Danny Ainge In Studio, Celtics In The Finals, Mavs Up 3-0, Remembering Bill Walton And 35 Minutes From Our 2017 Interview With Him

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Auto insurance can all seem the same until it comes time to use it.

So don't get stuck paying more for less coverage.

Switch to USA Auto Insurance and you could start saving money in no time.

Get a quote today.

Restrictions apply.

USA!

On today's Pardon My Take, we are back from the long weekend. We got a lot of basketball to talk about, and we have an awesome in-person interview with Danny Ainge.
We also are going to talk about the passing of the legend Bill Walton, and we have some unreleased footage from our interview with him, which we never actually put it out on video, so that'll be at the end of the episode. We have 35 minutes.
It was back in 2017 in Las Vegas before the Pac-12 championship, the Conference of Champions. Yes.
And it was an unforgettable experience, so we've condensed it down into about 30 minutes, but I think it was much longer than that. It was like two and a half hours.
Yeah, because there was a lot of people who of people probably didn't hear it i know there's a lot of people didn't see it because before we released every podcast on video so that will be in video as well at the end uh we're going to talk half of the nba finals is set cocky hank gets paid off also the mavs are up 3-0 uh some hockey some hot seat cool. And we're happy to be back.
We're excited to be back. Extra long show because we're not going to have a show on Wednesday.
Our next show will be Friday, so we have an extra long show for the people. And we're brought to you by our friends at DraftKings.
We're this close to crowning an NBA champ, and with the action heating up on the court, it's even hotter at DraftKings Sportsbook. An official sports betting partner, the NBA.
There's only so many games left, and DraftKings Sportsbook has you covered with same-game parlays, live betting odds, boosts, and so much more. Don't miss out, or you'll have to wait until next NBA season to place your bets.
It's super easy for first-timers to get started. Try betting on something simple like picking a team to win.
Go to the DraftKings Sportsbook app, select your squad, and place your first bet. It's that simple.
You can bet game four of the Mavs versus Wolves. That is Tuesday night.
Just a little tip. Kyrie Irving has never lost a closeout game.
That's interesting. Just remember that.
If you're new to DraftKings, listen up. New customers can go get a no-sweat bet up to $1,500.
Just deposit at least $5. And you'll get a bonus bet back equal to your first bet if it doesn't hit.
Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Now use code TAKE.
That's code TAKE for new customers to get a no-sweat bet up to $1,500 if your first bet doesn't hit. Only on DraftKings, and responsible gaming resources.
Okay, let's go. It's a part of my take presented by Barstool Sports.
is Tuesday, May 28th, and we have lost a legend. Bill Walton passed away on Monday.
Kind of shocking. Yeah.
I didn't know he was battling cancer, and it was also shocking in the fact that, you know, we don't, we'll talk about celebrity deaths. I think this might be the first one that's ever led the show, and I think it's appropriate because this one, I don't know about you, PFT, but like when I saw it hit, the news hit, I was really, really like affected and bummed out because I loved Bill Walton.
And we, I'm like so happy that we were actually able to interview him and he just was, he was just walking joy. Yeah.
And it was like really sad to see that news yeah i i don't really get emotional about celebrity deaths um i did cry when i found out about bill because he was such a positive person and when we had the opportunity to meet him we met him for one day in 2017 one day we spent about two hours with him just a blip on his radar and i've missed bill ever since then yeah like i've missed hey i actually miss hanging out with bill walton and he was so fun to be around and such a unique person and just larger than life in every single aspect the joy that he brought countless people the joy that he was able to exude he was without a doubt a one-of-a-kind human being they've never made anybody like bill walton they're never going to make anybody like bill walton again and so for that reason i'm sad that the world no longer has that unique person but bill walton would probably get very mad at us if he heard us being sad about him yeah that's not his vibe i am going to be sad because that's just how it makes me feel. The only good part of today was we got to hear hours and hours of Bill Walton stories.
Yes. Which was very nice to hear because everyone, everyone that met Bill is like, he changed their lives.
He was authentically Bill. Like he was the same person when we got, when we were lucky enough to interview him, he was just exactly what we expected.
You know, I said at the beginning of the show, if you skip through it, we interviewed him in 2017. This was early, early days, first year of part of my take.
So it was just the three of us. I think that was right after the Evander Holyfield interview.
Right after we got duped by Evander Holyfield. But it was just the three of us so we didn't release the the podcast on uh video so we're able to find the hard drive and we'll have the video of the 35 minutes we're going to put at the end of this show if you're a new awl listen to it it was a joy it also i mean i've told this story before but the two things that were so great when we interviewed him one he asked me beforehand if it's okay if he brings his own chair.
And then he said, it's the greatest chair ever. And if you watch the video, it's, I think, for his back, because he obviously had so many surgeries on his back.
He's just towering over us. And the second was we interviewed him.
We both were very, like, not anxious, but anxious but like nervous going into this interview because we wanted to nail it I wrote down all these questions I think I might have asked two of them because Bill just talked and about two hours in he's like how long does this go and we're like it's kind of up to you Bill like we're having a great time and so he just the best. Like I was just smiling the entire interview and you're right.
Like all these stories that have come out. I also like as, as great as he was as a broadcaster, I loved just his little corner of the world where it's like, it's a late night game on the West coast and Bill Walton's going to get weird and he's just going to be fun.
It's crazy how good he was at basketball and how injuries took away so much of it i people should watch there's a four part documentary uh luckiest man in the world that he that came out a couple years ago i actually think maybe because i remember when it came out i was like this kind of weird it's out he might have it might have been because he was battling cancer um but he was one of the greatest college basketball players of all time. If he hadn't had to deal with injuries his entire career in the NBA, he very well could have been a top five, seven player of all time because he won a title with Portland, who never wins anything, won an MVP, then was part of the 86 Celtics.
All the Portland fans at home right now are just catching the biggest ricochet. I mean, it's true though, but he was, it is.
Yeah. And like, he was that good of a basketball player.
And then, uh, his life touched everyone after being in broadcasting and, um, all his grateful dead stories. It's just like, he was, he saw a thousand shows, all one song.
It's all one song. That's what I'll always remember.
And it makes sense when he says it's all one song. Yeah.
I tapped into his worldview. You can't stay there because it's only Bill's brain, and he only truly understands what he's singing.
But when he's talking about it, yeah, it is all one song in a very spiritual sense. I know we're getting sappy, but I am sad.
No, I was sad. I about Bill Walton Not only did he He won I think three Naismith Player of the Year In college which is crazy And then he won NBA MVP And he also won NBA Sixth Man of the Year For the Celtics which is probably That's got to be a very small list I would imagine Of players that have done both yeah and and in a serendipitous moment there's a minor serendipitous moment the fact that we interviewed Danny Ainge in person two weeks ago and we had been holding it because we're like oh this is such a great interview let's let's wait till we come back for Memorial Day he has some great Bill Walton stories in there that obviously now they feel even more important.
And then, of course, the fact that Bill Walton passed away a day after the Pac-12 played their last sporting event ever. I was legitimately like, what is going to, he loves that conference so much.
What's going to happen? And now he's just, I don't believe in heaven, but I do with Bill Walton. He's probably hanging out with Jerry Garcia right now.
And the Pac-12 is 24 7 yeah he's loving it yeah it's like yeah the pack 12 ends bill's like well my work here is done yeah i uh i'll share one last thing the uh so we we tried to get him on a couple other times in the last few years and every time he would text back he was so bill walton and so nice but the one time that i laugh about when we tried to get him back on a few years ago and he just wrote back uh thanks big cat for your kindness in my life you guys are amazing and you have an incredible audience i still get more positive and interesting comments feedback from your show than from almost anything any other thing i've ever done in my life please i am sadly ricocheting through the universe on the business road through memorial day sorry hopefully next time you're back through the promised land shine on dream on build on carry on b-dub love that bill with two l's did yeah bill with two l's and he always spelled his wife's name uh l-o-r-i lori i'm the luckiest man in the world he used to always say. Did he give us nicknames, Hank? I don't think so.
I thought he did something to remember our names by. Yeah, I don't remember.
I also had... I also have to imagine that he texts everybody that way.
Yeah. Yeah, no, he's authentically real.
Very positive to say to close out every conversation with everyone. everyone yeah and he just meant so much to us as sports fans um the you mentioned all the stories i i did see one that i wanted to share that was very funny uh from vince mancini he said my favorite bill walton story was luke walton telling how for christmas his dad would just wrap up some free swag he collected and one year luke walton's stocking was just huge and overstuffed, and he was all excited to open it.
And then when he did, it was all power bars inside. That's awesome.
Vince Mancini is very funny, too. I like that guy.
Film drunk. Yeah.
So legend. Absolute legend.
Like I said, we don't usually start the show or even talk about death, but Billton felt like it was someone we had to so tune in for danny age has danny age tells a great great bill walton story that i had never heard uh about chess yeah and just also bear in mind that during the interview we did pre-tape it so when he's talking about bill yeah right he had right he had no idea that he passed away right and then uh at the end show, after lottery ball, we will have the 35 minutes of our interview with Bill Walton. So please listen to it if you've never listened to it.
If you have, listen to it again because it will make you happy and smile. And he was the best.
Okay. Hank? Yes? Congratulations on being in the NBA Finals.
Thank you. Some might say Eastern Conference Merchant, but that's fine.
You play you play. Cash the under.
Remember when we said, I said the line would be four and a half. That was way too high.
Way too high. They lost two games in their path to the finals.
Also, people were like, oh man, the Pacers, they were right there because game one they threw away. Game three of Rick Carlisle just was like, I have the youngest team and I'm not going to use a timeout.
But guess what? I actually look at it the other way. The Celtics are a seasoned team that knows how to make big plays, and that's what they did time and time again in this series.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of adversity for a sweep.
Okay. Was this the hardest sweep ever? No, but it was a well-earned, hard-ought sweep the pacers showed up they didn't give up uh but the celtics like like big cat said overcame and in the past when it feels like they turtle up in close games and kind of you know turn into more iso ball selfish stuff like they didn't do that at all they they found a way to win they made plays when they had to and they won three games where they were down late in the fourth quarter in a sweep against an inferior team.
That's all you can ask for. They stopped the Patriots in the score for the last three and a half minutes in this game tonight on Monday night.
Jalen Brown, Eastern Conference Finals. You could tell when he got the trophy he wasn't expecting it and that meant a lot to him.
I think he deserved it. Wait, Jason Tatum did it win? No, I think Jalen Brown deserved this one big time.
Jason Tatum had a great game three. So did Jalen Brown.
Jalen Brown had a great game two. He hit the big shot in game three.
Jalen Brown is so good. You know who could have won it? It's Drew Holiday.
Because he was, his defense, that's why you make that trade. And that type of player who can make the big moment plays on defense, he was awesome.
Was that at the end three the little poke away that he had there steal yeah also and the rebound tonight yep shout out to rick carlisle by the way for that that end of game play that he drew up in game three he just basically turned into football coach and they almost had that one that was like you know just inches away from going in yeah or verts yeah i love that play so keep keep running that rick but yeah hank you guys were the much better team cocky hank deserves this i'm ready i mean that's that's the the drew holiday and porzingis like those are two huge huge difference makers that we didn't have last time we're in the finals there you know drew holiday's won nba championship porzingis is amazing i'm i feel great now would it affect you at all because porzingis isn't back yet would it affect how ready you are if maybe hypothetically the maverick sweep and then the timetable for the nba finals gets moved up you guys are playing later on this week that's not how oh wait that's not how it works because the nba is a bunch of fucking idiots and they're going to make us wait until june 6th to tip off no matter what no matter what so 6th, no matter what. What are we supposed to do with these two weeks here? Yeah, it's crazy.
I said it on Sunday night. I was like, I'm rooting for a double sweep just so we can make fun of the NBA scheduling.
Yeah. Someone pointed out that fans have to book their hotels.
They booked their hotels and tickets months ago. It's like for all permutations of this.
Celtics fans did, knowing that they would be. But imagine if they did that last year.
Yeah. There's no way anyone, any fan books their hotels and plane tickets for the NBA finals months in advance.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't make any sense.
Now, if I know the NBA, I would expect the other series to go a little bit longer, burn up some of that time. Irie, though, has never lost a closeout.
He's never lost a closeout game. Never lost a closeout.
So, Hank, you feel confident. Very confident.
And now you're obviously rooting for the Wolves. Yeah, I think it's going to be Mavs no matter what, so I don't really care.
And, you know, they're going to have enough rest, even if it goes seven. I mean, if it goes seven, that would maybe affect things,

but it doesn't really matter.

I'm ready for the Mavs.

So Lucky wants his revenge.

It will be a talking point. It will be a storyline if it is Mavs-Celtics.

How big of a factor is the stomping on Lucky in your head?

It's a huge factor.

I mean, we talk about it with Danny Ainge,

but that was as disrespectful as it gets. Yeah.
Also revenge game for christops yeah former dallas maverick yeah yeah um we got some messages from a friend of the program yeah jerry o'connell he wanted to send you a few statements hank should we read them to him big guy you can read them yeah she really wants you i think it's be Tiffany. It's supposed to be a Hank reading them in a Boston accent.
Oh yeah. Okay.
Okay. Would you like to tell Hank to read these to Tiffany? But the Mavs are not, the Mavs are not set yet.
So we should save it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
We'll save these. There's a lot of them.
He kept adding throughout the day. I got an email out of nowhere.

Everyone, all the Swifties that came after me for the Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift video idea that I threw out there,

what they thought I was doing, that is literally what Jerry O'Connell is doing with Hank and Tiffany Gomas.

Yes.

He wants that. He does.
And he wants to see it weird level he wants to see he wants to ride on a helicopter and watch hank shoot his nut out of the helicopter and hit tiffany with it are you a little worried that you're gonna have to go against tiff house divided i mean it is what it is celtics celtics are more important split jersey um but congratulations thank you yeah no don't apologize i mean we'll see what happens in the finals but the celtics were just better than everyone in the east you can't apologize for that they just were the better team by far they have been all year this is exactly how you drew it up to yeah two losses you know ball that's it yeah and now they and shaft now they're gonna go and hopefully we have a all year. This is exactly how you drew it up, too.
Yeah, two losses. You know ball.
That's it.

Yeah.

And shaft.

Now they're going to go and hopefully we have a good NBA Finals.

Yeah, I'm fine with another Celtics sweep.

That would be crazy because then everyone would have to just switch

if the Celtics swept the Finals and be like,

are they an all-time great team?

Yeah.

We'd have to have the conversation.

We'd have to have the conversation.

That's on the table for you. Especially if they beat maybe the best offensive backcourt of all time in the finals was that kenny was that kenny the jet that first said that yeah one of the guys on tnt said that about the mavericks kyrie and luca the best offensive backcourt of all time and people laughed at him and then they played three games and they're like maybe it not that far off.
Are we permission to glaze the Mavericks, Hank, without thinking that we're saying anything bad about the Celtics? Yeah, of course. I mean, the glazing was coming.
That was never a question. Right, but can we separate? Do you have any other thoughts on the Celtics before we move to the Mavs-Wolves? Because I don't want I don't want I don't want you know things thoughts to get twisted here no but when we compliment the Mavs it's separate than Celtics Max what are you shaking your head about I have hated everything that Hank has said in the past 10 minutes but that's fine what would you have said if you were him I mean he just talked about how it was a hard-fought battle against a great Pacers team without mentioning that their best player didn't fucking play.
So, yes. Wait, who smoked 15 cigs today? I don't know.
Us or you? I haven't spoken a while. Oh, yeah, we should say that.
We did the John Daly challenge earlier today. So I think me, Big Cat, and Hank are averaging somewhere between 13 and 15 cigarettes each.
Yeah, I feel a little weird. I feel great.
Yeah, I feel a little weird. I have a headache.
That video weird headache that video's coming out tweet it max he'll get the video out as fast as possible it's already next week it's already edited he's just waiting for somebody to tell him to press the button yep if no one says press the button he will not put that out but if you say it enough say it a thousand times it will happen max just interrupted the glazing yeah all right I'm ready for the Mavs glazing

and I wanted

to be personal towards Hank

they call Hank Nicky Glazer

Max if you want to take notes at the end

and you can add a personal slant

towards Hank you're more than welcome to

the Mavericks

we obviously have been off since Friday

we saw

Luca on Friday night

completely emasculate

Thank you. The Mavericks, so we obviously have been off since Friday.
We saw Luka on Friday night completely emasculate Rudy Gobert, hit the game-winning shot in his face with Rudy doing the – I thought the saddest part was Rudy doing the double jump to try to get there and his body just couldn't get there. And then Luka saying, you can't fucking guard me.
You can't guard me. And then on Sunday night in a similar fashion, Luca and Kyrie completely took over the game.
The wolves look like the moment is too big for them. Anthony Edwards looks gassed and weirdly like in the fourth quarters has been kind of just, was a couple possessions especially Sunday night where he just had no urgency and just passed the ball the last second that like Kyle Anderson made that crazy shot that he like cross court like here you take it uh Carl Anthony Towns cannot possibly be playing worse he was 0 for 8 from 3 he's 3 for 22 in this series I love that he kept shooting though yeah he was just like next one's going in that's in some of them some of them it's not like he was like yeah there's just kind of some bounces aren't going my way it's like no dude some of them look really really bad very bad one of them looked like he was throwing a medicine ball but he's got so much confidence I I yearn to have confidence in anything the way that Carl Anthony Towns has confidence in his three-point shot yes like watching him just next one's going in next one's going in and yeah anthony edwards seemed like he was he was panicking a little bit in the fourth quarter yeah he would get he i think he had like two or three turnovers in the last five minutes of the game he would just throw the ball away because he was trying to make an ill-advised pass at the last second because their offense looks completely disjointed and nothing like what we've seen from them they don't know what to do offensively at the end of games if you just take away those last five minutes of the game they're playing really good against the maverick so yeah except for carl anthony towns is shot making yeah carl anthony towns shot making and rudy gobert also just i i don't think i feel bad for rudy gobert but it's getting very close because every year he wins the defensive player of the year, and then every year he gets in the playoffs and he gets completely, like, roasted, cooked.
He had – I actually – so this is the craziest thing. On Friday night, you had the one-on-one with Luka who hits the game-winning shot.
Incredible play. Luka is so good, he'll cook anyone.
So, like, that one I'm like, all right, you know what know what? Luka is that good. That's not Rudy Gobert.
Rudy Gobert in space against Luka Doncic is just a huge mismatch. That's not fully on Rudy.
They have to figure out a way to not have that be a switch or at least double team get the ball out of his hands. I thought the worst thing for Rudy Gobert, I don't know if you guys noticed this, on Sunday night, maybe two and a half minutes left in the third quarter, Jaden Hardy had the ball and tried to pass it back to Luka at the top of the key.
and Luka waved him off because Jaden Hardy had a one-on-one in space with Rudy and then got him on like a bad foul jumping up.

But Luka was literally like, no, you take it.

It's fine.

Whatever's going to happen here is going to work because it's Rudy Gobert. Rudy and then got him on like a bad foul jumping up.
But Luka was literally like, no, you take it.

It's fine.

Whatever's going to happen here is going to work because it's Rudy Gobert

against a shiftier guy in space.

And that was like, man, this sucks for him.

I've noticed this, though.

A lot of players really like to go after Rudy Gobert.

Being the defensive player of the year, there's a line out the door of guys

that are just like, I want to embarrass him. I want to take him.
I want to emasculate rudy gobert on national television then i want to celebrate in his face i can't name another defensive player of the year that's ever had that giant target on normally if it's a defensive player of the year you're like well let's let's try to figure out a way to avoid him if at all possible well he's he's so good at rim protecting but when you get him away from the basket and this happened time and time again with him in the playoffs, getting him in pick and rolls, and then just exposing him, and it just keeps happening, and here we are, and it's like the big three, shout out Kat, of the Timberwolves have completely let them down. Nas Reed, if you could build the whole plane out of Nas Reed, the Wolves would be in the finals.
Give me all, like man and then yes I agree Nas Reed plays so fucking hard I love watching him it does feel like one of those stories where hey the Wolves the moment was too big for them they had a franchise altering win in game 7 against the Ngets, and that series propels them to being a serious title contender going forward. But this series and Anthony Edwards and everything that's come along with these playoffs, it kind of got ahead of them.
Ant and Cat, I don't think they can play worse. And I think that with Lively out, he's probably going to be out, I would imagine.
When he got hit and they said that's a neck sprain, that's like some NFL math going on right there. And he's their best player plus minus in this series.
Yeah. In the playoffs, I believe.
Yeah, I'm going to do the announcer thing where they say, we don't want to speculate on injuries. And then they go ahead and they speculate on injuries.
Yeah. I don't think that was a neck sprain.
Yeah. I feel like he might be out for this next game.
And he is again i don't think that anthony edwards and carl anthony towns can play worse they can't shoot worse than they've been shooting and this goes back um it was like game seven i think or game six against the nuggets neither one of them have been like on their a game for a while but i i feel like i feel like something's going to give and the timberwolves have been leading, I think, in every fourth quarter of this game or of this series.

I feel like something's going to give, and the Timberwolves have been leading, I think, in every fourth quarter of this game, or of the series. I feel like it's not going to be a sweep.
Okay, but here's the thing. Every game, it's been a close series, but the Mavericks have better players in Luka and Kyrie who are absolute killers.
The Luka stare down, that's when the series is over. He's done it.
And whenever he wins these series, he just goes right up next to the guy and just kind of looks at him. He did that to Anthony Edwards on Sunday night.
But here are the stats. So Dallas is – the Mavs are plus 13 in the series.
So to be up 3-0 and have the difference be 13 points is pretty crazy. That means it's tight.
In the fourth quarter, semi-contested shots, which means a defender is within four and six feet of space. The league average is 33% on those shots.
Luka and Kyrie are seven for nine. The rest, all of Minnesota, six guys are three for 13.

That's the difference.

They have killers who in the fourth quarter,

like the fourth quarter on Sunday night,

the Mavs scored 29 points.

21 of them were Luca and Kyrie.

Six of them were Luca and Kyrie assists. And then there was two points.

I think it was a Daniel Gafford tip in.

So like,

that's it.

The fourth quarter comes around and they just take over the game. And whether it's them shooting, they're going my turn, your turn, or them like that Luca lob to finish the game.
It's just, they're so much better. And they know what these big moments are and they are coming through.
Whereas the Timberwolves are not. And the pick and roll is a big problem for the T-Wolves.
So yeah, big, big problem. Yeah.
They are not, I don't know what their, their switching scheme is, but it's not working, and I don't think that they've changed it. Yeah, they just can't.
Luka is just out of this world. He sees the game so well.
If you double-team him, he'll get the ball. He'll make the correct pass.
If you try to show a fake double-team, he'll make the right move. His footwork, everything.

Sorry, Hank, this is glazing.

Oh, he's shaking his head. He's making notes.
He's making notes. This tweet, are you making notes? No, I'm just listening.
Okay. This one comes from Andrew Bailey that was a crazy stat.
Luka has played his 43rd career playoff game on Sunday. He has 1,336 points, 400 rebounds, and 355 assists in his first 43 career playoff games.
No one else has those three totals in their first 43 playoff games. And if you took away 236 points, so made it 1,100 points, you take away 100 rebounds, so make it 300 rebounds and 300 assists.
The list is just Luka, LeBron, Oscar Robinson. So you have to basically take away 200 points, 100 rebounds, and 50 assists, and then finally, there are two other guys, LeBron James, ever heard of him, and Oscar Robinson, who joined his category of their first 43 playoff games and how good he's been i feel like we also need to go back and watch some tape of oscar robertson because triple double he's mr triple double and he's in all these stats yeah he's always the guy in these stats it's like okay there's two guys from like one guy from the 90s two guys from the 2000s two guys from the 2010s and then there's oscar yeah i feel like we need to go watch some oscar shit yeah we should watch some oscar but it's it's crazy what luca has done and he uh he's just ascending to be one of if not the best players in the nba yeah and him when he screams at you he really he really wants you to die and he's annoying i'll i'll back anyone up who says that he's annoying with how much he complains the refs i will not disagree i just like watching him play basketball like that that fade away he had uh where his footwork was just oh so perfect and even that rudy gobert that step back where it's like he knew he had him and there was just nothing rudy could do and he had the perfect like got him off balance and then that two step back it it's just it's fun to watch sorry Hank no it is he's a great player tell you what Kevin Love would have put the clamps on him Kevin that was like pretty much the exact same scenario he had against Steph Curry yeah true Kevin Love better defender than Rudy Gobert write it down so are you worried Hank no I'm excited he's good I think the Southwicks are a better team great defense just as much star power okay just as much wait but we got kairi and we got luca yeah stars jalen brown jason tate you think they're equals yeah i think yeah i think that i think the supporting cast in boston you could you could talk me into saying that they have an advantage with the supporting cast although dallas is yeah, yeah, I know what you're about to say.
I know what you're about to say. They don't have the experience.
PJ Washington has hit 100 big shot corner threes in the fourth quarter in these playoffs. It's every single time, it's like, oh, PJ Washington is there and he's going to just fucking be so wet from the corner.
You forget about KP though. Chris stops.
know i i it's gonna i think it's gonna be incredible finals it's got everything you want star power like storylines the kyrie versus boston it's gonna be every like whoever comes out of this tatum or immortality is on the line yeah immortality immortality immortality hank never. No, you win a final.
Is that Banners Hank forever? No, that is true. Yeah.
That's a fact. That's a fact.
Max, did you think that the glazing was fair? Yeah, I mean, the Mavs have the best player on the- Are you okay? Yeah, I don't know what's going on with me. I swear to God, he smoked a six.
I smoked no six. He's got like- But the Mavs have the best player on the court.
And they probably have the second best player on the court.

And you say that the Mavs don't have experience.

Well, the Mavs have someone who have actually won a finals.

Yeah, they've won players, but in the finals.

Well, who's won the finals.

Okay.

Finals experience.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure that that was stated.

Stated.

Noted. Also, didn't.
Was Markeith Morris not on one of those Cleveland teams? No. Drew Holiday may have won.
Drew Holiday definitely has. Drew Holiday definitely has.
He was a very big part of that box championship. Yes, he 100%.
Yeah, but Kyrie. Markeith Morris was on the Lakers bubble team, which you guys have always said is a real title.

No.

Nope.

Okay, so yeah.

So yeah, Drew Holiday definitely counts big time as a guy who's won.

Something big.

Good point though, Max.

Max, you were supposed to get in this and like give us something good and then you just owned yourself. But Kyrie's better.
Okay. All right.
That's fair? Yeah. He's better.
Who's he better than? Tatum? Than Drew Holiday. Oh, than Drew Holiday.
Yeah. Okay, because I don't think he's better than Tatum.
But he has been playing out of his mind. Their championship experience supersedes the Celtics because their championship

guy is better.

Correct.

Okay, got it.

Correct.

I want to make sure

the numbers are right here.

So their number two guy

on the championship team

is better than

the box number two guy.

Yes.

Got it.

Yeah.

Or the box number three guy

on that championship team.

Chris Middleton was pretty good.

And Pat Connaughton.

And Pat Connaughton.

Don't forget Pat Connaughton. Kevin Love.
Kevin Love Deli no Deli wasn't on that team but Deli would have been the number two it's gonna be pretty awesome was Deli not on that I don't think he was on the Bucks team but he was on the Cleveland team yeah won a championship that was the he was the number two on that team he was number two on that team it number two it was like two batmans you had australian batman and then kid from cleveland batman oh all right i'm excited so you think that you think the wolves are gonna win a game i may put a little future on the wolves to be the first team to come back and well anthony edwards did say uh which i don't know if I agree with I love his confidence he is a breath of fresh air and confidence uh and very vocal about it but him saying after the game I still don't feel like they can beat us bro we haven't all been clicking at one time one game one game I I mean the the Mavs have proven they can beat them. I like the confidence, though.
I still don't think they can beat us, bro. Well, how many games in series, Big Cat? It is true.
He said, well, we're here now. First of four.
What are we going to do? All right, Timberwolves plus 1,000. Carl Anthony Towns probably just giggled.
They just can't be any worse. And the thing is, like, they're not playing that.
Don't get me wrong. They're not playing good, but they're still building leads into the fourth quarter.
And I feel like with Lively out, that's a big factor. That is a big, big.
But he was out for the majority of that game. Yeah, they played, again, until the last, like, three minutes of the game, they played pretty good.
But that's when you have Luka and Kyrie, and you don't have Luka and Kyrie on the other team.

Now you've got to build a little bit of a lead.

Yeah.

And let Luka and Kyrie do their thing, and hopefully it won't affect.

I'm just going to sprinkle it.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Hank, I'm excited.

Was that an okay amount of glazing that was nothing to do with the Celtics?

Jason Tatum's a very good player.

Jalen Brown's a very good player.

Drew Holiday's a very good player. Derek White, friend a very good player.
Drew Holiday's a very good player.

Derek White, friend of the program.

Amazing player. Amazing player.
Clutch.

Clutch? Yeah, that was fine. You good? You okay? Yeah.

I don't want you to get your feelings hurt. Nope.

I'm excited to see you in

two weeks. Yeah, forever

from now. Should we talk a little

hockey memes? You're in trouble.

The Rangers. The Rangers.
Yeah, the Panthers blow. Two overtime wins in a row.
Team of destiny? Yeah, the Rangers feel like they might be. Like the Rangers, New York should be showing the same enthusiasm to the Rangers that they were showing to the Knicks.
Like the Rangers are the real deal. And they got their overtime goal, nice dirty overtime goal to win game three.
You got to be worried. Although the Stars look awesome.
Well, the Rangers didn't even play that well when they won that game. Yeah.
But the Stars do look awesome. Yeah.
I mean, the Stars were down 2-0 in the blink of an eye tonight. And it's like, nope, now it's 3-2.
And they did that in game two as well where they were down early and it doesn't matter yeah mcdavid's gonna have some some answering to do wow we need rangers oilers though for the for the vibes rangers always would be great also are you a little worried that if the mavs and the stars were in that people would say title town they'd have to win i would love that i would actually well you don't have to win to claim Titletown. Max taught us that.
That's a good point. I would love it.
I would love nothing more. My wet dream is if we get the Stars winning the Stanley Cup, and we have the Rangers as the MLB champions, and we have the Mavericks as the NBA champions, and then the Cowboys go out there and they lose in the first round of the playoffs.
And it's all anyone cares about. I know that, obviously, Dallas fans, you're passionate about all your sports teams, but you'd give it all up for a Cowboys Super Bowl.
Yeah. And for all those in America besides Cowboys fans, we're going to come.
Oh, yeah. We're going to come if that happens.
Oh, we're coming. We're coming when that happens.
Big time. Might go to the dual parade.
Yeah. Yeah.
That would be sick. We might, when that happens, we might have to raise banners of all the Dallas championships in here.
Yeah. And then just have one empty spot.
Title town minus the Cowboys. Yeah.
Jerry Jones' worst nightmare. Was that Arlington? They'll just disassociate from the Cowboys.
They should be the Arlington Cowboys. Do you think he's definitely rooting against them, right? I think in his heart of hearts, he has to be.
Deep down, this cannot happen I just said he has a heart that was a mistake in his soul no that's not good um in his in the back the brainstem that the part that makes you like mad or horny that's the part where Jerry Jones is like I hope they lose in the shoe with cum in it in the shoe yes yeah oh my god it's cum shoe I really really he's a real cum shoe that Jerry Also, the Dallas Wings, they went to the WNBA finals. Oh.
They lost the Vegas Aces. So, a lot of championship experience in terms of making runs.
Oh. The WNBA is in trouble.
Are they in trouble? Why? Because I think that they're – Caitlin Clark is adding so many new fans, and there's a lot of fans that are just taking the fun out of sports. Yeah.
Because everything that happens in the WNBA now has to be a fucking bigger cultural talking point. It's like, hey, it's fucking sports.
Shut the fuck up. That's what we were saying on Friday.
Yeah. There's seven think pieces after every game she plays.
Correct. And I feel bad for caitlin clark and it's going really do because what's happening is there's no way that she can tune out all this stuff all all she's all that's being talked about in terms of the wmba she's probably uncomfortable with that because she's like i'm a rookie i haven't done anything in the nba yet i i want to have a successful career in the wmba and it's going to be a, big distraction if every time I go out there and I lose a game, then I've got seven people on Slate.com writing about why Caitlin Clark is problematic for the league and how the league has a marketing problem.
I feel bad for her. I miss the days when Greg Doyle was just being a sexual harassment creep on her.
Those were the good old days. I wish we knew it was the good old days.
When was the good old days? But it's spread to everywhere in the WNBA because it's a new with new fans come like new opinions and the new opinions are not about sports anymore because they came like with Caitlin Clark. Did you see the Alyssa Thomas foul on Angel Reese? And I don't know if it was a sky game this this person had 5 000 retweets i was just like what is going on she said unpopular opinion elissa thomas throwing angel reese down on the court is exactly how older black women treat younger black women in many industries both professional and personal it's not tough love it's envy stay out of sports it was a hard watch sports.
Relax. Please stop watching sports.
This is not fun anymore. Listen, we love sports.
We know it's stupid as shit, but we love it. Please don't ruin this for us.
I saw my brain just started to just be paralyzed. I rubbed my head, and I don't get migraines, but I got a migraine in that moment.
Self-correction, Dallas Wings lost in the semis last oh well i don't know if you could tell i didn't care you could have told me they won it and i would have been like okay so uh so angel reese did have a tweet alluding to caitlin clark the other night did you see this yes of course i saw she said she deleted it was yeah it was after after they won and that's on getting a win in a packed arena not just because of one player on our charter flight yeah kiss emoji hashtag sky town oh don't delete that why'd she delete it it's just it's just not becoming fun anymore but it's but if she leaves that up then she's talking shit and she's like yeah i'm talking shit about caitlin clark let's it's a good rivalry's a continuation of the rivalry they had in college. That's good for the league.
If you're going to talk shit, that's fine. You guys are going to play each other again.
And then you're going to have, you know, somebody else is going to win. They're going to talk shit back to you.
That's what sports should be about. But instead, now she deleted it because she's afraid of like all the other like outrage going on the K.
Clark narrative. Correct.

Yeah.

If I was K. Clark, I'd retire.

Yeah.

I'd be like, listen, this.

I'd go to the big three.

I don't mind getting hard fouled.

I don't mind getting hit in the face.

I don't mind getting knocked down. I don't mind not making that much money to play in a professional sports league.

But I'm just sick of all you losers writing columns about me.

Right.

Right. Just let me play basketball.
Yeah should she should actually reverse it and be like hey can you guys just shut up and let me dribble yeah you know what she should know what she should say she's say shut up and scribble yeah to the fucking yeah those that are that are taking all the fun out of a little scribble shut up and scribble a little scribble scrabble yeah always like, hey, can I do some scribble scrabble? I'm like, sure. Hand her a pen.
Literally, that's all it is. She just scribbles.
Nothing. Just scribbling.
Sounds like you're disappointed. For like a half hour.
Well, yeah, it'd be nice if she could just like draw me or something. Just scribble scrabble.
She says like, I'm scribble scrabbling. It's like, okay.
That's what Greg Doyle's doing right now.

Scribbling.

Sitting by himself.

Imagine the takes.

Scribble-scrabbling.

It takes that man is cooking up in his brain with all this time to just think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What were you going to say, Max?

So the Rangers game.

What?

It's all one song.

Yeah.

So the Rangers.

So the Rangers game.

The Rangers are a very good hockey team.

That was quite a tangent.

Memes, you are in hell.

I thought you guys were going to blow right by it.

Also, Memes' new thing is he just does all caps.

So he'll just tweet it and be all caps to be like,

look, I'm excited for the Rangers.

But it's all caps in the most monotone. Rangers win in overtime.
But it's all caps to be like look i'm excited for the rangers but it's all caps in the most monotone like rangers win in overtime but it's all caps oh memes has been on that shit for a while oh yeah but every every postseason all caps is a new part that he's doing where he's like trying to get people off the scent like hey i'm not editorializing it yeah but it's just it's just the same nothing but just all caps so it's by far

memes is least favorite part of his job and that that includes cleaning up turtle shit is having to post he loves his little mister he does love that but he he hates more than anything having to post rangers highlights uh memes speaking of which how mad were you at me on Sunday when I tweeted

at you, hey, are we covering

the Rangers game? When they went up

like... Speaking of which, how mad were you at me on Sunday when I tweeted at you,

hey, are we covering the Rangers game when they went up?

Would they go up 4-2?

Yeah, I was pretty fired up about it.

Yeah, and he hadn't tweeted anything.

And I just tweeted him.

I was like, hey, are we covering the Rangers game right now?

I think when they went up 2-1, you tweeted it.

Yeah, you just weren't going to cover them? No, I was covering them. point only tweeted out rangers goals oh wow reverse it on them you're trying to jinx or something no they they were playing really good their goal is really good the panthers just can't make a fucking shot they had 108 shots and they couldn't get five in just dark darken.
That's pretty crazy. 108.

If they win the Stanley Cup.

How many on goal?

43 to 48.

One of those numbers.

If the Rangers win the Stanley Cup, not only should we send memes to the parade to cover it,

we should also hang a banner just over his head in that glass room.

That'd be nice.

We should also put Hank's banner in there right above Max if the Celtics win.

Yeah, that'd be a nice touch.

Just, yeah, that would be our trophy case in there.

The booth is, yeah, the Canyon of Heroes in the booth.

I like that.

Yeah, you like that?

You like that?

Max, by the way, is out for blood in this NBA Finals.

Yeah, which is honestly a good thing.

Hop on board the Mavericks train.

I just want to know how you're going to hurt Luka in the second game of the series.

Why do you say that, Max?

Oh, because that's how every series has gone for the Celtics.

That's why.

And Hank just doesn't talk about it.

Yeah, you don't talk about that.

I mean, we talk about it every time.

You play who's on the floor in front of you.

I mean, you were talking about how it was a hard-fought game against the Pacers

and how they're a really good team, and then you didn't say that Tyrus Halliburton didn't play the last two games. That's a good point.
I have a question for you. Both those things can be true.
If you're a detective and a woman's been married five times and all four of her ex-husbands have been murdered mysteriously. Is this a Tiger King lady? Yeah, it's like Carole Baskin.
Okay, yeah. So now we're looking at the Celtics and we've got Jimmy Butler.
We've got the entire New York Knicks. Excuse me, the Celtics did not play them.
I'm sorry. You're thinking of Donovan Mitchell? I'm thinking about Donovan Mitchell who got very hurt.
And Jared Allen. Jared Allen got hurt and now I'm thinking of Tyrese Halberton on the Pacers.
There's one common threat there. And Rick Carlisle's brain.
Yeah, his brain. His brain was very hurt.
Again, I hope I don't want Luka to get hurt. I'm not rooting for injuries.
I want to beat the Mavs. You tried to injure TJ McConnell tonight, too.
It is funny because we started this whole playoffs when you were clearly rooting for the Nuggets to get hurt. So it is full circle.
i've never once said anything about rooting for injuries i i i'm gonna side with hank that you can't apologize for other teams getting injured yeah but it's fun to ask him yeah yeah you can't apologize for that no fuck no but if you were would you no if you could apologize would you absolutely not well hank you've said you said numerous times that luka is a much better player than kyrie irving right you have luka ranked well ahead of him which player would you rather see get injured on the maverick neither or kyrie because the lucky factor neither what if it was his lucky stomping foot i want to beat them full strength okay uh do we have anything else before we get to hot seat cool throne there's a lot of sports stuff oh shout out the indy 500 it happened i wouldn't it be crazy pft if you were uh someone who let's say quote unquote has shit for brains uh watched last year's indy 500 for a solid like 20 minutes not realizing it was in rain delay wouldn't that be crazy we did that one time with the Royal Rumble I fucking I I watched it for 20 minutes kind of zoning out and then I saw that like an hour and a half later like the the rain is cleared we're about to start the race what the fuck yeah I was rooting for it too I bet it and I was like oh man my guy's in seventh this is pretty good there's no way to know that's last year's race it's it's the same cards going around the same circle oh it's not even circle really dumb on that indie fans will get mad at me for saying it's a circle going around the same track only two only 200 laps though yeah asterisks big time asterisks um okay let's do hot seat coolrone because I think we have a lot of other sports topics to talk about and then we'll get to our great interview with Danny Ainge. Hot Seat Cool Throne is brought to you by our friends at Game Time.
Did you know that you can get tickets to a baseball game? Let's say Cubs. Cubs are around this week.
Let's see. Can you pull up the Cubs tickets for me? I think they're playing the Reds this week.
With Game Time, the official ticketing partner of Barstool Sports, you can find tickets to concerts, sports, anything out there, comedy, theater, all of it at Game Time. So, look, Friday, Friday, $22.
A little Friday 120 game. Not bad.
Nothing better.

Bleachers.

Let me see the bleachers.

Go buy a bleachers seat on Friday.

$70.

That's a great deal.

That's a great deal.

With GameTime, you can get great deals because they have flash deals for sudden discounts,

zone deals for when you're feeling flexible, and their lowest price guaranteed means that if you can find the same seats for less anywhere else, GameTime will credit you 110% of the difference. GameTime is the best place for last-minute seats with up to 60% off your favorite events.
What are you waiting for? I'm going to go to a Cubs game this weekend. That's a fact.
With GameTime, take the guesswork out. Buying tickets with GameTime, download the GameTime app, create an account, use code PMT for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply, download the Game today last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed and hot seat cool throne is brought to you by our friends at Coors Light shout out to the people who are ride or die fans despite multiple losses or bad draft picks choosing a chill mindset makes the day-to-day better life's too short to get worked up over small stuff choose chill and then reach for Coors Light instead I saw a bunch of people tweeting us their ice cold Coors Light over the holiday weekend, and it was awesome.
Had a couple Coors Light on Saturday when it was the perfect weather day in Chicago. So when you embrace a chill mindset, it's a good time to choose chill and crack open a Coors Light.
Coors Light is mountain cold, refreshing, crisp, and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. I'm going to say right now, it's the drink of the summer.
Coors Light is the drink of the summer. Those coolers, that one guy who had the cooler packed, and it was Coors Light.
It's a thing of beauty. There were blue mountains, and it was a beautiful, long weekend, and you're like, summer has officially arrived.
The drink of the summer, Coors Light is officially here so when you choose chill chill out life gets better choose chill and then reach for Coors Light get Coors Light delivered straight to your door with the Instacart by going to Coors Light dot com slash take my favorite beer in the whole world the coldest beer in the whole world the first Coors Light goes down so easy when it's hot out and you got that cold blue mountains on the cans or bottles. Coors Light dot com slash take or get it delivered straight to your door with Instacart by going to Coors Light dot com slash take.
Hot seat, cool throne. Hank.
My hot seat is Rafa. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh. Oh.
Oh. End of an era.
The king of clay. Yeah, not anymore.
Went down. People are saying it's probably his last one.
First round, right? First round. He got screwed on the draw.
He played Zverev. Oh, now we're making...
That's loser talk. He lost in the first round.
Yeah, it's Zverev. Four seed.
If Djokovic lost in the first round, you would have been like, kick him out of the country. He's not vaxxed.
Well, that's what happened at the Aussie Open. Yeah, I know.
Point me. Joker was watching.
I'm up 15 love right now, Jake. Okay.
Joker was watching Rafa because he appreciates greatness. Is he playing in the French Open? Yes.
So who cares? He fucking had a day off. 30 love me.
What are you talking about? When they play tournament games, the team goes and watches after the game or before the game. They watch who they're playing.
Depends. He's probably scouting.
He's there. It would be cool if he flew in just to see it.
No, he was just hanging out. He was like, oh, go watch Rafa.

No, he was probably scouting Sperr.

Sperr.

Yeah, of course he was.

30 love me.

Okay.

Any other shots you want me to hit back at you?

Forehand, backhand?

1-12-4 is his French Open record.

Okay, and what is he lately?

What's his last one? 0- oh 40 love me this tennis shit is easy i do feel like if if clay if he doesn't have clay anymore yeah it's it can't be he can't be long for this no that is that is a crazy record what is it one 12 and four that's nuts it's insane how can you be that good on that surface who did he lose to in so how many uh french opens has he won i think around a dozen and who has he lost to in the finals before was the joker no i'm asking no i honestly don't know i know this was a first round loss 14 french opens and who who did he did he lose to anyone Because anyone? Because he obviously is the king of the clay. That's not up for discussion.
But did he ever lose in the finals or was it always like upsets in the first round? Standby. Okay.
Okay. You're looking up.
Joker in 2015 quarterfinals. Joker? Joker 2015 quarterfinals.
Game me. That was easy.
Game point. In 2016, he had to withdraw before his third round match.
Okay. Joker semifinals 2021.
Whoops. And Zverev today.
Straight sets. Jake, there's no way that you did not know what Big Cat for that.
No, I mean. Of course I knew.
Game me.

You didn't even score a point.

You got loved.

Okay, but the game is a very small portion of the set.

Oh, you want to do a set?

You want to do a set?

How much time we got?

Do an entire podcast.

Just be scoring points.

No, it actually is insane.

1-12-4 is crazy.

Is that all you had, Hank? Just that he lost?

Yeah.

Kind of a hater move.

I never know.

Hot seat.

Yeah, true.

I am on the cool throne.

Is he done?

For losing?

No, not officially.

Okay.

Yeah, but he's done

if he loses in the first round

of the French Open.

But bad draw.

Bad draw.

Bad draw.

Bad draw might be

the biggest loser talk ever. Everyone was saying all the kind of story.
I would never lose in the first round Never Too much pride My other hot seat is Max He's performing this weekend With Pop Punk He's nervous about it He's been pacing around the office Yeah Jerison Weed One of my favorite places in all of Chicago Very excited about that I'm home crowd concert, pop punk. Yes.
There's a bunch of people from Barcelona going out there, and it's going to be a blast. These are always one of the most fun times that we have as a company.
And Max is singing a song. I'm not going to say what song he's singing.
I'm nervous. Memorizing stuff is scary.
He's got a good voice. What's the song? I don't want to.
It'll be good for publicity. Some people have said that Max looks like Fat Dave Grohl.
Some people have said that. So what are we going to do? Dave Grohl.
Dave Grohl. So what are we going to do? So he might be doing it.
Max would sing for the Food Fighters. The Food Fighters.
Got it. Yeah.
I'm very excited. It is.
I mean, not to not to glaze pft i'm gonna glaze him because i love him he's really fucking good at guitar and their band is really good so it's like a very fun uh night out so if you want live music and it's not that expensive it's not that expensive right buy tickets on weed is awesome joe's and weed's a great place ron is an awesome front man ron kicks ass at everything that he does he's a he's a very good front man for a band we got robbie on bass frankie on drums who's also gonna be singing frankie's got he's got some pipes on he does he's a good singer and then uh we got nick hamilton on keyboards guitars and then caroline's also singing love it's gonna be a good time come out to joe's on weed hell yes friday night good cool, Hank. Thank you.
No, that was my hot seat. Max.
Oh, hot seat Max. What song? My cool throne is...
Spoiler. No, just people get excited about it.
My cool throne is Mark Davis. Okay, Reggie.
Yes, good call. Yeah, Mark Davis.
A report came out that he got his 27-year-old girlfriend pregnant, but then she came out on Instagram and said,

the reports of Mark Davis being the father of my child are wildly untrue.

Oh.

Oh.

How is this cool throwing Mark Davis?

I don't think you want to be a new father at 70.

No, I think that's exactly when you want to be a new dad.

Don't think you want a woman being so repulsed

that she has to issue a press release being like, I sat next to him at a concert or a football game once. He is not the father of my child.
Is that all we had to go on? Was that there was a strange one? I mean, Dove's been getting into some weird breaking news. I don't know if he actually broke it.
If someone else broke it, then he probably, yeah, that's probably exactly how it went yeah no don't yeah but someone just saw she posted i'm pregnant announcement and then they're like oh she was at a raiders game with mark davis two years ago must be mark davis so anybody pictured sitting next to him in a game in 2022 and have endured false rumors of romantic relationships since i was just a guest sitting in the owner's box with other friends yeah so, so that's where I feel like it sucks to be Mark Davis that this woman's like, ew, no, everyone stop saying this. I just saw him once.
Yeah, Mark Davis was... She's basically publicly made an announcement of friend zone.
He got a nice little boost. I think that just having people assume that he was the

father right was good for him he's probably relishing in that right so i i don't know i

kind of feel bad for mark davis in this one aren't so hot seat yeah because you don't i mean think

about it that is to be like uh we're not dating yeah he's he's a really nice guy right basically

what she said like he would make a great father just not for me yeah not for my child make some woman very very lucky one day it would have rocked if he was a seven-year-old dad just because he'd have a kid and come out right with a bowl cut yeah be cute pf chang's wristband it would have the heir apparent to the raiders the way i wish I wish she should have done this would be if she said that's wristband. It would have.
The heir apparent to the Raiders. The way I wish she should have done this would be if she said, that's not his baby.
We just did it in the butt. Yeah.
That's what she should have said. Only mouth stuff.
What you know about that? Only mouth stuff. That would have been nice for Mark Davis.
Instead, it was just the, ew, no way. Yeah.
I never, I never. It's sad.
it's sad yeah it's sad billionaires can't even get laid anymore seriously well you know what mark davis let us interview on pardon my take and we'll go out on town we'll be your wingman yeah we'll find you a nice girl we'll fucking we'll talk you up we'll talk you up so crazy you might see my boy over there

thanks for here talk you up we'll talk you up so crazy what's my boy my boy my boy thinks you're cute it's literally mark davis my boy over there in a white suit yeah actually uh it it's actually kind of a pretty popular haircut right now uh you know mark davis jeff nadu it's it's kind of actually hot on the internet they called that the caesar yeah in the day because he's the most powerful person in the world. See my boy over there? He owns the Raiders.
Well, his mom does, but he kind of does. But his dad used to own the Raiders and everyone, his dad was a hell of a guy.
See my boy over there? He's so confident. He wears all white while eating buffalo wings see my go look how good he looks now that he's no longer wearing the propeller hat beaming oh man yeah see my boy over there he drives a conversion van bet bet you'd never guess that no actually i would all right yeah all right mark davis you, bro.
My boy over there, he can drink seven sweet teas at P.F. Chang's before the appetizers come out.
Yeah. That's a fact.
If you're asking if the carpet matches the drapes, they do. He's got a bowl cut for his penis.
You ever seen a dick with freckles on it before? Now you have. All right, yeah, we got this.
My boy. We got this.
All right, your right your hot seat cool thrown uh my hot seat is complaining about umpires yeah because the mlb world lost a real one today angel hernandez angel got his wings i'm sad about this he's he's not dead he's retiring angel hernandez major league baseball umpire much much better human being yeah even better of a human being than he is as an umpire way better so he retired today and probably not a great human being much much better way better uh he retired kind of abruptly and he said starting with my first major league game in 1991 that's a long ass time yeah that is his eyes can't be well they're definitely not good anymore i have had the very good experience of living out my childhood dream of umpiring the major leagues i treasured the camaraderie of my colleagues and the friendships i've made along the way i've decided that i want to spend more time with my family so it sounds like he it sounds like this is his decision that he's leaving to spend more time with his family all of a sudden in the middle of Major League Baseball season. That happens all the time.
Yeah. I'm going to miss him.
Of course. Of course you're going to miss him.
You can't have guys like this. We need at least a couple diva umps out there.
We lost Joe West. Now we lose Angel Hernandez.
It was always good for just, you know, having a moment where, like, can you believe Angel Hernandez did this? Yeah. It felt like Major League Baseball media really hated him.
But outside the MLB tight-knit circle, it's like you can appreciate art. Yeah, right.
How ridiculously bad he is. Angel Hernandez took bad umpiring to an art that we haven't seen before i don't know if we'll see it again but uh yeah it's always good it's always good to have one guy like that you can't have two or three guys like that right same time it's like when when joey crawford retired next man up scott foster right right new guy so who's next up who's the next umpire that we got to hate? I'm going to find someone.
I feel like a lot of people don't like CB Buckner. Okay, great.
All right, it's him. Yeah, fuck Stevie Buckner.
You're on the list. I hate him.
CB, CB. Oh, CB.
Yeah. CB Buckner.
Yeah. That's a 10-4.
Yeah. Angel Hernandez was so bad, but again, if you're going to be bad, just be the worst.
Yeah. And he was the worst.
By far. Which is, I tip my hat.

If you're like, you don't want to be bad in a mix of other bad guys.

You want everyone to be like, Angel Hernandez, that guy's the worst. Yep.
Fact. My cool throne is misogynistic NFL kickers.
So former Jaguars kicker Brandon McManus got accused of groping two flight attendants on the team chartered flight from Jacksonville to England to go play their London game last year.

And apparently he was like throwing money at him, making him dance like strippers on the team plane.

This seems like it would have been an Urban Meyer culture type move.

Maybe just a little bit left over from that.

I actually know Urban would have missed the flight. He have stayed home and and found some strange on his own i got a question uh-huh he's a former jaguar former jaguars who does he play for now former jaguars kicker who does he play for now former jaguars kicker he used jake who does he play for now when these actions occurred he was a member of the jacksonville jaguars but he got he got signed by a team after doing this? Well, no, the accusations just came to light right now.
So whatever team signed him is doing a full, thorough investigation into these allegations. And you can rest assured they'll leave no stone unturned because whatever team that has him is the type of organization that does not tolerate that sort of thing.
He is the kicker of the Washington Command. Oh, former Jaguars kicker.
Dang. That's how he's being labeled.
I'm going to continue to refer to him as such. We'll see where the investigation takes us.
If it's true, he should be cut. I think he will be cut if it's true.
He's got to be the only commander ever who's like, man, I wish Dan Snyder was still the owner. Yeah, that's the thing.
It's like if he was. It's like he just.
You know, the whole like was born in the wrong era? Yeah. Brandon McMahon has signed with the commanders in the wrong era by a year.
He would have been kicker for life. So, PFT, is your team about to have an open position for your position? I retired from kicking, Jake.
I retired. So this is a dream opportunity potentially.
If they ask me to camp, I will attend. I also feel like that's not a dream opportunity because like what if you lost a game for them i would actually much that would suck i would rather be a kicker on the cowboys and yeah right because then i could just lose game right like you'd have a double whammy if you missed a kick like oh not only did i lose but my team lost and now i have to podcast about it if they're looking for some camp fodder for you know just some some live bodies to bring out during training camp i will i will kick but um you know he was really happy about this probably harrison buck actually i bet you there's a lot of people saying why don't you keep that same energy no one's talking about brandon mcmanus everyone talked about harrison buckler let those people know on the record we're talking about brandon mcmanus right although harrison buckler would probably be like well if they they had just been home with a family and not working as a flight attendant, this wouldn't have happened.
Yeah. He shouldn't have been in a room with a woman.
Yeah, correct. Yes.
That isn't his wife. Yeah.
Mike Pence. Agreed.
Okay. Good hot seat, cool thrown.
My hot seat is NBA players because Draymond Green says that the NBA does not set up NBA players to retire with wealth. Okay.
Draymond Green made $177 million so far. Now, he said it was because taxes, which everyone pays, but also the fine system is basically trying to keep nba players poor did draymond green did he accrue a larger than usual amount of fines over the course he did he did he did um but he also quoted like he's like yeah i got a technical two thousand dollar fine okay two thousand dollars not as not a insignificant amount of money unless you've made 177 million dollars but yeah i i looked it up pft just because i was curious um and he has been fined over two million dollars but some of the fines let's just throw them out there um conduct detrimental to the team that was when he knocked out jordan pool that feels like that was on you dream on green you could have easily avoided that fine by not punching your teammate in the face uh how about this one stepping on the chest of uh demantis sabonis during the uh warriors kings game also very avoidable for escalating on court altercation during minnesota golden state game And that was when heoked rudy gobert kind of on you draymond and then the last one for striking uh uh yousef kirkik uh in the face during the golden state suns game where he just punched him in the face again on you yeah i mean there's a lot of stuff that draymond's done that probably ended up being deserved of fines is this a case of being like it's the wrong messenger saying it does he have a point i don't know i don't know what the nba does or not does not do i don't think that draymond is probably the one to say hey you know with all these crazy fines that they're leveling out uh it's really taken away from our ability to have a career post draymond doesn doesn't need a career post.
His career is he was in the NBA and he does whatever the fuck he wants. Correct.
But what about, I know like with NFL players, your window is so small and the last guy on the bench, they don't make that much money. Definitely not enough to set them up for life.
And they get like two years at it sometimes. In the NBA, what does a 10th man make in the NBA? A lot of money.
A lot of money. A lot of money.
I mean, remember when Tony Snell signed like a $40 million contract? Yeah. Tony Snell.
They make a lot of money. They make a ton of money.
And it's all guaranteed. I have a theory.
I think Draymond Green knows it's over and he's going out really sad. Just complaining, like trying to, you know, he made it kind of personal with rudy gobert on the inside the nba and carl anthony towns um i think draymond green has had insane amount of success he's an interesting guy he's made 177 million dollars minus fines i think there might be a small part of him when he goes to bed at night he's like Did I cost Steph like a couple rings? You might.
You might think that way.

I... finds i think there might be a small part of him when he goes to bed at night he's like did i cost steph like a couple rings he might you might think that way uh a little bit but he also had it yet and it's over he had a great career though incredible career he's i mean an incredible player incredible career four rings but i do think there's a little bit of it's over and he's grasping it whatever he can to try to keep it going I see his point though it's it's a little misleading to call punching Jordan Poole in the face and knocking him out detrimental to the team yeah that might have that might have been yeah that should have been reversed but like Clay did this last year remember when Clay was like I don't want to come off the bench and then Clay kind of realized like you know know what? I've had a really good career.
I'm going to just be around. I'm not going to rock the boat here.
I'm going to rock the boat part. Maybe he hasn't been great with his money.
Maybe that's why he's doing TNT. I don't know.
I don't know what his circumstances is. But, yeah, for him to say that the fines are the big problem.
Yeah, the NBA is just willy-nilly signing fines. You never know when you step on the court.

You might get an envelope in your locker after the game for no reason.

Yeah, quite something.

And then my other hot seat was the Braves because Ronald Acuna tore his ACL.

That sucks a lot.

Also, he went – how do we judge this one?

He went on Twitter and said, sorry.

You don't have to apologize. It's very Canadian of him.
Yeah. Also kind of gives you like everyone saying, don't worry.
You don't have to apologize. It's very Canadian of him.

Yeah.

Also kind of gives you like everyone saying, don't worry, you don't have to apologize.

I think that for him-

Maybe he just wanted to feel the support.

For him, it might be like he also had a devastating injury the year they won the World Series.

Yeah.

So he's probably bummed out that he's not going to get another crack at it again.

But he shouldn't have to feel like he has to apologize.

Injuries happen.

It sucks.

Wait, is it the same ACL as the last time? I don't know it sucks though yeah it does suck sucks um okay and then my cool throne is conor mcgregor because you wouldn't tell that he's got a fight in six weeks with some of the clips that have come out from memorial day weekend and i love this energy i think he's probably gonna lose to michael chandler but i like the fact that conor mcgreg, just like us, is like, it's Memorial Day weekend. Like, diet starts Tuesday.
Yeah. Fight camp starts Tuesday.
This is how the Irish train for fights. Was that his wife? I think it was.
I'm going to say yes. Yeah.
I think it was. I think it was.
Yes, definitely. So good for them.
They're very much in love. Yeah.
Very much. This is how the Irish do, man.
You go out, you party, you have a good time. Yeah.
You just show up. He's having a great time.
A great time. Okay, Jake.
My hot seat's Barry Bonds. Jose Ramirez, he was pitched around with the bases loaded, and someone after the game said, you received the Barry Bonds treatment, and he said, I'm better than Barry Bonds.
What? Interesting. That's confidence.
Well, that's not true. Embrace debate.
How many career home runs does he have? Not even close to. Not the most ever? Yeah.
Okay. All right.
Then, no, he's not. Yeah.
I'll just settle that one real quick. No, he is not as good or better than Barry Bonds.
He has 231. All right.
How much does Barry Bonds have? Is it Is it more seven something? Okay. Yeah.
Barry Bonds is better. I saw a stat that was like, uh, fuck, I'm going to try to find it.
Take away the seven MVP. Yeah.
Seven. Yeah.
Take away the seven MV. Still had like 490 home runs.
It was. Yeah.
It was exactly that. It was like, take away the seven MVP seasons.
And he had, uh, 440 home runs and 359 stolen bases. Yeah, pretty insane.
Barry Bonds. His seven best seasons, and he still is an incredible baseball player.
And even before the steroids, he was probably a Hall of Famer at that point. It's nuts that he's not in the Hall of Fame.
It's nuts. so in 2004 if barry bonds went up to the plate without a bat if he didn't have a bat in his hand he would have had an on-base percentage of 60 without a bat it's crazy it's crazy and you know what that would have been the best in baseball history yeah without a bat he's.
He's so good. He should be in the Hall of Fame.
Okay. Best player of all time.
My cool throne is college lacrosse. Notre Dame goes back to back.
Men's side and BC wins on the women's side. So Notre Dame, men's lacrosse becoming a wagon.
Yeah, the Cavanaugh brothers, right? Yeah. And then There's a guy who used to play quarterback at Alabama who transferred and is now.

Oh, yeah.

He was not.

Buckner?

Yeah, Buckner.

Is that his name?

Tyler Buckner.

Yeah.

Maybe.

A lot of people are having the conversation, could Notre Dame lacrosse beat the Whipsnakes?

Yeah.

Whipsnakes are so bad.

It's game week, by the way.

It is Tyler Buckner.

I nailed that.

Opening week, dogs. Yeah.
Philly era. Week dogs.
Yeah, I watched some of that game. Kind of wish they had scored more goals, but that is what it is.
Yeah. Sometimes it just doesn't happen.
They killed Maryland. Pretty damn good.
Wake up the echoes. Okay.
We have a great interview with Dannyy age in person been a long time coming shout out hank for uh working on getting us this interview for like five years uh but yeah great interview great stories great bill walton stories and before we do that pft you had a couple ads yeah before we get to danny age he's brought to you by chevy as knows, this is a Chevy truck podcast. The greatest trucks ever built and our good friends at Chevrolet are a big part of the part of my take story.
They've been a big part for a long time. The Silverado helped us dig the biggest hole ever dug in Ohio during Grit Week.
The Silverado partners with us every season to give college fullbacks all the rightful recognition that they deserve with the Lomann Award. They also powered our non-stop cross-country trip to the super bowl in la behind the wheel of a chevy silverado silverado has been a part of it all say this about that drive going from connecticut to la the silverado was so comfortable it was really comfortable i drove a lot of the way and it felt spacious felt like you could we had people taking naps in the front seat there were four of us in that truck and it was very very roomy the chevy silverado long time awesome partner of the show it's a truck with commanding and unstoppable grit legendary capability and dependability too i love chevy i drove a chevy silverado actually for an entire summer it's a great truck absolutely love it find out for yourself I personally own a Chevy.
You're going to love it. Like so many other AWLs, go to Chevy.com,

check out all the Chevy truck grit, build your own Silverado for do-it-yourself projects, road

trips, off-road adventures, tailgates, whatever your thing is, it all starts with a Chevy truck.

And now here's Danny Ainge. Okay.
We now welcome on an absolute legend, a very, very, very special guest. It is Danny Ainge.
Are you just the president of everything for the Jazz now? You've had a million titles. I'm CEO of the Jazz.
CEO of the Jazz. Was obviously a long time with the Celtics.
Played baseball. Was an incredible football football player which i want to get into uh thank you for joining us appreciate to be here yeah it's fun to break from the uh all the basketball yeah not at the combine camp yeah i actually you want to start with football because i i talked to your son earlier he said that that was the one thing that no one ever asked they're like he you know he was like everyone

talks about how danny ange was incredible you know nba champion long time celtic played major league baseball no one talks about the fact that he was actually an incredible high school football player that had a ton of offers to play football yeah i played football too yeah that's so you're You're good at everything.

Is there any sport that you weren't good at growing up?

I wasn't very good at tennis okay that's fine you could throw that one out yeah and as i tried playing tennis my father played some tennis and i didn't know which hand to use because i was i'm kind of ambidextrous and i don't know what hand left or right hand i heard you too yeah that you hit with both hands with both hands when you play tennis. Yeah.
Which that is, that means you're probably good at tennis even though you're not. I'm not very good.
Yeah. But so, so when you were coming out of high school, was there ever a thought that you were going to maybe play football and like, cause that was obviously something you were really, really good at, or was it always just baseball basketball? Yeah.
When I was coming out of high school, I thought that I might try to play two sports in college and so yeah i went on some recruiting trips in football and took it very seriously i mean i loved loved high school football i was mostly receiver um and a defensive on a corner and safety and then and so it was interesting how different parts of the country would recruit me as a receiver

and other conference teams would recruit me as a safety.

And then I played my whole senior year as a quarterback just because our quarterback got hurt.

And that was fun too.

Yeah.

That was a blast.

But I was mostly recruited as a receiver.

Yeah.

So when did you decide that football is not something I'm going to pursue anymore? I'm just going to focus on basketball. I think when basketball season started.
Yeah. After football was over, I went back on the basketball court, and I just felt like basketball.
Basketball was always going to be an equation. Football and baseball go the best together.
But, yeah, I was never going to give up basketball. It was going to be basketball and baseball football and basketball do you have you seen any of the discourse going on right now about uh you know how many NFL players could play in the NBA right now and vice versa because you might be the answer to all these questions like oh well Danny Ainge could probably play in all the all the leagues at his prime yeah I mean I don't know about that I mean I think it's disrespectful to the football to just say that basketball players could play in there.

But, I mean, I think that the great athletes, and I think there's a lot of great athletes in the NBA, of course.

And have they chose a different path to play football?

I don't think they go play football right now.

I think you've got to learn that craft.

But I think the same in football.

Every now and then you see good football players that play basketball in college, but they're not as good. You guys are too old, but I remember when the Cowboys back, you know, when I was a kid, they had drafted some basketball players to play on those Cowboy teams.
And when Tom Landry was coaching, and I know that's ancient for you but i i do believe that i mean you take guys like i'm watching right here jalen brown i mean he feels like he could be a football player if that's what he wanted to be but yeah um so i don't know what the argument is necessarily but i think there's some great there's some great athletes out there that could they could play different sports for sure had they started at a younger age. I guess the discussion was like, are there players that could translate from either league directly right now to the other? Our point was, yeah, there's some great athletes in the NBA if they love football, if they want to play football, they put their minds to it.
If you're one of these big guys, you can be a tight end with enough practice if you have that competitive mentality to you. But we also thought it'd be harder for a football player to become a professional basketball player because of the skill aspect dribbling shooting things that don't necessarily translate uh to football but yeah it was one of those discussions that you talk about usually like the second week of july when there's nothing going on yeah yeah but for some reason just cropped up actually you're you're a good person to ask this question to because you've seen so much basketball.

Well, there's a player named Caleb Lohner who played at Baylor basketball the last couple years, played at BYU before, and he's headed to Utah to play tight end. And that's a great school for him, I think, because Utah really uses their tight ends well.
Yeah. And so we'll see firsthand.
He's a bench player for Baylor right now, but a four-year college player who's going to try college football. Yeah.
Yeah. It's going to be interesting to watch.
So you've seen so much basketball. You've been in and around basketball for your entire life.
So let's just start with who's the best player that you've ever played against or watched play? Well, Michael Jordan. Yeah.
That's a good answer. Yeah, I would say that would say that's fair i heard that you might have something to do with his greatness or at least with his uh one of his all-time great performances yeah you played golf against him and pissed him off yeah that's true uh got him got him a little frustrated um he had 63 on us the next night i had to guard him for a share of that but my kids have abused me on that one.
And we've gone back and watched the film. I think I gave up 12 of the 63.
Oh, so you're fine. I'm fine.
But like Walton fouled out and he's never forgiven me because I switched a lot. I'm guarding Michael and his screen like you got him, Bill.
Yeah, yeah. And Walton fouled out.
And he was like, guard your own man. i watched a clip of mj talking about you as a golfer and he said that he you are his favorite person to golf with because you give him shit more than anyone else like you'll you'll talk trash to him more than anyone else is that fair to say i mean you you obviously you know from your basketball career you'd fight anyone you you got dirty but when you're on the golf course with michael jordan are you you're not intimidated whatsoever no not at all i mean michael is so fun to play with right he's a great competitor as we all know and him and i were golf junkies when we were playing in the nba and so we got together like we did and that was his second year in the league um when he had the 63 against us in the boston garden and that's when it started we had two media buddies that were that knew each other and they got us together and we played and and then we'd play every summer here and there i'd run into him in san diego and in chicago and boston and um it was fun he's a he's a great uh and he's a golf junkie like i am yeah wait so how bad did you beat him in these 36 holes before he drops? Oh, not bad.
I mean, I think our matches are always pretty close. Yeah.
And that's why it's so fun and so competitive. Yeah.
All right, so your entry to the NBA, obviously you were playing college basketball and Major League Baseball at the same time, which I feel like if that story happened today, people would be like would be like what's going on this is incredible like I mean it was incredible then but now even more like people being able to play multiple sports doesn't happen as much but your entry to the NBA what was it like coming from playing baseball and then you're walking on to a Celtics team that has Larry Bird that has Kevin McHale, that's won a title,

were you like, oh man, I can't hang with these guys? Or were you instantly like, no, I'm here, I'm where I belong? You know, when I played, I think playing in Yankee Stadium and in Fenway Park and against those great Yankee teams, Billy Martin managing, and that was pretty special. I mean, I was a kid and it was, it was a lifetime, great memories of playing in those games, but it did, it didn't feel like I was playing under the same kind of pressure when I got to the NBA, even though I was playing for the Celtics, I came in mid season because of my baseball contract.
And that was a very good team, like you said. And so I had to pay my dues.
I sat and sat that that first year and was dying to play. And then and then I started my second year.
But, yeah, I didn't feel that that pressure. I think that I got, you know, kind of that that youthful anxiety maybe out of the way when I was playing baseball and in those big ballparks in front of big crowds.
That was fun. And yeah I mean, that actually makes sense because baseball is the ultimate solo sport and the fact that you're there, it's pitcher versus batter, and you strike out and you fail whatever, three quarters of the time, and then you're on a team with the Celtics.
It made me fail 75% of the time. 75, yeah.
That's what you said, three quarters. What was your batting average? We won't talk about that.
Yeah, so I think I actually maybe gave you a couple points there. Okay.
That might be true. It's actually not a bad strategy.
I was being nice. Yeah, for player development, make them go play baseball for you.
Yeah. There you go.
Good idea. Go up there and fail all the time in front of everybody.
Would you say baseball is the hardest mental sport? I think hitting a baseball is tough, yeah. I mean, pitching is tough too, but I think hitting the pitchers is – there's so many good pitchers are different.
Pitchers are getting stronger and stronger all the time. I love watching baseball.
I wish the game somehow could figure out a way to have pitchers' matchups last a little longer than they do. I know.
I don't really like the three-start inning or three-starter innings, but yeah, I love baseball.

Yeah.

So at what point when you got to the Celtics, did you feel like you were accepted by a Larry Bird

and the rest of the team?

Did it take that, you know, putting in your dues?

Like, did you have a moment where you're like, okay, they can trust me and I can trust them?

I think my second year. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that it got through that first year, wasn't playing a lot.
And I don't think that there was much I did to convince anybody that I deserved to play a lot more. In my own mind, I was deserving, but you just got to pay your dues.
And I did. And I think my second year, I earned their respect.
Yeah. What was it like forming that relationship with the city of Boston as a whole? Because it's a good sports town.
We always talk about good sports towns, bad sports towns. Boston's a great sports town, but the fans can be hard on you, but you have to develop a relationship.
You watch that with players that come into the league, especially I'd say in Boston and Philly. You have to kind of like learn how to adapt to the city that you're in.
So what was it like ingratiating yourself to the city of Boston?

I loved Boston.

I mean, it's a great sports town.

I mean, you know, they're anti-New York and anti-Philly,

and they love cheering against those teams as much as they like cheering for their own teams.

But I think just having the Bruins and the Patriots and the Red Sox,

I mean, there's just a lot of competition,

and I think it's healthy competition.

And knowing the athletes in the different sports was fun experience,

and there's always sport all the time.

Yeah.

Was there a – I would imagine knowing your game,

you were a trash talker from time to time playing basketball. When you saw Larry Bird, you're like, oh, this is a different level of trash talking.
Well, yeah, Larry was funny. Larry wasn't like always a trash talker.
I mean, always talking trash. He was selective.
He wasn't. We had guys like Cedric Maxwell and ML Carr.
I mean, they never stopped talking trash. Right.
Always talking trash. And then Kevin McHale, just being around them, he was always talking trash.
And so Larry wasn't talking as often as them, but Larry said some funny stuff. That's got to be like when your dad raises his voice, you're like, oh no, this is serious now.
When Larry decides to start talking trash it's he's using it for a real reason i think he's using it for his own motivation more than anything i think some of larry's trash talk just felt like he wanted to get motivated i remember him telling hubie brown um as he's walking to the sidelines and he says uh you know hubie who are you serious this is the only guy that you got that can guard me and the whole bench hears it and you know i'm just sitting there smiling and laughing like but larry's so confident in his game and hubie like you know puts johnny newman in the game for me larry like are you serious that's what you got trash talking coaches next level yeah yeah i remember one time we're playing in san antonio and uh i don't remember the kid's name but a young center coming off the bench he runs in the game with all this excitement enthusiasm the crowd's going crazy and and larry says who you garden and the kid points to chief he goes oh crap chief you're you're ball now it's gotta be even more intimidating if he's got that mustache too you try to focus it feel like it'd be hard to be intimidating with that mustache but he was able to achieve that well he was able to achieve probably not with the mustache but with his play he was a lot more than the mustache that that was not very intimidating yeah yeah yeah no but the elevating your draft your trash talk to a different level that makes the mustache go from like that's a weird looking thing to i'm scared of that mustache it's a pretty good accomplishment yeah so um your teammates loved you in boston um who were you closest with there i was closest with kevin yeah he was my closest teammate i mean i still keep in touch with larry and kevin here and there and um you know kevin's really into the nba still I talked less to Larry, but we stay in touch with Larry and Kevin here and there. And, you know, Kevin's really into the NBA still.

I talked less to Larry, but we stay in touch over the years.

I was close with DJ for a while, but he passed away.

He was a great and fun teammate as well.

Yeah.

What about Bill Walton as a teammate?

Because we've had the honor of being able to interview Bill Walton.

We've told this story before, but we got, I think, about two and a half hours in and Bill Walton said to us, he's like, how long does this go? And we're like, as long as you want. So I don't think we wrote down all these questions.
I think I maybe asked one of the questions that I wrote down because he just he can talk. Was he always eccentric and out there like that? You know, we when we got bill i mean first of all we lost cedric maxwell so that was tough because i love cedric i was a great teammate but uh bill was he was who like larry and kevin and i looked up to when we were younger in high school and college and he was a legend in all of our minds and so he's coming to the celtics even though he hasn't played a lot a lot of basketball over the last few years we were we were very excited to get him but for me it was great because i was like larry and kevin's little brother and so i got picked on a lot and when walton showed up all the attention went to him and they were picking on him and it was it was fun they were uh but bill was a great teammate i mean he was that one of the most unselfish players i've ever played with

um although he didn't really have any of the skills left at that time so he had to you know

he had to use his passing yeah the most more than scoring but he was a great shot blocker rebounder

but his uh he was all about winning it's all he cared about and i think that rubbed off on

everybody so i have a dumb question about that 86 celtics team because they're up there with some

of the greatest teams of all time the 96 bulls the no no no not up there it's above okay above there okay um yeah well you didn't play the lakers in the finals well i know because they didn't make the fight that i've heard that wasn't gonna happen to us i've heard you talk about that and like it's it's crazy to say but i think that probably speaks to the confidence of the team and i've heard you know i think kevin mikhail even said this as well where it's like you guys were mad that the lakers lost even though they were they should have been the second best team you were mad that you didn't get a chance to beat them most teams are like well we you know we'd like to win the championship no matter what but you were upset that they lost the rockets yeah i mean i think that because the lakers beat us in 85 and you know we felt we were better yeah and in 84 maybe the lakers were a little better at that moment in time but uh and we won that series but 86 we we've planned all year to play the lakers we just we just assumed that's what was going to happen so it was a little disappointing, but we weren't going to lose either way. Yeah, so the question is, it's a dumb question, but maybe you can describe it and make it a great answer.
How fun was it to play on a team that was that good? Because it does feel like there are certain points in NBA history that certain teams reach that almost higher level of basketball where it's like everything comes together, and what they're doing is so good and it's such a different level that they can't be stopped. Did you feel that day in and day out? I did feel that.
I felt that all year long in 86. And I think it was, you know, you know all the names on the team, but it was, you know, the prime of my career.
It was the prime of Larry Bird's career. He was MVP of the league with Magic and Kareem and Olajuwon and Jordan and all these guys in the league.
I mean, Larry was the MVP, and it was the prime of Kevin McHale's career. And DJ wasn't past his prime yet.
Robert was the only one that was a little older, and Walton. And they were able to split that time at center.
And they were still great, great players. So we had a good bench.
Jerry Seasting was a great shooter. Scott Wedman had been an all-star and was the highest paid player.
Not very many people know that story. But he was the highest paid player in the league when the Celtics got him from Cleveland.
And he was an all-star in Kansas City and but he was Larry's backup so he didn't get to play not very many people knew but Larry reminded him and was very frustrated I can't believe you make more money than me that would piss me off yeah yeah so so you but you could feel it like just the level of basketball and night in and night out being like what you guys what was your record at home did you lose one game at home or something? Yeah, we were 50-1. That's insane.
Who did you lose to? We lost to Portland in December, middle of December. What happened there? Yeah, what happened there? Load management? No, Portland was, they just caught us on, you know, we weren't our best, but they were a good team.
That was the legendary story when we went back to Portland where Larry was going to beat him with his left hand.

And he had like 32 points with his left hand that night.

So he said that before the game.

He said that before the game.

I'm just going to shoot left hand.

I'm saving my right hand for the Lakers tomorrow night.

And he actually did it.

He did it.

That's incredible.

And while you're watching, you're like,

maybe mix in one right-handed shot?

No, just keep going. I mean, Larry was like me, and he was left-handed.
Right. He did a lot of things left-handed, but he played basketball right-handed, but that was still an amazing feat.
Yeah. Was there a respect between you and the Lakers, or did you just hate them? I didn't hate them.
I mean, our fans hated them, but, I mean, I grew up a Laker fan as a kid, and, you know, I ran into Magic Johnson, who was the same age I was coming out of high school and we played in an AAU tournament and like I was in awe of Magic. It was, it was unbelievable.
Seeing him for the first time as an 18 year old was, was incredible. Um, so I'd followed him.
Um, but no, I wasn't, I didn't hate him, but they were just, it's like playing against michael like they're the best like let's go this is this is the ultimate challenge and uh but i know that there was hatred mostly felt by the fans and you know what we're playing for there's a lot of intensity and you couldn't ever be caught you know talking to him being friendly to him picking him up off the floor after mikhail did uh the kurt rambus throat shot it was um a little bit more intense yeah and before that didn't larry call the whole team like a bunch of pussies or something the before the kurt rambus throat shot i don't know he called us yeah maybe not i'm not sure he called the lakers but no no you guys yeah he called out his own team being like we're playing yeah like wimps right i was in 84 yeah we came back and won that series which was miraculous actually but yeah we're going to get back to danny age in a second he's brought to you by better help part of my take is sponsored by better When life goes so fast, it's important to take a moment to celebrate your wins and make adjustments for the rest of the year. Therapy can help you take stock of your progress and set achievable goals for the next six months.
If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online.
It's designed to be convenient. It's flexible.
It's suited to your schedule. I've recommended friends to BetterHelp.
Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with licensed therapists and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. I've personally benefited from therapy in the past.
It's helped me get over loss. It's helped me deal with some emotions.
And I think that you guys, some of you out there could benefit from it as well. Take a moment, visit betterhelp.com slash PMT today.
Get 10% off your

first month. That's betterhelp.com slash PMT.
The interview with Danny Ainge is also brought to you

by Proper 12. Proper 12, so smooth.
Springtime is here. Summer's almost here.
Proper 12 Irish Apple

is here to welcome it. It's a delicious blend of Proper's award-winning Irish whiskey with

Thank you. the springtime is here summer's almost here proper 12 irish apple is here to welcome it it's a delicious blend of proper's award-winning irish whiskey with crisp and fresh notes of irish apple it's perfect neat or with a little bit of ginger ale there's no better springtime sip pour the roar with proper 12 pick up a bottle try it for yourself today original rich and smooth proper 12 irish whiskey or try crisp fresh irish apple smooth to the core and now here's more Danny Ainge so all right so just fast forwarding because we also want to talk about you as an executive I have a bunch of questions about that but playing at the end of your career with Charles Barkley and the Suns um that's another like bigger than life kind of character what was it like playing with Charles Barkley, especially that was one of his MVP years was in there, go to the finals.
Was it as fun as we all see Charles on TV and we're like, man, we want to hang out with that guy? Yes, Charles made me laugh every single day. He didn't practice a lot.
My favorite Charles story was we're getting ready to play a game and and coach Westfall was great I loved him but he knew he knew who was in charge of our team he knew Charles was in charge most of the time and um we look up we're getting ready 35 minutes before tip-off and we're stretching and Westfall comes in sits on his stool and we go through our pregame. Well, he's waiting and waiting, and we all kind of look over,

and Charles' locker still has his uniform hanging up.

He hasn't arrived yet.

And so we wait, and everyone knows exactly why we're waiting.

Nothing's said.

Finally, Coach Westfall, with nothing about the pregame, he says,

if he's not here by 7-10, he's not starting. 7-10 was the tip-off time.
And he walked out of the room. It was classic.
But that was Paul. He was loose.
He kept us loose. But Charles made everybody laugh all the time.
I mean, he was a lot of fun to play with. I had a great joy playing with him yeah he's a great player and also like a great glue guy great guy just in the locker room yeah i mean he was he was fun he made it he made it fun yeah yeah so um he was also your co-star in space jam yeah i appreciate a lot of people don't talk about you being in space jam yeah what was that like um i don't remember much about Jam.
My grandkids have told me about Space Jam more than I remember about Space Jam. It was a scene where they stole all of Charles Barkley's talent, right? Yeah, all of his power away.
Yeah, you were a great cameo in that movie. Did you get in any of the scrimmages that MJ would run on the set of Space Jam? I know was what was it filmed was it right after you retired or no it was it was during my yeah yeah yeah we did play yeah on some of the sets that's i mean those it feels like those are legendary just any pickup game with mj just taking it way too seriously at all times elbowing bill murray in the face All right.
So as executive when you when you decided to well you went you were a coach and then you actually were on tv for a year you didn't like tv yeah i was on tv for three years okay one year before i coached and then i did three years after i coached you what did you think about being on the media side i loved it really i loved it yeah really it, yeah. Really? Yeah, I mean, it was hard for me to leave that life.
I mean, I was working one day a week. I didn't really have to do much preparation because I'd just been a player, and then I coached, and I mean, I knew all the players, all the teams, all the tendencies.
I didn't really need to prepare for games, and so I'd fly in the day of the game and fly out the next day. Yeah.
Was it hard to criticize players that maybe you had played with or coached against? I guess you don't know me very well, but it should have been harder, but it wasn't so hard. I mean, criticizing versus kind of trash-talking is probably different.
I mean, I respect all the players and all they do, but sometimes we do things as players that are funny and entertaining and probably picked on guys a little bit too much for that. Yeah.
Yeah. All right, so I have a bunch of questions about your long time as an executive for the Celtics, but I wanted to start with the Jazz right now.
From your perspective, when Brian Windhorst did the jazz erupt or something, did you see that clip and you were like, God damn it, Windhorst just blew my cover? Do you remember that? I don't remember it. So it was when you traded the Royce O'Neal trade, and then he basically was like, look, when Danny Ainge made a trade right before getting Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and all these things, he's like, the Jazz are up to something.
And I don't know what they're up to, and everyone's trying to figure it out. And Danny Ainge is up to something.
I was hoping you saw it and were like, oh, man, he blew my cover because I'm clearly up to something. Yeah, no, that's really not how it is.
When I went to the Jazz, I wasn't really going to Utah to work for the Jazz. I mean, Ryan is a great friend, and I've known him for years.
And I told him on numerous occasions that, you know, you got me or my advice anytime you want. Then call me.
We're friends. You don't need to pay me to work.
I didn't really want to get back in the NBA. But when that happened, when the Jazz were making the changes, or we were all making the changes, I'm just helping the people that are there.
Dennis Lindsay had a great staff and great people working there justin zanuck is fantastic um and i just and ryan was you know wanting to know my opinion of what we should do so i was just helping facilitate what they're doing it wasn't like i came in with like this plan i'm gonna blow the team up and we're gonna start over that that was uh many other people's ideas but you do you you would say it's fair to say you like draft picks you love draft picks i like good players yeah yeah you like draft picks you've gotten a lot of draft picks yeah but some really smart moves have gotten you a lot of draft right but i i would say that i like good players much more than draft yeah you like draft picks that turn into good players yeah yeah draft pick like that's a future good player yeah i mean some are some we we did some good ones and some not so good ones like everybody but yeah I mean I think I like draft picks because I think they're they're currency and you need to take swings at the plate with some of these new players I mean every team. I mean, every team has players they've drafted

and turned out to be better than you thought. And also players that they've traded for or signed.
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, I would say that's one of the more interesting parts of your career is that you've kind of done it both ways, you know, with the, with the Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Celtics that win a title that, you know, trade the big three and then to rebuild it all kind of homegrown with Tatum and Brown and all the guys and Marcus Smart.

So how – a title that you know trade the big three and then to rebuild it all kind of homegrown with Tatum and Brown and all the guys and Marcus Smart so how did you how did you maneuver the the first iteration of it with the big three with with Paul Pierce Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett pulling that off and having you know basically a team have that success out of you know they were they were a little the cells were a little lost for a while with Paul Pierce in the early 2000s yeah I mean I think that there was a lot of good fortune that went that way I mean obviously we would have loved to get KG a lot sooner uh Ray Allen but those guys just were never available um and then they came available you know KG Paul and Ray were all teams playing for teams in the lottery. And all three of those teams were looking to go a different direction.
Seattle at the time where Ray was playing, they were looking to draft Kevin Durant and move on from their veteran guys, their older guys. And we were the beneficiaries of that.
Had we gotten the second pick that year in the draft, know we probably wouldn't have done that i probably would have kept kevin durant but um as it turned out we we didn't we got the fifth pick in the draft and we moved that and got ray allen and then we eventually moved al jefferson and and other other players and we ended up with kg so i mean that just turned everything kg's presence just gave paul hope doc hope the city of boston hope um ray was more excited than i'd ever seen him play and and it was just uh there was a lot of electricity in that that that whole time there we only won one championship uh we should have won a couple but injuries and we lose game seven in la but i think that that era was a lot of fun yeah we just talked to perk the other day and he said if he didn't get hurt you guys win another championship that year yeah no question about it yeah i think so i think that's probably right yeah so you guys get the big three together and i feel like from that point forward in nba history we've always talked about like getting a big three getting a big three to win a. I don't know if that's necessarily the blueprint to do it because we've seen time and time again it's harder than you would think to put together a super team, in quotes, that would end up working out.
So you have Paul Pierce, who I think one person voted as the best basketball player of all time, right? Was that you? It was like all the votes were either MJ or LeBronbron and then one person voted paul pierce he's a great player but um so you have a bona fide superstar and paul pierce and then you get kevin garnett also superstar ray allen superstar at the time what was that like gelling those three guys together and having them uh try to commit to being a team and not just three great players i just think they were together at the right time of their careers. I mean, I think that getting guys together, sometimes you get players that are too old, you know, managing older players.
They're the last ones to see the decline in their games. Sometimes you get players when they're too young and they really want to be all-stars and all-NBA and, you know, get paid as much money as they possibly can, and which is all understandable.
But those guys were, they only cared about one thing at that stage of their lives and careers. None of them had won a title and they were desperate for one.
And they played that way. They practiced that way.
And it was fun to watch. It's fun to watch that electricity and the way that they played.
I mean it wasn't always rosy um you know but they they it was always about team yeah you you mentioned something there that i'm interested in would would you say that's one of the hardest parts about being an executive is having to basically tell a guy who might be a little past their prime like hey this is we're moving on from you or this is not going to work the same way that you think it works because it is usually the guy himself is the last to know yeah i think that i haven't had to do that um i mean when i moved uh paul and kg um they could have vetoed the trades yeah um we talked it through and you know they ended up it'd be mutually beneficial them. And we were rebuilding and starting over, and so they were willing to be traded to Brooklyn.
And that was good for us. Yeah, very good.
I didn't have to tell them that you guys are really old and we need to check the expiration date on the bottom of your shoes. But they were great.
And those guys, their willingness to do that

for the Boston Celtics at that time is huge.

And it's paying dividends even to this day.

Yeah, so when you did make that trade

and then you have years where you're rebuilding

and you do such a great job of it,

were there any moments in that rebuild

where you're like,

this is a lot harder than I thought it would be or we're farther away than I thought we were going to be just because that is a very difficult thing to pull off in any professional league it is um you know again we were we were we were very fortunate and uh you know the Brooklyn didn't turn out as good as I thought they were going to be I thought it was actually a really good trade for Brooklyn to get Paul and KG with a couple years left, veterans, good locker room guys, all about winning, to go play with that core group up in Brooklyn. But, you know, I just think that our team was, we got Jalen and Jason, and then we brought in Kyrie, and then we brought in Gordon Hayward, And we were good.
I mean, and in training camp, I'm going, this team is powerful and explosive. And these young players are better than we think.
Terry Rozier was part of that group. And then, you know, we lost Gordon on day one, game one.
And that was devastating to us. But that meant Jason and Jalen got much much more opportunities and they you know but that team and then kairi got hurt late in the year uh wasn't able to play in the playoffs and then and and rogier at 20 and tatum and brown at 20 19 and 20 i think took us to the conference finals yeah so you know when that when those other guys came back i mean they're they're realizing that these young guys are pretty special yeah and pretty good and I don't think that was easy yeah so in terms of Tatum and Brown um we know now they're they're incredible basketball players or incredible NBA players but when you drafted them there were people who were like what is going on because I I know Jalen Brown was people thought that was was a reach.
His Cal year, like he had obviously all the tools, but it wasn't the smoothest year in his one year in college. And then Jason Tatum, not, I think very, like there's only been a couple times in NBA history where a team is traded out of the number one pick.
When you have those moments where you're just like, I know, I feel it. I it, this is who we like and, uh, forget everyone else.
Because it is funny to look back and be like, at the moment, at that time, people were like, Danny Ainge is kind of crazy. Yeah.
I mean, I feel like, uh, you don't ever know, but there are times that it's more fun. Like there's somebody that you just really like and you just feel like you feel like a fit.
I wish that were the case every year. But with Jalen, I watched him play a lot that year.
I mean, I got to games at 4.30, 7 o'clock tip-off, and I'm watching him out shoot before the game and watching his work ethic. And then I watched their team play, and he did not have a good finish to that freshman year.
Yeah. But, you know, we had had him as the number two or number three pick before the season started.
And then I watched his team play so much, I knew, like, they had a point guard that wasn't a good shooter. They had two seven-footers that weren't good offensive players.
And they just didn't have enough shooting, enough spacing for him. And I thought you know like man you get him in an nba court in the open court uh and so we brought him in for two workouts and in those two workouts he convinced all of us yeah um our whole organization that he was a guy that we wanted to go go to bat with yeah and then jason is the other one where it's like people, you know, like you trade the number one pick.
Everyone thought Markel Fultz was the guy. Philly fans have to look back at that constantly, our producer Max as well.
They probably hate you. They get to play the game of like, imagine.
Max, you don't hate me, do you, Max? He does. No, everything turned out fine.
No, Max is saying, it's not my fault. We traded Markel Fultz for the pick that got Tyrese Max.
Oh, yeah. And there you go.
He said that's fine. Yes, but no, Max was – he was cussing you out before you got it.
Good recovery. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Yeah, he hates you.
But that pick, like, you're out on an island because everyone's like, this is crazy. Markel Fultz was the guy for a while there, and you trade out of it and take Jason Tatum.
But was that a similar feeling where, like, we know that this guy is the best guy in this draft? I mean, I loved Markel. I watched Markel play a lot his senior year in college, and that was really a hard decision.
But I felt Jason was the guy for us. You know, Markel, if you needed a franchise point guard, that might have been the guy, but I felt like Tatum was more important for us to get at that moment.
And it worked out great for us. It was, you know, Markel, I think, had injuries, but he's shown to be an outstanding player.
And I think he's still got a lot of basketball left in him. Yeah.
When you're scouting, you can't scout high school players anymore in the NBA. But back when you could, were there any special tricks that you used to use when you'd go into a gym, watch a high school player play? Maybe somebody might get nervous if they're like Danny Ainge.
Did someone give you that tip? No, I asked the question to every guest that we have. I talked to Perkins about this.
Yeah. But they're like, man, Danny Ainge is here.
I might get nervous. i don't play bad i can't i can't give my secrets but um i've been to high school gyms and but i was grateful that my boys i had four boys that played uh aau basketball and was able to go into the gyms and all the major tournaments for a lot of years yeah so maybe disguise that was worn no glasses fake nose the groucho marks or nothing whatever oh my gosh i'm gonna kill crew to me that disguise makes you stick out even more it's like who's this guy that's wearing a disguise yeah it's a good disguise you got to be good at your disguise yeah you just have to believe it yeah would you ever throw on a wick yeah yeah I've done that before.
You've done the wig? That's great. Are people afraid to take your calls? No.
I would be. If I was a GM, I would be afraid to take your calls.
I'd be like, he knows something that I don't know. Well, you get on the phone with Danny Ainge, and then all of a sudden your picks for the next 10 years are gone.
Yeah. Oh, okay.
How did this happen? If you called me i'd be like what we're sending we're sending hank to the mcafee show he did it he did it to us right here where he's like i don't love picks yeah like yeah and then and then you're gonna walk out of here and be like wait did we just give up three picks what the hell just happened no um i think that like i believe that the trades were fair and i really do i mean some of them worked out for us in Boston, like Jason Tatum trade. I mean, it was unfortunate that Markell got hurt, but I felt like that was a really fair deal.
And the same thing with KG and Paul. They had Darren Williams and Brooke Lopez and Joe Johnson still in his prime.
I think that that team, I thought, was going to be a very special team. I thought they were going to be one of the top four or five teams in the league so it just worked out different i mean we just were fortunate that they gave us the number three picks for jaylen and jason like i don't i never had i had an idea that would happen yeah uh all right another uh story that i was told from inside sources uh your wife when you met her at byu yeah the story goes that you might

have met her and her boyfriend at the time at a party and then the boyfriend invited you to play

on the flag football team and you went and played on the flag football team and you're danny age

and you were the best player by far and then your wife was like oh i kind of like this guy more

is that fair to say that's close that's close what an idiot that guy was to invite you to his

Thank you. And then your wife was like, oh, I kind of like this guy more.
Is that fair to say? That's close.

That's close.

What an idiot that guy was to invite you to his flag football team.

Yeah, he played center.

I played quarterback.

And yeah, that's what I claimed to my wife.

That's when she fell for me.

But yeah, I wasn't supposed to be playing flag football.

It was, you know, our basketball players were not allowed to. and someone eventually tattled on me like right before the championship game.
No way oh that was definitely someone an opponent yeah they were like we don't want to we're sick of watching Danny Hange beat our ass. Yeah our coach got news that we're getting ready for the championship intramural game and yeah I wasn't able to play in that game.
Oh no way that's hilarious. Might have been the starting center.
Yeah probably was he's like god damn it I mean that was a really poor choice by him to invite you. I mean, I wasn't able to play in that game.
Oh, no way. That's hilarious.
Might have been the starting center. Yeah, it probably was.
He's like, God damn it. I mean, that was a really poor choice by him to invite you.
I mean, I guess you did get him to the championship game, but he lost his girlfriend. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, yeah, they were not dating for very long. I mean, yeah.
Don't invite Danny Hange on your flag football team. Did you play? I also heard that when you were playing quarterback, you would throw it lefty and righty.
I threw it righty. Yeah, but if you were rolling out.
I could throw it a little bit left, yeah. I mean, he was Patrick Mahomes.
He's a legend, yeah. He's Patrick Mahomes before Patrick Mahomes.
You taught Patrick Mahomes everything he knows. No, no, no, no, no.
Is that something you look for? If there's an up-and-coming player and they've played lots of sports at a high level growing up, is that something that you look at and you're like, I like that because they've developed all these other areas of athleticism that will help them be a better basketball player? I think so. I mean, it's not a make-or-break deal.
I mean, there's not everybody that played other sports. But, yeah, I think that I get a kick out of guys that have played other sports and had success, especially at their young ages but that's less and less yeah there's just not as many yeah was there a certain age where you it clicked and you were like oh i'm i'm better than everyone no um i would say that the first the most confident that i got uh was when i was playing in that magic johnson tournament i made all tournament team there back in boca raton florida and and uh some of the best you know albert king from new york and gene banks um call it where the high school players of the year and i i i held my own and played really well in that in that series yeah a series and that's when i i kind of believed like man this is real yeah but when walton was playing with the blazers i would go up and play with some of them too that same summer i would play pickup in their camps how old were you i was 17 and you were playing with nba players playing with nba players wow and uh i felt like i could hold my own i felt like i could play with those guys that's pretty badass.
And when Walton was talking to you, did it ever seem like a riddle that you had to decode before you answered? Because I feel like if I'm 17 years old talking to Bill Walton, it's going to take me about a minute to process what he said. Then if you think about it hard enough, you're like, yeah, he's making a good point.
But you have to take a meandering road to get there sometimes. Oh, I got a great Bill Walton story.
Oh, let's go. So Bill, when he was first with us, he would take a meandering road to get there sometimes oh i got a great bill walton strong oh let's go so bill when he was first with us uh he would take a chess set like his own computer chess set with him and he'd be sitting in his airplane seat and he would and we're flying commercial in these days and he's sitting in the first class section and he's but he's playing computer chess and uh you know so worth it and then we're stretching in the mornings and he's like telling us about bobby fisher and boris spaski and you know queen three to jack seven it was you know it was crazy stuff we don't know what he's talking about but he's like talking about the brilliant moves that that these players are making so we thought he was like a chess genius he's with that board all the time so finally one day i challenged to play him and i beat him and then uh jerry seastain challenged to play him and he beat him and we said we you can't ever talk chess again like what was he not you are not good yeah what was he doing with that board i don't Must have been at like level one or something.
Beginner mode. He's dominating, and then he's thinking that he's on the same level as like the Bobby Fisher.
Bobby Fisher, yeah. The famous blunder, I think.
That was like a famous tournament that he was in. So he reads a story about it.
He just gets his ass kicked. Perfect.
We should let Hank ask a couple questions. Hank is a diehard celtics fan born raised he loves you yeah

he does love you as much as hank is hank the guy that made the bet the big bet for dunking yeah yeah oh yeah we'll get we'll actually after this we'll have him go show you his progress but hank aren't you like are you six feet i'm six feet yeah yeah i've been training uh how old are you hang i'm 30 okay Okay. Just a pop.
I got about eight months to get about seven inches. But have you ever dunked before? No.
No. Not even close.
Hank. He deadpan asked Derek White.
He's like, hey, Derek, when did you first dunk? I was like, Hank, are you asking Derek White when he first? I don't think you can compare the two. Well, Hank, HGH in the rules.
Yeah, yeah. He actually said September, October is when he's going to start mixing in the steroids if he doesn't make progress.
Yeah, we're trying to – I mean, we're getting progress, but we're going to go through it the natural way, and then if it gets to like October, November, we might start going the alternate routes. Okay.
Well, you can come out to Utah and do some altitude. Yeah get the elevated thin air jump yeah there yeah some trampolines all right so yeah hank what are your questions yeah obviously you know when you're in boston everyone everyone called you trader danny but one one trade i didn't even know was possible uh until it happened was when you traded the coach was it was that like a different negotiation uh you know talking to teams versus you know when you're talking about players and like hey do you want to you want to coach well what different negotiation, you know, talking to teams versus, you know, when you're talking about players and you're like, hey, do you want to coach? Well, what happened there was, you know, Doc had been with us for nine years and he knew we were and he had gone through a rebuild with us before we made the big trade.
And so he was just not in the mood to do it again. And I completely understood where he was.
And so the Clippers opportunity came to him. And, you know, he's under contract.
I can't just let my coach go. So, you know, I don't think Doc was happy at first, but I think he understood where we stood.
And we got a first-round pick for our coach, but Doc got to go do what he wanted to do was go coach chris paul and blake griffin and they obviously had a lot of promise there clippers yeah yeah i mean this isn't really a question either and you know he didn't pan out but he was he was a fan favorite he was always one of my favorites uh gershon yabusele i just Yabasele. He just likes saying the name.
He didn't even say it right. He didn't say it right.
Gershon Yabusele. I just love them.
Yabusele. He just likes saying the name.
He didn't even say it right. He didn't say it right.
Gershon Yabusele. Yabusele.
He's still playing really well overseas right now. But he didn't – you know, what happened with Gershon is he had some tight Achilles tendon.
And so he got surgery on them and, you know, it messed up his whole rookie year. And we knew that going in, you know, trying to do what was best for him and his health.
But it didn't really help. And he was not the same even in the second year.
But watching him play now, you know, I wish we had that Gershon the last few years he's been playing in Europe from that that health standpoint but by the time he really did get healthy we just had a stacked team and but Gershon was a great fun kid and and had a lot of talent what's the number one trait you look for in uh in prospects is it is it size is it explosiveness shooting ability I mean there's there's not... I'm asked that question a lot.

I don't think there's one.

I mean, but talent overrides a lot.

Yeah.

You know, when guys are really talented,

you can look the other way on other things sometimes.

But...

I guess that would be a better question,

is what's the one thing you can look the other way on

being like, they can probably get better at this?

I mean, if a guy is a great athlete uh and a good player has a good brain but can't shoot i think that that's a good bad to be a good bat yeah yeah like you know like scotty pippen magic johnson all those guys they weren't great shooters jason kidd uh one of my favorites i that i ever coached was jason kidd or been around um but he was you know what it what a special player he was yeah those him gary payton scotty pippen if they could never learn if they never learned to shoot which they all did learn to shoot they still would have been great players yeah yeah so what's the recipe for that just is it a numbers game just get in the gym work for tip put up this amount of shots every day yeah i mean kawaii leonard was another guy that wasn't a great shooter in college and turned out to be one of the best yeah yeah yeah how many shots a day do i need to get good you saw me shoot a little bit i think i break the layout i'm not sure you i'm not sure that'll happen about the same odds as him as hang dunking yeah what who's the one guy you uh i don't say missed on but you're like man i i was i was thinking about drafting him and it just didn't work out and i i obviously turned out to be great um i would say jimmy butler is the first one that comes to mind it was uh you know he was a late first round pick and he was seriously in our thoughts of drafting and we went another direction and jimmy turned out to be a great player yeah and uh that's probably the one i regret the most what about what about yannis yannis was different like um it's not like it's hard to regret like but everyone missed onnis. Right, I mean, I saw Giannis play like three months before the draft, maybe four months before the draft, and I liked him.
I loved his enthusiasm for the game. And then I saw him in the summer league, and it was like he's three inches taller, like he actually has muscles in his arm.
Like it was incredible, the transformation over that time. But, I mean, what a great story Giannis is yeah I went over to I went over to Greece to watch him play and I mean he was a joy to watch but never in a million years could I imagined him being an MVP NBA champion that he's become but it's fun to see yeah so so you've lived your whole life in basketball hey can you know can you notice like overseas now, just how much the game has grown and how much better the guys are just like on a baseline level? Yeah, I mean, I think it's been that way for the last 20 years.
Yeah. It's big.
I mean, people talk about Jokic and how he's the best player in the game today. But I remember when, well, Drazen Petrovic was a superstar over there years ago i played with drazin for a year in portland but uh and then um sabonis sabonis before he had his his uh achilles tendon injury when he was 20 21 years old i mean he was so special he had he passed the ball like yokich he could shoot he was seven two i mean he was an amazing amazing young player yeah i mean it's been good over there for quite a while yeah different countries that have different strengths like is one country known hey this they produce really great point guards one country's like you got to get like a serbian big man no i don't think so i think that there's um i think they're they come from all the countries over there and i mean you got donchich and jokic from the same country but they're completely different positions but um you know those guys are are very special i mean i don't know why they they grew those two players but it's a big country and actually a small country but yeah it actually is remarkable that both those guys yeah i mean they they had good basketball roots and you could just see how smart they were at a very young age yeah yeah um all right well this has been great i have a like couple last questions roback question r-h-o-b-a-c-k.com promo code take 20 off your first purchase q-zips polos hoodies joggers shorts roback.com i don't know if you know this danny but we've been trying to get you on the show for a long time so this is is a thrill for us hank has been bothering your son for how many years hank four or five six six six years that's so fun yeah we and i i feel i hope you had a good time where it's like oh we could have probably done this no good.
It was good. It was way better than anything else I'm doing in Chicago tonight.
So I've been sitting watching basketball. So this is fun.
Yeah. So last couple of questions.
Is there, so you got, you got some scraps in the NBA. I, you know, it is funny watching back some of these old videos where you were completely unafraid and doesn't matter who the guy was you weren't gonna take shit uh but you famously got bit in in a fight uh by tree rollins what was going through your head while you were getting bit were you like what is he actually biting me right now is this actually happening yeah i mean so tree was a physical player it was a playoff game and and uh you know like he set screens i think that's part of their thing they're going to hit hit us on screens in those days they didn't call him like they do today i mean they let guys really screen and move and hit uh and tree had knocked out quinn buckner earlier in the game and you know just with an elbow and quinn went down and so um i just gave him an elbow as he was running back down the court, he's running by me.
And I just like gave him an elbow cause he's been doing that all night, but he turned and started coming at me. I mean, I basically had two options to run to the locker room or tackle tree.
And, uh, so I went and tackled tree and we're in a, in a dog pile that all the players on the floor and my finger is in his mouth and I swear I thought he was going to bite it off. I thought he was gnawing at my finger to bite it off.
Yeah, that's got to be terrifying. It was crazy, but I don't think that he could move.
I think we were all kind of paralyzed with all the bodies around and that was his way of getting at me. I guess at that moment my my hand must have been up close to his face and he just like chose to bite it almost bite it off but it was crazy i looked down at my hand and i i could see it hadn't started bleeding and so i could see my finger that it lift up i could see all the way the tendons oh my god inside my hand really bitch you have teeth marks on your finger still i have a i have a scar on the middle of my finger right here that's a pretty cool scar it is yeah a man bit me yeah man bit me an nba game i still i still say when when i play golf when i hit a tree that you know tree rollins blocked my shot so and then in terms of all the the fights or the scraps or the physical play was there ever a time where larry Bird got mad at you and was like, no, we shouldn't fight today? Because Larry got in fights too.
Yeah, Larry had some fights. But no, a matter of fact, we kind of had a team rule that if you go down swinging, you got to take someone equal or better on the other team with you.
That's a good rule.

But other than that, I think that it was – I mean, I could score 35 in a game and Red would come in

and pat me on the butt and say, nice job, way to go.

But if I got in a fight, like he wanted to celebrate.

He wanted to take me out to dinner and throw a party for me.

Like it was unbelievable how excited Red was when the fights happened. That great and uh he just you know he loved that he loved that intensity and um you know i didn't i mean i played 14 years in the nba and i mean i think i had like six of them but they were usually at times when yeah they were memorable i just googled danny ainge fighting before, earlier this morning I was like damn he was he he would throw with anyone yeah I didn't win very many yeah the one where you got knocked out but you actually got up yeah yeah yeah you got up fast that was credit to you that was a big time uh I'm not injured I'm not injured but you're clearly injured move yeah no i wasn't injured i

was i was dizzy yeah yeah i was chasing him and i felt like my body was like tilting the whole time running running after sadel and i someone asked me uh you know like what the greatest shots you ever made in the nba and it was those two free throws i was i saw two baskets philly fans are going crazy and i like i made both the technical free throws but like it was that that was yeah he also those days you'd have been you know concussion protocol yeah two weeks yeah he also he escalated that very quickly it was like a push and then he's like you know what i'm just gonna i'm gonna just punch danny age in face yeah it was a sucker punch yeah he got me good yeah he did but you got up he landed he landed the punch though he won the fight yeah did tree ever reach out and apologize was he like hey my bad for biting you no no but i mean everybody that i know that's played with tree says he's a great guy like i don't hold anything against fighting and those things that happen in a battle. What about as a talent evaluator?

Do you like a guy that fights on your team?

It's kind of a phase out of the game.

I mean, it's harder to fight now just because it's so penal.

But I think I like guys that fight.

I mean, not literal fight, but guys that will fight for what they can

and take it as far as they can.

You like guys with – do you actually – I like instigators. can you can you tell if a guy has a has the dog in him i don't know if you know that me yeah yeah i mean i think some of my favorite draft picks were avery bradley um tony allen delante west like they were they were big time instigators got the dog do you have like an analytics department that has the like you know you pull up all the charts you're like all right he's got 95 that's a good dog yeah we could be that for you okay we're gonna do some we're gonna do some dog yeah you just give us a guy have him come by i hear my scouts talk about it all the time but like we needed like is it 20 yeah put a number on it 75 and you need to know what kind of dog too yeah i had a scout Leo Papil, who I worked with in Boston, and he used to always say he's the wrong kind of cat.
He's a house cat. Is he an alley cat or is he a house cat? Yeah, indoor cat, outdoor cat.
Yeah. We need Rottweilers, pit bulls.
It was John Thompson that said, like, you can get one of those guys and win a championship. If you have two of them on the same team, they can get you fired, though.
Yeah. two interesting yeah uh hank you got one last question yeah the only thing i was i was going to ask about is just i like hearing the stories about the uh the old garden versus the new garden like the home the home corner advantage the heat i always wish i got to go there yeah i mean that lakers game uh you know where it was a hundred and something degrees.
Yeah, that was crazy. But the old garden was just more, it was just steeper.
It felt like they were right on top of you. You know, we got the smoke going on in the arena.
You had all the dead spots all over the floor. Would you know, do you knew all the dead spots? No, no.
Like, we didn't know the dead spots because we never practiced there, but we knew there were dead spots. And so I think that's an advantage.
I mean, there was a guy, I remember Isaiah Thomas coming down one time and, you know, doing his dance with the ball and he loses the ball. Like, we knew not to do that.
Right. You know, like, it's not a normal floor.
So, but that might have been our only advantage, but we didn't know where the dead spots were. Yeah.
Yeah. That's a a good question none of us were that good of ball handlers anyway Kyrie would have to know is Kyrie the most talented ball handler you've ever seen um he's up there for sure I'm trying to think there's a lot of good ones um but I mean Kyrie was he's a magician with the ball he's really fun to watch and he has really strong hands so like you know in traffic he hardly ever loses the ball and yeah he's he's a beautiful player yeah did you get as personally offended uh when he stomped on lucky as hank did hank was like you couldn't talk to him for a week is that right yeah he was so upset what's your stat like after he stomped on lucky he hasn't won a game there that pretty sure yeah Yeah.
Pretty sure he hasn't won a game. Pretty sure.
Good stats. I'm not.
I mean, I'm grateful Kyrie gave us a chance, and he was great for the first year and a half, and some things went wrong. He talked with me about it.
Like I don't hold any grudges at all. Okay, so Hank will just hold the grudge for stomping on Lucky.
Hank will get over it. No won't the luck definitely won't like anything else would be for devin but he stepped on lucky that's the difference between players and executives and guys who are on that side versus fans fans will never get over it yeah i mean i i would get over it just because i know all the circumstance and i know kairi and uh you know what he did to help us and yeah i hold no grudges yeah but stumping on Lucky yeah except right on right on that leprechaun's face Lucky should have been standing there yeah what did Lucky do to instigate that that's what we need to ask it's a symbol yeah I do have one last last question how often do you get unsolicited advice from fans on what to do with oh oh wow all the time yeah yeah and i like it i think it's fun really yeah there's some good ideas there's some not so good ideas but there's but fans they love that stuff i mean the fans care more in the world we live in today more about the trades and the draft and the free agency and lottery than they do the games it's incredible how much of a following there is in the nba and in the nfl just with all of that chatter yeah and uh so i i like it i enjoy it has there been like a really good suggestion that somebody's given you yeah i mean i get them sometimes from kids at schools um going to watch games and college kids they come up with some very good ideas.
Yeah. You should, you, here's a suggestion.
Let's bring back some paint play and maybe some mid range, just zig while everyone zags, no more threes. Well, there's, there's teams that are doing that.
I think it's getting, it's, it's coming that direction. I think that it's not like exclusively threes, but, um, I think there was a three craze.
And I think the three is still a great thing if you got great three-point shooters. But you have to have both.
You got to be able to score in lots of ways. Yeah.
I just don't want to see basketball become like baseball where it's some teams and more like college teams are playing this way where it's like no shots that aren't threes or layups. And it's like, I mean, there's got to be something more.
There has to be something more. Yeah, I mean, I've always fought the analytics on that.
You know, the analytics will say that mid-range shot is a 40-something percent shot or around there. And, like, get better at it then.
Yeah. Shoot 50%.
Shoot 55%. You know, like, there's a lot of – Be Kevin Durant.
DeMar DeRozan. Yeah, there's a lot of players that shoot a higher percentage than that that can be very efficient with your team at mid-range, and especially at times of the game.
There's times of the game where two points is crucial or one point. Like you've got a seven or eight-point lead, and it's hard.
Like get the 55% shot instead of the 40% so um yeah i think that it's coming in that direction yeah all right well danny thank you so much this was honestly we like i said we've been trying to get you on for a while now and this didn't disappoint we appreciate it very much anytime you're in chicago we'd love to have you back on okay and uh let's let's go to get crew on when you get crew on we's go judge Hank's dunking ability. Oh, yeah.
Give us the scout's take on this. Hank, I got to see how far you are.
It's going to be great. Tune in to PMTV.
Bear in mind that what you're watching today is probably like five inches better than what it was three months ago. Yeah, I worked out this morning, too.
Oh, you're giving an excuse to Danny Ainge, who was basically the best at every single sport. Yeah, you worked out today.
Just go do it, Danny. Yeah.
All right. Thanks, Danny.
All right. Thank you.
Pardon Your Take is brought to you by EA Sports College Football 25. I am so excited for this.
It's coming out. We've seen the trailers.
It features all-new composure system, player wear and tear, home field advantage,

diverse play styles across 134 FBS teams.

I might mess around and win a championship, national championship with JMU,

Sunbelt representing.

Through Dynasty, you can create a coach, you can upgrade their abilities,

establish your staff, then recruit the best talent either straight from high school

or direct from the transfer portal. Coach Dugg is going to be playing College Football 25.
You can pre-order the MVP bundle now to get College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25. Plus, can't miss rewards in both, like three-day early access.
You're going to want that three-day early access, by the way. Three days is an eternity in video games.
4,600 Madden points, college football points, Madden early access, ultimate team challenges, Madden cover athlete, elite player item, and more. You get all sorts of goodies when you order the MVP bundle.
Pre-order the MVP bundle right now. You get college football 25 and Madden NFL 25.
Get involved. Okay, let's wrap it up with some pardon your take.
Reminder, we're back on Friday, and we also have 35 minutes of Bill Walton from our 2017 interview after numbers here coming up. Hey, Big Cat PFT and the boys.
I have a college football fan base question for you. I'm a massive Colorado Buffalo fan.
I have always been, even before Dion showed up. I've enjoyed seeing Colorado being brought out more in conversation, but now it's mainly people just hating on Colorado.
Would you rather be a fan of a team that no one talks about or be a fan of the team that everyone hates? That's a good question. I would rather be a fan of a team that everyone hates if the hate was because we were winning.
This isn't that. If the hate was because you talked a big game and you never did anything.
You didn't win. That'd be tough.
Yeah, that'd be really tough. Right now, as a fan of many teams teams that nobody cares about it's not that bad yeah colorado's so weird to me because colorado and and this is maybe just you know the 90s kid in me like i remember when colorado was a big deal and cordell stewart and all those teams and rashawn salam and uh westbrook yeah westbrook um but it it's it's crazy they're not good because boulder is like the coolest place on earth and their colors are awesome and their stadium is awesome i know that doesn't actually make a college football program and in my dumb brain it does it's like do you have a cool stadium cool colors and is it a cool place to go to school okay you should be good at football well that's also what would make people hate it more if you were also good at football yeah it's like you can't have everything yeah i i think that uh this type of hate is not the best hate you want it like people if you're alabama you probably love being hated that's a fun hate to have because you can always a fun hate you can always just be like well we're gonna kick your Yeah, Michigan this past hated.
That's a fun hate to have. Georgia, fun hate.

You can always just be like, well, we're going to kick your ass.

Yeah, Michigan this past year, that's a very fun hate.

Us against the world and you're winning,

but this one is not as fun of a hate.

Yeah, for a while for my teams it's been us against the world

and we've just gotten our teeth kicked in by the world.

The world keeps winning.

The world minus 2,000.

Yeah.

I know it's late,

but Max's Sixers ruined the NBA lottery.

The process has failed like everything in Philly lately,

and it pisses me off even more that because of those losers,

they changed the whole lottery system.

I've watched so much bad basketball,

and I never got to see Blake dunk because he was hurt,

and Detroit is in its longest championship drought as a city ever. I hope that Wemby could save us, but instead all I got was another kick to the dick.
Fuck the NBA, fuck the lottery, fuck the Sixers, and fuck you, Max. Did Philly ruin the Detroit Pistons? That's a fair part in your take.
Yes. Like, if you're a Pistons fan, you have a fair gripe to be like, hey, the way the lottery worked for all these years, we should have been in that lottery and we should have gotten Wemby.
How about you just be better? Well, no, but you didn't do that. But that's not what the process was at all.
You literally were worse to game the system. You ruined it for the rest of us.
You pulled the ladder up on everyone else. That's not true.
Yeah, you did. You climbed the ladder by getting number one picks and pulled it up.
You sucked so flagrantly that you ruined every other shitty team ever. You're the baby boomers of NBA franchise.
We're the only team that admitted it. But you understand this Pistons point.
This is a fair pardon your take. They have suffered, and they just wanted a good shot at Wemby for being so bad, and all they keep getting is the fifth pick.
Sorry. I don't give a fuck about it.
You don't sound sorry. I don't give a fuck about it.
Also, one correction on this, guys. Take the process isn't over yet, right? We're still processing? Yeah, yeah.
The process of the process is not concluded yet. Sorry, that was a cigarette snickers burp.
The process of the process worked. The results of the process, jury's still out.
Thank you. We still have not decided if the process worked or not.
Until Joel Embi until how many more years it's unfortunately pft i think it's in perpetuity because it's until like joe mb will play for the sixers then he'll demand to leave because the sixers fans will be so mean to him and then his trade assets will be part of the process got it and then the next guy will be part of draft so they're in a process for the sixers fans as long as some piece of the process is still alive and they win a title in 50 years they can be like the process worked yeah precisely jesus precisely i do feel i do feel bad but if it's any consolation to Detroit, San Antonio was always going to get Wemby. Yeah.
That's how it was going to work. You know what we need? We need all the current Sixers right now to just retire.
Then the process is over. How would that not be? If they just disbanded the team.
No, I disagree. Right, but if they did that, then we would be done with the process.

Sure.

But also, if they disbanded the team and they all quit,

then you would never have another playoff loss again,

and that would be a win.

Or if the Sixers just win that the process is done.

Yeah, we don't want that.

Yeah, you do.

No, we don't.

All right, one with this one.

Imagine if Max won.

What's next?

He's going to get the lottery ball.

I haven't won.

I know I haven't.

Well, actually, technically, I have won on this show.

Yeah, Cubs.

Won a World Series.

That's huge.

But Hank Seltz has seen nothing but success.

I have seen nothing but success.

Raise your hand if your team's won a championship on part of my take.

Pug?

What are you raising your hand for? Oh, the NIT? Yes, Pug! Yes, the NIT champs. Pug.
Memes? Georgia won back-to-back national championship. Oh, yeah.
Georgia fan. Yep.
Yep. Hell yes.
Max, did you want to raise your hand? Next part in your take. Okay.
And Jake's P's are still in it. Yeah.
Still in it.

Still in it. And I'm just one by being on this podcast.

Yeah.

There you go.

Are they still, are they calling them the P's now?

I think it's solely Brooks Koepka.

But it started to spread a little bit.

I've seen like three or four other people call them.

It feels weird.

Yeah.

When Brooks said it on here, I just like went with it.

Yeah.

But I've never heard that before that.

Shane is going to win because he's got Jim Harbaugh.

Yep.

So, Max, yeah.

Have you ever gotten this in real life?

No.

Close, though.

Would you rather?

Last one.

A series, NBA or NHL, that ends in a sweep,

but all four games were closely contested and entertaining throughout.

Relatable.

Or a series that goes seven games,

but the first six games were all blowouts.

Cheers, Tyler.

Which would you rather watch? Would you rather? Seven. Because he said the seventh game could be great.
It just says the first six were all blowouts. Yeah, so seven.
Yeah, also in a seven-game series, you get a lot of weird storylines that pop up and creep up and a lot of stuff to talk about and get excited about these i a four game sweep where all all games were closely contested entertaining throughout a great great experience i wonder why you're saying that um yeah i'm over that we call that the lakers how far away were the lakers two years in a row back to back almost best team in the nba They lost didn't they lost the team that lost to the team that lost to the team but that even if the nuggets won it all the lakers could be like we were so close but they literally if the mavs lose the celtics the lakers lost to the maximum amount of teams but that's so small-minded of you big cat the only reason that the nuggets lost in seven games by the way is because they were exhausted yeah i guess yeah playing against the but i just realized that that it would be the maximum amount of teams they lost to every team every team after lost tough uh okay uh max do i owe you a number this is the last one No, that was last week I wanted 20 so bad to happen

Yeah, but it would have been great. All right, let's do numbers.
32. 18.
56. Wow.
Ben or 18, Jake? Six. Ooh, nice.
I gave you a second. Max, would you like to trade 20 for 56 right now, one for one?

No.

Three.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Never give a man two numbers that you like.

99, Pug.

What was your number, PFT?

32.

I'm looking at 56.

Three.

I'm looking at 56 right now, though.

I don't like that.

I'm picking three.

Max, this lottery machine is so far in your head.

So far in his head.

What'd you say, Max?

What'd you say? I didn't say anything. What'd you pick?

Oh, 20.

And I have 56. His other number.

I'm picking three.

35. Looking for half a second 35 love you guys i thought that said 56 okay we have our uh special re-release of our 2017 interview with bill walton if you missed it uh when we did the interview it's must listen this is it.
Also, like I said, we never released it on video, so go watch it where we have all the video. And it is brought to you by ourselves.
Pardon My Cheese Steak. Go check out Pardon My Cheese Steak now.
It's a pickup and delivery only restaurant bringing you craveable cheese steaks, tenders, loaded fries, and desserts for lunch, dinner, and late night. Choose from our expanded menu that has regular cheesesteaks, chipotle cheesesteaks tenders loaded fries and desserts for lunch dinner and late night choose from our expanded menu that has regular cheesesteaks chipotle cheesesteaks and chipotle chicken buffalo chicken or chicken bacon ranch cheesesteaks and the newly added buffalo tender sub which features crispy chicken tender tosses uh tossed with buffalo sauce topped with ranch and pickles on a toasted hoagie roll you can order the the Big Cat Combo and get your cheesesteak a choice,

fries, and a drink. And don't forget the Max Special 2 sodas with more than 1,500 locations

nationwide.

Find a Pardon My Cheesesteak near you and order yours now at

pardonmycheesesteak.com or by using the QR code on the screen here.

Use code PMC20 for 20% off your order.

And here he is from 2017, the legend, Bill Walton. All right.
Wow. I am the luckiest guy on earth.
I'm at the MGM Grand. I've got a view of the Statue of Liberty outside my room.
I'm fired up. And I'm with a couple of guys named Dan.
Dan, right? Yeah, Big Cat. Big Cat, Dan.
How many names do you have? Two. And PFT? You nailed it.
Is that like a restaurant, like P.F. Chang's or something? Yeah, you can think of it that way.
You actually know my name better than our lawyer does, so thanks. So I'm sure everyone can tell.
That's a good thing. I'm sure everyone can tell the man on the mic i'm bill that's bill with two l's san diego

from san diego and i'm the luckiest guy on earth nba legend uh college basketball legend no no no

man i was lucky yeah you're lucky because i had fantastic parents my first coach was the greatest

coach i ever had the message in my life was chick Hearn, the most positive, optimistic, happy guy, a guy who had a lot of reason to be sad. Chick lost both his children when they were in their 30s and 40s.
And then John Wooden. John Wooden was this remarkable person that I had no idea what I had because I grew up thinking that everything was perfect.
Did John Wooden's ears, were they always very large? I never looked at his ears. Did you notice at the end the lobes got, I think that's something that's happened.
I never noticed that. I never noticed that.
I made a conscious decision in my life when I was 21 and I graduated. I was Coach Wooden's easiest recruit.
I became his worst nightmare and I drove the poor guy to an early grave at 99. But here was a guy who, when I was 21, when I graduated from UCLA, he had his pyramid of success, which we thought was crazy.
He had his seven point creed, which we thought was, what's this? He had his two sets of threes that didn't make sense. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, don't whine, don't complain, don't make excuses.
He had his endless maxims. He had his tools to overcome the adversity and the tough times.
He wrote everything down. And he was an English teacher by profession who happened to have young people under his athletic supervision in the afternoon.
But here was this guy who, on the day I graduated, he wrote a maxim for me to Bill Walton. It's the things you learn after you know it all that count.
John Wooden. And that still sits on my desk at home.
And although home these days is at the MGM Grand, where it's spectacularly beautiful. And right behind me, we have Red Rock Canyon State Park.
You actually said this. So when you came in, you sat down and you said, I don't want to look.
I want my seat to have it back to the window. Otherwise, I'm just going to stare out there.
Concentration, focus, discipline. That's what I really need work on.
Okay. And then the clock.
What about the clock? You have a clock. I live by the clock.
You sat down and you put a clock down here. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Okay. And you got to know what the time is because you have to know.
And this was another thing I got from John Wooden. Because when we would go play as children, and I played all the time, basketball was my religion.
The gym was my church. I love basketball.
It was the easiest thing I've ever done besides academics in my life. And my challenges have been orthopedic health.
I've had 37 orthopedic surgeries. Both my ankles are fused.
I've got a replaced knee as well now. And now I have a replaced and brand new reconstructed rebuilt spine.
My other big challenge in life was my speech impediment. I'm a lifelong stutterer.
And I couldn't say a word. I couldn't say hello.
I couldn't say thank you until I was 28 years old. And then Marty Glickman, one of the greatest broadcasters, one of the greatest human beings ever.
Please check out his book, Fastest Kid on the Block. Please check out his movie on HBO, Glickman.
Marty's now passed. When Marty did pass, they came to Coach Wooden for a comment because, you know, Coach is so, he is so experienced, so worldly and so old that he knew everybody.
And so Marty, who completely changed the world of broadcasting and humanity and spirit and ethics and moral clarity. When he passed, they asked Coach Wood about him, and Coach was going on and telling a story about how great a person and humanitarian and philanthropist and broadcaster and really everything that Marty Glickman was.
But then he said, he turned it and he said, but I've got a problem with Marty. Because Marty, he taught Bill Walton how to speak, but now he's passed away, and he didn't tell Bill Walton how to stop talking.
That's a fair... So Dan, Big Cat, PFT.
Yes. How's the restaurant business? The restaurant's going well.
Good. I love to eat.
I eat so much. I wish I didn't have to eat so much.
If I were to open a restaurant, it would just be nachos. Just nachos and buffalo wings.
Really? You'd have a deep fryer and that'd be it. You guys are so young.
You're probably not into health food, man. You've got to get into health.
You've got to get into sustainability. What does that mean? I'm not into health food or do you think that I'm fat? They call me fat.
Is that what you're saying? No. Okay.
That's okay. I know that you're really into health.
You're a biker, right? I'm fat. You're a bicyclist, right? You're an avid bicyclist.
I love biking. So me and you, we actually have a little connection here actually have a little connection here you lost you lost your bike when you went to hawaii you remember that oh one of the worst yeah not one of the worst customer experience ever but i got it that's why we have twitter yeah i saw you on twitter and i i called the resort i called the resort for you thank you and i was i was like my friend bill lost his bike you to help him get it back.
So I essentially found your bike for you. PFT, you're my man.
The Statue of Liberty, shining the light. There we go.
Big open hand here. Have you guys seen that picture at the Bill Graham traveling exhibit? Bill Graham, the guy who created the concert world experience that we have today.
I was at Desert Trip. How about you guys? It it was over the top you have become somewhat of a viral phenomenon with what is i have a i'm a virus now you're viral yeah so you i just had viral pneumonia it was the worst you're the old let's put it this way you are wholly unique in the way you announce games and you do your color play with d Pash.
Who? Are there moments where you... Who's the guy you mentioned? Your co-host.
What's his name? Is it not Dave Pash? I don't know. He's messing with you, Big Cat.
Okay. He screwed up the name before.
Oh, now we're going to deflect it on... No, but that's why...
Now I'm name conscious. Good radio.
So you a big cat. I'm Bill with two L's.
This is PFT. You nailed it.
Pure fine and talented. So when you go off in the middle of the broadcast, do you ever get lost in your own mind and you almost forget where you are? I get lost all the time.
It's unbelievable to listen to. People love to listen to it's late night on the east coast it's a it's fun to get lost and it's important to get lost but getting lost that implies that i know where i am to begin with and and that's's a giant leap of faith right there.
But I love education. I love knowledge.
I love science. I love facts.
I love politics. I love music.
I was just upstairs before I came down here. And I woke up at the crack of dawn.
I was up late last night working. And I woke up at the crack of dawn knowing that I had a chance to be on this special show.
And so as I'm clearing my life and trying to wash away the sins, trying to cleanse the stains of my life and try to come down here and be able to shine that light. Because as that light comes in, you can't keep it.
Your job, your duty is to reflect it. And so I put on my iTunes and I found John Fogarty and he was singing.
And he had guys singing with him. And it was just over the top.
And it took me back to a new place. Saw a a soundbite the other i heard a soundbite the other day of you saying that there's a lot of synchronicity between the nba and your favorite band the grateful dead yeah it's not just the nba it's basketball it's sport so i i want to play basketball more than any other sport because see the other sports you're standing around, I like speed.
I'm a speed freak. I want to keep going.
Drush. It's a drug.
It makes you high. Cycling's rush.
Progressive rock. It makes you so high.
It's faster, faster. When you're riding your bike, you see those mountains over there? When you're riding your bike straight up those mountains, that makes you so high.
When you're playing basketball and there's 20,000 people there yelling and screaming, even if there's no people there, it's the greatest thing in the world because you're moving and you're doing something and you can make a positive contribution on every single play. These other sports, they just stand around.
They stop all the time. I hate that.
Yeah, I wanted to play a quick game with you in that vein. Who's the ref? I'm going to name four NBA teams and you tell me which Grateful Dead song

matches up best with that soundtrack.

Let me just say

that I

am not good at thinking on my feet.

I'll help you. I would disagree with that.

I'm not good at thinking on my feet.

The answers I'm going to give now...

There are no wrong answers. What's your favorite Grateful Dead year, by the way,

before we start this game? This year.

Okay.

It's like, first of all, it's all one song i remember we were there it was at poly it was at poly pavilion right it's just one long song right just wait a second let

me tell this story real quick we're at poly pavilion right and the grateful dead every year

we're at ucla they came grateful they would come and play at poly pavilion i didn't know him at the

time i was too shy i had opportunities to meet him i became a fan which is my first dead show when i Thank you. And the Grateful Dead every year were at UCLA.
The Grateful Dead would come and play at Pauly Pavilion. I didn't know him at the time.

I was too shy.

I had opportunities to meet him.

I became a fan, which was my first Dead show when I was 15, 1967, summer of love.

It was just incredibly great.

And so my life was never the same again.

And then over the years, there was always these opportunities to meet him,

but I was just too shy.

And I couldn't talk.

And so I was very much of. And I couldn't talk.
And I just, so I just, I was a very,

I was very much of a loner as a person.

On the stage, on the court, it's fantastic.

You know, the light's all shining on me.

Otherwise, I'm heading back to my hotel room.

I'm going to the library.

I'm going to read a book.

I'm going to go to the beach by myself.

I'm going to just be by myself.

And so, but that changed when I learned how to speak. Anyway, so Coach Wooden, when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great

when the great when the great when the great, so Coach Wooden, when the great for them would come and play at Pauley Pavilion, they would use our locker rooms as their dressing room. And Coach Wooden would come in the next day.
And still smell. And he'd say, what's that smell? He said, nothing, Coach.
There's nothing to see here. Incense.
But we were out in the audience. We were the audience, one of these, one of these shows at Pauly Pavilion and, and, and the Grateful Dead were just all over the place.
Just one of those spectacular ricocheting journeys through the universe, right? Where you're bouncing off Pluto and Mars and going into other solar systems. And it's just like, wow, let's go.
And then they would come back and go out and come back and somebody in the crowd said wow hey you know they already played that song and somebody else said hey man it's all one song that would blow my mind right there that's an all time moment that's the kind of stuff that happens in my life every day that sounds amazing every day we going to play a quick game. I'm going to name an NBA team and you're going to tell me which Grateful Dead song it marks.
Okay, I'll try. But bear in mind that for the people listening at home and the people keeping score at home, if you write these answers down, tomorrow there might be different answers.
Yeah, it's just a tap into your brain right at this very moment. Because that's one of the problems in my life.
The test is always changing. Right.
The answers change. The questions change.
And I love that. Yeah, okay.
So first one, we'll make an easy one. San Antonio Spurs.
I'm going to play this game with you. Yeah, okay.
San Antonio Spurs, okay. Touch of Greg.
No. I love greg popovich that guy is awesome and i i don't know if you know peter holt's story the owner of the team that guy do we have time to tell this yeah of course we have as much time as you want we have nowhere to go okay so peter you know you talk about uh you know the song you talk about uh the the sustainability and the dream and something special.

I mean, this franchise was just floundering.

They were going to fold.

They had nothing going on.

Peter Holt, he is an heir to the Caterpillar tractor family, right?

He is, you know, at the top.

And so Peter, somehow, some way, he ends up in Vietnam in the fight. And don't ever let anybody tell you that Vietnam was fun or that Vietnam was good.
That was the epitome of evil and selfishness and greed and crony capitalism and war profiteering and just all the worst of the worst, that was Vietnam. And so Peter, fortunately for him, he survives.
But he comes back and ends up in San Francisco, as so many people did. And California, meet me on the burning shore, the promised land, just knocking on heaven's door.
Peter peter goes there and he and his life is never the same again and so but he loses a lot if not everything including uh his family connections because the family basically just cut him out and he was just out on his own so peter Marty Glickman, when he had his challenges and his problems,

like so many of us try to do, Peter was able to get back up. And he got back up and started over again.
And this is the ultimate challenge in life. And this is what I've tried to do many times.
by taking the worst things that ever happened to you and make them into the best things that ever happened to you when my spine failed february 24th 2008 and i went from the top even though i had been slowly debilitating physically and i was getting worse and worse and worse.

But it was on February 24th, 2008,

that I got off the plane and could no longer move.

And I spent the next four and a half years

trying to get back up and trying to go.

And I tried everything.

And I did not understand the concept of everything

until my spine failed. I thought I knew a lot of stuff, but when your spine fails and you're lying on that ground and you would just rather be dead, that was me.
If I had a gun, I would have used it. There was no reason for me to ever think that I was going to get better and I had a chance, but I am all better now.
And so during that time, I got fired from my job, lost my health insurance, lost everything, my dignity, self-interest. I had lost everything.
And just lying on the ground, nothing I could do about it. But now here I am.
That's nine years ago. And so I have been able to learn this time and take it back to the other times when my ankle fusions, knee replacements, all that kind of stuff and personal failures, financial failures.
But to learn to take those failures and turn it around to it becomes the best thing in your life. And that's what Peter Holt did.
And he climbed back up, he got back in, and he bought the San Antonio Spurs. And he has created this culture, this culture of excellence, a culture of success, a culture of genius.
And that's what I want to be a part of in my life. I don't want to be a part of negativity.
I don't want to be a part of intimidation. I don't want to be a part of anger.

I want to be a part of joy, of happiness.

And so as we think of the song, you said, Touch of Grey.

I mean, I don't know.

I can't think quickly enough to think.

I'm going to go with Truckin'.

Truckin', that's a good one.

Because of the owner and also the Spurs.

Every year they're there.

They're all good.

They just keep on going.

They're all good.

Okay.

Okay.

What was your question, PFT?

Lakers.

Now we'll do the Lakers.

Ooh.

Ugh.

A little close to home for you.

No, I love it. Do you think Magic was the right hire? Absolutely.
We love Magic. Okay.
Everything Magic does is fit. You know, Magic is, you know, he's one of those rare beacons of hope.
I mean, look, come on. They told Magic he was going to die, and now look at him.
Right. He's, Magic is perfect.
And you talk to David Stern. And David Stern, all the things he's done in his life, the best thing he ever did was with Magic Johnson.
When Magic Johnson went and played in that 1992 All-Star game. Dick Enberg, our college broadcaster, one of my best friends.
Dick Enberg called that game. Don Nelson coached that game, and Magic went out there.
It just was fantastic. And what he's done.
And, okay, so I love Magic Johnson. But the Lakers, see, you guys are, I'm not sure you guys are deadheads.
I am. I don't.
PFT is not. Well, no, he appreciates that.
Well, see, being a deadhead is a personal choice. Right.
And, you know And when I first went, I had heard him on the radio. And the DJ, he was the one that prompted me to go.
It was Gabriel Wisdom. It was 1967.
And he said, hey, man, there's a new band. They're going to have a concert.
Let's go. Everybody got in free.
And it was fantastic. And I got to the front of the stage.
And just happiness and joy and love and peace. You know, singing Uncle John's Band.
The first days are the hardest days. Don't you worry about it, no.
When life looks like easy street, there's danger at your door. What I want to know is, are you kind and will you come with me? Come here, Uncle John's Band.
There we go. I love it.
That's the Lakers. So for me, my love for the Grateful Dead has always been, like I'll float around and listen to other music and like other music, but whenever I turn on, whenever I put in a Grateful Dead concert or Dick's Picks when it was back, one of those CDs.
There's just something different.

You know what I mean?

It just feels different than all other music that you're listening to.

There's nothing like a Grateful Dead.

There's nothing like a Grateful Dead concert.

Bill Graham said it best.

The Grateful Dead, they're not the best at what they do.

They're the only ones that do what they do.

And you talked about Dick's Picks, so you know Dick Lafala.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let me tell you how this works because, you know, I'm not sure are you are you 32 no way yeah see the gray hairs by the way do you hate do you hate donna who donna gotcha i love donna come on be honest i love donna please okay no time to hate okay only. All right, all right.
Okay. Please.
I'm not a Donna fan, if you couldn't tell. He'll listen to you whine one time, Big Cat, but next time.
I'm not a Donna fan. Donna is an angel of mercy.
Brent Midland was my favorite. Brent Midland is fantastic.
I wish they would play his songs again. They don't play them anymore, and I'm just sad because I love those songs.
But let me tell you the story of Dick Lotville and this is sort of how this whole life works.

That was actually, by the way, the first time you didn't smile in the entire interview

was when I bashed Donna.

No, I'm standing up for Donna.

Yeah, I know.

I appreciate that.

I love Donna.

That's a ride or die guy.

And as soon as they turn this camera off, I'm going to punch you in the face.

So we're on tour with the dead and we're up at Red Rocks. And I think it was in the eighties.
I'm not sure. Somebody will know.
Red Rocks. Fantastic.
Three days, three nights in a row. Everybody's there.
Camping, parties, hotels. Let's go.
Just having the time of our lives. Show starts first night.
Bam. The heavens explode.
Thunder, lightning lightning just torrential historic epic monumental rain right just pounding all night long and but the fans they all just stayed it was not a one left and it was it was the grateful dead and it was just better than perfect and what we live for it was our team it was our was our leaders, it was our beacons, and let's go to the promised land and let's celebrate. But it just rained, all just floods, water, rivers, coming right down through the Red Rocks Amphitheater Bowl there.
This phenomenal place. And so everybody, the concert's over and everybody goes back and they're looking at the weather report and talking to the guys and the police and everything.
And they just said, look, this rain is going to keep going for the next three days. And so at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, the band makes the decision, look, let's cancel Red Rocks and move the whole show downtown to McNichols Arena, which was the NBA arena at the time.
And so everybody in the middle of the night gets up, drives back out to Red Rocks, works all night through the dawn, tearing everything. Grateful Dead, that's a big production.
That's a big show. And tons of equipment, tons of lighting, everything.
Work all day, tear it down, drive it down into town, set it up at McNicholsols and at the announced starting time they were ready and they come out on the and it just but everybody's beat everybody's dead tired and the all the deadheads we're all still wet from the night before but the music starts up and the joy and the happiness and the rainbows and the people and the smiles and the love and the spinners and just everything is just fantastic right so i'm just cruising through the whole arena just listening to the music play and riding the wave and just having the time of my life as they're just going through again ricocheting off the comets and the stars and the planets and the universe whichever one we're in that night and I come around this corner and there's this guy. Looks a lot like you, Big Cat.
And he's walking right toward me. He's got these dazed, glazed eyes and he's just like fierce and he's intense.
And I can just feel it. I can see it.
Masculine man. Sweaty.
And I look at him, powerful, handsome. I look at him and he has got this shirt on.
And I stop, we come face to face. So we stop and I look at him and I said, that is the coolest shirt I've ever seen in my life.
This was like an airbrushed history of the world through the prism of the Grateful Dead. Pyramids and exploding bus stops, rainbows, serpents coming out.
And it was just as wild a shirt as you could possibly imagine. I said, that's the coolest shirt I've ever seen.
I had no idea who he was. He just looks at me, doesn't say a word, and rips off his shirt and gives it to me.
Wow. And then he just goes on his way.

Was he also seven feet tall?

Did it fit?

No, no.

He was like a little short guy like Big Cat here.

And so the night goes on and I put the shirt on, right?

And I'm wearing the shirt.

And so it was a fantastic shirt.

People were talking all night long about my shirt.

And the show's over.

And so now we're all leaving. We're down the stage, out the back door, through the gauntlet, all the fans reaching and grabbing and trying to get all the autographs and take the pictures.
And the vans are waiting right there. And we're getting in the vans.
And I look over, and there's that guy who gave me the shirt. And he's standing on the front of the rail, reaching in, looking, still with no shirt on.
Yes. And I look at him, and I said, you're coming with us.
And so I picked him up by the back of the neck and lifted him up over the barrier, threw him in the van, and says, let's go. We got back to the hotel.
I introduced him to everybody all around. They looked at my shirt and said, oh my god, that's the coolest shirt ever, Bill.
And they hired him on the spot.

That was Dick Latvilla and he went on

to become the

curator of The Vault.

Wow. That's amazing.
You never

know. So people who don't know,

Dick, he basically was the librarian

for all of Grateful Dead's

music. And his job was to sit

in The Vault all day long and listen to all the old concerts and decide which ones were good enough to put out as re-releases. Sometimes the universe just kind of works together like that, doesn't it? That's the way all of our universe works.
We just have to keep our eyes open. And we just have to keep our shoulders back and our heads up.
That's also the most Grateful Dead story ever because they basically pick the highest guy in the world to listen to all their music. No, no, no.
That's the way it always works in Grateful Dead. I promise.
Pain is no good and don't ever discount pain because the challenge in life is to get out of pain. Gotcha.
No. We're busy in here, please.
We're busy. I'm with PFT and Big Cat.
Housekeeping is trying to get in. Yeah.
They're breaking into our room here. Okay.
The forces of evil. Let's do another team.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
I mean, it's like team. We'll jump back.
Then we get a story, which is exactly what we wanted this interview to be. No, thank you.
No, thank you. We're busy.
Force of evil. Oh, a gift.
A gift. All right, well, let's see what the gift is.
Hank is going to go check it out. By the way, have you ever...
Please have the security forces check this, please. These forces of evil, they get at you in lots of different ways.
What do we got? Oh, it's a can of beer nuts. Let's open it up.
Do you and Dave Pash ever have a talk about the fact that he doesn't believe in evolution? Thank you. I had to wait until a gift came in to ask you the hard question.
Oh, my gosh. Do you have that conversation with him ever? I love discourse.
Okay. Yeah, same.
I love. Oh, I meant intercourse.
But love that too. I love my wife.
My wife is fantastic. Can you imagine being married to me? What did they bring you guys? A bottle of tequila, some chocolates and stuff? Oh my gosh.
If you can't do it for breakfast, if you can't do it all day long, don't do it at all, guys. Do's right.
So do you talk to him at all about the fact that he doesn't believe in evolution? No, no, no, man. I'm kidding.
No. Please.
You've been to the Galapagos, right? Oh, one of the great trips ever. Yes.
Oh, my God. You need to take him there.
I didn't know him then. No.
He's young. Take him there.
He's very young. He's very young.
Yeah. Look, we're trying to bring people along.
We're trying to get – my job in life is to be a human forklift and a human solar panel. I'm a road grader.
Wow. So like – well, I'm more one of those traffic cones that's kind of like got dirt on it and everyone's like, that's the saddest traffic cone I've ever seen.
But think of the forklift. A forklift picks things and people up and puts them in a better place.
Think of them as a solar. Solar energy is the biggest no-brainer in the history of the world.
Are you kidding? It's so sunny out there. More solar energy hits the earth every day.
But now let me stop here. Every whine don't complain you could do the sun or we could just go and burn cold another war in in the middle east right i'm choosing the sun okay i'm choosing solar tomato here or we could start a new ice age kill all the humans and then dinosaurs come back then they die then millions of years after that we've got more more oil.
Then maybe Dave Pasch will believe it. What kind of trip are you guys on? We sound like Dave.
You guys love coal. I actually read a story yesterday in the New York Times.
About what? I think that you would enjoy it. It's about the Galapagos, which is one of my favorite places on Earth.
You've been there? Yeah, I've been there. I had just the best time ever.
Were the Angermeyers still alive when you were there? The Angermeyers. So the Angermeyers are five brothers.
I didn't meet the Angermeyers. I was going to say the Angermeyers are five brothers in the early 1930s in Germany.
And this was when Hitler was just coming up. And if you haven't read Eric Larson's In the Garden of Beasts, please make that.

We've talked about a number of books here, but that book right now today is critical. But all the books I've mentioned today are critical.
And anyway, their parents, the Engelmeyer's parents, saw what was happening. They were Jewish and they saw, so they put their children on a boat

knowing that they would never see their children again. And the boys, they ended up in the Galapagos in the 30s.
What island were they on? I forget the name. It's the main island.
Porta Aorta? Is that the name of the town? There's San Cristobal. There's Santa Cruz.
What's the name of the town? Porta Ayora, right? Ah. Where the harbor is and the town.
Anyway, this was a phenomenal trip. Oh my gosh.
It was one of the... I could easily make the argument that certain days on that trip was the greatest single day of my life.
I could make the argument that that trip was the greatest single moment of my life. But then there's all these other things that have happened too.
They just keep coming. And so what I've learned over the course of these now 64 years, never rank, rate, or compare.

That's what I tell my girlfriends all the time.

Championships, concerts, children, coaches,

or congratulations.

Just enjoy them all.

What about teams?

Like could UConn women's basketball beat the 76ers?

No.

No.

But you're not supposed to compare.

So you're not supposed to compare. You never answered what the best team you ever played on was.
Any team that won the championship. That's what I played for.
Bill Russell was my hero. I played to win.
I didn't play for personal glory. I didn't play for...
What was the most fun team you ever played on? When you win the championship, that's good. It's interesting because you...
And when you lose, it's like, that's the worst. Well, you taught us a lesson today.
That's a lot of lessons. I told you what not to do.
No, no, no. No, this is an important lesson because the way we do this show, we'll game plan our guests and we'll try to steer them different ways.

And I think today's interview taught us that you got to let the guest talk about what they want to talk about because this was one of the most interesting interviews we've done.

And we didn't steer.

Well, I didn't even look at my pad once.

Coach Wooden, that's the antithesis of what Coach Wooden was like. Because Coach Wooden, he never started practice with these words.
Never. What do you guys want to do today? Right.
In basketball, you need a coach. Structure, organization, discipline, focus, platform.
And that's where the sacrifice comes in, and the discipline. Because to be a part of a group, you've got to realize, okay, you know, platform.
And that's where the sacrifice comes in and the discipline because to be a part of a group, you've got to realize, okay, what's the goal here? Hopefully we achieve something here today. Yeah, absolutely.
I had a great time. Thank you for stopping by.
BFT, big cat. Here we go.
I'm Bill, two L's from San Diego. I'll have to tell you about the Galapagos story, the New York Times some other time.
But I think you'll really enjoy it. I saw you talking about the Banff buffalos, right? The bison.
Oh, yeah. I love buffaloes.
I can't believe. I'm reading this book right now.
Peter Kozen's The Earth is Weeping. Oh, my God.
It's the story of the Indian Wars in the latter half of the 19th century. Oh, it is just the most tragic story.
We're right back there again, and they're still making these pipelines. Come on, solar energy, the biggest no-brainer in the history of the world.
Do it. Don't think about the past.
Learn from the past. Learn from our mistakes in the past.
Quit burning coal. Let's move forward.
Solar energy, wind power, hydro electricity.

Let's go.

Geothermal.

One last question.

I did write this down earlier.

I just remembered it.

Have you ever found Bobby Jackson?

Bobby Jackson.

I know a bunch of Bobby Jacksons.

During that King series.

Right. You're like,

where is Bobby Jackson?

Where is Bobby Jackson?

Oh,

that Bobby Jackson.

Yeah.

Sixth man of the year.

I do love when you do that. When someone disappears on the court and you just start saying, Where is Bobby Jackson? Oh, that Bobby Jackson.
Yeah. Sixth man of the year.
I do love when you do that.

That Bobby Jackson.

When someone disappears on the court and you just start saying, where is this person?

When they stop playing well.

So you're familiar with the pyramid of success?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there's 15 human values.

Do they store grain in that pyramid too?

No.

They store love.

They store happiness.

They store knowledge, which is-

Power.

I don just kidding. It's a joke.
I told you, I'm not good at thinking on my feet here, man. You are..
You are. You don't give yourself enough credit.
You guys are scrambling on my brain.

You don't give yourself enough credit. You guys are trying to join in with those forces of evil.
So anyway, the pyramid of success, 15 words. Human values and personal attributes and characteristics of your soul, of your being.
And they are industriousness, enthusiasm, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, intentness, initiative, alertness, self-control, physical fitness, skill development, commitment to the team, poise, confidence, and the very top block. Competitive greatness.
Be at your best when your best is needed.

Where is Bobby Jackson?

There we go.

That's a perfect ending.

Walking away I don't know what

To say I'd say it anyway

Today's time I take

To find me

Shining away

I'm becoming

Your lover

Baby

Your lover Today's the night To pop and shine away I'm coming for your love of me Love of me Take on me Take me Take me Take me Oh Take me on I'll be gone To do So needless to say I'm not saying it But I need be Stumbling away Struggling Life is okay Say up to me It's for better To be safe than sorry Take me on me Take me on me Take me on me Take me on me Take me on me Take me on me Take on. Thank you.
I'm turning to the moon Thank you.