NBA With Kirk Goldsberry, Final Draft Preview With Daniel Jeremiah & Field Yates, Max's 5 Stages Of Sixers Grief + Guys On Chicks

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Speaker 1 On today's part in my take, we have a three-fer for the people. We're going to finish our draft coverage with Daniel Jeremiah and Field Yates.

Speaker 1 And we have our good friend Kirk Goldsbury on to talk specifically about Monday night in the NBA. We're going to have him on to talk some more NBA playoffs when he's in Chicago in a couple weeks.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about everything that happened Monday night. We're going to talk about everything that happened Tuesday night.

Speaker 5 Max is going through the five stages of grief. We have hot seat cool thrown.

Speaker 1 We have guys on chicks. It's a great show.
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Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

Speaker 1 And then a lot of solved work to be done.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then a candy game all on the sun. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down to

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Speaker 1 Today is Wednesday, April 24th.

Speaker 1 And PFT, in the words of Anthony Edwards, they got KD, but we got Jaden McDaniels. That's what happened.

Speaker 1 That's what happened for the Timberwolves.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he said that on February 9th, 2023, when the Suns traded for Kevin Durant, and he was asked about that trade and what the West is going to look like. And he said, we got Jaden McDaniels.

Speaker 1 And Jaden McDaniels was the best player on the court tonight. He did it.
He outscored KD by seven points. He was awesome.
They got Jaden McDaniels.

Speaker 6 The Suns are dead. I proclaimed it.
The Suns are dead. They don't look like they have any life to them whatsoever.

Speaker 6 They look anemic. Bradley Beal looks pretty bad.

Speaker 6 No trade clause, by the way, for Bradley Beal. So I think he's like the sixth highest player in the NBA.
They're going to be stuck with that for a little bit.

Speaker 6 I can't tell. The Suns, I don't think the Suns were going to do anything in these playoffs anyways, but I also think that the Timberwolves might just be good.

Speaker 1 The Timberwolves are good, and they're deep. Like, Jay McDaniels

Speaker 1 was better than Carl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards tonight. Mike Conley was incredible, just dicing them up, pick and roll with Rudy Gobert.
Like,

Speaker 1 the Timberwolves' two stars did not play great, and the Timberwolves still won easily because they're just so much better defensively. And the Suns play ISO ball.
Like,

Speaker 1 it's terrible basketball to watch. And yeah, I think the Timberloals are really, really good.
And I just love that

Speaker 1 Anthony Edwards' quote turned out to be prophetic with the, they got KD, we got Jay McDaniels. Everyone laughed at him.
He was dead right.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the Suns' offense typically looks to be, it is actually heliocentric, in the words of our good friend Ryan Rossillo. But you just you drive to the bucket and then you kick it out.

Speaker 1 and you panic.

Speaker 6 So it's like usually Booker, he'll take it towards the hole, defense collapses on him, and then he's like, oh, oh, shit, what do I do?

Speaker 6 Tries to find a guy on the outside, makes a clumsy pass, ends up with a bad three-point opportunity. It's just, it's a tough, tough offense to watch right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And KD just stands around and he'll he gets his points, but he just like it, it is very tough to watch.
And they, they, you said it on Monday. They, they miss Chris Paul.

Speaker 1 And I know they don't miss actual Chris Paul at this age, but they miss a point guard because Devin Booker's not a point guard. He's a great player, but he's not a point guard.

Speaker 1 And it's like their offense just looks like crap.

Speaker 1 And I do think they'll still win win a game or two here going back to Phoenix, but the Timberwolves just look younger, fresher, hungrier, better defensively. They're ready to go.

Speaker 6 I should say, thinking back to the term heliocentric, the way that Ryan uses it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you didn't use it right.

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 6 No, but

Speaker 6 I did in a weird way because they're heliocentric, but with like three different players.

Speaker 1 Three sons. They have three sons.

Speaker 6 Three sons. They have three sons, and the earth revolves around all three of those sons at the same time.
But whenever those guys get the ball, it's like they're the only guy on the court.

Speaker 1 There's only one ball. Also, shout out Frank Vogel.
Maybe don't use your last timeout with seven minutes or eight minutes left in the game. That felt like maybe not.

Speaker 1 Maybe you want to hold on to at least one.

Speaker 1 Not that I thought the game was going to go different because of that, but that was a head scratcher. I was like, what is going on?

Speaker 1 Like, if you need to change anything, if you need this timeout later, you're just fucked.

Speaker 6 What's all the separate runs that the Timberwolves end up going on. And Vogel's like, got to stop this run.
Got to take the air out of the ball real quick.

Speaker 6 But that happened too many times, and he didn't have enough timeouts.

Speaker 1 I also have a vibe stat for this game, and it has nothing. It's based on absolutely nothing.
I'm sure someone will actually give me the stats and say I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 I don't think Devin Booker is good when he wears a headband.

Speaker 1 I just don't. I don't know why.
I think maybe his head is too constricted.

Speaker 1 He wears a tight headband.

Speaker 6 That might be the case.

Speaker 6 I think it has partially due to that, also partially not having the offense run like a cohesive offense where you have, like you said, a facilitator, somebody that's like in charge of what's going on in the court, and then he plays off that guy.

Speaker 6 But the headband also makes a difference.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and

Speaker 1 the Suns offense is horrific to watch.

Speaker 1 You know, in these last two games, it also is the Timberwolves defense just being so goddamn good. And they're so, like, they're in your face.

Speaker 1 Just don't, they've just been playing such good basketball.

Speaker 6 It's like Rudy Gobert might be Hank's best opportunity for a Jokic stopper.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're just finding Jokic stoppers every time.

Speaker 1 Every show is just, Hank, where are you going? Where are you feeling right now, Hank?

Speaker 1 Who's the team? Is it the Timberwolves?

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably the Timberwolves. Okay, you're a Timberwolves fan now.
Just hopping from rock to rock. Could be the Clippers, though.
It could be the Clippers.

Speaker 1 After they just lost.

Speaker 9 Yeah, but the matchup.

Speaker 1 And Kawhi came back.

Speaker 9 I'm doing a lot of matchup research.

Speaker 1 Okay, Give us your matchup research.

Speaker 9 Clippers are more physical.

Speaker 9 They got the stars on the perimeter, physical front.

Speaker 1 They also run an offense that can sometimes look very bogged down and like a bunch of dudes standing in the paint. Like, what are we doing?

Speaker 1 But yeah, they are physical. Kawhi came back.
We lost our who comes back first, Giannis or Kawhi. And he came back in the best.
What, did you say Kawhi was going to come back first?

Speaker 6 I said Kawhi. I said Kawhi can come back any day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, he did it in the most Kawhi fashion where he just showed up at practice today, like walked in, and everyone's like, oh, is he playing? Okay, he's playing. And then they lost.

Speaker 1 So they probably need him to get injured again.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't know what that was about because he's been out, what, since late March?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's been out since the end of March. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the end of March. And you would think that if he was good for game two, he would have been good for game one, right?

Speaker 6 Like we're talking about a matter of

Speaker 6 days here. And I read some, there was some report out there.
I forget who actually put it out. Somebody can find it.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 they were saying that Kawhi has been working his way back, and this has been the target timeframe

Speaker 6 for a couple of weeks now. But I guess just two days ago, it wasn't right.
It wasn't right yet. It had to be just perfectly good for him.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it had to be exactly what he needs. The Mavs were like when Kyrie and Luca are both playing like they did tonight, like they're, they're, they are fun to watch.
And Luca is.

Speaker 1 What was the line from Ion Eagle, Jake? I'm sure you loved it. You might have creamed your dockers there.
He said, he is that guy or something like that.

Speaker 1 What do you say? I think that was it. Yeah.
And it was true. Like, Luca, I love Luca just shit talks too.
He'll hit a big shot and he'll just turn around to just no one or everyone and just shit talk.

Speaker 6 It's usually the person closest to him. And 99% of the time, that's the referee.
So it doesn't matter what happens on any play.

Speaker 6 Luca just stares at the ref, screams at him, or at the very least, just like stares daggers at him and mean mugs him. It got so bad tonight, actually, that he got teed up

Speaker 6 for saying the end word and one.

Speaker 6 And he was right. It was an end-one, but they gave it a technical foul.
And then I think James Harden made a free throw for the Clippers.

Speaker 6 So it wasn't N1 technically, but it was just the very rare end-one for the team that didn't score.

Speaker 1 I just like it. I don't know.

Speaker 1 He's got that shit to him. He also, Luca has to lead the league in garments worn during a game.

Speaker 1 I feel like we're going to get to a point where Luca just plays a game and he's just like, there's no skin showing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, or what he might do is come out there with like two full sleeves and then they're like tear away, like tear away pants.

Speaker 6 So like he tears away the forearm on one for the first quarter, entire sleeve on another, leaves just a wristband behind maybe.

Speaker 6 But my take was that Luca, I think Luca desperately needs therapy, but I also think that it would be very, very bad for him as a basketball player.

Speaker 6 I feel like that shit that he has makes him excellent, but he's just, he's always angry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he is. He's always angry.
And then the last game we had in the NBA was Pacers, Bucs. I want to,

Speaker 1 you know what? I'm going to put my hand up and retract what I said on Sunday when I said if the Bucs played the Celtics, Giannis would be the best player, and then the next four best players would be

Speaker 1 on the Celtics. A lot of Bucs fans, I heard you.
I like that. You're listening.
You're mad. You're angry.
I like that. Let's get debate going.

Speaker 1 I think the second best player in the series would actually be Damian Lillard in the first half, and then the eighth best player in the series would be Damian Lillard in the second half.

Speaker 1 So that's my correction because he was awesome again in the first half, and then he was, he just ran out of gas. Like he's their only option right now.

Speaker 1 He just ran out of gas.

Speaker 6 I actually have Pat Bev as the best player and then Giannis and then the Celtics, then Dame.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was one of those takes I just threw as a throwaway. And then I heard from a lot of people.
I still think I'd probably take three Celtics, maybe not four, but three

Speaker 1 over Dame. But we can have that debate.
We can continue to have that debate. But this was like a very classic case of they need Giannis very badly because Pascal Siakam was incredible.

Speaker 1 And they, again, ran out of gas. Like, Damian Lillard was so good in the first half.
And in the second half, there were stretches where he wasn't touching the ball. It was like

Speaker 1 the Bucs are an older roster, and the Pacers were like, we're just going to run all over them. And it worked.
They ran him out of, They just ran him out of the gym.

Speaker 6 A few times in the second half, the Bucs looked like it was going to be a game. They looked like they were getting within that striking distance.

Speaker 6 And then you'd look up and the Pacers had opened up like a nine-point lead within a matter of seconds on them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And Tyrese Halburn is so good.
He's so good at making everyone else good. I know that's a very stupid thing to say, but it's like if you watch it, he is just good at making everyone else good.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. He's also got a crazy voice, which I had never heard until I listened to his post-game press conference.
Have you heard him talk?

Speaker 1 I don't know if I have.

Speaker 6 He's got a very, it's like a super smooth, unexpected voice.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
So shout out, shout out to Tyrese Halliburton.

Speaker 6 One of the better ones in the NBA, I'd say.

Speaker 1 Well, and the last thing I had on this game is:

Speaker 1 I don't actually know what Jay Crowder does, but he's on another team in the playoffs. He's got the best career of just being on teams in the playoffs.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, Doc Rivers, people will blame Doc Rivers because he's an easy foil.

Speaker 1 The Bucs have like major problems when duh, major problems when Giannis is out on the court because they have to play guys that probably shouldn't be on the court as much as they are.

Speaker 1 And Jay Crowder is, I just don't know what he does.

Speaker 6 Jay Crowder, he'll hit some unexpected threes occasionally for you.

Speaker 1 He'll hustle.

Speaker 6 He's physical.

Speaker 8 I think he's a leader. I think his teammates like him a lot.

Speaker 6 But yeah, that's what he does. He bounces around.
He's always on a playoff team. Always finds himself in the conversation sometime in like

Speaker 7 mid-May.

Speaker 6 There's always a nice team. Yeah, he seems like a cool guy to be teammates with.
So I think that's what his value value is. It's like, I enjoy hanging out with Jay Crowder.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but then you can't have Jay Crowder playing 15 minutes in a playoff game.

Speaker 1 I'm down for all of that. Yeah, that actually is intangibles that you need, but

Speaker 1 he probably shouldn't be playing in this series.

Speaker 6 He's like

Speaker 6 a slightly better Eudonis Haslam for the last like four or five Haslam seasons.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's just, he's, he's cooked. And yeah, I mean, this is going to be a fun series.
I hope Giannis comes back.

Speaker 1 I, I, I still think like it will be a competitive series, even if, if Giannis comes back, but uh, it's just it's like Pascal Siakam was so good, and it's just like, yeah, you need Giannis to guard him.

Speaker 1 I don't know what else you could do.

Speaker 6 If Giannis comes back, you also won't be 100% Giannis.

Speaker 1 Yeah, true. Although I'd take 75% Giannis right now to guard Siakam.

Speaker 6 I think 50%

Speaker 6 Giannis can beat 75% Embiid.

Speaker 1 Ooh. Well,

Speaker 1 is Embiid ever at 75%?

Speaker 6 No. So he's actually, I'm talking about like 75% of 50%.

Speaker 1 Got it. Yes.
Yeah. I'd agree with that.
We're going to talk all the Monday night stuff back in studio. This is just for all the games to finish late.
So don't worry. We get into all of that.

Speaker 1 PFT, would you like to break down advanced analytics on the Capitals game?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I'll keep it real quick. It was a tough loss tonight.
But using the proprietary algorithm that we set forward after game one,

Speaker 6 I have the Capitals actually winning this game three goals to two. So the Caps take a commanding 2-0 series lead on the road, and we're coming back to D.C.
Verizon Center on Friday.

Speaker 6 It's going to be incredible.

Speaker 6 Hopefully clinch it at home after two more home wins.

Speaker 6 But what I have here,

Speaker 6 I'm going to eliminate three minutes from the game. and show how the Caps won.
So I think it was 1540 in the second period.

Speaker 6 The Caps got called for a penalty. You would think that I would want to keep that on the board, but what actually happened was the Rangers scored a shorthanded goal.

Speaker 6 And they probably should have scored three shorthanded goals tonight. It was atrocious power play by the Caps.
So they got a shorthanded goal. So I would wipe that off the board entirely.

Speaker 6 And also during the game, it was pretty obvious that the real score of the game was three for the Caps, three for the Rangers, one for the referees, because the refs just absolutely gave that game to the Rangers.

Speaker 6 And also, they didn't call an egregious hit hit on tj oshi which tom wilson would have been thrown into volcano if he had done it he would have been kicked out of the league and murdered if that was if that was him throwing that hit in there so i'm taking that one goal the shorthanded goal off in the three minutes and then the capitals then win that game three goals to two goals and then one goal still for the refs okay so up to nothing now what would we say to the haters that being like i wish this was the red wings i would probably agree with the haters okay

Speaker 1 you haters.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the haters absolutely are correct. Yeah.
And I think that hats off to the haters.

Speaker 6 They call this one. So good job.

Speaker 6 I agree with all of them. You're absolutely right.
And I will admit when I've been bested by you, and

Speaker 6 you guys had it right from the start. But

Speaker 6 it's a tough series to watch so far. Ovi had one shot on goal in this game.

Speaker 6 And then at the very end of the game, with I think like a second left, maybe half a second left, puck on a a stick, front of the crease, and the puck just kind of scoots by him. It's been tough.

Speaker 6 Like when Spencer Carberry has the balls to call out Alexander Ovechkin, you know that there's a real problem.

Speaker 6 And having your head coach call you out publicly like that after a game, probably deserved. He needs to show up.
He needs to do something because he was great in the second half of the season.

Speaker 6 But he looks like he just doesn't want to be out there.

Speaker 1 Shit. But we're up to nothing.

Speaker 6 We're up to nothing right now. The Red Wings would probably have already won the series if they were in it because they're way better than the Gaps.
But yeah, we're up by

Speaker 6 two games right now, and we'll see what happens on Friday.

Speaker 1 And we should just mention, I mean, that Lightning Panthers game was some of the best goaltending ever for like two and a half, or it was about a period and a half because it was like from half or whatever, somewhere in the second period

Speaker 1 till they went to overtime was just insane. It should have been like a 6-6 game.
Bob made one of the greatest saves ever, diving back across the crease.

Speaker 1 It was just awesome playoff hockey, and then it was a great goal in overtime.

Speaker 6 It was like a reverse spin move that he pulled across the street, stuck his hand up there, and got it.

Speaker 5 They're calling it the Bobbery.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like that. Yeah, that's a great one.
I mean, it was just both goalies were just insane. It was just back and forth, and both goalies were just standing on their head.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you need to have, if you're going to be an elite goalie, you have to have at least one save that has a nickname to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I saw the memes of Bob the Builder. He's building the wall around the gold.
That's nice. I like that.

Speaker 1 Avs tied it up. And

Speaker 1 Predators tied it up. So we got 1-1s everywhere, pretty much.
Well, 2-0 capitals.

Speaker 7 A lot of good hockey.

Speaker 6 Yeah, a lot of good hockey. That's the one lopsided series.
It pains me every time they play, looking at the odds in the puck line and just

Speaker 6 how deeply, deeply favored the Rangers are in this series compared to every other series out there.

Speaker 1 Hank, I don't like your face.

Speaker 9 No, I mean, I hopped in. I was, I appreciate that.
PFT kind of, I believed him. I was like, 150 to 1.
Like, that's crazy. In hockey, you get a Hawk goalie there playing well at the end of the year.

Speaker 5 And then you just watch the games.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 It's fair.

Speaker 6 It's totally fair. And you guys are absolutely right.
Like, the Capitals, they were such a weird, shitty team this year, but they were kind of fun because they found ways to just...

Speaker 6 pull rabbits out of their ass every single time.

Speaker 6 It's much harder to do against maybe the best team in hockey.

Speaker 6 But Hank, I didn't tell you to bet on the capital.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, you didn't.

Speaker 9 No, this was all me. It's the same thing as I'm saying, I'll say later in the episode about the Leafs, where it's like, oh, OV, TJ Oshi, championship experience.
They got a Hawk goalie.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Left-handed goalie.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Crazier things have happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. We're going to kick it to our team.
Actually, maybe not. I don't.

Speaker 1 Now that I think about it,

Speaker 6 I don't remember a crazier thing that's ever happened in sports than the Capitals beating the Rangers in the first round of this playoff series. I don't think that's happened.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sitting at two.

Speaker 1 It wouldn't have been the craziest before the series started because it's like, who knows? But now I'd say it would be pretty crazy.

Speaker 6 If the Caps come back and win this, that is the craziest moment in sports history.

Speaker 1 It's bigger than the Miracle on Ice.

Speaker 6 Way bigger than Miracle. Way bigger than the Ryan Garcia upset.

Speaker 6 There's just a lot of stuff. Muster Douglas.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Before, so we're going to kick it to ourselves and talk about everything Monday night, and then we have three great interviews.

Speaker 1 But I just wanted to, because this is basically a time travel. We're going to go back to the afternoon.
Max has to go through all the stages of grief. I just want to say, my boy Max, I heard reports.

Speaker 1 He hit two dingers tonight in softball. So that's a positive thing.
Two dingers.

Speaker 6 Nice work.

Speaker 1 What was that, Hank?

Speaker 9 No, I was going to say I can confirm that. I don't want to confuse the people people even more.

Speaker 1 But I also heard reports after we recorded what we were about to listen to.

Speaker 9 PFT and Max were just screaming at each other for like two hours off camera. But I would like to get some more details on that.

Speaker 1 I'll give you some details. It was Max.
Max screaming. Yes.

Speaker 1 That was an overreaction by me. That was an overreaction.
Max screaming. He did.
Max was screaming at PFT. PFT was sitting just.
kind of lightly trolling.

Speaker 1 And then they come out of the Part of My Take Studio. The entire office was standing up looking down the hall, being like, what is going on? And then Max did a move that

Speaker 1 it was basically like a five-year-old's move. He sat down at his desk and he pressed his hands over his ears so hard that I had to like grab him, be like, dude, you're going to hurt yourself.

Speaker 1 He was like this.

Speaker 1 Like that, trying to block out PFT talking. And meanwhile, it was a whole fucking circus because then memes had, he was taking Mr.
Pear for a walk. So it was like Mr.

Speaker 1 Pear, like he kept, memes kept on screaming. Like Max would get up and pace.
And he'd be like, Mr. Pear, watch out for Mr.
Pear. And PFT was just like walking behind.

Speaker 1 It was just a, it was quite something. So I mean, the rest of this episode is quite something as well.
But that led to two dingers. So yeah, two dingers.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he had the rage going.

Speaker 6 Then when the two hands over the ears didn't work and I was still trying to talk to him, he just got up, walked, grabbed some headphones and sat down, put the headphones on at the computer to drown me out.

Speaker 6 But the look on our co-workers' faces of genuine concern. I don't know if it was concern for me or if it was concern for Max.

Speaker 6 But either way, they were shocked.

Speaker 1 I determined

Speaker 9 to have a shit upstairs in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 No, it was a bunch of people who were standing up being like, is pardon my take about to break up? And I had to be like, no, no, no, just the NBA pool report came out.

Speaker 6 That's what Memes was most concerned about was like he didn't want Mr. Pear to to see members of the family fighting with each other.
His papas?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 6 he still has Mr. Pear thinking that we're all one big, cohesive, loving family.
And that was Mr. Pear's first glimpse into like, whoa, maybe I entered a broken home right now.

Speaker 1 It was also just a funny, like, I was trying to be the peacemaker for once. I was like trying to calm Max down.
So,

Speaker 1 yeah, that's a great.

Speaker 5 The silence was actually

Speaker 5 a mature move by me because if I would have kept going. If I didn't go silent,

Speaker 8 I would have just started screaming in circles.

Speaker 5 And I also am so bad at arguing. That's my worst flaw, is that I am so bad at articulating my points that I just scream and it just nothing makes sense, even though I was a thousand percent right.

Speaker 6 I still disagree that you were a thousand percent right.

Speaker 5 Well, so you'll show you, I'll show you like the SBN article. Like,

Speaker 8 you just don't understand that you're the only person on the planet that doesn't, that is reading that report that way.

Speaker 6 I mean, I use my own

Speaker 1 person on the planet.

Speaker 8 The only person on the planet.

Speaker 5 ESPN is lying.

Speaker 1 I don't get my information.

Speaker 6 I don't get my information from people that are quote tweeting

Speaker 6 the release from the NBA refs and then promoting it to their Philly audience.

Speaker 9 This is going to be confusing for people. Yeah, this would be very confusing.

Speaker 1 So no,

Speaker 1 I just wanted to stir Max up. Let's kick it to ourselves.

Speaker 1 We're going to discuss everything happen Monday night. We also get the pool report in the middle of discussing everything.
So it will all make sense once you listen to the next part of the show.

Speaker 1 So let's kick it back to ourselves in studio.

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Speaker 1 Okay, boys.

Speaker 1 What game do we want to talk about on Monday night?

Speaker 6 There were a couple really good ones, but

Speaker 6 I think a lot of of people want to hear us talk about the Lakers and the Nuggets.

Speaker 6 I know that.

Speaker 1 I know that.

Speaker 1 However,

Speaker 6 I think this is one of those cases where we should trust our gut, big cat, because

Speaker 6 we're ball watchers. And if we're being quite honest,

Speaker 6 the middle of that game was not the best basketball. I think there was a better game on last night.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so you want to say it one, two, three?

Speaker 9 Let's talk about the game with the team that choked.

Speaker 1 Well, let's do one, two, three, and then we'll say the game that we think was the most important on Monday night. Okay.
All right. One, two, three, Calvin.

Speaker 6 Bruins Maple Leafs.

Speaker 1 Oh, I said Cav's Magic.

Speaker 6 Bruins Maple Leafs.

Speaker 1 I said Islanders. Oh, man.
We got a whole. You know what? Let's.

Speaker 6 Okay, since we can't come to a decision on any of those ones that we really want to do, let's look at the ones that we didn't say. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 6 So there's the Lakers and the Nuggets, the 76ers and the Knicks. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So which of those two do you think we should talk about?

Speaker 1 Well, you did say Lakers, Nuggets.

Speaker 6 But I said that.

Speaker 1 But we didn't say 76ers Knicks, so I think that's got to be the one.

Speaker 6 That might be the last one.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's talk 76ers Knicks.

Speaker 6 Okay, so big cat, I didn't get to watch this game, so I have no idea what happened.

Speaker 1 Okay, so here's what happened:

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 oh, he's taking off his headphones. Philadelphia 76ers

Speaker 1 were up four points really with

Speaker 1 under a minute, but hold on.

Speaker 9 I didn't finish. Tyrese Max had diarrhea.

Speaker 1 Tyrese Maxie had diarrhea. The 76ers' official Twitter account posted a picture of Tyrese Maxi looking like he had the flu, hands on his knees, and Michael Jordan.
From the flu game.

Speaker 1 From the flu game.

Speaker 1 The Bulls win that game. If you don't remember, the Bulls did win that game.

Speaker 1 The Sixers did not win this game. So the Knicks scored eight points in 27 seconds to win this game.

Speaker 1 Boxing out is important. Yep.

Speaker 1 Actually calling timeouts is important.

Speaker 6 Getting inbounds passes, just hypothetically.

Speaker 1 Getting inbounds passes is important. Hitting free throws is important.

Speaker 1 All these things are important to basketball and winning games.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So I kind of lied a second ago when I said that I didn't watch this game because I did, but then my cable cut out when there were, I think, like 14 seconds left in the game.

Speaker 6 So I didn't see the end.

Speaker 6 So what you're telling me is very, very surprising.

Speaker 6 The cable cut out, and then I saw that the 76ers were protesting, filing an official grievance about the end of the game. So I don't know what happened, yada, yada, yada, in those seconds.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so you know what, PFT? Because that does suck that your cable cut out.

Speaker 1 I actually have a transcript that I could read from you. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 Feel like I'm there.

Speaker 1 We call this the five stages of grief. All right, so here it goes.

Speaker 1 First part of the transcript, that didn't just fucking happen.

Speaker 6 Okay, that's denial.

Speaker 1 How did that three go down?

Speaker 1 How did that just...

Speaker 6 These are all separate tweets, by the way.

Speaker 1 How did that just happen? How did that just happen? Those are two different tweets? These are three different tweets.

Speaker 6 How did that just happen?

Speaker 1 He said, this, that, I'll just read them all. That didn't just fucking happen.

Speaker 1 New tweet. How did that three go down? New tweet.
How did that just happen? How did that just happen? That's all the same tweet. Twitter silenced me like five times last night.

Speaker 1 Lowry has to make that free throw. New tweet.
I'm done with this shit, man. New tweet.
Absolutely done. I can't keep watching heartbreak like this.
New tweet. I'm absolutely gutted.

Speaker 1 I can't keep watching losses like this it just can't keep happening new tweet i'm absolutely devastated i keep saying i've never felt this bad and then a new devastating way to lose continues to happen new tweet how does that happen new tweet

Speaker 1 where he has to make that free throw these are all just the same tweet he's he just keeps going repetitively new tweet i just need to know how that happens new tweet how do you lose that game new tweet in no way can you lose that game new tweet the kawaii shot in this Both of those losses have happened in our lifetime.

Speaker 1 He's talking about Jalen Brunson hitting the front of the rim, having it go up like five feet in the air and then go down. New tweet, how do you not call a timeout?

Speaker 1 New tweet, he did call a fucking timeout. What the fuck is this? This is the bargaining phase, I believe.

Speaker 6 No, so I actually broke it down into five separate. There are five stages of grief that you have.

Speaker 6 First is denial. Yeah.
Second is anger. Third is bargaining.
So we've reached the bargaining stage because I had denial being that didn't just fucking happen.

Speaker 1 Was it that didn't just happen or how did that happen?

Speaker 6 No, it's that didn't just fucking happen. Okay, all right.
And then anger was, he did call a fucking timeout. What the fuck is this?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 6 And then bargaining was.

Speaker 6 I have it.

Speaker 1 I have it coming up. So he then goes, new tweet, I don't know what to do right now.

Speaker 1 New tweet, here's the bargaining. We will get a better whistle at home.

Speaker 6 Yep, that's the bargaining.

Speaker 1 And then he goes, new tweet,

Speaker 1 this literally has to be. one or the other.
It's simple basketball. He's talking about the fouls that could have taken place.

Speaker 1 New tweet, I need an explanation on the inbounds timeout. Absolutely need it.

Speaker 1 New tweet, this is depression. Can someone recommend a very good feel-good movie, like the best feel-good movie of all time? New tweet, stop saying Marley and me.

Speaker 1 And then the final act, new tweet, Sixers will win this series.

Speaker 6 That's acceptance. That's accepting the loss, but moving forward and choosing to try to better yourself in life.
So it was healthy to watch somebody speed run the stages of grief. Yes.

Speaker 6 And I don't actually, when I printed out that screenshot here, but I cut out who that was. So I don't know who was making all those posts, but they sound like they're a real loser.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it was a hell of a game. Shout out the Knicks.

Speaker 1 So the Knicks, it is, you know, Tom Thibodeau, that culture, never giving up, just playing just hard all the time, offensive rebounding, you know, in the inbound play, getting all over Maxie, not having a foul, not letting Nick Nurse call a timeout, which he might have, he might not have.

Speaker 1 It was an all-time war. He did do the Hesi.
Yeah, he did the Hesi. And then I think he also tried to call a timeout after Maxie had thrown the ball away, being like, but just kidding, I want this.

Speaker 1 It was an all-time. No, both of those are actually correct.
Both of those are correct.

Speaker 6 As an unbiased watcher,

Speaker 1 wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I, I, I.

Speaker 6 As an unbiased observer of what happened at the end of the game, I've seen all the screenshots. I've seen every single angle of this.

Speaker 6 I've watched from probably like 10 or 12 different angles and synced them all up.

Speaker 6 What happened was Nick Nurse thought about calling a timeout as they were inbouting the ball, as the ball was being thrown in.

Speaker 1 He can say, wait, wait, I.

Speaker 1 Hold on, Max. I'll let you, I'll call on you when PFT is done with his point.
Let's have some decorum in the courthouse, please.

Speaker 6 Nick Nurse considered calling a timeout. He even made the motion.
His body wanted to call a timeout, but his brain stopped his body at the last second.

Speaker 6 To call the timeout, you have to, your hand touches your other hand like that and makes it a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Wait, show me. According to the show, that's a timeout.
According to 90. I.

Speaker 1 I talk. Show me a timeout.

Speaker 1 Now show me what Nick Nurse did.

Speaker 6 Nick went like

Speaker 6 and even one of his hands was curved.

Speaker 6 That's not a timeout. Never the two shall meet.
It did not ever touch. Tuck rule of the timeout.
Exactly. And so that was not a timeout.

Speaker 6 And then when he did call the timeout with authority, the ball was already out of Maxie's hand.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay, Max.

Speaker 1 Counterpoint?

Speaker 8 I want to think about it. And there was a push-off, too, on Max.
If people keep going like this, that he tried to take the timeout away.

Speaker 8 At what point logically in that play would a coach be like, oh, just kidding, I'm comfortable with where we are at right now.

Speaker 1 I don't want the timeout.

Speaker 1 He never caught the ball. I'll answer that.
I'll answer that.

Speaker 1 He was about to call a timeout when they couldn't inbound the ball, and then he pulled it away when they inbounded the ball.

Speaker 8 Correct. They didn't cleanly inbound the ball.

Speaker 6 Yes, but it looked like they were.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, it didn't.

Speaker 8 It never looked like he was cleanly, that there was going to be a clean inbound.

Speaker 1 It's very clear that he was about to call a timeout, and then they caught the ball.

Speaker 8 He reacted to the play that was going on at hand.

Speaker 1 Either way.

Speaker 8 And that's wrong.

Speaker 8 If we're talking screenshots, he clearly called a timeout when Maxie had a ball.

Speaker 1 Maxie had the ball. Okay, either way.

Speaker 1 It was an all-time night. We talk about it all the time, where if you are a die-hard sports fan, you know that at some point your name and number will be called.

Speaker 1 It's like a military draft. You will be called in the screenshot war.
And it was Philly and New York just going back and forth in a screenshot war, Zapruder film type shit, breaking it down

Speaker 1 frame by frame. I love watching all of it.
I love watching all of it. Max, can I ask you a question that has nothing to do with the timeout?

Speaker 1 Do you think Joel and Bi should have boxed out?

Speaker 8 Yeah, you also didn't get to my last tweet where it said,

Speaker 8 I'm done complaining about the refs. Obviously,

Speaker 8 we're going to get fucked at the garden.

Speaker 1 Wait, those are your tweets?

Speaker 8 You guys are so annoying.

Speaker 6 But wait, that can't be your tweet because you said, or the person that tweeted said they were done complaining about the refs.

Speaker 1 And you just complained about the refs.

Speaker 8 I was disputing what you were saying was incorrect. And I was letting you know that you are incorrect.

Speaker 1 But you're done complaining about the refs.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Well, someone has to.

Speaker 8 The refs weren't why they lost that game.

Speaker 8 There were six 50-50 plays that could have gone the Knicks or the Sixers way at the end of that game.

Speaker 5 The Knicks got all six of them.

Speaker 1 That's just a fact. They just try harder.

Speaker 8 No, I mean, regardless, yes, they try harder. They won the game.
They deserve to win that game. But you are.

Speaker 1 There's. Did Joel Embiid have one rebound in the second half?

Speaker 8 Joel Embiid scored 36 points on one left. Joel Embiid, Joel Embiid, and Tyrese Maxie have nothing to do with that loss.

Speaker 8 They're

Speaker 8 the only ones who showed up.

Speaker 1 Although he should have boxed out.

Speaker 8 Well, how about Nico Batum and Tobias Harris in the last two minutes of that game where they may have well been sitting on the fucking bench?

Speaker 8 Nico Batum was sitting there and watching the last minute and a half doing nothing.

Speaker 8 Yes, Embiid should have boxed out, but Embiid was giving everything he had on the 50% leg, and no one else was doing anything to help him. I think he's about to cry.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Isaiah Hartenstein.

Speaker 9 Who hit the big shots for the Knicks at the end?

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know that. I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 6 So from what I saw, Hank, from what I saw from the transcripts,

Speaker 1 I just want Hank to fucking experience one of these fuckers. And that little pussy over here.
He won't talk, talk, though. Max, you know that.
He won't talk if he does.

Speaker 6 Hank, you remember that guy, Dante DiVincenzo?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Where'd he put Yukon?

Speaker 6 No, no, he won a Natty. You remember that one year where he got just sick hot?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. We were at the game at Novo.

Speaker 6 We're at the game at Nova, yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you guys see Villanova's tweet shouting out their guys? No.

Speaker 1 What did it say?

Speaker 7 Villanova MBB.

Speaker 13 Our guys, Jalen Brunson and DiVincenzo, with two huge threes to steal the win.

Speaker 1 It had all of their sat lines, and the Philly fans did not like it. And Josh Hart was incredible again, who also went to Villanova.

Speaker 1 Max, do you think you shouldn't have sent the flu game tweet before the game was over?

Speaker 8 Yeah. Wait, oh, me personally?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 No, the Sixers.

Speaker 1 Oh, the Sixers? Sure, yeah. They should have waited.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 So, PFT, I would like you to look at this.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're looking at this. But you're not complaining about rest.

Speaker 8 No, no, but I just want to make sure that we're not spreading misinformation on this podcast.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 6 I'm going to lower the shades because I can't remember.

Speaker 1 All right, go ahead, play it.

Speaker 8 No, no, no, that's it.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's it. It's just that.
It's just a screenshot. I mean, you're in the screen.

Speaker 8 Now, Max, what we are looking at is

Speaker 8 Tyrese Maxie holding the basketball and Nick Nurse behind him calling a timeout.

Speaker 6 Press play real quick.

Speaker 1 That could be the parallax effect. Oh, that's it.

Speaker 6 Okay, press play, though.

Speaker 1 I have to get

Speaker 1 screenshot. He's been in the screenshot warning.

Speaker 6 Because it could be a situation where Maxie is losing the ball right at that very moment.

Speaker 8 Okay, here's Maxie.

Speaker 1 Has the ball.

Speaker 1 Kind of.

Speaker 6 Kind of losing the ball.

Speaker 1 It's on the ground. Yeah, kind of losing the ball, Maxie.

Speaker 6 No, Max. See, this is why screenshots are

Speaker 6 to see the clip, the full clip.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 He has it in his left hand.

Speaker 6 Okay, so they are filing a grievance with the NBA, which has... What happens when you file a grievance? Adam Silver just does he open up the envelope?

Speaker 1 Knicks did it in February. I don't think it led to anything.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 I think that Adam Silver is just like, okay, they filed a grievance. No, that's stupid.

Speaker 8 Yeah, doing that is stupid. And I do agree.
Like, the Knicks wanted to win that game at the end of the game more than the Sixers did.

Speaker 1 Both of those things can be true.

Speaker 8 Both of those things can be true. I need you guys to admit that both of those things are true.

Speaker 1 Yes, both those things can be true. Joe MB did actually, I should say, he did box out.
He just boxed out the wrong guy.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, I had three guys boxed out.

Speaker 1 Three guys doing nothing. Yeah, doing nothing.

Speaker 1 It just feels like the Knicks, I mean, the role players, the Knicks, are stepping up, and no one from the Sixers.

Speaker 8 What do you say?

Speaker 1 Yeah, role players are better at home. You got to win, but you're going to have to win a game on the road to win this series.

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 6 I might game of the year on the Sixers

Speaker 6 at home.

Speaker 1 Game three. Max already did that.
Oh, you did? Yeah. I won that.
No, I thought you did it for series of the year. No, I did for series of the year.

Speaker 6 Series of the year. Oh, no, I'm doing just this game.
And I actually do think the Sixers have a good chance to come back and win this. It's going to be tough.

Speaker 1 I think I agreed with everybody. You're going to have to win on the road.

Speaker 8 I think Kirk Holgeberry said. We'll get to it later.

Speaker 6 You're going to to have to win on the road. But I love the Sixers in game three.

Speaker 1 Love them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 1 they were right there. They were right there.
The Knicks are just. They're just a tough fucking team.
And Jalen Brunson has not played great.

Speaker 8 And Tyrese Maxie is incredible.

Speaker 8 He was so good last night.

Speaker 6 So are these all must-wins from here on out?

Speaker 1 He got blocked at the end. I think that was the greatest flu game that ended in a loss.
Yeah, Hartenstein was.

Speaker 8 I mean, he's.

Speaker 1 I mean, how about the three from the logo to put him him up.

Speaker 8 I mean, that was.

Speaker 1 Hartenstein just decided for the last

Speaker 1 hour of the game, was just like, I'm going to just get everything and just out-hustle everyone.

Speaker 8 No, yeah, that's a guy that's just like a pure heart guy that wanted it more than anyone else on the court last night.

Speaker 8 And that's he's like the reason why the Knicks won because he wanted to win that game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No one else wanted to win. He was basically wanted to win.

Speaker 1 Did you see a very funny clip on Jalen Brunson's podcast, which I'm sure you listened to, Max, because it's, I think it's Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart hosted it. Both went to Nova.
Cool.

Speaker 1 Isaiah Hartenstein

Speaker 1 reminding Josh Hart of the moment that Josh Hart found out that he's black. His dad is

Speaker 1 black and white, and so he's like, yeah, I'm actually black. And Josh Hart was like, yeah, I do remember that.
I was like, he's like, you changed everything. Yeah, I did.
But yeah, he's a dog.

Speaker 1 Like, he's a fucking dog. He just, those type of moments,

Speaker 1 Mecca was on fire. Like, that is the coolest place in a playoff atmosphere.
And the Knicks, I mean, the Knicks deserve it. Like, they're a long-suffering fan base.

Speaker 8 I don't think the same, like,

Speaker 8 the series is going, it's going to look a lot different in Philly. Like, they feed off the energy of that crowd, and that's like very obvious.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 So, again, again, to clarify, this is game three is must-win. Yes.
No matter what happens, game three, game four also must win.

Speaker 1 Game three is a must-win. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Has to be a must-win. If it's 2-1 going into game four, is that a must-win?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
They're all must-wins. Game five.

Speaker 1 Although

Speaker 1 it is.

Speaker 8 If it weren't the Sixers, if it weren't the Sixers, like I could see the Knicks blowing a

Speaker 8 3-1 lead, but the Sixers make it.

Speaker 8 Do you understand what I'm saying here?

Speaker 8 Like, the Knicks feel like a team that would get really excited and blow a 3-1 team, but the Sixers are the antithesis of the team that would come back from a 3-1 team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got it.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 1 Max was in hell last night.

Speaker 6 You're thinking about not making game five a must-win is what I'm hearing.

Speaker 1 No, no. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 They're both must-wins. Okay.

Speaker 1 Max is hell.

Speaker 6 You know who agreed with you, Max, on the end-of-the-play review system, all that stuff was LeBron James in his post-game comments after his. Oh, he was like, yeah, the Sixers got fucked too.

Speaker 8 I mean, Maxie also got fouled four times.

Speaker 6 Maxie also had quite a shove. Also, lost in all this, Kyle Lowry's flop was so good.

Speaker 6 So good. When

Speaker 6 he dropped to his knees and then he fully extended his body and just dove to the baseline.

Speaker 6 They didn't call it, but I think everyone should should go back and watch that clip because it is the absolute best flop that I've seen from him. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Max, so who are you?

Speaker 1 You're only mad at Hank, I think, right now.

Speaker 1 What did I do?

Speaker 8 Well,

Speaker 8 I'm so happy I can't see your fucking face from in here. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Max and I were actually commiserating on a side text last night because I bet the Sixers' money line as well. And I also, I don't want to re-litigate anything because I didn't text anything.

Speaker 1 I thought about it.

Speaker 1 I've copped to being a bitch for the Wisconsin JMU game, but Max did go through something very similar where a person he has met twice in his life texted him talking shit, and it's the worst.

Speaker 1 It pissed me off. Like, friends, fine, but just randoms? Bad.

Speaker 1 Hank, you are. Well, you know what? Let's go to hockey real quick.

Speaker 6 Well, to Hank's defense here, Hank wouldn't act like this if it wasn't good for the pod. He's doing this because

Speaker 6 he's a company man. Not because he's a smug asshole.

Speaker 1 Are you worried, though, that you've,

Speaker 1 so you're

Speaker 1 basically beating up the long time little little brother to you in Philadelphia while the Knicks are kind of rising. Are you a little?

Speaker 1 Because New York fans are fucking crazy.

Speaker 1 Who cares? Okay.

Speaker 9 We've played the Knicks in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 No smoke. The Celtics would win that in four.
Yeah. Oh.

Speaker 6 All right. So the Bruins.

Speaker 6 Dominating the Maple Leafs historically.

Speaker 1 Shout out Mr. Pear.

Speaker 9 Didn't play Swayman.

Speaker 1 Underdog Pear. That was my key to the game, and he didn't play.
Dude, how about Mr. Pear going 2-0? He picked double Philadelphia teams, and he somehow survived 2-0.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. Like, the Bruins owned the Maple Leafs, and the Maple Leafs won that game.
Yeah. Kind of stole that game.

Speaker 9 They did steal the game.

Speaker 11 I don't know how the Maple Leafs, again, hockey guy, but

Speaker 9 they should be. They're stacked.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they always are.

Speaker 9 Austin Matthews, Tavares, like they have everyone.

Speaker 6 Max Domey.

Speaker 9 Max Domey. Who's the other

Speaker 9 skinny kid?

Speaker 6 Their goalie kind of stinks. That's the thing.
If they can get a good game, I've watched Sam Sonov a lot over his career.

Speaker 6 He will show up once every week and be like, holy shit, this is the best goalie in the NHL. And then the other games, he's just letting everything through.

Speaker 9 Marner, that's what I'm thinking of.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, they stole the game. Bruins had a power play at the end of the game.
I think they got one shot, maybe.

Speaker 9 That was probably where I went south.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 what's your panic level?

Speaker 9 They got to get Swayman back in net. That was key to the series.
And then game two, he just didn't play.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people were like, oh, Hank's key to the series isn't playing playing tonight. Look what happened.
Look what happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And sticking in hockey, memes.

Speaker 1 Hello. The fact that the Sixers lost, because Memes is a Knicks fan, but he's way more of an Islanders fan than Knicks fan.
The fact that the Sixers happened, the Booth Boys were down tremendous.

Speaker 1 Actually, we should have mentioned Jake. Jake had a great night because Mike Breen double bang.
How about all those people saying, oh, let's cut the mics?

Speaker 7 No, no, no, no, no. Now you're going to talk about this?

Speaker 1 Like, pick

Speaker 1 one side.

Speaker 1 Pick one side.

Speaker 6 The double bang was good. Yeah,

Speaker 6 but it's because it's so rare that it happened.

Speaker 1 What is it?

Speaker 6 Six times we've got a double bang. And this was certainly worthy of a double bang.
So I liked it a lot. I appreciated Mike Breen that moment.

Speaker 6 I'm just saying that, you know, it's the exception that proves the rule, Chase.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Just pick a side.

Speaker 1 Okay. Embrace them or hate them.
I'll tell you,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to get a national one, though. No, I won't pick a side because some announcers I like and then when they say stupid shit, I'm going to make fun of them.
It's pretty simple.

Speaker 7 You do that for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's pretty simple. Yeah.
It's pretty simple. When Reggie Miller says something dumb, I'm going to make fun of him.
When Mike Breen does double bang, I'm like, that was awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 6 But it would suck if you did double bang all the time. Correct.
It would lose its magic.

Speaker 1 It would rule if Reggie Miller just fucked.

Speaker 1 We'll talk about Lakers Nugs, but when we get down late in games and Reggie Miller just starts brainstorming out loud, there's just nothing better.

Speaker 1 You're like, he's going to just, he's going to say some shit.

Speaker 6 I think what happens is he gets high on basketball. Yeah.
There's a good basketball game going on. He's just so excited by it.
It amps him up.

Speaker 6 and he's just thinking about too much basketball in his head. There's no room for intelligence.

Speaker 1 He becomes like a five-year-old where you're like, you know what? Sound it out.

Speaker 1 And he just sounds out all his thoughts. And you're just like, no, not that one.

Speaker 10 It's like Trent Dilfer.

Speaker 7 You can't lose football games and still win.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. So memes.
So the Booth Boys.

Speaker 1 The Sixers have that horrific loss. And then at basically the same time,

Speaker 1 the New York Islanders, who are up 3-0 in this game,

Speaker 1 they are then up 3-2. The Carolina Hurricanes pull their goalie.
The Carolina Hurricanes tie the game with about 2-15 left. They win the face-off, and they score maybe 8 seconds later, and that's it.

Speaker 14 Yeah, 9 seconds.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 15 So I was watching the next game. I was like, there's no way.

Speaker 15 No, that's got to be the worst loss any fan could go through.

Speaker 1 And then 30 seconds later, that happened. Oh, no.
So you were like, you had a moment of sympathy for Max and then it just smacked you right in the face.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 14 The end of the Knicks game was kind of almost like Reggie Miller.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 15 They just get it, shoot it.

Speaker 14 It was like, holy shit, I can't believe this is happening. And then the hurricanes immediately tipped one in.

Speaker 14 And then nine seconds later, they scored again. And I was just laying on my beanbag chair in my apartment, just speechless.

Speaker 15 And then they scored again.

Speaker 1 So it was three goals in 90 seconds.

Speaker 14 And there was just silence.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.
How do you think most people who are fans of the Knicks and the Islanders woke up this morning? Was it the Alonzo Morning gift where it was like really sad and then, but okay?

Speaker 1 It was the bus. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The bright side, Knicks 2-0, dark side, Islanders, 0-0.

Speaker 6 Yeah. But for you, you woke up more negatively than positively.

Speaker 6 I understand that about you. And if you watch the, if you look at the part of my Take Twitter account, you can see very clearly the bias show through where something bad happens to the Islanders.

Speaker 6 Everything's in lowercase letters and usually just a sentence stating fact. When something bad happens to the Rangers, it's always like uppercase letters.
Holy shit, this is awesome.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like that, though. I like that you know a memes tweet.

Speaker 9 You think eight points in 23 seconds or

Speaker 9 eight points in 27 seconds or two goals in nine? What's worse?

Speaker 1 I think two goals and nine.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Speaker 8 Memes and I were both texting, like, even though he's a Knicks fan, we were just like sports sock.

Speaker 5 It was a good, we were, We were in lockstep.

Speaker 14 Yeah, Max was like, I hope you sleep. And I was like, I don't care.

Speaker 1 But, man.

Speaker 6 I bet most of the people that are Sixers fans didn't even watch the first half of the Lakers Nuggets game, even if they're a die-hard NBA fan, because they were too busy with the screenshot.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you had to get on the screen.

Speaker 1 You got to get in the front lawn.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 your second screen was completely devoted to grainy screenshots.

Speaker 1 Yeah, your number was called. Okay, so the Lakers' Nuggets, I mean, it was an incredible night of sports.
Lakers-Nuggets. We said it on Monday's show.

Speaker 1 Every single game goes the same.

Speaker 1 Anthony Davis and LeBron James play out of their mind. The Lakers get a lead.

Speaker 1 Jokic somehow has like a quiet to the national media, quiet triple-double.

Speaker 1 Everyone in the national media says, watch out for the Lakers. They're so dangerous.
Jason McIntyre, Nick Wright come out of the woodwork being like, this is the team. This is the team.
Nuggets win.

Speaker 6 LeBron has some career-defining highlight plays.

Speaker 1 LeBron was incredible.

Speaker 6 Block dunk on Jamal Murray was awesome. It was incredible.
The fast break dunk that LeBron had at the end of the game, also amazing. He was playing out of his mind.

Speaker 6 He's hitting big shots down the stretch, and then he misses one, and that gives the Nuggets the opportunity to go down and win.

Speaker 1 LeBron was so, so good. That block dunk,

Speaker 1 it reminded me of the splitter block dunk in the NBA Finals, which was 10 years ago. And he's still doing that.
And then also the steal of Jamal Murray and then dunking on Jamal Murray.

Speaker 1 Like, LeBron emptied the clip. He was so good.
Anthony Anthony Davis emptied the clip, and it's just right back to Nuggets win. It's like, I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I know that the Sixers had probably a more, actually, I don't know. I think the Lakers might have a more demoralizing loss.

Speaker 9 That series is definitely over.

Speaker 6 Well, what's going to happen is

Speaker 6 the Lakers are going to play great in some more games that they're also going to lose.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 6 That's what's going to happen. And

Speaker 6 it must be so frustrating if you're on that team or if you're a Lakers fan. And every single time they go out there, they play their balls off.

Speaker 1 They play incredibly.

Speaker 6 And then something happens, and the Nuggets end up winning. And

Speaker 6 they're coming off, what, 10 games in a row that they've lost to the Nuggets in the playoffs? Or is it just overall?

Speaker 1 It's 10 games overall. It's actually

Speaker 6 overall, and it's LeBron's ninth in a row.

Speaker 1 Yeah, fun fact.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 ever since LeBron picked Jokic last in the All-Star game, the Lakers are 0-10 against the Nuggets.

Speaker 6 Interesting. Interesting.
Another interesting stat.

Speaker 6 Jokic had another 20-20-10 game. Yeah.

Speaker 6 There have been eight players, eight times that that's happened in playoff history. Jokic has four of those already.
It's crazy. He's insane.
Jamal Murray stunk, but then he was good.

Speaker 6 Michael Porter Jr. was awesome last night, too.

Speaker 1 Well, that was the craziest play. Jamal Murray was, he was so bad for, I don't know, 46 minutes, then he ended up scoring the last six points, which is also a credit to keep going to this guy.
But

Speaker 1 play that was like, that got him to that point was Michael Porter Jr.'s three, which was off of Jokic doing the move where he was trying to get a foul when he wasn't really ready set to shoot.

Speaker 6 It was a heave. It was a three-point shot.
It wasn't like from the logo or from three-quarters of the court like he does sometimes, but it was an off-balance, very awkward attempt at a three. It got,

Speaker 6 I don't know if it got deflected or if it was just a bad shot in general, but he did get fouled on the attempt. They didn't give it to him.
Austin Reeves gets out-muscled out-muscled for the ball.

Speaker 6 Pass back to the game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Aaron Gordon was, yeah, all hustle.

Speaker 6 Wide open three.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it was a crazy game. And I do, you know, LeBron,

Speaker 1 it's nuts that he's doing this at age 39, but it's also got to be so demoralizing because they have emptied the clip. Like, D'Angelo Russell even was playing well and scored 23.

Speaker 1 Like, they have done everything.

Speaker 1 They are essentially playing a team that they have to play A plus and the other team has to play like a D plus to have a chance of winning.

Speaker 1 Because the Nuggets were playing like a C plus last night and they still won the game.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think it was like five minutes of game time, maybe six, where the Lakers didn't score in the third quarter.

Speaker 1 Because they do the thing where they stop running plays.

Speaker 6 The Lakers were up 20 points and their game plan just became either chuck a three or take a weird off-balance shot that's heavily guarded in the paint.

Speaker 6 Seven-foot jumpers, they probably missed like five or six seven-foot jumpers. It was just bad.

Speaker 1 The Lakers came out of halftime. I think they ran three or four plays, scored on all of them, then they just stopped running plays and stopped scoring.
It's crazy. And

Speaker 1 people are saying, you know, Plenka and

Speaker 1 Plinka didn't have the roster set because Jokic, anytime Anthony Davis comes out, Jokic just dominates. He dominates anyway.

Speaker 1 You know, Ham is not a good coach.

Speaker 1 The Nuggets are just better than the Lakers, and it just, every game is so funny. It's like, I kept on just betting the Nuggets live

Speaker 1 all night. Like, I was like, nine and a half, seven and a half, five and a half.
Okay. they're going to be in this game.

Speaker 6 And the way they lost it at the very, very end with Anthony Davis falling into the Nuggets bench after it was all over and having them all celebrate around him like he was on the team.

Speaker 1 Brutal.

Speaker 6 It's going to be tough to come back.

Speaker 1 Also, crowd shots, buzzer beater crowd shots. There's something like it gives me a little tingle in my balls.
I was just watching all the crowd shots. They're so fucking cool.

Speaker 6 Speaking of crowd shots, there was another video that came out from after the game. Yes.
The Jokic brothers got active. And I think it was Strahinja.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 I think that the big guy, the big Jokic brother with the Mohawk, that dude threw a punch at a Lakers fan or another fan. I don't know what he was wearing.
Nomination.

Speaker 6 I'm going to assume that it was a Lakers fan.

Speaker 6 Guy got punched in the face by what appears to be a 270-pound, very, very active Serbian guy. Yeah.
Chewed the punch.

Speaker 6 Credit to the guy that got punched in the face because I think anybody else would have just crumpled into the fourth dimension at that point. But that guy, he stood up to it.

Speaker 1 People are wondering if the Jokic brothers are washed.

Speaker 1 They got to knock someone out. Yeah.
They got to do some kind of feats of strength. They got to lift up a building or something.
Just do an Instagram video where they lift up a car. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do the Magnus von Magnussen. Get like a big rock that's shaped like the continent of Africa and put it over your head.

Speaker 6 I liked one of their girlfriends or wives when the punch happened right before they got into the actual fight. The lady was walking away.
It looked like with a baby.

Speaker 6 Just rolling her eyes, being like, oh, no, he's about to fight again. Yeah.
This is bad.

Speaker 1 Oh, break the boost. Break the news.

Speaker 1 Kawhi?

Speaker 9 No, some good news for Max. The last two-minute report came out for the NBA.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, so the grievance worked. They won the game.

Speaker 9 The NBA finds that Brunson did pull on Maxie's jersey. It should have been called.
Maxie's push-off on Hart was marginal and should not have been called. And Nick Nurse should have gotten a timeout.

Speaker 8 And Josh Hart did foul Tyrese Maxie on the inbound.

Speaker 1 So does that mean the Sixers won't? No, but that means I deserve an apology.

Speaker 8 Nick Nurse did call the timeout.

Speaker 1 Do you want it for me too? I didn't really.

Speaker 8 I'm looking at Mr. Sunglasses over here.

Speaker 6 Oh, Mr. Sunglasses.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 6 I know what I saw.

Speaker 8 Well, the official league report saw it differently, buddy.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at it right now. Oh, he got buddied.
I'm looking at it right now, pal.

Speaker 1 Okay, look at it.

Speaker 6 Maxie brings his hand towards heart, marginal contact.

Speaker 6 That's how I know it's bullshit. That was definitely a push-off by Maxie.
They shouldn't have called it, but it was, if we're calling fouls. I agree.

Speaker 1 I shouldn't have called it. Are you admitting you might be wrong or no?

Speaker 6 No, I'm admitting that

Speaker 6 the timeout when Maxie, quote, still had the ball, I dispute the fact that he had.

Speaker 8 Do you want to read it again?

Speaker 6 I dispute the fact that he had possession of the ball when that timeout was called.

Speaker 8 Do you want me to read it to you again?

Speaker 10 Read it to me again.

Speaker 8 Nick Nurse should have gotten a timeout.

Speaker 6 I dispute the fact that Maxie had possession of the ball.

Speaker 1 So you're filing a grievance.

Speaker 1 No, I'm disputing. I'm disputing the grievance.

Speaker 8 You're disputing the league report?

Speaker 6 I'm disputing the findings of the grievance.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 6 It's under protest.

Speaker 1 So to be continued on the apology, you're not getting one today, pal.

Speaker 1 PFT, I have some good news for you about the Lakers. Okay.

Speaker 1 So you might,

Speaker 1 if you're in the media and you're like, I have a show every day. I've got to figure out how to talk about the Lakers.

Speaker 1 They're down 2-0. They've lost 10 in a row to the Nuggets.
How are we going to possibly talk about how the Lakers are really, really good? We have a solution.

Speaker 1 given to us by your good friend Mike Greenberg. Okay.
Mike Greenberg did an entire segment on GetUp today where he talked about how dangerous are the Lakers to every other team in the playoffs.

Speaker 6 Besides the Nuggets.

Speaker 1 Besides the Nuggets through the down 02, too. He would pick the Lakers against any other team in the West.
Unfortunately, they're playing the Nuggets down 0-2.

Speaker 6 So, really, the Lakers, if they lose this,

Speaker 6 let's keep track. It's crazy.
It's keep track of this because I think Queenie's onto something here. The Lakers should be, they should be able to hang a banner for Western Conference finalists.

Speaker 1 It's also just so wildly disrespectful to the teams that played so much better than the Lakers all season long. Yeah.
Thunder, the T-Wolves, the Clippers, the Mavs, the Suns.

Speaker 1 But the Lakers, they are the,

Speaker 1 honestly, they should have won the title. They actually should win the title.

Speaker 1 If you could do the bet, like, you know,

Speaker 1 title winner with excluding. So title winner excluding Nuggets, it's the Lakers.

Speaker 6 So in the finals, Lakers versus Celtics, who do you got?

Speaker 1 Nuggets.

Speaker 6 No, but you can't do the Nuggets. Okay, all right.
I actually think.

Speaker 1 Wait, are the Celtics wearing Nuggets jerseys?

Speaker 6 No, I think that the Lakers will beat the Celtics in the finals. Yeah.
If they're allowed to play.

Speaker 6 But there might be some antiquated NBA rules that say if you lose in the first round, you're not allowed to play in the finals.

Speaker 1 Greeney just did an entire segment being like, I didn't, but I would have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, you're lucky that I got held back there and didn't have to play any of the other teams.

Speaker 6 The crazy thing is, he might not be wrong when it comes to talking about matchups.

Speaker 1 No, I think he's wrong. I think there's other teams that are better than the Lakers.

Speaker 6 Not better, but match up better than the Nuggets.

Speaker 1 I think they would. No, no, no.
Against the Nuggets, you're saying? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Like, I think the Lakers match up against the Nuggets as good, if not better, than any other team in the West.

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't agree with that because they haven't won a game in 10 games.

Speaker 6 I know, but that's what's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, his argument was the Lakers match up better against everyone else in the West. He would pick the Lakers against everyone else in the West, but unfortunately, they're playing the Nuggets.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So essentially, like, they're so good, this is bullshit. They have to play the Nuggets.

Speaker 6 It's like saying the Bills, unfortunately, have to go through Mohamed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Patrick.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Bills, the 49ers and the Ravens are really, really good if they don't have to play Patrick Mahomes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Cavs, Magic, all I had is that the Magic are still going with their strategy of not scoring the basketball.

Speaker 1 It hasn't worked through two games. They have shot 34% from the field in two games.
They've shot 23% from three. They have not had a lead for a single second.
Let's see how game three goes.

Speaker 1 Maybe they'll try to score the basketball.

Speaker 6 All I have in this game, in this series, and Max, this applies to you too. The series doesn't actually start until the home team loses a game.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, Cleveland's playing great defensively, and the Magic have Paolo and then a bunch of guys who are missing shots.

Speaker 1 That's essentially what's happening.

Speaker 1 Stars,

Speaker 1 Knights was awesome. That was a great game.
I also have made a bet on the Knights at 13-1 to win the Stanley Cup based on one period.

Speaker 6 Okay, so I like the Stars.

Speaker 1 It might be in my running for period of the week because as soon as the nights went up 2-0, I was like, this team's good.

Speaker 6 So, for my period of the week, I actually liked the third period of the Hurricanes Islanders game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was that's in the running.

Speaker 6 That's more of like a 10 seconds of the week.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's definitely in the running. But it was just

Speaker 1 one of those nights you sit back and you're like, Could you imagine not watching sports? No, they're great.

Speaker 6 They're absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 6 It was so how lucky are we to live in an age where we can watch all these sports?

Speaker 1 And how lucky are we that Max is with us?

Speaker 6 So, it's just very

Speaker 1 lucky.

Speaker 8 He's a generational Ron.

Speaker 1 He can't get anything.

Speaker 1 Anything going.

Speaker 6 Can you imagine how bad it would suck to watch sports in the 80s when you had to...

Speaker 6 You wouldn't even know what happened in most of these games.

Speaker 9 You'd have to call a phone number in the morning.

Speaker 1 Max,

Speaker 1 you should try just being a loser like us.

Speaker 8 It's insane how

Speaker 8 good my teams are at being bad when it matters.

Speaker 1 Your only fault is that you should take a page out of our playbook and just be bad from the start.

Speaker 8 Every team is the same. The Eagles, the Phillies, and the Sixers are all the same team.

Speaker 1 I'm absolutely devastated. I keep saying I've never felt this bad, and then a new devastating way to lose continues to happen.

Speaker 5 I got silenced by Twitter, too.

Speaker 8 I tried to tweet so many things that they were like, you've already tweeted this before.

Speaker 6 You've already tweeted this before. Did Twitter ever ask you if you were emotionally okay?

Speaker 8 No, I wish they did.

Speaker 1 I would have said no.

Speaker 6 I think Elon put a stop to that, but they used to be like, are you you sure you want to tweet this?

Speaker 6 You seem sad.

Speaker 1 We also had a great moment when Max tweeted, our role players will play better at home. Their role players will play worse.
And he spelled role R-O-L-L.

Speaker 1 And then Jake tried to lightly tell him that he spelled it wrong. And Max, in the nicest way, but I know what he was thinking when he was sitting in his house.
I don't give a fuck, Jake. Yeah, but

Speaker 7 I wanted to do it over text and not publicly shame him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 Hey, yeah, Max, I noticed that you tweeted the word role a lot, R-O-L-L. Didn't you mean to put hoagie?

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 6 You get any of that?

Speaker 8 I'm done with you today.

Speaker 1 Max, I was with you.

Speaker 1 I was in the

Speaker 1 foxhole with you last night.

Speaker 1 I was fighting for you.

Speaker 1 That was devastating.

Speaker 1 Okay. Anything else before we get to Hot Sea Cool Throne? We got some great interviews coming, some drafts, some NBA, more NBA.
We get actually,

Speaker 1 you can skip ahead for our dumb NBA thoughts and actually listen to Kirk Goldsberry give you good NBA thoughts.

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Speaker 1 Kank, your hot seat, cool throne.

Speaker 9 My hot seat is the Broncos.

Speaker 1 Oh, I had this as well. Yeah.

Speaker 9 They released their new jerseys and they are ass.

Speaker 1 Okay, so...

Speaker 9 They look like a spring football team.

Speaker 1 I actually had a different take on it. Not the jerseys.
The jerseys are ass.

Speaker 1 I actually think the hot seat is all the 31 teams, PR teams, in the league, because the Broncos did a masterclass on Monday.

Speaker 1 If you see it, they release terrible jerseys, which is hard to do. Most jerseys are like, oh, Fireflame, Fireflame, Fireflame.

Speaker 6 I disagree because any new jersey that gets released, everybody's like, this looks like an XFL team until they get used to it.

Speaker 6 And then they kind of gradually warm up to it because what we like as fans is nostalgia. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 6 We want the old

Speaker 6 blue helmet with the D on the side and the horse and all that stuff because we associate that with our childhood. So to us, the old jerseys are always better than the new ones.

Speaker 6 And the new ones will always get roasted until they become like a little bit less new.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So anyway, they released the jersey.
This is why they're at PR Masterclass. And I was thinking about this.
I was like, the jerseys got absolutely roasted.

Speaker 1 They look like people were saying they look like UTEP

Speaker 1 or or UTSA, sorry.

Speaker 1 But they actually are really smart with what they did because they released bad jerseys and then they traded for Zach Wilson all in the same day and you don't know which one to be mad at.

Speaker 1 They just split the vote. Like that was so smart of them to do those in basically a matter of hours with each other where they're like, which one you want to choose? We'll take some heat here.

Speaker 1 We'll take some heat there. None of the heat will feel too hot.

Speaker 6 Well, the good news for Broncos fans and for one Billy Football as well is that now that Zach Wilson gets to play against Patrick Mahomes twice a year, we'll finally get to determine who is better, Zach Wilson or Patrick Mahomes.

Speaker 1 I actually don't hate it for the Broncos. Like, take a shot.

Speaker 6 He's got a big arm. The altitude.
He'll throw the ball like 75 yards.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he played in altitude of college. Yeah.
But yeah, the Broncos, I thought it was genius for them to do those two moves at the same time.

Speaker 6 I did like the retro look that they're bringing back, too. That is a good look.
And it feels like it's been jersey season, like redesign season. Yeah.
Uniform redesigns because we had the Jets.

Speaker 6 The Jets were ass, too, right?

Speaker 1 No, they were fine. They just kind of look a little, they're like,

Speaker 1 they're just getting closer to looking like the Eagles every day.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they didn't do much in their redesign. Then the Texans dropped their new ones today.
Yeah. I like the helmets with the big H, the calligraphy H on the side of it.
But yeah, just.

Speaker 1 I think the Lions had some new ones.

Speaker 6 Oh, I actually like those because they brought back the black uniforms because Dan Campbell won the division. And the owner said you can wear those.

Speaker 6 You can have your Metallica jerseys if you win the division, which he did.

Speaker 1 I like that. All right.
Cool throne?

Speaker 9 My cool throne is Paul Pierce.

Speaker 1 Yep. Also, had this.
The truth.

Speaker 9 The NBA polled 133 players, active players. They asked who the greatest player of all time was.
Michael Jordan was first. LeBron James was second.
Kobe was third. Seth Curry was fourth.

Speaker 9 And then Paul Pierce was tied with Magic Johnson for fifth.

Speaker 6 How many votes?

Speaker 1 0.8%.

Speaker 1 0.8%?

Speaker 6 Paul Pierce figured out a way to vote for him. It's definitely Paul Pierce.

Speaker 9 Any vote is like he's on the list. Yeah.

Speaker 1 According to his

Speaker 9 current NBA players, he's the top five NBA player of all time.

Speaker 1 I love the anonymous polls.

Speaker 1 I saw the other one that was, you know, stuck out was that Tom Thibodeau won the coach you'd least want to play for at 46.8%.

Speaker 1 Josh Hart did have his back. He's like, everyone's soft now, which I agree with.

Speaker 1 Tom Thibodeau has made average players great throughout his entire career. I don't know why you'd not want to be an average player and become great with him.

Speaker 1 And then the best, though, was they graded the refs, and

Speaker 1 3% gave it an A, 27% B, 47.8%

Speaker 1 C, and then 8.3%

Speaker 1 F.

Speaker 1 And they talked to some of the anonymous players for quotes.

Speaker 1 And so they talked to the player who voted it an F, and he said, shit, they don't know if they want us to play or not play, but they good people.

Speaker 1 It's a perfect quote.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I like that because that grievance isn't so much with the referees themselves.

Speaker 6 It's with the system and being told how to officiate different players on different nights sometimes. Yeah.
And no consistency. But they're good people.
Yeah, they're good people. They're good people.

Speaker 6 They're good people.

Speaker 1 We just got to start using that all the time when we insult someone. They're good people.

Speaker 6 And bless their heart.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bless their heart. All right, PFD, your hot seat Quitron?

Speaker 6 My hot seat is non-compete clauses because they just got ruled to be inadmissible. So you can go ahead and compete now as employers.
And to tie that in with sports,

Speaker 6 Hank, you just give me a look.

Speaker 9 So if you have someone sign and non-compete, that just doesn't matter?

Speaker 6 Apparently, it doesn't matter anymore. Apparently, they threw them all out.

Speaker 6 So that's Tom Brady is on deck to now begin.

Speaker 9 Like in regular jobs? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who did this?

Speaker 6 Was it the FTC? Federal Trade Commission? I love it.

Speaker 6 Power to the people, I guess. But Tom Brady is now going to be voted on to partially own.
the Las Vegas Raiders as early as like, I think, next week.

Speaker 6 They've ruled that the admission has gone far enough where they can actually put pen to paper and determine whether or not he can own the team, which they always approve.

Speaker 6 You never hear of any owner getting rejected by the NFL. So, Tom Brady is going to own the Las Vegas Raiders, or at least a big part of it.
Or play for the Patriots. Well, that's what he said.

Speaker 6 He could do both now because the non-compete.

Speaker 6 He could play for the Patriots and also, well, I guess he technically has owned the Raiders since the Tuck Rule game. Yeah.
But he could officially own them now.

Speaker 1 Yes. So congrats.
Congrats, Hank. It's awesome.

Speaker 6 Yeah, then my cool throne is going to be uniform redesigns because everyone's doing uniform redesigns right now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking, what team do you think is the most current? Not current.

Speaker 7 Hasn't changed their uniforms a very long time.

Speaker 6 I mean, the Patriots haven't. Packers in the Patriots did a few years ago.

Speaker 9 Yeah, they changed their color scheme. Their font.
It cut slightly worse. Yeah, Packers Bears.

Speaker 1 Packers Bears.

Speaker 6 Vikings feel like they've been around forever, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Vikings have been around for a really long time.

Speaker 7 A lot of them just cycle through it.

Speaker 1 Giants, although they changed their helmet. But yeah, there's

Speaker 1 some of the French. Raiders.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Raiders. Raiders classic.
Yeah, classic.

Speaker 1 Okay, my hot seat was all of Hank's hot seats, so I'll go to my cool throne. My cool throne is the Oklahoma City Thunder, because

Speaker 1 Kevin Durant is 100% going back to the Thunder.

Speaker 6 You think so?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 They're doing some trial balloons. Did you see Chet Holmgren's new shoe?

Speaker 6 I did not see his new shoe.

Speaker 1 It was, I think it's under the KD line, and it was a video narrated by KD talking about Chet Holmgren and the the city of Oklahoma City.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Oklahoma City Thunder have,

Speaker 1 I'm just looking right now, like they have every single draft they have four or five picks.

Speaker 1 If they're one player away, this is the only place that Kevin Durant can go win a championship and everyone will be like, your whole career has been perfectly bookended, and you're not a bad guy.

Speaker 6 Kitty's probably thought about it for a couple of years, and then they went ahead and had such a good record this year. And I was like, you know what? This is kind of my thing.

Speaker 6 This is kind of my thing.

Speaker 1 It all makes sense. It all kind of comes together where it's like, KD, like there.
Can you pull up the Chet Holmgren new shoe ad narrated by KD?

Speaker 1 Because there's also a very funny moment where I think KD says, Can you handle the whole city on your shoulders? And they show a picture of Oklahoma City.

Speaker 1 And no offense to our listeners who are from Oklahoma City, but

Speaker 1 don't do a skyline pick if you have two and a half buildings. They have two and a half buildings.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It literally was like two and a half buildings.

Speaker 6 But that's just so you can see the skylight.

Speaker 1 It was, I think you got to do, or maybe do a night skyline or do like a close-up of like the arena. So here it is.
You play the video.

Speaker 1 But I think KD's going back. You think you could do it?

Speaker 5 I'm not just talking ball.

Speaker 6 You think you could put the whole city on your shoulders?

Speaker 1 There it is. Step up there.

Speaker 1 I know I can do it.

Speaker 6 Go back. The whole city.

Speaker 1 I don't know my drive. To be fair,

Speaker 1 both KD and Chet have pretty narrow shoulders. I know.

Speaker 6 The whole city on on your shoulder.

Speaker 1 There it is. Yeah.
That's Oklahoma City. That's a city that...
I count two and a half buildings.

Speaker 6 That is a city that would fit on Chet Holmgren's shoulders.

Speaker 1 You got to do a different angle. I don't know what the angle is, but you can't do this angle.

Speaker 6 Maybe bird's eye so you don't see how big the buildings are.

Speaker 1 Like, this is like half of Atlantic City.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 6 Or maybe just worm's eye view. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Worm's eye view. I like that.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think KD is going to go back to the Oklahoma City Thunder, and I'm absolutely for it because I think that would be a very cool, like if he wins a title with the Thunder, kind of everything's forgiven.

Speaker 1 I know not everything's forgiven, but it would be

Speaker 1 like that, that, oh my God, I finally, we did it in this city. I ended my career here.

Speaker 6 Nice. There will be people that say, oh, you went back to them when they finished first in the wild.
Oh, duh.

Speaker 1 Yes, that will be the thing. Yeah, he would not go back to the Thunder if they weren't a good team.

Speaker 1 They are a good team, and they have so many draft picks. It's actually insane.
They don't have,

Speaker 1 they have too many draft picks for players that they can rush.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they don't have enough spots. Right.

Speaker 1 So that's going to happen.

Speaker 6 Get excited for that.

Speaker 1 And then probably a sick, we'll probably see the skyline again when he does the I'm Coming Home video.

Speaker 6 Make it nighttime. Show me that black ass.

Speaker 1 Make it nighttime. And maybe an arena shot and like a fountain shot, but don't do this angle anymore.

Speaker 6 I need to make sure to annunciate when I say black ass guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Black ass. Sky.

Speaker 1 This depressed me. Sorry, Oklahoma City.
I'm sure it's a nice. Actually, I've been.
Remember? We went. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 We went through Oklahoma City. Yeah, Raven.
Yeah, we had a waitress at a chain restaurant we won't name because she offered us mushrooms.

Speaker 1 Sounds about right. She was cool.

Speaker 6 I've enjoyed my time in Oklahoma City. Yeah.
I spent two nights there, and I had a perfectly fine time.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 we had a great time in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 1 And also lead the league in wearing the free shirts. Shout out to him.

Speaker 9 I also think they might have just got a bid to build the largest skyscraper in the country.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 6 They did. I saw that, Hank.
The skyscraper, it's actually going to make the city look worse because it's so much taller. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 You need like seven skyscrapers.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you can't put like one giant building in Oklahoma City because then everyone's like, what the fuck are those other buildings? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
We'll figure it out. Yeah.
Maybe do the shot from the top of the skyscraper. Or just do the big hole that they're going to have to build,

Speaker 1 dig for the skyscraper. Be like, look, we're up and coming.

Speaker 6 You have to add at least 50 to 75% on top of all the other buildings if you want to put another giant building there.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Okay, Jake, finish this off.

Speaker 7 My hot seat's MLB umpires.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 This is becoming a weekly segment on this show because we've talked about Angel Hernandez, but the Aaron Bootin situation on Monday afternoon was one of the most jaw-dropping.

Speaker 7 Like, there's not a two-sided story to this one.

Speaker 6 He ruled. He got ejected for something a fan said.

Speaker 7 Correct. And the umpire didn't, he literally said, I don't care who said it, you're gone.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love that.
That's wild.

Speaker 1 I love it when

Speaker 6 umpires double down on something that's so insane.

Speaker 7 The egos on these guys.

Speaker 6 It's so good. I love it.

Speaker 1 So, you know, why do you not love it, Jake? It was awesome. For an umpire to be so

Speaker 1 to be like, yeah, I don't care. You're still gone.
It's fucking hilarious.

Speaker 6 That's something that a parent would say when they know that they're wrong, but they don't care anyways. Right.

Speaker 1 You can't, if you're an ump, you can't admit that you were wrong.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So what I would do.
And they'll

Speaker 1 take advantage of it.

Speaker 8 People would appreciate you.

Speaker 1 Would they? No. Yeah.
Fans would be like,

Speaker 1 thank you for admitting you're wrong.

Speaker 8 You can't take accountability.

Speaker 6 You can't show weakness.

Speaker 6 That's beta male.

Speaker 1 I appreciate it more to just be like, I was wrong, but I'm not going to say it. Like BFT with Max.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Or like when the NBA admits that they're wrong about a last-minute call where somebody should get on a timeout, nobody respects them more for doing that. Yeah.
Just a crazy situation for.

Speaker 7 The ejection and the umpire probably won't face any consequences. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, he shouldn't.

Speaker 1 He should get a fucking hero's welcome. It was a hilarious clip.

Speaker 7 Are you saying that because it was the, like, if it happened to the Cubs? It would still be hilarious. I mean, it's hilarious, but it's also, it's hilariously bad.

Speaker 1 It's very funny that it's hilarious.

Speaker 6 It's very funny that it happened right now. If it happened in a playoff game or a World Series game, then fans would be irate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it happened.

Speaker 6 It probably deserved.

Speaker 7 Yeah, on a Monday afternoon game in April.

Speaker 1 No, that video was so fucking funny. And it's also like the managers don't even do anything anymore.

Speaker 1 The computers tell them what to do.

Speaker 1 It's true. The computers tell them what to do.

Speaker 6 If I was really good at impressions, I would learn how to do the different managers' voices and then go to the game, sit behind them in the dugout, and try to get them kicked out.

Speaker 1 It ruled. That fan has a story for life.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 All right, your cool throne? My cool throne's Andy Reid. He got a new contract.

Speaker 1 Oh, nice.

Speaker 1 Deserved. Well deserved.

Speaker 6 Well deserved. $12 million a year, I think.
Big red. Good for him.

Speaker 1 A lot of cheeseburgers. He's definitely going to do a press conference where he's like, what are you going to buy, Andy?

Speaker 6 Cheeseburger. He's probably going to buy McDonald's.
He's 66.

Speaker 7 How long do you think he's going to stick around?

Speaker 1 As long as Patrick Mahomes keeps slaying it, why would you ever retire?

Speaker 6 He's got a pretty good gig right now. Yeah.
Unless Travis Kelsey kills him on the side of the game at some point.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Shout out to Andy. Got to get him on the show.
Come on, Chiefs. Said some really nice things about you.

Speaker 1 Okay. PFT, let's get to our trifecta of interviews.

Speaker 6 Man, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 17 When you're hungry out there, you start acting like a rookie quarterback in his first game, making bad decisions, messing up the basics, being all out of sorts. That's where Snickers comes in, man.

Speaker 17 That thing is packed. Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.
It's like the MVP of candy bars.

Speaker 17 And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger. Remember this.
Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

Speaker 18 Snickers satisfies, man.

Speaker 5 That's a winning play.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on our very good friend, recurring guest, Kirk Goldsbury. You can find all his work at thegoldenhexagon.com.
Great Father's Day gifts.

Speaker 1 Kirk will be in the office in a couple weeks, so we're going to do an extended NBA playoff talk with him then.

Speaker 6 This is really the Kirk Goldsbury preview.

Speaker 1 It's the preview, but we watch such incredible games on Monday night. We wanted to have someone who's smarter than us to talk a little basketball for our listeners.
So, Kirk, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about it. The Nuggets Lakers series,

Speaker 1 the greatest, most lopsided series of all time, going back to last year and this year. So I guess my question to you is, what the hell do the Lakers have to do to beat the Nuggets?

Speaker 19 I mean, the same thing the rest of the league does. A lot of us think the Nuggets...
are the best team in the NBA, and we've thought that for a while now.

Speaker 19 A lot of people think Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world, something we would describe LeBron James as for a vast majority of the 2010s, but this decade appears to belong to Nicola Jokic and the Nuggets.

Speaker 19 And I think it's telling. It's sort of a handing of the torch.
It's a very painful one. But this is LeBron James's longest losing streak against any single opponent in his entire 21-year career, guys.

Speaker 19 He's lost nine straight games to Jokic and the Nuggets now. What do they have to do? They have to get more support from their role players.

Speaker 19 I think one of the themes of our conversation from these two great series that we watched with Philly, New York, and this Denver Lakers series is the the old cliche: the role players play better at home.

Speaker 19 The Lakers need that to happen in game three if they're going to get back in the series. Simply put, Anthony Davis has been pretty good.
LeBron's been great.

Speaker 19 The rest of the team has not been good enough to even come close to really beating the Nuggets in a series. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They were, they were so close.
It felt like last night, obviously, they just lost by two.

Speaker 6 What was it? One point? Oh, two.

Speaker 6 Two-point loss.

Speaker 6 They were up by 20. They were winning by 20 in the third quarter.
What percentage of blame would you put on the Lakers versus credit to the Denver Nuggets for winning that game?

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 I'm going to give credit to my friend Mike Malone, who you guys have had on this podcast. Mike Michael.

Speaker 6 Apparently, you're really good friends with him if you call him Mike. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Well, I remember you brought up my paper where I was very critical of Jokic's defense, and that's relevant, PFT, because like PFT, because I think one of the things we saw last night was Michael Malone made the adjustment.

Speaker 19 The regular season is checkers, playoffs are chess. What happened last night, in my opinion, was our first real chess move of this series.

Speaker 19 Anthony Davis was absolutely cooking Nikola Jokic guys in the first half, just cooking him. I think he was eight for eight against him in the first half.

Speaker 19 In the third quarter, Michael Malone puts Aaron Gordon on Nikolai Jokic and moves Jokic on the forest.

Speaker 1 On Anthony Davis, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yeah, that's sorry.

Speaker 19 Let me start over. No, so he puts Aaron Gordon on Anthony Davis and puts Jokic on to Hashimura, and the whole game changed.
And the Lakers scored 40 points in the whole second half.

Speaker 19 Anthony Davis had a bunch of touches in the first quarter of the second quarter. By the fourth quarter,

Speaker 19 he had one shot, no points. Aaron Gordon and Michael Malone deserve credit for that win, in my opinion.
That was a gritty adjustment and defensive.

Speaker 19 breakout for Aaron Gordon, who's one of the few athletes in the NBA that can put up a physical sort of defense that can deal with Anthony Davis.

Speaker 19 So PFT, my answer answer to that question goes to Michael Malone deserves credit with Aaron Gordon.

Speaker 1 Now, the other part of it is, so Anthony Davis was in foul trouble as well for parts of the second half. It does feel like the Lakers' roster is a big issue.

Speaker 1 And I don't want to take blame away from players, but like every time Anthony Davis comes out of the game, Jokic does literally whatever. He can do whatever he wants most of the time.

Speaker 1 He does whatever he wants to the, you know, 10th power

Speaker 1 when Anthony Davis comes out of the game.

Speaker 1 Is that fair to just be like the Lakers just they just don't have enough dudes, they just don't have enough bodies to be able to compete with a team like this?

Speaker 19 I mean, it's not a sexy talking point, big cat, but one of the big differences between good NBA teams and great NBA teams is simply depth. Yeah.

Speaker 19 And when you're talking about dynasties, where you have like Sean Livingston or Manu Ginobly coming off the bench for these teams that win multiple championships, this Lakers' bench is short.

Speaker 19 No offense to my fellow Longhorn Jackson Hayes, but he just isn't going to be able to defend Nicole Jokic in a big playoff moment.

Speaker 19 And I think, like I said earlier, the fatal flaw with this LeBron-era Lakers team is often not LeBron or A.D., it's the supporting cast.

Speaker 19 And when you look at this losing streak against the Nuggets, D'Angelo Russell hasn't been good enough in a lot of these games. He was pretty good in game two, especially in the early.

Speaker 19 But Rui Hatchamura, Spencer, Dinwiddie, Vincent, these are the dudes that weren't good enough in Denver. And if the Lakers want to climb back in this series, it's that thing again.

Speaker 19 Can the role players get us a game at home? And they haven't been good enough in Denver so far, but Kat.

Speaker 1 What's the other chess move that now Ham can counter with? Because that is my favorite part of the NBA playoffs is you see one team will say, all right, we're going to adjust here.

Speaker 1 And then the next game, it's like, all right, well, we're going to counter adjust. So what can they do knowing that they might put Aaron Gordon back on Anthony Davis and make his life miserable?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I think they can use switches maybe.

Speaker 19 And I, you know, Jokic is the best player in the world, not throwing shade at him, but Anthony Davis showed last night one of the only weaknesses in this dude's whole game is defending athletic players.

Speaker 19 And the Lakers have two options. Obviously, they're going to, I think, stick with this Gordon matchup on Anthony Davis, but can LeBron James attack Nicole Jokic and pick and rolls?

Speaker 19 Can they get Jokic exposed in the paint and really just start to attack him with their incredible rim-attacking athleticism because that's what they had success with in the first half last night: Anthony Davis in the paint.

Speaker 6 You mentioned the role players stepping up. It would be nice to get an Austin Reeves game.
That would take a little bit of the pressure off AD and LeBron James. We haven't had that yet.

Speaker 6 But it also feels like, Kirk, are you making excuses for LeBron? He missed that big three down the stretch.

Speaker 6 I want to know what the nuggets being LeBron James's kryptonite.

Speaker 6 What effect does that have on LeBron's legacy? Because

Speaker 6 he made two great shots down the stretch. He didn't make the third.
And so we can point out the third and be like, LeBron can't get it done.

Speaker 19 At age 39, LeBron gave you exactly what the Lakers fans could hope for. He, I mean, I know you're joking, but dude, LeBron was incredible last night.
And then consider his age, he wasn't the reason.

Speaker 19 Again, if there's a legacy flaw here, it's his choice to move to Los Angeles and play these Western Conference teams.

Speaker 19 Remember, this is a dude who went to the finals eight years in a row, in part because he was playing, you know, no offense to Hank, a relatively easy Eastern Conference playoff bracket each year compared to the West.

Speaker 19 So, hey, welcome to the West, LeBron, Denver, in the first round, the defending champs. Get used to it.
I think they just need more depth and better performance from their PFT.

Speaker 19 Their bench scored six points last night. That's not going to get it done against the World Champs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I also, and LeBron was incredible, and I'm not, I don't want to be a LeBron hater. I just, maybe it's more just defensive philosophy

Speaker 1 for the the Lakers. But I

Speaker 1 thought that, I thought that last defensive possession, like, I understand switching everything, but like, at least make a guy actually set a pick before you switch.

Speaker 1 A lot of times in the NBA, it's like a guy just has to just stand somewhere and be like, all right, switch.

Speaker 1 Like, they're not, there's very little like fighting through screens and like forcing the other team to actually like commit to a pick.

Speaker 1 Like, it was some, I can't remember who flashed up and then LeBron just passed him off to AD, you know, Jamal Jamal Murray to AD, and it's just like, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being a hater.

Speaker 19 Hey, you want to get super nerdy with me?

Speaker 19 If we look at the shot quality models for those last two shots, the one that went in, Jamal Murray's history-making shot, one of the best buzzer beaters I've seen in the playoffs in a long time.

Speaker 19 You know, the nerds give that about a 33% chance of going in. Okay.
I mean, he is, but Anthony Davis is one of the best defenders in the league you could have defending that exact shot.

Speaker 5 So smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 19 And then, but LeBron's shot too. It was like, that was a clean look from downtown.
It just didn't fall. Yeah.
And LeBron is a much better three-point shooter than we're used to seeing from him.

Speaker 19 You know, if we play that out 100 times, I bet that LeBron shot goes in and the Murray shot doesn't a few of those times.

Speaker 19 And that's what we're talking about, the difference between a 1-1 and a 2-0 series.

Speaker 1 And also, Jamal Murray did, I mean, he was so bad in the first three quarters. His shots were so off.
And then all you got to, you know, just let a guy keep shooting.

Speaker 1 And he was incredible in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 19 Yeah. And I think that's one of themes with this other series.
Like if you want bad news from the Lakers perspective, Jamal Murray, aside from a few of those shots, has been ice cold.

Speaker 19 He's one of the coldest jump shooters in this whole playoff so far. And Denver's up 2-0 despite this dude being really cold.

Speaker 19 Now, obviously, he has the shot of the playoff so far, but they've done a good job containing Murray, and they're still down 0-2.

Speaker 19 It stands within reason, big cat, that Jamal Murray is not going to have a couple more stinkers like this in games three and four.

Speaker 19 So they're going to have to find find some offense from somebody else other than LeBron and AD in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 Yeah. It's the way that the Lakers are losing, too.
You just mentioned like LeBron's shot was a much better shot than Jamal's at the end.

Speaker 6 And they just happened to lose another one of these close games.

Speaker 6 I was saying last night that I actually, I kind of respect the Lakers for taking all these really tough losses in games where a lot of the times they play really well and then coming back and playing good enough to win, but then also losing again.

Speaker 6 Like it's a vicious cycle that they're trapped into, but it'd be very easy for a team like that to just kind of give up and to not give the Nuggets all that they could the next game.

Speaker 6 But it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Speaker 19 I mean, they're a great team, and it goes to show. I mean, one of the big themes for this playoffs, PFT for me is five of the top six teams, arguably in the NBA, on one side of the bracket.

Speaker 19 The West is loaded. And one of the things the Lakers and the Warriors did, they get a lot of attention, but they dug holes earlier in the season.

Speaker 19 And they get a seven seed, and you have to play the defending champs. If they were on the other side of the bracket, they they would have a much easier first-round opponent.

Speaker 4 But that's not the world we're living in.

Speaker 19 They dug a hole early in the season. Now they have to play a very, very good team in the first round.
The narrative is never going to catch up to that.

Speaker 1 But they're a good team.

Speaker 19 The Lakers are a good team. They're probably, in most years, not a first-round exit, but it sure looks like that's where we're heading unless something changes.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, I just want to give you something to think on because I would like to discuss this in person. I'd like you to really nerd out on it for me.

Speaker 6 It feels like the last 25 years of the NBA, give or take, the West has been dominant over the East in terms of depth, in terms of talent.

Speaker 6 There's certainly a couple years where you could make the argument that maybe the East had it for a little bit, but the West has just been so much better than the East.

Speaker 6 I'd like to know the reasons why. Like, if you look at the data, what are the driving forces behind the West just consistently beating the shit out of the East in terms of quality of teams?

Speaker 6 Can you do that?

Speaker 19 Yeah, I'll write that up, and when I'm there in a couple of weeks, we'll go through my findings.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's probably the Golden State Warriors.

Speaker 6 That, and I would say

Speaker 6 I was going to say a seven-year stretch where it's Kirk Goldsbury working for the San Antonio Spurs. Yeah.
Yeah. Really tipped the balance of power.
That's right.

Speaker 19 That's what it is.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the other game that we watched in the other series, the Knicks Sixers, also two very close games that now have the Knicks up 2-0.

Speaker 1 And also a game where you can watch it and be like the old dad sitting on the couch being like, this is why you got to box out because

Speaker 1 the last possession, there was a ton of maybe borderline fouls, whatever, timeouts, all this stuff.

Speaker 1 But at the end of the day, it felt like it was just a Knicks team that, and it's probably because their coach is the way he is, that was just fighting for those loose balls that can win you a game versus lose you a game.

Speaker 1 And what is the fix, though, for the Sixers going forward to even this series up?

Speaker 19 There's some parallels here. I mean, I think like Jamal Murray, Jalen Brunson has been ice cold.
He's one of the coldest shooters in the playoffs. He's even colder than Jamal Murray.

Speaker 19 And the Knicks fans should be excited, and the Sixers fans should be a little scared of that because obviously the Knicks have won these two games.

Speaker 19 And Brunson, I'm sorry, should have has had two of his worst games of the entire season.

Speaker 19 And you're right about the rebounding. I mean, the Knicks are just dominating the offensive boards.

Speaker 19 That last sequence, I thought, epitomized a bunch of the narratives here in this series. The Knicks out hustling, out-harding, making the bigger plays, making the bigger shots.

Speaker 19 Say what you want about the Sixers. It just feels like they lose those types of games.
And say what you want about those Knicks teams. They're tough.

Speaker 19 They make those kinds of plays and they make the dads on the couches proud because they are the ones on the floor.

Speaker 4 They are the ones boxing out.

Speaker 19 It is a classic Tibbs team and maybe his best team he's had in a decade.

Speaker 19 But the Sixers, like the Los Angeles Lakers, need to get more. I heard you guys talking about this the other day.
Buddy Healed, hello. Are you there? You're here to shoot shots.

Speaker 19 You're here to shoot threes. Tobias Harris, have you seen his paycheck?

Speaker 19 He needs to be better. Like the Lakers, they need to get more because

Speaker 19 Embiid and Maxi have done enough.

Speaker 19 If you look at the plus-minus, with Embiid on the court,

Speaker 19 the Philadelphia 76ers are winning this series. When he goes to the bench, it's a tire fire.
The Sixers fall apart, and that's where the Knicks have stolen both of those games.

Speaker 19 So they need, like the Lakers, those role players to show up at home to turn the series around.

Speaker 6 What would you say to the haters, one of which might be sitting behind the glass right now listening to this, that say Jalen Brunson's not playing well because the Sixers defense is doing a good job?

Speaker 19 Look, Nick Nurse is a big upgrade over Doc Rivers, and I credit the game plan. You know, I know you guys were joking about some tricks, but Nick Nurse knows how to make life hard on a guard.

Speaker 19 He won his only NBA championship by really making life hard on Stephen Curry in the 2019 finals.

Speaker 19 I think there might be some truth to that, but Nick Nurse has also left Josh Hart wide open. This dude is 8 of 15 on threes, and the average defender difference PFT is over nine feet away.

Speaker 19 Those are practice shots, and NBA players are too good. Josh Hart's threes have sort of been the deodorant to cover up for his teammates' stink as a jump shooter, Jalen Brunson's.

Speaker 19 And Dante DiVincenzo has also been hot. So look,

Speaker 19 he has done a good job on Brunson, but he has to find a better way to cool off the other three-point shooters in New York.

Speaker 19 I think there's some truth to that, but ultimately, I would say to the Philly fans, the one behind the glass, we need to get more from the south end of our rotation if we're going to save this series.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I have another assignment for you when you come here in a couple weeks. Could you track the amount of minutes in a game that Joe Ellen Bede

Speaker 1 physically looks tired?

Speaker 1 He doesn't even jog up the court and playoff get him sometimes. Yeah.

Speaker 19 He looks tired.

Speaker 6 He looks tired.

Speaker 19 He's a fires at a high rate.

Speaker 19 He lumbers. Any old guy who plays pickup knows exactly what that feels like.
I saw a couple of minutes ago.

Speaker 19 He's not even running up the floor.

Speaker 1 He's playing on one leg.

Speaker 1 Here comes Max. I just would like to see the amount of time.

Speaker 1 Like, it wouldn't shock me if you're like, all right, I've tracked the data 60% of the time, and Bede is trying to let us know that he's tired.

Speaker 19 Well, one of the things we do track is who's the last guy across half court in the player tracking area. I think that would expose that he is not, in fact, running up and down.
And to Max's point,

Speaker 19 he's got a giant knee brace on. He's a massive human being recovering from a knee injury.

Speaker 19 Cut him some slack. But, dude, the playoffs are unforgiving, Max.
We need Joelle Embiid to play like an MVP if we're going to beat the two seed in the first round.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 can you track that data like retroactively can you go back and and find out guys or is that something that's just all new age because i would love to see late patrick ewing because there were times when he would like it'd be like eight seconds left in the shot clock and then you'd see him coming into the frame and be like whoa there you i'm talking like magic patrick ewing no we can only go back to 2013 okay i don't even think patrick was playing for the magic no maybe some late era shaq yeah Definitely late era Shaq we can get.

Speaker 19 I'm trying to think of who would be the all-10th man across half George Mirason was pretty slow.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Big George.
It only took him like three steps to get there, but he was just, he had the two big knee braces on. He looked like Mega Man.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Another superstar who's 10th man across a lot of the time is Luka Doncic. But not because he just enjoys, he enjoys

Speaker 19 some drinking sometimes too, but it's mostly because he's yelling at Scott Foster and the referees. He has to settle some scores before he plays defense.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Looking ahead in this series, which team would give the Celtics a better matchup?

Speaker 19 Dude, if they're healthy, it's the Sixers. I mean,

Speaker 19 they were 31-8, dude, when Embiid played this year. They were on pace to win about 65 games.
The statistical markers with Embiid on the court scream were a contender.

Speaker 19 Now, you have to look at the playoff version of this team. And so, I am not mad at the Knicks.
And if they win this series in five or six games, I'm happy to change my answer.

Speaker 19 But coming into this series, PFT, the clear answer was the Sixers if Embede was healthy.

Speaker 19 And I think that's a good answer, but looks like Knicks are about to run him out of the gym unless Philly changes something.

Speaker 1 Okay, so similar last question for me.

Speaker 1 And again, we're going to do an extended NBA playoff talk when you get here.

Speaker 1 Biggest threat to the Celtics in the East. Maybe it is just the Sixers, but I don't know if maybe there was another team in a different series.
And biggest threat to the Nuggets in the West.

Speaker 19 The biggest threat is the winner of this series. It's not a cop-out.
I have a lot to learn. This 2-7 series, the rivals, the East Coast rivals, the Knicks could play themselves.

Speaker 19 Man, when the Knicks look good, they look good. So I think the winner of this series, and that might be the Knicks, obviously,

Speaker 19 I just don't see Giannis coming back into shape. If Giannis comes back at 100%, maybe you could argue it's the Bucs.

Speaker 19 But I have to see that first in the West.

Speaker 19 I think the number one threat to the Denver Nuggets is the injury bug.

Speaker 1 I think they're that good.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I really do. I think Jokic is just, they deserve that kind of dodgy, cute answer, big cat.
If I have to answer,

Speaker 19 I'll give the Thunder the answer right now because they have home court. But, dude, if they're whole, I just don't see anybody taking out Jokic in seven games, beating them four times in seven games.

Speaker 19 It just looks like. They're the best team in the league right now.

Speaker 6 Yeah. All right.
So I'm going to give you a chance to look stupid when we talk to you in a couple weeks here. What percentage do the Sixers have to win this series? series?

Speaker 19 32% chance. And if they win game three, that goes up to 40.
But if they lose it, as you know, it goes to zero.

Speaker 19 So I think this is what you guys might call a must-win game, game three for the Philadelphia 76ers, because a stat that we like to say is that no team has ever come back from 03.

Speaker 19 And I don't think that's going to be a Sixers team.

Speaker 6 So this is a first to do. It is a must-win, officially a must-win.
Officially a must-win.

Speaker 19 This is a must-win. Play it back to me when I'm there in two weeks.

Speaker 6 And following up on that, is game five, is it how, what percentage pivotal is game five? Is it 100% pivotal?

Speaker 19 100% pivotal, without a doubt. I mean, the analytics leave little doubt, PFT, especially if it's 3-1 and the team up 3-1 wins game five.
That's very pivotal.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 19 Pivotable, pivotal for that series. Okay.

Speaker 6 All right. Good to know.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, Kirk, thank you as always.

Speaker 1 We'll see you in a couple weeks, and we appreciate you giving us some insight because you're smarter than us about basketball.

Speaker 19 Love it, guys. You guys know ball.

Speaker 1 See you soon. All right.
See you, Kirk.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on our good friend, recurring guest. It is an annual tradition.
It is Daniel Jeremiah NFL Network.

Speaker 1 You can see him on draft night, also the Move the Sticks podcast, Chargers Radio. Actually, let me start there real quick before we get to draft.

Speaker 4 How pumped are you to be able to call some Jim Harbaugh coach games uh coming up because i i think he's one of the best coaches i don't know if you've been able to sit down with him uh how how excited are you for that part of your job dude i'm i'm i'm super excited i mean he's won everywhere he's been and like he kind of brings an identity with him and on top of that like i'm just looking forward to my own jim harbaugh stories because everybody everybody has theirs i met him for the first time i popped up there to uh uh joe or t's his uh his press conference when he was announced as a gm because i i'd known joe forever So I get there kind of late, and Harbaugh is going to be walking in with a couple other guys I know from the organization.

Speaker 4 And they're like, hey, Jim, I don't know if you know, this is Daniel Jeremiah, NFL Network, but he calls our games for the radio.

Speaker 4 And he kind of pauses and looks at me, goes, I think I've heard of you.

Speaker 1 Fist bump and gone. And then gone.

Speaker 4 So I'm looking forward to my collection of Harbaugh stories to add to the archives.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he's an honest guy. That's what I love about him.
You'll never get bullshit out of him.

Speaker 4 Yes. Yes.
100%.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 4 I'm looking forward to it, man. It's going to be fun.
Like, when that hire happened, I was driving up to the network and there's like billboards, like the Chargers had billboards, like Jim Harbaugh's

Speaker 4 face on it. I was trying to think of how many coaches can you sell? Like,

Speaker 4 this is the draw. It's the coach.

Speaker 1 Like, that's pretty nuts. It's absolutely true.
All right. So it is draft time.

Speaker 1 You are deep into the draft. Like I said, you can see on NFL Network on Thursday night for the draft.
So let's start start here with the draft.

Speaker 1 What, as of this week, have you heard anything in terms of teams moving up? Who you would see as a potential? Like, watch out for these guys. They love this position.
They love this player.

Speaker 1 What's the latest?

Speaker 4 The latest is like, I don't know how much movement we're going to see. Like, as of last night and talking to a couple of different GMs, the expectation was sticking and picking one, two, three.

Speaker 4 So sticking, and that, and that ends up being, you know, Jaden going two, Drake going three. And then you have

Speaker 4 at four it sounded like the cardinals were gonna were gonna stay there and take marvin harrison and then you know i know the chargers would like to get out of five but the sense that i get at least as of you know last night was that minnesota would come up for drake may but they weren't going to come up for anybody else that was i mean that's what it was last night so so now you're thinking minnesota could just sit there at 11 And I don't know who else, I don't think the Giants are taking J.J.

Speaker 4 McCarthy. So now I think Minnesota might just kind of roll the dice a little bit, hang at 11 and see if he's there when they pick.

Speaker 6 How much panic happens on draft night inside the draft rooms? I know that every team's got their board. They say that they're confident in it.

Speaker 6 And every year after the draft, every team acts like, you know, we had a plan, we stuck with the plan. But in reality, how often does a team just break out in a cold sweat?

Speaker 6 They're afraid they're going to miss out on their guy, whether it's a quarterback or a high-level prospect somewhere else, and they just throw all their prep out the window and move up and do something reckless.

Speaker 4 Well, usually it's it's like they have their group of guys. So say if you're picking 15 and you're like, well, surely one of these four players is going to be there.
We love these four guys.

Speaker 4 One of the four is going to get there. Then all of a sudden you get to like pick 11 and three of the four are gone.
And then it's like, oh, crap, like we got it.

Speaker 4 All of a sudden we weren't planning on being aggressive. We were planning on sitting here, but now we literally only have one more of our cluster of guys that we really like.

Speaker 4 So then that's when you see teams do stuff that as of like 24 hours ago, they had no intentions of doing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, Suede, I want to go back real quick to what you just said about the moving around and maybe everyone's staying put, which will be very funny because we had a lot of talk.

Speaker 1 It always happens, but, you know, oh, the Patriots want to move out. The Cardinals are definitely going to move out.
The Chargers want to move out. All these teams move around.

Speaker 1 So how far could JJ McCarthy fall if everyone sticks to their pick and essentially the Vikings are saying, we'll wait this out and just take him at 11? Would that be where it goes?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I don't think he gets. I mean, that little quarterback alley, like 11, 12, 13, I don't think he would go beyond that.

Speaker 4 I don't think it'll be like a Willeva situation where he dropped, you know, all the way to the second round. But I was sniffing around this morning because I had, there's so much stuff flying around.

Speaker 4 And like one of the teams had told me, like, hey, I wouldn't be surprised if when it was all said and done, if Pennex like went over McCarthy, like if the Minnesota Vikings just held their ground and said we're comfortable with either one of these guys.

Speaker 4 And like, I wouldn't even rule out the fact that they might take, you know, Pennex over McCarthy. I don't think that's going to happen.
I still think, you know, that would be the McCarthy spot.

Speaker 4 But if he gets by the Giants, then I don't, you know, I know Denver, you know, the Zach Wilson thing, I don't think that changes much there.

Speaker 4 But everything I got from them was they were more likely to move back than to than to trade up. So, yeah, maybe we don't get as much movement as we thought.

Speaker 4 There's always teams willing to trade down, but if you can't find a partner to come up, I mean, you got to stick and pick. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. What's interesting to me about this draft is there's not a lot of buzz around the defense side of the ball.
There are a few talented players that are in that top 10 conversation.

Speaker 6 Dallas Turner's one. I know that the Falcons are interested in him, but

Speaker 6 if there's a comparison you can make, Dallas Turner this year, how does he stack up against some of the other edge rushers that we've seen get drafted in the top five over the last 10 years?

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's not in that group. I mean, he's, I mean, just go with his teammate, like him and Will Anderson.
I think Will Anderson was on another level as a player.

Speaker 4 I think I ended up with Dallas as like 13 on my list overall. So that's, I mean, he's a good player.

Speaker 4 He's got some intriguing tools to work with, but he's not

Speaker 4 a dominant edge player. I don't think we have one of those.

Speaker 4 That's why like you could, you could scrimmage it out and you can come away with scenarios where we could have like all offense in the top 10. Like that wouldn't, you know, wouldn't totally shock me.

Speaker 4 Because like some of some of the points that I'm curious about that I'm most fascinated about, like I was told that Atlanta at eight was going to be, you know, that would be the edge rusher spot.

Speaker 4 And it would be Dallas Turner versus Latu, who, you know, is like the, he's the most natural edge rusher. But then I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the connections.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, okay, well, the defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons was his head coach at Washington, who and Jimmy Lake, who they literally retired him.

Speaker 4 Like he went and saw five doctors and they medically said, you can't play. He goes to UCLA and takes off.

Speaker 4 So I'm going, well, I know he must like the kid because he recruited him and he coached him, but then he's also keenly aware of some of the risks medically there.

Speaker 4 So like those are the puzzle pieces trying to put together. And then like with nine,

Speaker 4 you know, I've been thinking, everybody's telling me edge rusher, edge rusher with the bears at nine.

Speaker 4 And I'm going, man, when you take the quarterback number one, like every decision is about making sure that pick looks right.

Speaker 4 I'd rather have one too many studs on offense and worry about fixing, you know, maybe some of the other holes on defense.

Speaker 4 But when their defense was good after the sweat trade last year, I mean, what would you rather do? To me, I'd rather just, I'm going to go get a tackle or I'm going to go get Roma Dunze.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think for the Bears at nine, it's very simple. It's like, if you have one of the three receivers, you can take them.

Speaker 1 If you have one of the two or three tackles, which one of those will be available, you take him.

Speaker 1 And then if someone offers you a crazy deal, because the Bears, like they have one and nine, they only have four picks in the whole draft.

Speaker 1 So if someone offers you something crazy to then get him maybe a second this year and a second next year, you listen. But I agree, like,

Speaker 1 this is all about Caleb Williams now. Just set him up.
More offensive line better, more wide receivers better. Worry about the defense later in the draft and maybe next year.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's what I mean, that's what I think.

Speaker 4 And then on the on like the Washington side of things, I've been beating the drum of, okay, if you're going to take Jaden at two, like, are you really comfortable with your tackle situation that you're going to wait it out till 36 and 40 for a tackle there?

Speaker 4 Like, they almost feel like they have to come back in. Oh, I think that's the one.

Speaker 1 Because if we just found one of those tackles, I think we just found the trade.

Speaker 1 Give us 36 and 40. You can get nine.
Get up to nine.

Speaker 1 Deal?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I'd be curious to see what those numbers look like. I haven't looked at the trade chart, but I would think that's,

Speaker 4 if I'm the Bears, I think I would.

Speaker 1 I think I'd do that. So maybe a third rounder next year.

Speaker 5 Yeah about this.

Speaker 6 We'll do that, but then you have to give us the Montez sweat pick back.

Speaker 1 No, no, no deal. No, that is no, yeah.

Speaker 1 That is the pick, right? That is the pick. It is yeah, that's the pick.
That's why we have that's why it would be that. I don't like that.
That boomerang. Yeah, I don't like that boomerang back.

Speaker 6 That just feels insulting to me to stack L on top of L, but I'll consider it. If I start to panic during draft night, I might give you a call.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 I hit you up last night, Daniel, about this because I wanted you to, I didn't want to put you on the spot. I always like to contextualize the entirety of the draft.
So I asked you,

Speaker 1 for people who like, I asked you the question, if you ranked each position, how deep does it go in terms of second contract starter guys? So like, and you don't have to do like each

Speaker 1 offensive lineman. It could be offensive linemen in general.

Speaker 1 But I'm always just wondering in terms of the depth of the draft, especially when people are watching the draft on day two, day three, where they're like, okay, we know we can get, we don't know all these names, but you know where the deep positions are in this year's draft.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so I was very strict with how I did this with my homework assignment. First of all, like, look at the professionalism on the, I mean, this is really, I mean,

Speaker 4 this is on the Detroit Foundation Hotel official stationery

Speaker 1 here.

Speaker 4 But I was strict with it. So you can, you can extrapolate this beyond this, but like of comp, like my confidence level is high.

Speaker 4 So it'll tell you, this will give you a feel of the strength of the positions. Yeah.
So like wide receivers, 10 to 12 of them.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 Like there's 10 to 12 that I feel pretty confident they're going to, they're second contract, same team, commit to them, tight players. That's the, that was the deepest.

Speaker 4 Next up would have been offensive tackles at eight to ten, which is a, it's actually a really big number for offensive tackles compared to most years. So that would be number two.

Speaker 4 Number three, you kick over to the defensive side of the ball will be corners. And that you're talking like seven to eight, you know, of those corners.

Speaker 4 So those are the three deepest position that, you know, running backs for obvious reasons, I put put like zero to two. You know, like there's not going to be, it's not a great running back class.

Speaker 4 This has nothing to do with the devaluing of the position and all that. It's just not a, it's just not a great running back class.
It is not a good tight end class. Why put one to two on there?

Speaker 4 Interior offensive line is pretty solid, like five to six. So that would be, you know, when you combine the interior offensive line and the tackle group, it's a really, really good.

Speaker 4 offensive line draft.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 4 And then, so you go to and like safety is not great, four to five, defensive tackles, edge rushers, those are both four to five, four to six. So linebackers not good, three to four.

Speaker 4 So it's, it's literally receivers, tackles, corners. Those, that's the strength of the draft.

Speaker 1 I love it, though, because that's the kind of stuff that I love knowing going in that, like, all right, if there's 10 to 12 receivers that you confidently feel, obviously, draft is hard to predict.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But these, we're talking about guys that are going to get their second contract that you, because that's really the goal here.

Speaker 4 When you draft a player, it's really you're drafting them to try to get to a second contract because that means they were good enough to be on your team for five to seven eight years uh so if you're a team looking for a receiver you don't have to panic you know that in the second round there's going to be a lot of guys out there that you can pick up that could be part of your team for the next five seven years yeah and that's and that's one of the reasons too like when you just boil it down to individual decisions decisions and if the bears don't trade out at nine and they're sitting there and you've got the tackle versus the receiver um even though i've said it's a deep top group the tackles are going to be gone like those those eight ten guys are going to fly So the receiver, you still get a chance to get a really good receiver with your next, you know, they don't have a two, but you know, you get the gist of it.

Speaker 4 The depth is going to run a little bit longer at the receiver position than any of these other spots. Yeah.

Speaker 6 One of my favorite stories in each draft is there's always seems to be like one or two really good offensive tackles, maybe a left tackle in college, maybe a right tackle in college, but there's a team that loves their talent.

Speaker 6 but they just don't have a need at that side of the line. So they draft a guy and then they're like, well, he can learn how to play right tackle or he can, we can shift him over to the left.

Speaker 6 Are there any guys in this draft right now that jump off the charts in terms of their ability where a team might say, okay, we're going to have this guy switch sides?

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, look, you can start right with five with the Chargers because, you know,

Speaker 4 it's an interesting decision. I was having a talk with a guy last night about this, with a general manager.
We were saying alt was, you know, he's played left.

Speaker 4 If he goes to the Chargers, they're not going to move Rashawn Slater. The guy's an all-pro left tackle.

Speaker 4 So, and then some people people would voice concern to me of like, wow, you're going to ask alt to switch positions. He's a left.
He's never played on the right side.

Speaker 4 And this GM was like, you really, I mean, he's played offensive tackle, left tackle for two years. This kid was a tight end who converted to left tackle.

Speaker 4 Within two years of playing a position he's never played in his life. He's a top 10 pick.

Speaker 4 You don't think it's, I think it would be a lot easier to move from left tackle to right tackle than move from tight end to left tackle. So he's like,

Speaker 4 he'll figure it out. He'll be fine.
So some people don't like it of moving a guy from one side to the other. Others have more more concern.

Speaker 4 But like a guy like Fuaga from Oregon State, who's a really good tackle, a right tackle. I know teams like with him specifically who have an aging tackle.

Speaker 4 And they're like, look, the thing I like about him,

Speaker 4 he's our right guard year one. And then once our tackle ages out, we can kick him out and do that.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I think there's different ways of looking at it, but there are some teams that are more strict. Like, hey, he's been in a left-handed stance his whole life.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to ask him to, you know, I don't want to draft him and move him over to the other side.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Can you give us your top three freaks in this draft?

Speaker 6 Athletic freaks?

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I would say, I mean, Brian Thomas is way up there.

Speaker 4 You go, Brian Thomas, the receivers are going to be the easy ones. And Adnai Mitchell, both those guys, LSU and Texas, like total, total freak show dudes.

Speaker 4 And then I would say,

Speaker 4 If I want to get somebody on the defensive side of the ball,

Speaker 4 absolute freak. Well, I mean, I think in his own way, I think Byron Murphy's got some freak to him.
Yeah, defensive tackle from Texas.

Speaker 4 He's not a huge dude, but just super, super twitched up and explosive.

Speaker 1 What about a freak who's going to go late in the draft that is like raw, where you're like, all right, he's not, he hasn't played enough football or he hasn't been coached enough, but everything that he has,

Speaker 1 uh, size-wise, speed-wise, if he puts it all together, he will be a real gem.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'll give you this name. It's kind of a fun one: Travis Clayton.

Speaker 4 This dude, so this dude's 6'7. He's 301 pounds.
He's a tackle. He ran 4'8-1.

Speaker 4 I say he's a tackle. He's from England.

Speaker 4 So he hasn't played. He's played soccer.
He's been a boxer. And he's been a rower.

Speaker 4 I don't have any idea how any of that translates to the NFL, but I did spend 15 minutes of a Saturday watching a workout, and I've convinced myself that in the sixth round, this guy's going to end up being an unbelievable player.

Speaker 4 I put college, like I have my Excel sheet, you know, like the position, the name, like the height, weight, speed, the grade, and then the ranking. And I have the college in there.

Speaker 4 I put college like England.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know how I, what do I do with that? I love those guys, though.
They'll probably have tight ends.

Speaker 1 That would be awesome.

Speaker 4 He dude, I'm telling you, like, I've never given somebody so much credit for running over a bag, but I was like, this is graceful. Look at this guy move.
This is beautiful.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What if he was, yeah, he could be, he could be like a Kyle Brady type, where it's like, he's just another offensive lineman and he also can run and catch balls.
No one can tackle him. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no. What was the guy? Why am I, George Fant was another one who was like, remember Seattle just used him as like the sixth offensive lineman for like 40% of the snaps one year.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. I think that, was that the Tom Cable years where he was just like, I'll take anybody that's big and I'll teach them how to play offensive line.
Doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's it. And we're going to play all of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 What about the S2 cognition test? We're big fans of it. We think that it was, it's a very valuable tool that can be used to determine which quarterback should drop to number two.

Speaker 6 So are teams still using it? Or is there, I guess maybe a more interesting way to ask would be like,

Speaker 6 what's the new S2 cognition test this year where there's a there's like an edge that teams are trying to get with some sort of new technology that's very important to them?

Speaker 4 In post, are you going to put like some Sarah McLaughlin music underneath this conversation with in memory of the S2?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I look, I know a bunch.

Speaker 4 I know like Athletes First is a huge agency and they had stroud and like none of their guys took it um this year like they and i think that's not just them i think there's other people that that their players aren't going to take it anymore uh after all that information got out i think everybody's always trying to find like the cheat code of of doing this of like evaluating quarterbacks and i'm like i just i i don't think there is one you know there's no test there's no stat there's no like the old parcels like you know formula if you drop them through that formula and the number of starts and graduated and all up captain and all that stuff like there is no there's no cheat code and it's like i don't want to it sounds weird to say because i'm like i can disqualify myself here but at the end of the day it almost feels more like a coin flip on on these quarterbacks and and more so than anybody has the exact answer of how to of how to how to figure it out i'll actually give you a cheat code i think i think we know what the new uh the new science is going to be to determine whether or not a quarterback will be successful it's you take them to top golf and then you have them compete against each other in top golf and then that's a great way to figure out how you're definitely not going to draft a bust.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, but I see this is, I think of being the scout in this situation. Like if I was in the room and they're like, guys, like we're at top golf.

Speaker 4 If I have a big grade on the quarterback and he's just crushing it, right? Crushing drives at top golf. I'm like, this guy's so athletic.
Literally, any sport, he can do it.

Speaker 4 Like he's a natural competitor. Like he's great at everything.
If he goes out there and he literally is shanking everything, he can't hit the ball straight. Like this guy is so obsessed with football.

Speaker 4 Like you think he has time to go golf. Like this guy is just grinding tape.
Like, he's not out there on his free time hitting the golf ball. Like, this is the guy you want.

Speaker 4 So, I could swing it either way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can. It's always fun to do that.
The, the, just whatever, like, it's the J.J. McCarthy conundrum where you're like, oh, he's, he didn't play.
He didn't throw a lot.

Speaker 1 But what he did throw was awesome. You can just convince yourself one way or the other on the argument.

Speaker 4 Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 4 On the McCarthy thing, like one of my favorite.

Speaker 4 stories with him through this draft process is he's watching tape uh with somebody and they're going through his tape and kind of he's answering like what he sees all this kind of stuff and they're in the end i don't remember what game it was he's like they get to the 20 and going in get to the 20 and jj goes like you can fast forward it and he's like well no i want to see like your reads and what he's like it's michigan football like we're we're gonna run it six times and score like yeah you can fast forward yeah and he's like look we did all this stuff in practice every day but and and i don't know how you argue with michigan like their philosophy was like we don't have to like we can beat all of these teams by just doing this why why would we do anything else yeah i i agree all All right.

Speaker 1 Another question, this is real nitty-gritty stuff that I know that you can answer. I love to think ahead.
What does next year's draft look like?

Speaker 1 And what are teams thinking in relation to next year's draft where they're like,

Speaker 1 this position is going to suck next year? We've got to get it this year.

Speaker 4 Well, I know I was talking to a GM who had this conversation with his owner because the owner wanted to say, what's coming down the line at the quarterback position?

Speaker 4 And the GM was like, well, right now it doesn't look great. But like last year at this time, we wouldn't have been talking about Jaden Daniels.

Speaker 4 The Joe Burrow year, we wouldn't have been talking about Joe Burrow. Like these guys, every year these guys come out of the woodwork and you see guys improve.
They'll transfer, get in the right spot.

Speaker 4 I mean, but looking ahead, it doesn't look great at that position right now.

Speaker 4 But the, you know, like his message to his owner was like, there's always going to be, right, there's always going to be quarterbacks.

Speaker 4 So even though we don't know who they are at this point in time, I don't think you can panic this year.

Speaker 4 say oh wreck we've traded everything let's go up and get one of these guys we don't love but we don't know what's coming next year You kind of just got to have some faith that those guys will emerge.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's kind of pointless to look that far in the future. Because I love doing it.

Speaker 1 Anything could happen. Yeah.
Yeah. Just being like, well, we got to get it now.
You can convince. It's similar to J.J.
McCarthy or Top Golf. You just convince yourself one way or the other.

Speaker 6 And then if there's like a quarterback you project already as being really high next year and he doesn't quite live up to those expectations next year, you still kind of have that high grade on him because you're like, well, you know, he had that body of evidence in the past.

Speaker 6 So you can never really be wrong about that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 6 It's great. It's great.

Speaker 6 What mock draft are you on right now?

Speaker 1 Is this mock 4.0?

Speaker 4 I think I've done four. I've got my last one.
I got to turn it in today as we're recording this. And then that'll come out tomorrow night.

Speaker 4 So I used to like push back on it because I'm like, dude, if you just let me get like to Thursday, because you'll hear more stuff and blah, blah, blah. And then I realized two things.

Speaker 4 Number one, stop taking this so seriously. It's a mock draft.
And number two, the information that you get in the last 24 hours tends to be like the worst information in the entire process.

Speaker 4 So just turn it in Tuesday morning and be done with it.

Speaker 6 So what would you grade yourself for,

Speaker 6 what does success look like for your most recent mock draft? Like if you get six, seven guys in the right spot, what is it?

Speaker 4 I don't think it's more than like 10, honestly. Like I really don't.

Speaker 4 But to me, I always kind of look at it and see of the 32 players, like how many of the 32 players that went in the first round did you have in the first round?

Speaker 4 Like hopefully it's at least like 25, you know, 26 of those guys. So we're talking about the right, the right people, basically.

Speaker 4 But, you know, one trade and the the whole thing's, you know, it's all screwed once you get one of those trades that happens and there's no way to predict that stuff.

Speaker 4 So I don't, I, I used to like, oh man, what like talk to 90 people and then stress over this stuff.

Speaker 4 And I'm like, they just kind of use some logic, common sense, look at how they've done things and throw it in there and move on. Yeah.

Speaker 6 What's your worst miss when it comes to a mock draft?

Speaker 4 Oh. I mean, like, there's misses like this every year.

Speaker 4 Like last year, I was told that Indy was either Levis or richardson like it was that was still was those two guys one of those two guys so i'm like well flip a coin i'll go with i'll go with levis um and then he doesn't you know he doesn't go he not only doesn't go there he drops out of the whole whole first round yeah so there's guys there's stuff like that that happens all the time what uh so you were obviously you know a scout you're in war rooms uh whenever a draft completes I know personally, I'm just like, yeah, the Bears nailed it because you have,

Speaker 1 you know, between the draft and when they start playing football, you can just convince yourself that, yeah, we got every great pick. This is awesome.
A-plus.

Speaker 1 Was there ever a draft where you guys were like, we actually didn't do that great? Or is it like everyone we love?

Speaker 1 Like, you're like, maybe like, oh, we really wanted this guy and we weren't able to get him. We just don't feel that great about the draft we just submitted.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've, I mean, I've had a draft in Cleveland where we didn't pick till the fourth round. I mean, so it was like, I mean, that was brutal.
I ate a lot of cookies in the draft room that year.

Speaker 4 Just bored out of my mind.

Speaker 4 But yeah, that one, I mean, you didn't know what, and it ended up not being very good. But you didn't know what you had at that point in time with that group.

Speaker 4 But I know before I got to the Ravens, I know that they, you know, like, I think it was Ed, might have been the Ed Reed draft or the Ray Lewis draft, one of those Hall of Famers where they had targeted another player who didn't end up being great.

Speaker 4 And they were kind of, you know, let down and bummed about that a little bit. And then after like one mini rookie manicamp, like, holy crap, like, yeah, this worked out.

Speaker 4 This worked out quite well for us.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is so funny because it's just like, I just never even thought like a draft room could just walk out and be like, damn, we kind of blew that.

Speaker 1 Because you'd think that they, no matter what, you'd just be like, all right, whatever we got, like, we have some time to work with these guys. You don't know what, that's the beauty of a draft pick.

Speaker 1 You don't know what you can always just think of their ceiling, not their floor. Uh, but just walking out of a draft room being like, fuck, we kind of fucked that up.

Speaker 4 There's been, I mean, there's been times for sure. I know one year I was in Philadelphia where there was a player we took in the second or third round that just individually I had a very low grade on.

Speaker 4 And it's like, it's the weirdest feeling in the world, man, because you're like, for my livelihood, I need this to be a really good player. And hopefully we win and we all get playoff bonuses.

Speaker 4 But there's also the part of like, I didn't think this guy was very good. Yeah.
And so it's like, is this to reflect on me as an, you know, as an evaluator?

Speaker 4 And it was one of those deals where I think we kind of went off of more of like, you know, a closer, somebody had a close relationship with the coach, the college coach and kind of was kind of worried over what you've seen.

Speaker 4 And he didn't, he did not end up being a good player. But that's a, that's a weird, it's a weird vibe when you're like individually like, I don't really like this dude, but now I'm, I hope he's great.

Speaker 4 I hope I'm wrong.

Speaker 6 It's a tough, it would be a tough victory lap to take, too, if you were like, I don't like this guy. They drafted him.

Speaker 1 And then I told you guys. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And then yeah, like he misses, he misses a tackle in a game that costs us the playoffs. I'm like, I told you guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was right. You guys were wrong.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but by the way, it is, I know it's a weird feeling for guys who are doing it as their job in the scouting rooms, but it's actually a very relatable feeling to all of us because I don't think I've ever done a fantasy football draft where I'm like, I love my team.

Speaker 1 I literally submit it and I'm like, what the fuck? That was a terrible. I hate my team.
I despise my team already. Like, I'm a bad drafter.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you read the

Speaker 6 grades for the drafts?

Speaker 4 I know. I fortunately have been out of the grade business.

Speaker 4 I had to do that my first couple of years at NFL Network, and I don't push back on much stuff, but like that one was like, can we just please find somebody else to do that?

Speaker 4 Like, I, I have no interest in it. I think it's so, it's like the silliest thing, but obviously it gets a lot of attention and uh and people read it and and and all that.

Speaker 4 But I just think it's like do it, do it in two years, and then it's like a then it's a real exercise. But this is kind of silly.

Speaker 4 All you're doing is reinforcing whatever your own opinion was before the drafts.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 4 There's no facts. There's no facts involved in any of it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you're mad at teams for not doing what you would have done in that draft. And you're like, F.

Speaker 6 My favorite is always the Seahawks draft from 2012, where they drafted Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, I think Bruce Irvin as well.

Speaker 6 And then I think Bleacher Report gave him an F and said none of these picks made any sense whatsoever. Which, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, they might have been.

Speaker 6 Bleacher Report might have been right about Russell Wilson.

Speaker 1 Russell Wilson, yeah, it took 10 years at a Super Bowl. Yeah, they're correct.
Two Super Bowl appearances later.

Speaker 6 Now I'm the idiot for mocking the guy that gave the bad grade on draft night. So hand up.

Speaker 1 I'll do it when I'm wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's true. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, I don't know what the.

Speaker 4 People read it though, so people care.

Speaker 4 Oh, I read every single one thing yeah the funny thing is you you'd be shocked how many teams like like like gms that get pissed at these grades yeah what do you care like who cares man like just you you like him hopefully he's a good player but like this doesn't mean anything coming from anybody out here yeah i also just seek out whoever gives the bears the highest grade I'm just like, I'll just find an A somewhere.

Speaker 1 Someone gave us an A somewhere, and then I'll just be like, that guy, fuck, he's so.

Speaker 4 Does anybody go lower than a C?

Speaker 6 Yes, yes, sometimes. Sometimes they'll do like, I think when the when the Lions picked Gibbs in the first round, I think a lot of

Speaker 6 people had them as like D minus, D plus, because they're like, that was a reach for a running back.

Speaker 6 That is what really sets off the draft graders is if you reach for a running back, they'll be like, F.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 The red pen comes out.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 All right, so I got one last question.

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Speaker 1 Give us one name, late first round, second round that you're in love with. So that way, when we watch the draft, we can be like, oh, that's DJ's guy.
Great pick by that team.

Speaker 4 Ooh, that's a good one.

Speaker 4 Let me see. Late first round, early second round.

Speaker 4 You know who I really like? Teams are kind of split on on him, but I really like him is Ennis Rakestraw, the corner from Missouri. He didn't run great.
He ran like 4-5-1, but

Speaker 4 he's so fun to watch. He's so tough.
You'll see pulling guards.

Speaker 4 He'll go attack him. He just plays way bigger than his size.
And he went up against a lot of the top dudes in the SEC and held up really well.

Speaker 4 He's one I think will slide a little bit just because he ran like 4-5-1 and he's 183 pounds.

Speaker 4 But I think you'll be watching games on Sunday next year and be like, dude, this guy's, this guy's making plays. Pretty good.

Speaker 4 He's like a, he's like a little bit like a Kirkland brand Witherspoon from last year.

Speaker 4 Just kind of like the knockoff. All right.

Speaker 1 So when we see the name Ennis Rake Straw come through, we're going to be like, that's a great pick.

Speaker 6 Costco. Yeah.
Yeah. Costco.
Although that's, I mean, Kirkland brand is awesome. Yeah.
Their hot dogs are still cheap as hell.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Is it still a buck fifty? I have not been in a while.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They're never going to change it.

Speaker 6 It's fantastic. It's the best deal.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I feel like every time I would go there too, I feel like the churro got longer. Like they just keep giving you more churro.

Speaker 1 They're pranking us. Yeah, and then watching the pizza sauce, the pizza machine.
My kids like to watch the pizza machine where they do the sauce and that's pretty cool.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think their vodka was ranked best vodka in America. Like it tastes better than right now.
We're just doing a commercial for Costco.

Speaker 4 What about the golf balls? Because I feel like every time I'm trying to find my ball, I find like four Kirkland balls.

Speaker 6 Yeah, those are the most lost golf balls. You're absolutely right.
Because I think people that buy their golf balls from Costco are the ones that are spraying under the tree.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the spray chart for Kirkland brand is just the woods.

Speaker 4 Yes. And I think there's also, obviously, you get them in bulk.
I would imagine it's a very good deal, which would leave you less likely to want to hunt that thing down. You're like,

Speaker 4 let's forget it. Let's just keep going.

Speaker 6 It's a fascinating study. My last question is, how deep into the second round can a team delude themselves and be like, well, our early second round pick is, that's basically your first rounder.

Speaker 6 Is it like the top five picks of the second round? You can say essentially your first round pick.

Speaker 4 I think if you're taking a wide wide receiver in the top of the second round, you can be like, I got a first round player just because, you know, maybe they get pushed down a little bit because the depth there.

Speaker 4 I think, you know, for the most part, the defensive side of the ball, I don't think you're getting a, you know, you're not going to get a first round player in the top of the second round in this draft.

Speaker 4 So I would say if your team drafted a wide out in the second round, you can, you can, you know, bump your chest a little bit and say, dude, we just got a first-round tight player with a first-round grade here in the second round.

Speaker 1 How many first-round grades do you have in this draft?

Speaker 4 Well, it's kind of you know the way that the way that it is i wouldn't say like just like first round grade second round grade i would say like where the fall off point is um

Speaker 4 i think you get to i can probably go like 20 22 deep is is is around where that spot would be okay and then i think it starts to starts to drift off a little bit i like that i love the fall off points yeah 22 first round picks but 32 picks overall yeah those other guys shouldn't even be there yeah well to that to that point like 24 and 34, like, I don't know that it's that, you're not getting that different of a player.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's good. That's good to know.
All right. Well, DJ, thank you as always.
Best of luck. We'll be watching.
You're the best. And yeah, good luck on the draft on Thursday night.

Speaker 4 I appreciate it. Congratulations to both your teams.
I'm looking forward to seeing that NFC championship game next year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're, yeah, next year, think about it this way. Next year, this time, we're going to be having you on and we're going to be like, so the Bears pick 32, the Commanders pick 30.

Speaker 1 We beat them in the NFC Championship game. This is crazy.
Yeah. We're not.

Speaker 6 Actually, we probably won't have you on next year because we won't care about the draft because we're drafting so late in the first round.

Speaker 6 That it's like, yeah, you can go on Max's podcast that he does with the Eagles drafting number two.

Speaker 4 You guys, yeah, you guys are talking baseball this time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks so much, DJ.

Speaker 4 All right, guys. All right.
Take care of you later.

Speaker 12 And now for something completely different.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on our very good friend, recurring guest. It is Field Yates from ESPN, and he will be on your television on draft night.

Speaker 1 Let's start there, Field, before we get into maybe some draft intel that you have for us.

Speaker 1 How are we feeling about draft night?

Speaker 1 What's your exact role? And are you like, this is your first time doing like the whole thing, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, this is my first time doing it in this capacity. So on Thursday and Friday, I'll be part of the ABC broadcast.

Speaker 5 So ESPN has the traditional ESPN broadcasts, which will be Kuiper and Greene and Booger and Lewis Riddick on the primary sets with Molly McGrath doing the player interviews.

Speaker 5 And there might be a couple others that I'm missing there, but that'll be sort of the people that you'll be hearing the most from on ESPN.

Speaker 5 And then on ABC, it'll have a little bit of a different feel to it. It's called sort of the storytelling broadcast.

Speaker 5 So you might hear a bit more about the players, about the humans, excuse me, on top of the players. But it'll be a lot of familiar faces to college football people.

Speaker 5 It will be Rhys Davis hosting with Kirk Herbstree, Desmond Howard, and then Nick Saban making his ESPN/slash ABC debut. So that'll be sweet.

Speaker 5 Pete Thamel, myself, and then Laura Rutledge will be doing the player interviews on the ABC side. And then on Saturday, we got the full rounds four through seven.

Speaker 5 I'll be back over on the ESPN set as we reduce down to just one broadcast.

Speaker 1 So you're doing the tragedy broadcast?

Speaker 5 I hope there's not too much tragedy, but I have thought about that.

Speaker 1 Okay, I was reading through.

Speaker 5 So I've been spending, you know, at some point, you kind of have to turn the page on like, you know, all the film study and all like the various notes you've been taking on players and just kind of remind yourself about the things that you've seen or the things that you've tracked over the past 11 or so months.

Speaker 5 And I was looking for a few more uplifting stories because I am mindful of the people that feel like the draft, which is supposed to be this very celebratory night, can turn a bit somber sometimes.

Speaker 6 That's great. That's smart.

Speaker 6 How many names do you know right now?

Speaker 1 Ooh, good question.

Speaker 5 There were probably upwards of... Yeah, so ESPN asked me how many wanted to have ranked.
And actually, Kuiper gave me a little hint here, but I thought was a useful one.

Speaker 5 So I ended up ranking 200 for ESPN.com. Probably had closer to 330 or 340 players ranked.

Speaker 5 The reason why we cut it off, though, is: I think this is probably logical to you guys, but people who watch the draft broadcast or a little bit less football guys may not necessarily think of it this way.

Speaker 5 Is as you get further and further away from player number one, the difference between like player 150 and 190 is pretty negligible, right?

Speaker 5 It's a lot of times as simple as like preference, maybe the system you're playing, and et cetera.

Speaker 5 But it even gets more and more difficult to sort of figure out the difference between 220 and 250.

Speaker 5 So Kuiper said, hey, cut it off at 200, at least in year one, because the last thing you want is player 325 in your board to be drafted at 110th.

Speaker 5 And people saying, why the heck did whatever this team reach by 200 plus slots according to your big board when the reality is it might be that player 110 and player 320 aren't that dissimilar of players, even if the ranking suggests a huge gap.

Speaker 6 Or you take him at the end of the draft because you want to control where he's going to go and you think, oh, oh, there's another team that's that's closer to him geographically that he might end up going to as a free agent.

Speaker 6 So let's just use our pick to get that guy on camp.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's sort of the mentality.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I think the reality of day fourth, rounds four through seven, two guys, as you guys, I'm sure, know this, but like, it's just so much of it is much more like beauty in the eye of the beholder, right?

Speaker 5 There are certain teams who, their offensive line preference is more athletic guys. Some teams prefer size.

Speaker 5 Some teams prefer, you know, corners that maybe don't necessarily have great size, but have great speed. Other teams can compromise speed for size.

Speaker 5 So, well, I think the first 20, 25, 30 players on the board are probably going to be names that the league evaluates pretty closely. And certainly in the first 10 picks, that's going to be the case.

Speaker 5 But the further we get from pick number one, the more and more likely we are to have some curveballs.

Speaker 5 And as a result of that, those rankings can become, at least to my mind, a bit more difficult to accurately pinpoint when you're scouting for 32 teams as a scouting, as opposed to just scouting for one team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the first two rounds are for criticizing all the other teams.

Speaker 1 And then rounds like three through seven are basically selling yourself on whoever your team picks, being like, this is actually a steal. We got to die.

Speaker 1 I believe we got this guy. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 100%. Yeah.
Like there's a couple kids.

Speaker 5 There's a handful of players from both North Dakota and South Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota State, and University of South Dakota who are all good players.

Speaker 5 But I really can't wait for people to say, like, with absolute conviction, like, we got that guy in the fourth. Like, we got him in the fourth.
Kidding me that corner from South Dakota.

Speaker 5 Like, most people had him in the third round. We got him in the fourth.
Like, imagine, like, you know, we just might as well book the playoff tickets now. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's a part of the exercise for sure.

Speaker 1 All right. So I just looked up your top 200.
Thank you for ranking Caleb Williams number one. But I, so you have Caleb Williams number one.
You have Marvin Harrison third.

Speaker 1 I feel like everyone has said that Marvin Harrison is, if you just went best player, like best pro on the board, Marvin Harrison would be number one. So why did you why do you have two quarterbacks?

Speaker 1 You have Caleb Williams one,

Speaker 1 Jaden Daniels two. Why do you have them ahead of Marvin Harrison?

Speaker 5 Yeah, part of it is the positional value, just because

Speaker 5 if Jaden Daniels and Caleb Williams become top 15 players at their position, which obviously both the Bears and the Commanders are hopeful that it's top five players at their respective positions, a top 15 quarterback is going to get paid way more than the number one wide receiver in the NFL.

Speaker 5 And I think you would argue that a top 15-ish quarterback can tilt the fortunes of a team a lot more than the number one wide receiver in the NFL.

Speaker 5 So at the very top, it feels a little bit sort of like it just feels kind of weird when you're talking about players.

Speaker 5 Saying Marvin Harrison isn't the best in the NFL draft feels like kind of a shot at him, but it's a bit of just like baking in the value of those guys being quarterbacks.

Speaker 5 And I do feel as though, you know, this is sort of a two-quarterback tier at the top of the board. I've got a lot of love for Drake May, who's fifth on the board as well.

Speaker 5 But I do see a gap between Caleb Williams Williams and Jaden Daniels and Drake May.

Speaker 5 So I thought that sort of having that quarterback, quarterback, then wide receiver, wide receiver run at the very top did reflect how I view this sort of draft class at the very top.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I would personally take Marvin Harrison Jr., but we do need a quarterback in D.C. So I'm happy to take quarterback for the record.

Speaker 6 I know that Marvin Harrison is an AWL, listens to every podcast.

Speaker 6 I have your son ranked number one, sir. So don't come out.

Speaker 5 That's the respect he deserves. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, he's and like Marvin Harrison Jr., it's really, there's like not a single thing in his game that you can point to that isn't at an above average or excellent level.

Speaker 5 That's kind of one of the cool things about this draft class that you got three receivers at the very top, him and Malik Neighbors and also Martin, and then also Roma Dunze, where one of them is going to have to be third receiver taken.

Speaker 5 And it might not be until the seventh, eighth, or ninth pick.

Speaker 5 And in a different draft, like all three of those guys could easily be the number one wide receiver taken and maybe even the top three selection.

Speaker 5 So it's going to sound to one of these teams like they're getting the third best wide receiver, I guess, to the fan bases of these teams.

Speaker 5 But the reality is there's a very, very small difference at the very top between Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Neighbors, and Roma Dunze.

Speaker 5 All three of those guys are part of the blue chip group that we have in this year's class.

Speaker 5 I would say, along with, you know, three of the quarterbacks plus Brock Bowers, like it's a pretty special seven or eight players at the very top of the board.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you're looking for tips for Thursday night, but here's a tip.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 I really wish Roma Dunze's name was Romeo Dunze.

Speaker 1 That is a good one. Did you hear the reason why his name is Rome?

Speaker 5 His dad was infatuated with Roman Empire, so that's how they landed.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like that. I was thinking about Roman Empire.

Speaker 6 That's a football guy move right there.

Speaker 1 But wouldn't it be cool to use Romeo? Plus move. Romeo Adunze? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Romeo Adunze would be a great NBA prospect. Yeah, true.

Speaker 1 True.

Speaker 1 But Rome.

Speaker 5 I don't know if he has any basketball in his background, but if he does, might make more sense.

Speaker 1 Oh, since you know all the stories, who's the best athlete in another sport in the draft?

Speaker 5 Well, J.J. McCarthy was an awesome hockey player and the cross player growing up.
So he's a three-sport athlete. He's certainly up there.

Speaker 5 Keon Coleman played Peon Coleman, the Florida State wide receiver, began his career at Michigan State. He was on the basketball team for a year.

Speaker 5 So he was a sick athlete as well, which kind of shows up. I feel like sometimes we do that too often.

Speaker 5 We tried to, you know, like DJ Burns, we tried to make that an NFL thing for a minute during North Carolina State's run to the Final Four.

Speaker 5 But with Keon Coleman, like the basketball stuff does kind of show up.

Speaker 5 Like he plays above the rim in the red zones, like constantly making catches over defenders and going up for catches with one hand and somehow bringing them down.

Speaker 5 He certainly would be on the short list as well. There's always a handful of basketball guys, it feels like, in every class.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to think of anybody else that has an obvious multi-sport background that I'm forgetting off the top of my head, but those two came to mind.

Speaker 1 I love whenever that's a story just because it's like, man, these guys just have it all.

Speaker 1 Where it's like, yay, did you know that this guy who's getting drafted in the top 10 could throw 99 miles an hour?

Speaker 6 This guy's good at sport.

Speaker 1 He's good at all as an athlete.

Speaker 5 He's really athletic. Crazy how that works, right?

Speaker 6 Is there any play that you're looking at that's going to either give Roger Goodell a giant, giant, giant hug or maybe a very confusing handshake that Roger Goodell won't be able to keep up with?

Speaker 5 Ooh, good one. I got to shoot.
There's only 13 players going to the draft this year. Do you guys see how small that list is?

Speaker 1 People are getting scared, huh? They don't want the green room. I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't know if that's because I don't know if it's just because there's a little bit more uncertainty in terms of who's going to go there.

Speaker 5 I don't know if players are wary of being the guy left in the green room, potentially overnight. I feel like all 13 guys that are going, I feel pretty good about them being taken in the first round.

Speaker 5 So I'd have to go back and look at the list. But this offensive line class is full of absolutely massive humans.
If Amarius Mims went, he's from Georgia.

Speaker 5 If he is going to the draft, and I don't believe he was invited, he would be a leader in the clubhouse.

Speaker 5 I saw this note. ESPN Stats and Information Group does a great job of pulling together notes on the top 200 prospects.

Speaker 5 And I know you guys love talk of wingspan and hand size and things like that during the pre-draft process.

Speaker 5 And they dropped in there that Amarius Mims' wingspan is a quarter of an inch shorter than Giannis's so just to give you some perspective in terms of how big this human is.

Speaker 5 So I feel like if he goes to the draft, and I don't think he was on that list, but if he did go, if he decided to make a last-minute call and fly to Detroit, I feel like Amarius Mims would swallow Roger Godell.

Speaker 6 It'd be very funny if as the first Zoomer quarterback, Caleb Williams, just gave him a big kiss on the lips.

Speaker 1 Oh, I love it.

Speaker 6 Just like made out with Goodell Rose.

Speaker 1 Maybe cupped his balls. Yeah.
What up? Checked him off. Wait, who's got the biggest hands?

Speaker 5 I believe it's Patrick Paul, whose older brother Chris Paul, not to be confused with Rosalie's Chris Paul, plays for the Commanders, who actually took over as a starter second half of last season.

Speaker 5 I think he's at like 10 and a half inch hands. Pennix has huge hands as well.

Speaker 5 You know, it's weird. I feel like there's been less talk about hand size this year with the quarterbacks, which is good.

Speaker 5 I don't know if I've seen this, and I haven't been doing this nearly as long as Kuiper, but I ran it off him, and he did not have a great recall of a player with this kind of measurement.

Speaker 5 But Olu Fashionu, the left tackle from Penn State, who could be a top 10 pick, certainly a top 15 or 18 pick guy's a stud.

Speaker 5 He was actually Caleb Williams' teammate in high school, so he protected for him for a few years there, and then went to Penn State. He has,

Speaker 5 I think someone saw this, like one of the smallest hands on record at the combine, eight and a half inches for an offense. So you would just think that an offensive lineman, just based off of

Speaker 5 the position they play and their overall size, would have bear clothes, but he's got eight and a half inch hands. So that's an important stat that people need to be aware of for Thursday night.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure what it means, but it's important.

Speaker 1 That's really tiny.

Speaker 6 That's a good bizarre for a human being. I like that a lot, too.
Have any teams taken our advice and started measuring quarterbacks to the eyeball and not to the top of the head?

Speaker 5 I've seen, well, do we have any quarterbacks this year that have a hairstyle that would make the top of the head a little bit like trickier?

Speaker 1 Bo Nix has done the spiky hair. Bo Nix has done the spiky hairy hairy hairy spiky hair.

Speaker 5 Bo, I was kind of surprised i saw bow at the senior bowl and then i went to oregon pro day i i he was bigger than i realized uh i maybe i just i don't know why i assumed that he wasn't like all of 6'2 6'2 and a half but bow kind of surprised me with this size all right so uh let's talk real quick about like some of the scuttle butt that's going on right now i saw a report that the patriots are trying to trade out a three so how much Is that reality and what would be their plan there?

Speaker 1 They're now saying we don't want a quarterback.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so first of all, I had to stop listening to McShay with you guys on Monday, about 15 minutes in, because I was starting to realize that Todd and I had heard some similar things.

Speaker 5 I love Todd, obviously. He's awesome, and

Speaker 5 he was great with you guys from the part that I heard. But I was realizing we were starting to hear the same things.
And I was like, you know what?

Speaker 5 I don't want to come on the show and simply regurgitate what I think Todd had said. A lot of it sounded pretty good to me.

Speaker 5 So I had to cut myself off.

Speaker 5 So if some of this sounds like repeat for McShea, I don't want people to think that it's just because I heard McShay, but rather to sort of support that maybe there's some validity to some of the things

Speaker 1 that we are hearing.

Speaker 1 You did your due diligence. We are going to need you to, after the draft, finish that episode for the numbers.
Oh, no, I'll do it.

Speaker 5 I'll do it after we finish today.

Speaker 1 I still want to hear what Todd had to say. Yeah, got it.

Speaker 6 That's loyalty.

Speaker 5 But so the Patriots, I think they would be, I think they would listen. I think we'll listen to

Speaker 5 an offer at pick three only because, you know, obviously, if their board is Caleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, and Drake May slash J.J.

Speaker 5 McCarthy in terms of the third and fourth quarterbacks, then you're getting, at best, your third or fourth quarterback, and QBs can kind of be like real estate, right?

Speaker 5 Like there might be, whatever, a few houses on the market for the same price, and you see, you know, one differently than the other.

Speaker 5 And, you know, reasonable minds can agree on things, and reasonable minds can disagree on things. That being said, the Patriots need a quarterback so bad right now.

Speaker 5 Look at the roster, and obviously they have so many holes. But I would be surprised if the Patriots ended up trading out of pick three.

Speaker 5 What I don't know for sure right now, and I suppose this could change with like one tweet from Schefter or a big insider that suggests where the Patriots could turn.

Speaker 5 I think it will end, it would end up being Drake May.

Speaker 5 I don't think J.J. McCarthy should be totally ruled out, but I do lean towards Drake in that scenario.

Speaker 5 But the problem with trading down, I've talked about this throughout the process for the Patriots or anybody else that's sort of been rumored as a potential trade-down candidate that needs a quarterback, is while the Patriots could trade down and maybe get the Vikings 11th overall pick, 23rd overall pick, and then a pick next year, whether it's a first-round pick or something else significant, is the Patriots wouldn't have a quarterback in that scenario.

Speaker 5 And then a year from now, the Patriots could find their way to like six or seven wins. I don't know that I view them right now as a team that's going to be very good.

Speaker 5 That being said, it's the NFL, right? Like the Giants this past season are a good example of this.

Speaker 5 If the Giants had finished with the fourth worst record in the NFL and had the fourth pick, we might all be talking about four quarterbacks going off the board to begin the draft without any trades whatsoever.

Speaker 5 But instead, the Giants might not draft a quarterback in part because in order to get up to pick four, they might have to move maybe a first round pick in 2025 along with pick six.

Speaker 5 So you might get a bunch of assets when you trade down, but you might just need to repurpose them a year from now to get back up to take one of those quarterbacks.

Speaker 5 And while anything can happen and Shador Sanders and Quinn Newers and a handful of other quarterbacks certainly are going to be talked about a lot going into the 2025 draft cycle, you just don't know until those guys go through their final season.

Speaker 5 Jaden Daniels is a good example of how a player can certainly rise way up.

Speaker 5 And then Drake May is an example of a guy who, you know, going into the season, people would have thought there was no way anybody could challenge Kale Williams except for Drake May.

Speaker 5 And now Drake could, we'll see, but could be the third quarterback off the board.

Speaker 6 Yeah. All right.
So when it comes to the quarterbacks, Caleb Williams,

Speaker 6 he's going to Chicago. We've established that.
The Bears are all in on him.

Speaker 6 He's going to be awesome. He's going to be awesome.
He's going to be awesome.

Speaker 1 He's going to be awesome.

Speaker 6 One of the best quarterbacks that we've ever seen. Ever.

Speaker 6 I always like when teams are leading up to the draft, you'll talk about the presumptive number one pick quarterback and then compare them to quarterbacks from 10 years ago.

Speaker 6 Right now, that guy I feel like is still Andrew Luck, where they say, is the most surefire prospect since it's always Andrew Luck right now if you have a really good quarterback.

Speaker 6 But if you were to compare Caleb with the number one quarterbacks that have been drafted in, say, the last five years as prospects,

Speaker 6 where would no, I'm just curious, where would you rank Caleb in terms of all the top prospects?

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Because I know the answer.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I would think, and let me just make sure. So five years would be 2018 to 2022, right? Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, going into the process.

Speaker 10 Yep.

Speaker 5 Going into, like, not based off what we know now, right?

Speaker 1 Because we do know what we know now. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Josh and Lamar have raised, you know, have raised the bar, right? I mean, those guys from the 2018 draft class are certainly at a different level.

Speaker 5 But I would say going in, going into the draft, it would be Caleb and Trevor, sort of in the tier one by themselves.

Speaker 5 And, you know, we'll see with Trevor. I still have a lot of optimism on what he can become.
It's been kind of a weird start through the first three years. But I would say that

Speaker 5 Caleb is sort of right there with Trevor in terms of like tier one quarterbacks going into the process.

Speaker 5 Obviously, what they become after they get drafted is a whole different part of the conversation, but that's where I would view him as at least.

Speaker 5 I mean, now Jaden Daniels had one of the best college seasons we've seen, you you know, maybe ever, right? I mean, he won the Heisman Trophy, which already puts him on the short list.

Speaker 5 And that wasn't enough to overtake Caleb Williams. So I think that sort of suggests just how much of a

Speaker 5 shirt thing is not the word I like to use, but how strong of a prospect Caleb Williams is and why that number one pick was so valuable for the Bears.

Speaker 5 When you were asking me for like a comparison, you know, we always do this thing where we compare guys from like the last 10 years or so.

Speaker 5 My favorite thing with working with Kuiper is, you know, Kuiper will be like, he'll be talking about some wide receiver, like, you know, Malachi Corley, who might go in the second round.

Speaker 5 He'll be like, Phil, you know, doesn't he remind you of like Al Toon who got tracked in like 1974? And I'm like, Mel, no.

Speaker 5 Maybe. That's possible, right? But Mel, you know, obviously when you got a 46-year Rolodex of prospects to work off of his comparisons, date a little bit further back than I do.

Speaker 5 But I don't recall quite what the players were like back in 1976.

Speaker 1 So, all right, so we had another one

Speaker 1 I'm curious about with J.J. McCarthy.

Speaker 1 There's now I'm hearing, this is all hearing internally, literally in our office, there's debates that he is going to be like Will Levis and that he will fall and this is all just fodder and people are pumping him up

Speaker 1 What's the what's the reality?

Speaker 5 I don't think he'll fall. I don't know that he'll go third third overall, which I mentioned earlier is like I would say there's a chance.
I don't know if it's a great chance.

Speaker 5 I wouldn't totally dismiss it, but he's not going to fall too far. I would think the floor for J.J.
McCarthy, the absolute floor would be 11th for the Vikings.

Speaker 5 But that would be a really, like, that would be a ballsy game of chicken the Vikings would be playing if they don't move up from pick 11. And just imagine, like, the possibility of J.J.

Speaker 5 McCarthy falling to them is in play, right? Because you can make a case that, you know, obviously the Cardinals aren't taking the quarterback. The Chargers aren't.
The Titans aren't.

Speaker 5 The Falcons, I don't think, are. The Bears obviously aren't with number nine and the Jets not at number 10.
The problem is. The Broncos at 12 and the Raiders at 13 are looming, right?

Speaker 5 So all three of those teams were kind of competing against each other with this smaller, you know, every pick away from one reduces the size of the quarterback pool. So I think JJ's floor is 11.

Speaker 5 I think the more realistic floor is probably somewhere within the first six picks because I do think we'll have at least one trade-up.

Speaker 5 But my grip on like where these quarterbacks are going to go feels a lot like a lot weaker once we get past JJ because I think there are people that feel like Mike Pennix Jr.

Speaker 5 is a lock to go by 13 at the absolute latest for the Raiders. And there are others who say I could see both he and Bo having to wait around a little while.

Speaker 5 I'm starting to move closer and closer towards Pennix definitely going early off the board and Bo finding his way to the first round as well.

Speaker 6 Interesting. So if

Speaker 6 JJ is truly the best quarterback that's ever played at the University of Michigan, as Coach Harbaugh said.

Speaker 1 What he could say, because he's counting himself.

Speaker 6 He's counting himself and he's counting Tom Brady and he's counting everybody. If he truly believes that, wouldn't he want to draft him?

Speaker 5 You would think so, right? Yeah. No respect for Denard Robinson, others that have made their way through Michigan, by the way, from Jim Harbaugh.

Speaker 5 It's actually kind of a brilliant play in this regard, right? Like, I'm not saying that J.J. McCarthy wouldn't have been in the conversation without Jim Harbaugh's approval.

Speaker 5 I do believe that he would be very much in this conversation. But Jim Harbaugh being the ultimate hype man has been a nice way to remind people about how good this kid is.

Speaker 5 And the public is like buying it more and more and more.

Speaker 5 And what I will say is that, well, I don't think GMs and head coaches are paying attention to what other GMs and head coaches are saying publicly about a player that they just spent time with, right?

Speaker 5 No GM or head coach is going to do anything other than promote the crap out of that player. I do think owners, you know, they got these rabbit ears, right? And they're hearing everything.

Speaker 5 And I think that an owner whose team might be thinking about taking J.J. McCarthy in the first, you know, 10 picks probably feels more solid about it because of Jim Harbaugh's words.

Speaker 5 And Jim, with that fifth overall pick, not taking a quarterback, may have increased the value of that pick in a trade, right?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 5 you know, he's so he kind of workshopped this

Speaker 5 a long time ago to kind of set his team up for a potentially more valuable trade back if the Chargers go that way, which is certainly possible. I think it's a totally reasonable case.

Speaker 5 I think there's a totally reasonable case for them to just sit at pick five and take a wide receiver, given releasing Mike Williams and trading Keenan Allen.

Speaker 5 But the Chargers, you know, and Jim Harbaugh's history tells you, like, if there's anybody who's going to try to play this game as old school as possible and maybe not necessarily need to invest a ton of valuable resources into the wide receiver room.

Speaker 5 It might make you think, at least of the draft, that's Jim Harbaugh and his new GM, Joe Hortiz.

Speaker 5 So I wouldn't rule out, obviously, the Chargers being a trade-back team, even if, you know, Malik Neighbors or Roma Dunze or Marvin Harrison Jr. would look perfect playing with Justin Herbert.

Speaker 1 What other scuttlebuddy you got?

Speaker 1 Maybe what team is kind of laying in the weeds that you're hearing little things about where you're like, they might get active. They might trade up.
They might trade down.

Speaker 1 They could be the team that changes how the draft falls.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think that the first round, the first eight picks is where I think things are kind of interesting.

Speaker 5 So I think there's a chance that the first six picks are in some form or fashion four quarterbacks and two receivers, right?

Speaker 5 That would require a trade down by one of either the Chargers or the Cardinals, which I think is certainly in play.

Speaker 5 But if either of those things happens, then you'd probably have Minnesota being in the top five, taking the fourth quarterback, and then the Cardinals or the Chargers would take the first wide receiver.

Speaker 5 And then I think the Giants would take the second wide receiver but I think things get interesting with Tennessee and they have this big need at left tackle and Joe Alt from Notre Dame certainly very worthy of that seventh overall pick but unlike the wide receiver spot where you have this like really clear at least in my opinion like line of demarcation you got three like next level receivers and Marvin Harrison Jr.

Speaker 5 Malik Neighbors and then Roma Dunze and then a drop With the offensive tackle class, like there are people around the NFL that have told me it's at least a conversation between Joe Alt and Olu Fashionu or Joe Alt and Tali Fuaga as an Oregon State offensive tackle or Joe Alt and even Troy Fautanu from Washington.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I think that like if I'm Tennessee, if I think the gap is pretty narrow, and I just hired Bill Callahan, who's obviously the father of their head coach Brian Callahan, but one of the great offensive line coaches, maybe ever in the NFL.

Speaker 5 He might say, listen, I'm comfortable with whoever we get at, let's say, pick number 12 or 13, if we want to be the team that trades down and maybe you know the somebody wants to move up to grab that third receiver so in some ways i feel like seven and eight with tennessee and atlanta we've all been mocking joe alt and dallas turner from pretty much the uh combine on as those two picks One of those feels like it's due for a curveball and a trade back certainly would qualify in that category.

Speaker 5 I like that.

Speaker 1 I hadn't heard that one because I've been hearing mostly Cardinals, you know, Giants.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, the Cardinals could too, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Monty's trying to make that

Speaker 6 make that pick move right now.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, but isn't it funny how, like, and it's possible, like, I'm not, I'm not ruling this out, but like, uh, we've all, it's like a lot of people are assigning, like, Monty Austin forts, like, M.O., is the guy who's like constantly moving around the board.

Speaker 6 And it's like, he's been the GM for one draft.

Speaker 5 And, like, by the way, they got an offer that when they made that deal last year, we were all like, holy crap, like, that's an that's an unbelievable win for Arizona, right?

Speaker 5 Like, they got obviously pick 12, which they ended moving back up to pick six, but they got the Texans first-round pick in 2024.

Speaker 5 I remember at the time, I was like, they didn't announce it on the draft broadcast because the NFL didn't say anything, which 2024 first-round pick they were getting.

Speaker 5 And I kept thinking to myself, there's no way Houston would give up their own 2024 first-round pick, right? It's got to be Cleveland's 2024 first-round pick because Houston wouldn't give up.

Speaker 5 the potential of a top five or 10 pick. And obviously, things went very differently.
And Houston ended up being one of the great stories of this past season.

Speaker 5 So it's possible that Monty wants to move down, but he's got one draft of doing it, right?

Speaker 5 It's like one move that has sort of defined his MO, which for all we know, like he might just stick around and sit at number four and take Margaret Harrison Jr. because he's just that good.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 So you've got, obviously, Caleb, number one, reading the tea leaves, it sounds like you're set on Jaden going second.

Speaker 6 I hope you're right, but we've had Drake May moving up in the odds. We've had JJ moving up in the odds, but you're pretty confident it's Jaden number two.

Speaker 5 I feel good about Jaden going number two. You know, this past week was interesting, obviously.

Speaker 5 I mean, mostly incited by Jaden Daniel's agent, right, taking to Twitter and giving the sort of the hmm emoji, which, you know, I'm not sure it does a whole lot of good, right?

Speaker 1 But I will say, like,

Speaker 5 I think like the takeaway from that is more that like we're entering like kind of a different era of where athletes are, especially when they are entering the professional ranks, right?

Speaker 5 Because of NIL, that was sort of my takeaway from it is that like, you have to kind of treat these guys a little bit differently.

Speaker 5 Because I'd imagine, I don't know, you know, there's been the reports that Kaylee Williams was making, made like 10 million bucks last year at USC.

Speaker 5 So like these guys are probably used to from the past couple of seasons, especially this past year for Jaden when he, you know, put that team on his back and had this meteoric rise.

Speaker 5 Like probably every second of every day, being the center of attention and being sort of accustomed to people sort of expect, like that's kind of maybe his expectations that like, hey, when you're bringing me in, like for the past, you know, whatever the start of last football season was, eight, nine months, like that's been the way that I was treated.

Speaker 5 Like now I'm being brought in amongst amongst several quarterbacks. Like, it's just a different time right now for athletes, I think.
Um, but I do think Jaden Daniels ends up going number two overall.

Speaker 5 Like, I don't think there was some sort of like serious like calculus behind that decision last week to have three or four quarterbacks.

Speaker 5 I think it was just kind of like the commanders, people who are in charge of that organization, have been with organizations in the past that have done things similarly.

Speaker 5 And there's no rules for those pre-draft visits. But I feel good about Jaden Daniels going number two.

Speaker 5 And we all know about the dual threat, we all know about you know the great passing numbers last year with those two great receivers.

Speaker 5 But the part that I've felt best about with Jaden Daniels throughout the process that I think gives me a lot of confidence that he's going to be, you know, very successful at the NFL level is I'm not sure I saw a more composed player in big moments last year.

Speaker 5 And I know you guys know this, but you know, most people probably think LSU, like, you know, five stars all over the roster, like there's a ton of talent every single year.

Speaker 5 That wasn't the case last year for LSU on defense, and they needed to put up 40, 45, 50 points in a game every week to have any chance of winning.

Speaker 5 And the SEC has got a lot of great defensive teams, and Jaden Daniels pretty much solved them all. I mean, even Alabama, he left that game early.
It was early in the fourth quarter with a head injury.

Speaker 5 He was back the next week, so it wasn't super serious, but he had almost 400 yards of total offense against Nick Saban.

Speaker 5 I can't wait to see what Saban has to say on Thursday night when Jaden's taken, because, you know, if Sabin can't totally solve you, like to me, that's another reason to believe confidently in that player.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Although

Speaker 1 it was always when Saban, they're like,

Speaker 1 you know, a mobile quarterback is Saban's kryptonite. And it was like, but he only lost like four games in like 10 years.
Like, but Johnny Manzel. It's just my favorite thing to say.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That one fateful Saturday afternoon when Saban, like, you know, God forbid he loses one game.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. I got a couple last questions.

Speaker 1 First one about the actual logistics of draft night for you. So a lot of names, a lot of backstories, a lot of colleges.
You are an AWL. We want to protect you.

Speaker 1 How many mistakes are we going to stomach and go to bat for you? Because there will be mistakes. So, like, is it Field Yates fucks up one time and we will defend you?

Speaker 1 But if you fuck up two times, we're going to have to be like, we don't know this guy.

Speaker 5 Right. Yeah, I think three strikes seems reasonable.

Speaker 1 We'll play with some baseball rules.

Speaker 10 You mean like

Speaker 5 messing up a name or something like that? Not like evals, because there could be a lot of evals that, you know, we look back three years from now and it's like, yeah, that doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 That doesn't matter thinking. Yeah, that doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 I'm saying like name, wrong school, wrong pronunciation like we got to be ready because the internet's a mean place so it is yeah what do we say two should say two mistakes it depends on what the mistakes are yeah all right so here's the only thing i'll say and i was gonna bring this up anyway so i'm glad that you kind of led me to this we got a very difficult group of names at the top of this year's draft board i've been practicing these guys like crazy but olu fashionu Penn State, some people have been saying Olu Fashanu.

Speaker 5 His first name is complicated enough that I think he's just has gone by Olu on broadcast for quite some time now that it's not even worth trying.

Speaker 5 We got Tali Fuaga from Oregon State,

Speaker 5 whose first name is actually Taliazi or Talyisi, depending on who you talk to, because he's answered to both during interviews that I have watched or in the pre-draft process.

Speaker 5 But I was on the road for one of the pro days and somebody said, well, if it makes you feel any better, when we met with him, he mentioned that people just call him Tali. So I've landed on Tali Fuaga.

Speaker 5 Got Troy Fatanu from Washington. That's top of the, that's three guys who could be top 15 or so picks.
So Leatu Latu from UCLA, also a guy who deserves to be a top 15 pick. So I can't wait.

Speaker 5 Goodell, I think, is going to have to be very deliberate when he's going to the podium with those names.

Speaker 5 I feel like that's an underrated skill for a commissioner, but no joke this year with some of the names.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's going to read 15 names.

Speaker 1 And you also have to deal with the fact that I put Romeo romeo adunze in your head now yeah i'm definitely calling him romeo at some point that would be awesome

Speaker 5 make sure if gadell messes up the pronunciation you just jump in immediately afterwards and say it the correct way you don't have to tell him like you screwed this up just let america know that he's an idiot yeah well yeah i mean i we've got i do have the espn pronunciation guide now so i feel i feel better i feel like a little bit more confident right now because uh you know like i'm sure i should be spending more time like going through like a little more film on these guys or you know just going through my notes when you're when you're juggling, you know, 340 or so names in your brain, invariably there are players that you just haven't watched as recently as others.

Speaker 5 And obviously, 90, I don't know, 95% of the interest in the draft up until Saturday is Caleb Williams versus Jaden Daniels or Marvin Harrison Jr. versus Malik Neighbors.

Speaker 5 So those seventh round guys or undrafted guys haven't gotten quite as much love. So I probably could be spending a bit more time on some of those guys right now, which I'll try to find some time for.

Speaker 5 But the pronunciation now feels like my responsibility come come Thursday night.

Speaker 6 Got it. Okay.
My last question was just going to be: how many different Williams guys do you know?

Speaker 1 Last class. I'm just in this class alone.

Speaker 5 We've got Caleb Williams, Evan Williams.

Speaker 5 I could probably pull this up and sort it by last name. There's got to be a few of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're high on Williams.

Speaker 6 This would be a good question for Blake, right?

Speaker 1 Buy out the stock on Williams.

Speaker 6 No, you're not allowed to look it up.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, I just have my list in front of me. No.
Top your head.

Speaker 5 No, Evan Williams, Caleb Williams. Jeez, I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of them.
I feel like Mike Mike Williams is just bound to be a name. He's always

Speaker 5 a money. I just feel like there's, you know, like just throw out the generic names and you've got a chance there.
Okay. At least two.
At least two. All right.

Speaker 1 My last question: Roeback question, R-H-O-B-A-C K.com. Use promo code take 20% off your first purchase.
QZS, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Roback.com promo code take.

Speaker 1 This is a tough question for you, Field. And you probably can't, there's probably nothing you can do.
Okay. But maybe because, you know, ESPN's putting on the draft, ABC, all this stuff.

Speaker 1 Detroit Don and Superfan don't have tickets. They aren't put in the Lions inner circle.
This is a travesty. We need to figure out what

Speaker 1 they should. I'm sure they could buy tickets, but I know that the draft, the way they set it up,

Speaker 1 they put people in the little pods. These guys deserve to be there.
Can we figure it out? Can you figure out? Can you ask anyone?

Speaker 5 I'm getting off this and I'm going to make a call. Okay.

Speaker 1 Good, good. Gotcha.
That's all I need.

Speaker 5 It doesn't feel right.

Speaker 5 I probably should have spent a little more time figuring out what the actual ticket buying process was. It was not on my checklist prior to this.

Speaker 5 I just assumed that pretty much anybody gets. Aren't they expecting a quarter of a million people?

Speaker 1 I think they just thought that they would be in the little pod that they show everyone before and they show all the fans. And I'll say this right now:

Speaker 1 they will be on their best behavior. I'll put my reputation on the line, which is nothing.
So that's

Speaker 1 a lot. We're going to start doing that.

Speaker 6 What was the name of the lady that came that hadn't been there in years?

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck. What's her name?

Speaker 6 That fan.

Speaker 5 That hadn't been where? The drafting years?

Speaker 1 No, she hadn't been. She left.

Speaker 6 She used to sit with Detroit Don and Superfan, and she hadn't shown her face.

Speaker 1 She was like, I'm not coming back until they make the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Not Sprinkles.

Speaker 6 Was it

Speaker 1 no. Miss Sprinkle?

Speaker 1 Was it Sprinkles?

Speaker 6 It could have been.

Speaker 1 Ah, shit. All right.
Well, just see if we can

Speaker 1 see if there's any way. See if there's any way that we can.

Speaker 5 I got a couple more levers I can pull here before we actually, before the games begin. So I'm not giving up hope yet.

Speaker 1 Our reputation.

Speaker 1 I'll do. There's a lot of responses.

Speaker 6 If I put my reputation on somebody behaving in a crowd, that's actually the worst endorsement you can ever have.

Speaker 1 I'll do Detroit Don. You do Superfan.

Speaker 6 I endorse Detroit Don.

Speaker 6 I endorse Superfan to act in all ways like I would not act.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll say if Detroit Don gets out of line, then my reputation can be sullied.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Superfan will play everything by the book. Yeah.
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 I want these guys. They make this happen.
These guys

Speaker 6 they do everything for the lions they are they are the lions so by the way like what are they gonna do like they haven't picked 29th in probably i know right yeah it's really strange they're they scheduled this draft in detroit everyone's like oh that's gonna be cool no you gotta sit around and wait i i just know that dan campbell's gonna pick somebody that he's gonna get so fired up that he wants to just like wrestle his entire war room That'll be great.

Speaker 1 Totally. Oh, it's going to be great.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that is one of my, I think you guys have highlighted this in the past, but that's also one of my favorite parts of the draft, especially at the top, right?

Speaker 5 Where it's like, you know, who you're taking. And I get it.

Speaker 5 Other than Washington and Chicago, like, I guess you don't necessarily have a guarantee of who you're taking, um, but it's like, and they start immediately celebrating, which I get it.

Speaker 5 There's a lot of work that goes into this process. Like, it's okay to relieve, like, be exhale for a second, um, but and feel some relief.
But man, I do kind of get a chuckle out of that.

Speaker 5 That is always one of the better parts. It was sprinkles, by the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sprinkles, yeah,

Speaker 6 now you make me nervous, though, because you, you just said, like, bottom line, the commanders are taking Daniels, which I hope to God you're right.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 now I'm officially

Speaker 1 very nervous.

Speaker 5 I know, I know. You know, I've had a handful of commanders' buddies in my life, and it's like every time they, hey, have you talked to Schefter recently?

Speaker 6 Like, what's he saying?

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 6 I tend to believe, I do feel good about that one.

Speaker 15 I will.

Speaker 1 Me too. Me too, though.
Prove it otherwise.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I did hear this part from Todd, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. Like, from a tape standpoint.

Speaker 5 To me, it was, you know, it was pretty clear who the two best players in college football were, at least at the quarterback position this past year.

Speaker 5 So I feel good about Jaden going number two overall.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I think the draft sort of begins at number three, even if I do lean towards straight. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, Field, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 First one's on us, mistake-wise, on Thursday night.

Speaker 10 Second one, I'm out.

Speaker 1 Yep, second one, you're on your own.

Speaker 5 It's going to be a short-range as a draft analyst.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just make sure that the first one really counts. Like, don't

Speaker 1 screw up like a school on the first one and then say like someone's like parents are dead on the second one and they're alive because then we can't help you. Yeah, we can't.

Speaker 6 I would have no way to help you out of that badge.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, it happened to me last year.

Speaker 6 It happened to me last year at the Masters, our reputation is yet to recover. Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 5 That can be a long road back.

Speaker 1 Trust is a hard thing to earn, but an easy thing to lose, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, best of luck, Field.
Thank you so much, and good luck.

Speaker 11 Experian is your big financial friend, helping you find ways to save, manage your credit, and apply for cards labeled No Ding Decline.

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Speaker 1 okay let's wrap up with guys on checks uh by the way we are going to do Mr.

Speaker 1 Pear picks on Instagram live so go follow us on the pardon my take Instagram uh if you're listening to this we already picked his Tuesday night games but Wednesday morning we'll pick uh should we do it for mr.

Speaker 1 Pear what for his account yeah we we could do it from Mr. Pear's account.
Yeah. So we'll, so he went 2-0.

Speaker 1 We're not going to have him on every show, but we will do the picks because we've got to see how he does.

Speaker 6 I want to, I want to. It's Mr.

Speaker 8 Pear on Instagram. Yep.

Speaker 1 It's Mr. Pear on Instagram.

Speaker 6 I want to analyze the trends behind what he's good at picking. Wait.
What are his most successful picks?

Speaker 1 His Instagram handle is

Speaker 8 It's Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Do you see how that's confusing when we say it?

Speaker 6 It's ITS Mr. Pear.

Speaker 8 It's Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Oh, not at ITS, Mr.

Speaker 13 Prister Pear.

Speaker 1 It's part of the...

Speaker 1 His Instagram handle is Mr. Pear.
It's at It's Mr.

Speaker 6 Pear.

Speaker 8 It's at It's Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 So we will get some picks for the people.

Speaker 9 Hi to Big Fat, P L F T Handsome Hank, Philly Fat Natic, and Cake Marsh.

Speaker 9 They just call me Handsome Hank. I love that.
My boyfriend is currently finishing his master's program and will be joining me in the workforce soon after.

Speaker 9 I've been making more than him while he's been in school and working part-time, and we've been splitting our rent in general expenses.

Speaker 9 Once he graduates, he'll be making a lot more than me, and part of me thinks that he should cover more of the rent expenses now that he's working.

Speaker 9 He's saying that I should have been doing the same the past couple years while he's been in school,

Speaker 1 but it's not fair.

Speaker 9 I'm bringing this up now. Thoughts.
That's a good point.

Speaker 6 He got you there. Foot's on the other shoe.

Speaker 1 He got you there, especially with the

Speaker 1 you should have

Speaker 1 been paying more, but or wait, he said she should have been paying more, but she was splitting it.

Speaker 9 she he's saying that she should have been playing paying more yeah if she's going to ask him to pay more now that he's making more it's also relative like if he's making way way more just

Speaker 9 it is interesting that she's bringing it up now though yeah very interesting also i feel like you got to wait like maybe if you move and get a new place that kind of reopens negotiations but

Speaker 1 to just change it Also, long play here, get married and then joint bank account. You're good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you kind of got caught there, though. You kind of got caught.

Speaker 1 You should have seen the future there. You should have seen what was going to transpire and paid a little more

Speaker 1 when you were making more.

Speaker 6 Yeah, and I guess it depends when you moved in together, too. How long have you been dating up to this point? Have you been covering them for a matter of years?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Like, do you feel like maybe you're entitled to some of that money back?

Speaker 6 You put him through his masters.

Speaker 1 But she didn't. She didn't.

Speaker 6 They split it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 that's a crazy argument to make that that was uh what's the what's the guy's name bateman what's his first name jason jason that was very jason bateman yeah yeah it's interesting it's like that you you reminded me that was a flashback of you just got the news that like your entire family was killed by a mexican cartel while you're living in missouri yeah that that show

Speaker 6 they're just always leaving the the show is just michael or jason bateman backing his car out of a series of drivers in a minivan yeah

Speaker 9 Hey, PMT.

Speaker 9 I recently got out of a long-term relationship in which my boyfriend introduced me to his favorite sports team, the Buffalo Bills.

Speaker 9 Now I'm a huge fan. I'm afraid I will always associate the Bills with my ex, but I want to enjoy watching Josh Allen be a freak of nature.

Speaker 9 How might I mitigate this association so I can watch football and not be incredibly sad at the same time?

Speaker 1 You got to fuck Josh Allen.

Speaker 6 I was going to say that.

Speaker 1 Then it ruins the team for him.

Speaker 6 I was not going to say that part, but now I am.

Speaker 6 It is good. And I agree.

Speaker 6 If I was him, I'd be very upset that my ex is now rooting for my favorite team. I'd like nothing more than for her to pick just somebody else.
I feel like that should be divvied up.

Speaker 1 But she fell in love with Josh Allen.

Speaker 6 It happens. It's hard not to be.

Speaker 1 The best of us.

Speaker 6 Go ahead. What about when you start dating somebody else? Yeah.
Are you going to take on their fandom?

Speaker 9 Well, no, she says she wants to be a Bills fan. Yeah, but how's that?

Speaker 6 That's going to be a weird conversation in your next relationship when your boyfriend's like, why do you root for the Bills?

Speaker 1 It sounded like it didn't end so poorly because if it did end poorly, you'd either fuck Josh Allen or date a Cheese fan.

Speaker 1 One or the other.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you're a free agent, just find it nice. She doesn't want to be a free agent.
No, I'm saying, but just she's a free agent in terms of dating.

Speaker 1 Date a Cheese fan. Let's see how that goes.
I bet you would be fun.

Speaker 6 For, yeah, until January.

Speaker 9 I'm pregnant and my husband is adamant we name our first child Hercules because it's a badass name and guarantees our child will be strong and powerful.

Speaker 9 We don't even know the gender yet, but he is convinced it's a boy. He refuses to consider other names, calling any other name weak

Speaker 9 and accusing me of wanting to raise a softy or a wimp. He refers to our child, again, we don't know the gender, as Hercules.
He has been steadfast on this idea for over a year.

Speaker 9 Will he eventually back down or will I have to name my child after a cartoon?

Speaker 6 So Hercules, I guess he was a myth. He was a mythological figure before he was a cartoon.
That's true. It's kind of reduction, reducing it down to something brand new.

Speaker 6 But I I feel like you're setting the kid up for failure, actually, if you name him Hercules. Yes.

Speaker 6 Because unless he is the strongest kid, then he's going to be like kind of on the wimpy side for a Hercules. He's going to be the second strongest Hercules.

Speaker 1 Two things are happening here. One, definitely a girl.
It's going to be a girl.

Speaker 1 Update us when your baby girl arrives. Hope everything goes well.

Speaker 1 Two, this is just classic pre-having a child guy brain where they have plans in their head for my kid's gonna be the toughest, my kid's gonna be this, that, the other.

Speaker 1 And then you have the kid and you melt into a pool and you're just like, I hope he's happy and healthy and nothing else matters.

Speaker 1 So just wait it out because he will not care one iota once the kid arrives.

Speaker 1 Wait it out. And it's a girl.
Just so he knows. That's it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you're like adamant, it's a boy, it's going to be a girl. That's just a fact.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 I just, I feel like Hercules, unless they're the toughest kid ever, is going to be just a bad name for that kid.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just remember before I had kids, I had all these plans for my kids, and then it's like, oh, my kid likes rocks. My kid likes to pick up sticks.
Okay, that's the coolest thing in the world.

Speaker 1 And you know what? I'm down for that. You know what?

Speaker 6 If your kid does turn out to be strong, you can call him Hercules. Yeah.
You can still call him. There's no rule saying he's going to have a nickname.

Speaker 1 Hey, Hercules. Yeah.
Hey, Herc.

Speaker 6 Herc is kind of a cool name. Herc actually is a great name.
Watching the wire.

Speaker 1 That's a strength and conditioning coach. Yeah, Herc.
In the making. Bald head.

Speaker 6 Maybe OT.

Speaker 1 yeah. All right.
Good show, boys. Good show.
We covered everything.

Speaker 1 Numbers. 40.
8.

Speaker 9 20.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. I'll go 76.
3.

Speaker 8 18.

Speaker 13 Also, please tune in to PGA Tour Live this week.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, Jake. We'll be on the broadcast.

Speaker 7 Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

Speaker 1 When does it start?

Speaker 13 Thursday through Sunday.

Speaker 1 I love it. A team event, right? Yeah, a team event.
Do we know what the teams are? Yeah.

Speaker 6 What team's Max on?

Speaker 13 He's not playing.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 13 But I am also doing my first signature event in two weeks, the the Wells Fargo, which he's a two-time champion of.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's the fifth major.

Speaker 7 Pretty much. Hell yes.

Speaker 1 Good job, Jake. Thank you.
I'm proud of you.

Speaker 1 All right. Everyone can say the numbers? 99, Pug.
40. 20.

Speaker 13 8. 21.

Speaker 1 Shout out to everyone who bought a pug shirt. Sold over 100.

Speaker 1 Did you know that, Pug?

Speaker 1 Buy a pug shirt, Pug. Nice.

Speaker 1 65 65 65 65

Speaker 6 Max, I'm reading this post-game report here. It just says that Coach Nurse, an attempt to call a timeout by Coach Nurse, is neither recognized nor granted by the officials.

Speaker 6 It doesn't say that the attempt

Speaker 6 was a valid attempt.

Speaker 8 It says the first one was a valid attempt, the second one.

Speaker 1 Not at all.

Speaker 6 In the tweet that you sent over,

Speaker 6 that's what I'm looking at.

Speaker 8 The second one was a valid attempt.

Speaker 8 The second one was not a valid attempt.

Speaker 8 The first one was.

Speaker 6 Love you guys.

Speaker 6 I'll be coming for your love of day.

Speaker 6 Drink on me all.

Speaker 6 Drink on me.

Speaker 6 Needless to say,

Speaker 6 I thought today was about me. So let's wait.

Speaker 6 Slowly the mind is okay. Say on the knee.

Speaker 6 Last of the day, to be safe, this hardy.

Speaker 6 Thanks for playing to me, say, this hole. Hey,

Speaker 6 come on.

Speaker 6 Dream on me. Hey,

Speaker 6 I'll drink all the arms.