Celtics HC Joe Mazzulla, Nuggets HC Michael Malone, NBA Play Ins, Gregg Doyel creeped out America + Fyre Fest

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have a twofer for the people. A great

Speaker 1 NBA preview for the playoffs. We have...
Head coach of the Denver Nuggets, Mike Malone, who we had on last year. Great guy, great interview.

Speaker 5 Michael Malone.

Speaker 1 Michael Malone. I already fucked it up.
Michael Malone, we said we would protect him.

Speaker 1 And then we also have head coach of the Boston Celtics, Joe Missoula, who I'll just say must listen to interview because he won us all over. He's the man.
Yeah, we're going to talk play-ins.

Speaker 1 We're going to get Hank's draft big board. He actually

Speaker 1 went through with it.

Speaker 5 QBs. Just QBs? QB big board.

Speaker 1 I thought it was top 10. No.

Speaker 1 It was top 10. I was replacing Billy's QB bracket.
Oh, okay. All right.
So we're going to get his QB big board. He's watched the film.
We got Firefest, and we're going to do a redemption pick with Mr.

Speaker 1 Pear, the worst gambler of all time.

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Speaker 1 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

Speaker 1 And I not like the solid work to be done.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out on washing,

Speaker 1 and then I can't blame all on the sun. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down to electric avenue, and then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to electricity. It's part of my take isn't about Marshall Sports.

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The crown is yours. Today is Friday, April 19th, and PFT.

Speaker 1 You like that? The heart. You like that?

Speaker 5 I do like it.

Speaker 1 Because if you like that, there's going to be more of that coming.

Speaker 5 I love you. Yeah, I love you.

Speaker 5 That's how Greg Doyle wishes that interaction

Speaker 5 had gone. She's like, I'm in love with you, sir.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to talk about the play-ins, but we have to talk about Greg Doyle in the most cringe-worthy press conference I've ever seen, which if you didn't hear, can we actually put in the audio?

Speaker 5 I don't know. I don't think we should do that to the people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to put in the audio. Oh, no.
This is Greg Doyle

Speaker 1 talking to Caitlin Clark at her introductory press conference. I don't even know.
Like, I've watched it so many times. I've cringed every single time.

Speaker 1 He did the heart. emoji to Caitlin Clark, asked if Caitlin liked it, and then followed up with one of the weirdest things ever

Speaker 1 when he said, okay, well, start doing that to me and we'll get along just fine.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 5 he wrote a column on it. Yeah.
And then he apologized in his column with maybe a weirder column. No, it wasn't as weird as the heart thing, but it was almost as weird.

Speaker 5 In the column, he was, it was just all about him and how weird he is. Yeah.
So I'm going to read just part of it for you here. Okay.
He said, what happened was the most me thing ever in one way.

Speaker 5 By the way, right off the bat, like him saying, well, that's just, that's just kind of who I am. I'm just Greg with three G's.
I'm just Greg being Greg. That's all.

Speaker 5 He says, I'm sort of known locally, comma, psi, comma,

Speaker 5 writing out the word psy.

Speaker 5 I'm sort of known locally, psy, for having awkward conversations with people before asking brashly conversational questions. That's his problem.

Speaker 5 The conversation was too brashly controversial.

Speaker 1 No, conversational.

Speaker 5 Conversational questions.

Speaker 1 He's brashly conversational.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Brashley conversational. Good character trait to have for a reporter, by the way.
I've done this for years with Colts coaches Chuck Pagano, Frank Reich, and Shane Steichen.

Speaker 5 I've done it with Purdue players Carson Edwards and Zach Eady. I did it with IU's Romeo Lankford, talking to them as people, not as athletes.
Notice something about all those names?

Speaker 1 They all

Speaker 1 people? They're all people.

Speaker 5 They're all men. Oh,

Speaker 5 shit. So he doesn't know how to talk to a woman.
I think that part was clear.

Speaker 1 Oh, we didn't need, yeah, we didn't need you to write a column that you don't know how to talk to a woman.

Speaker 5 And then he said that he went through all the stages of grief, excuse me, the first two stages of grief after this happened. Okay.
Mourning his own passing on as an interviewer, I guess.

Speaker 1 Brashley conversational.

Speaker 5 He said he said denial. I didn't do anything wrong.
I gave Caitlin her signature heart-shaped hand gesture as a way of introducing myself and welcoming her to town.

Speaker 5 I did this during a nationally televised press conference. What kind of idiot acts creepy on national television? Me.
And then he was in anger and he said, This is how I talk to everyone.

Speaker 5 This is how I, uh, the male equivalent would be talking to uh Anthony Richardson. I'd have shown him the heart gesture and reiterated, I like that you're here.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 and then he played

Speaker 5 and don't worry. He had a conversation with a woman.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank God. So he talked to me.
Name a woman, Greg Doyle.

Speaker 5 He talked to a woman, someone that he trusts, that's close to him, and they told him that you can't talk that way to a young woman. There's a line, and he crossed it.

Speaker 5 I now realize what I said and how I said it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I mean, it was just wrong.
Caitlin Clark, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 Oh, you know what the craziest part is?

Speaker 1 He had another part in that press conference that was almost equally as cringeworthy where he asked the Indiana Fever head coach, he said, so you get the keys to that.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do with it?

Speaker 5 You're going to be able to drive that thing?

Speaker 1 I mean, it was, that was,

Speaker 1 like, that would have led every story, but then he obviously did the heart thing. Dude, that.
What is it? Wait. Okay, well, start doing that to me and we'll get along just fine.

Speaker 5 He asked the coach, like,

Speaker 5 that might be too much woman for you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you have a keys to that.

Speaker 5 Damn, what I would

Speaker 5 take that thing out for a spin.

Speaker 5 It was very strange, although it did make me think that when the Bears draft Caleb Williams, you should go to his press conference and show your fingernails. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And be like, you like that?

Speaker 5 Be like,

Speaker 5 if you come cry in my arms after a loss, we'll be just fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you paint my fingernails, Caleb, we'll get along just fine.

Speaker 1 So it's obviously not the worst thing that's been done. It's probably the most cringeworthy thing that's been done.

Speaker 1 But the problem with Greg Doyle is he is one of the captains of the scold kings online. So when you're a scold king and you mess up, we get to dunk on you, buddy.

Speaker 1 We get to dunk on you over and over and over and over again. And it was great because you're a fucking idiot.
And that was so cringeworthy. You like that?

Speaker 5 Do more of that. What he should have done, he should have just disassociated himself from that conversation and then wrote a column pretending it was somebody that he doesn't like that said that.

Speaker 5 He should have pretended it was Dan Dockich did that to Caitlin Clark. And then write the column about Dan Dockich and then do find and replace and substitute Greg Doyle in for everything.

Speaker 1 Dan Dokic is getting to do a well-deserved victory tour because he's had a long, long history with Greg Doyle. My ass.
My ass.

Speaker 1 Also, Greg Doyle, he had, I think his old tweets started to resurface. And here's one from 7, 8, 2010, which I, listen, I don't love the old tweets thing, but again, he is the scold king.

Speaker 1 He is the person who would do this to other people. Yes.
He would be like, cancel this person for saying this. 2010 was truly the

Speaker 1 way long ago. Again, I'm not judging on the tweet.
I'm judging on the cringeworthy press conference, but I just wanted to share it with you.

Speaker 1 Just realized my LeBron column references masturbation, gangbangs, and oral sex. Damn, I'm twisted.
That was the decision.

Speaker 1 That was the decision.

Speaker 1 That was the decision? Yeah. Calling yourself twisted is...

Speaker 1 Calling yourself twisted is actually the worst part of this.

Speaker 5 I've got a twisted sense of. I'm so twisted.
I'm kind of edgy sometimes when I talk about LeBron. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Warning bangs.

Speaker 5 He's the kind of guy that will put a warning at the start of his column. Warning.
This column contains some serious hot takes. If that offends you, click the backwards button.

Speaker 1 Warning. This author has been accused of being twisted by himself.

Speaker 5 And then he does the emoji, the old school emoji, where it's the,

Speaker 5 I guess that would be the greater than sign, and then the colon, and then the smiley face.

Speaker 5 So it looks like a guy that's smiling, but he's he knows that he's just said something that's a little bit out of bounds.

Speaker 1 Damn, you like that? Do more of that, and we'll get along just fine.

Speaker 1 So fucking weird. All right, well, we had to leave the show with that because I've just been laughing.

Speaker 1 Again, it comes down to the fact that he remember we talked about him a couple weeks ago because he had the column after Purdue lost the national championship game that essentially

Speaker 1 Danny Hurley is an asshole and Purdue has all the class. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 where we're coming from with this twisted mind of Greg Doyle.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Greg Doyle. And then Caitlin Clark got a shoe deal announced right after that for eight figures, which is, I think now she's going to be paid more than she was at Iowa officially, right?

Speaker 5 So she's making upwards of, what, what do you think eight figures is?

Speaker 1 10.

Speaker 5 Somewhere between somewhere between 10 and 99.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I am enjoying the burning brush fire, tire fire online right now of just a bunch of people getting in debates about the economics of a league and no one actually having any expertise on it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's very fun.
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 5 People are showing that they don't understand how

Speaker 5 the economy works.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's because some people are saying that the WNBA players are paid too low, and then they're comparing them to NBA players and showing what percentage of revenue the players get in the NBA or how much money they get.

Speaker 5 It's way less.

Speaker 5 But NBA players obviously make way more money than WNBA players, but the league revenue is much higher.

Speaker 5 So at the same time, they're making the argument that NBA players should actually be paid more for what they're bringing in, but their salaries are artificially deflated by the collective bargaining agreement that they have.

Speaker 5 So it's just... NBA players are fine.
Oh, no, no, I'm saying like they make good money, but if you were to see like the percentage in league revenue compared to salaries, it's just fun, fun.

Speaker 5 The NBA also brings in a fuckload of money.

Speaker 1 Everyone's going after everyone. I've just been like diving into.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ravel is just sticking with his that Caitlin Clark would have had a shoe deal at Iowa and all this stuff. We also had, I saw.

Speaker 5 Real quick with Revelle, his new company. When I first saw his company,

Speaker 5 I thought it was called Clit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I thought the name of his company was Clit. You're twisted.
I'm a little bit twisted.

Speaker 5 But you see, I know it's got an extra C in there. Yeah.
But every time I see it, I'm just like, Darren Revelle owns the Clit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's yeah, he does.
He owns the Clit.

Speaker 1 But it's just been every, it's basically the Avengers of the internet just going at each other like Jamel Hill was going at Doug Gottlieb, which that's a fun fight.

Speaker 1 Then someone was calling him Gottdweeb, which I loved.

Speaker 1 Like, this is just the kind of stuff that's going on right now, all because of Caitlin Clark, when we really should be focusing on Greg Doyle doing the heart.

Speaker 5 Jamel Hill has the race card, and then Doug Gottlieb stole it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. But he wrote an apology.
Yes. So.

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Speaker 1 It's fine. All right, play-in games.
The Chicago Bulls have advanced to the Friday night game, and the Philadelphia 76ers are officially inside the playoffs.

Speaker 5 Congratulations, Max.

Speaker 1 Congratulations, Max.

Speaker 5 You made it.

Speaker 1 We'll get to Mr. Pear later.
But, Max, thoughts on the game? You guys, that was a very classic heat. Muck it up, make everyone look bad, almost steal one, but Joel and B.

Speaker 1 just starts hitting some threes and the Sixers are going to the playoffs against the Knicks.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, that's a game that the Sixers lose 10 times out of 10 with Doc Rivers and last year's team.

Speaker 3 Nick Nurse actually can make an adjustment. Halftime adjustments were very good.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Nick Batum, absolute beast.

Speaker 1 Like, what a performance from Nico Batum.

Speaker 3 He was a legend. And And shout out the chicken.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the free chicken.

Speaker 5 Shout out to free chicken. The free chicken turned it all around for the fifth.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. The stadium was absolutely dead.
They looked like shit. I think Caleb Martin missed two free throws, free chicken for the crowd.
Immediate run. Sixers never looked back after the chicken.

Speaker 3 Shout out the chicken.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that made all the difference. We should do something on this show where free chicken, like a free part of my cheese steak, Buffalo chicken cheesesteak.
Hank falls asleep on the podcast.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1 Or he doesn't wake up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Batum was awesome.

Speaker 1 I saw a great analogy for Nick Batum. This is from Screaky Shooter.
He said, Nick Batum is the LeBron James of Tobias Harris's.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
Pretty much perfect. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I like that.

Speaker 3 I mean, Tobias Harris still was absolutely terrible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. Well, that's the thing.
It's like you expect one thing from Tobias Harris and you get the LeBron James of Tobias Harris's coming up.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was awesome.
Both sides of the court absolutely kept us in it. And then I'm beat at the end of the game.

Speaker 3 Finally, he has a good moment in a must-win game that those last three possessions where he went three and one. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then the pass to Ubre to get another and one.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 I have to ask this question, Max. So the Sixers are favored in the series against the Knicks.
Giannis, we don't know when he's going to

Speaker 1 come back and play. That might be a problem for the Bucs against the Pacers in their first-round matchup.
Is the East opening up for the Sixers?

Speaker 3 No, I mean, the Knicks are a really good team. The Nova Knicks, it hurts that I'm going to have to go against my boys like this.

Speaker 1 But it's kind of opening up for the Sixers.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's all about Embiid's health. Like, you can even see last night that he wasn't at 100%.
He gutted it out towards the end, but it's a long playoffs.

Speaker 1 It's a long playoffs. You said Sixers and five, right?

Speaker 3 I no longer think Sixers and five. I do think the Sixers will win.

Speaker 5 You forgot about the Nova Cats, yeah.

Speaker 1 The Nova Cats are good.

Speaker 3 The Nova Knicks.

Speaker 1 Also, Max, you brought up a good point. Embed finally has a big moment in a playoff game.
Unfortunately, the playing games do not count.

Speaker 3 I didn't say playoff game. I said must win.

Speaker 1 Oh, must-win, but it doesn't count. So it actually doesn't.
He didn't have that. No, he did.
No, none of these stats record. Yeah, the record books.
We've talked about this for three years.

Speaker 1 I watched it. Toby White had

Speaker 1 his career high in 42 points. Does not count.
I watched it.

Speaker 5 But the stats don't exist.

Speaker 1 Playing game legend.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1 even think. I think once a playing game happens, you can't even ⁇ you have to pretend it never happens.

Speaker 5 It's also, by definition, not a must-win. If they had lost this game, they would have gotten to play another game.

Speaker 1 Good point. True.

Speaker 3 But that was such a game that everyone was so dialed in to be like, uh-oh, playoff Embiid's back.

Speaker 1 He struggled with the playoffs. He still doesn't understand.
No, but you guys. I mean, that would be the narrative right now.

Speaker 5 That would be the narrative right now. It was not a must-win.
PFT, he still doesn't understand it. Still doesn't get it.
He still doesn't get it. Max, I'm with you that

Speaker 5 I've been buying in on the Sixers. Because if you look at the bracket and look how it shakes out for them, for the reasons we just went through, Hank, because Giannis is going to be limited.

Speaker 5 Plus, they have Doc Rivers. And then

Speaker 5 the Knicks don't have Randall, and they're a 500 team without Randall. So it feels like the Sixers get an bead back.
I was very high on the Sixers.

Speaker 5 That first half, especially, though, last night did not make me confident in them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, but I mean, that's

Speaker 3 coming in with a good game plan, making things sloppy.

Speaker 3 You're going to have bad halves of basketball like that, but it's good to see them bounce back for once.

Speaker 3 We've had halves like that against the Celtics, and then they just win by 50.

Speaker 3 Like bad first halves, they look sloppy, and then they just give up. And it was nice to see that they didn't give up.

Speaker 3 They made an adjustment, looked good in the second half, switched some things up, put Tobias Harris on the bench, put Nick Patum in the rotation.

Speaker 3 It was good to see. It was good to see it.
And Beagan get a little bit more healthy. Maxie didn't have his A game.

Speaker 3 Only things are looking up.

Speaker 1 Things are looking up.

Speaker 5 Okay, Hank, from your perspective, I'm curious to know, as a Boston fan, who would you rather play in the first round?

Speaker 1 The Bulls. Yeah, the Bulls.
Why the game when you want to punish me? Why the Bulls? No, I mean, the Heat obviously, you know, have had success against us. No, Jimmy Butler.

Speaker 1 No, I know, but still, it's like you just don't just

Speaker 1 mad about the Heat yet. Don't mess with it.
If you play the Bulls, it's much better. I can go to a couple games.
Take that Teddy is going to come with me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'd much rather play. Did he say that? Yeah, I said I did actually say I would go to one game.

Speaker 1 You just want the free win, which it would be a free win, but that's okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and it's like, just don't, don't tempt fate.

Speaker 1 Like, you just want the free win. I just want the free win.
And I'm not going to go to a game. I'm stuck in a spot where the Bulls were awesome against the Hawks, who are an unserious organization.

Speaker 1 They don't believe in defense. They do not believe in defense.
Also, Trey Young is their... quote-unquote best player.

Speaker 1 The only time I was nervous during that game was when Trey Young was on the bench because that's when they kind of came back in the game a little bit. And I'm stuck because I love Kobe White.

Speaker 1 He was awesome. Io come back.
He was awesome.

Speaker 1 DeMar DeRosen is one of the most likable guys out there.

Speaker 1 He played the most minutes in the league. Yeah, I mean, he's the best.
And they try so hard and they don't have a ton of talent. And so when they get on the court, I'm like, I want these guys to win.

Speaker 1 But then I remembered that Jerry Reinsdorf likes nothing more than getting a couple extra playoff game ticket gates for a team that has no chance of winning.

Speaker 5 But at least he's going to contribute that money towards his other organization, the White Sox.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, unfortunately for the future of the Bulls and the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf probably spent all the money last night because he got sea red towels for everyone on their seats and Red Panda.

Speaker 1 Oh, Red Panda's coming. That budget is probably blown.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 It knows what the fans want.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is a very shitty situation where it's like, I know they're not good enough. They could maybe win a game against the Celtics.

Speaker 1 And I also know that Jerry Reinsdorf, nothing would make him happier than being like, see, we made the playoffs and we got two extra games at home to make money.

Speaker 1 But then they get on the court. Those guys, like, it's hard not to root for those guys who are trying really hard.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Kobe White seems like a good dude to root for.

Speaker 1 Oh, he was awesome. Awesome.
And

Speaker 1 yeah, and DeMar DeRosan is the best. Like, he's just...

Speaker 1 He's the best. So we'll see what happens on Friday night.
We'll see what happens. No, Jimmy Butler.
Probably know Alex Caruso.

Speaker 1 I honestly just, if I had to give you my take on the game, it's going to be a one-possession game with three minutes left, and then who the fuck knows?

Speaker 5 How about Jimmy Butler playing, though? Yeah. Like playing on a sprained MCL.

Speaker 5 Pretty impressive, but then it swells up, it gets worse, so he's probably out for the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they said two to three weeks.

Speaker 1 Damn. Oh, it's just all breaking for Hank.
He's just got that Hank smile on his face. All right, you know what? Let me get this Hank smile off your face.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Your football owner's a fucking dickhead.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the report comes out after the Dynasty documentary, where Robert Kraft does an entire 10-part documentary essentially tearing down Bill Belichick.

Speaker 1 We're like, all right, enough, enough, enough.

Speaker 1 The report comes out that Bill Belichick, part of the reason why he didn't get a job this year, was Robert Kraft called Arthur Blank and essentially was like, he's really difficult to deal with.

Speaker 1 Don't hire him.

Speaker 5 So in the response to it, I think the Krafts said that

Speaker 5 they did not say anything negative about Belichick during that interview process, but owners might talk behind the scenes over the course of a frustrating season.

Speaker 1 It would have been funny if he just came out and he's like, I did not say anything to Arthur Blank. All communication with Arthur Blank was done through Kraft LLC.

Speaker 5 Yeah, not my words.

Speaker 1 Not my words. So where are you? This is tough because it does feel like Robert Kraft is like kicking a dead body at this point.
Like,

Speaker 1 why would you go that extra mile? Like, the breakup happens. Why go the extra mile and make sure that he doesn't get another job? That's crazy to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like he, like, it's kind of the same thing with Brady, where they, in the documentary, they made it seem like Brady just wanted some out-of-boys and some thank yous.

Speaker 1 Like, it was probably the same with Kraft, where he felt slighted for whatever reason, just ego.

Speaker 1 And Belichick's not the type of guy to be like, thank you so much, Robert, like, and kind of kiss the ring. Because he was giving him the rings.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he sounds like a scorned ex. Yeah, He's had a bad offseason, I would say.
It hasn't gone exactly how he thought it would go.

Speaker 1 And he's entering territory where it's like he's going to start getting like booze, which is insane. But

Speaker 1 he has set himself up for that where they're going to do an event, maybe like Tom Brady. Like the Tom Brady, they're doing Tom Brady Day 612.

Speaker 1 And I think they're giving him a statue or whatever at Gillette. And I could see there being like booze or something where

Speaker 1 that's going to rattle him. He's done it to himself.

Speaker 1 And it happens in sports from time to time where the owner deludes themselves and thinks that they actually are what fans are rooting for it's like that's just never the case it was always brady and beltrack it's never the case and yeah i don't it it sucks because now i mean he's he's set himself up for for disaster because it's like they have a four and a half you know win total over under this year they're not going to be good and everyone's just going to come at his neck oh that that statue unveiling is going to be a big day for you though you have to nail that one

Speaker 1 yeah they got to give him a bigger statue than ai i mean they'll they'll they'll they'll do them. They'll do it right.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the AI statue.

Speaker 1 No, that was a bull choke. No, no, no, that was a tiny little statue.
Every single tiny little statue.

Speaker 5 As a fan of the Commanders, if there's one thing that we can do well, that's honor our former players with statues. Correct.
And that AI statue was garbage.

Speaker 3 That's every statue that goes into the garbage.

Speaker 1 So they're all that's garbage. But why does Rocky get such a big statue? And why in front of the front? Oh, gosh.

Speaker 1 It's not in front of the practice facility.

Speaker 5 Rocky's not even real.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's not in front of the practice facility.

Speaker 3 This was like a bad take that the internet didn't know that all the other statues in front of that facility existed. And then they were like, fuck.
Are you saying we don't?

Speaker 3 I'm sticking with the take.

Speaker 1 Why don't they just get bigger statues for everyone? They just don't value anything. Also, why do they unveil it that way? It's an aesthetic.
Yeah, but don't unveil it.

Speaker 1 You guys don't know architecture. Don't

Speaker 5 know architecture?

Speaker 1 Don't unveil it that way then. Don't do the fucking reveal like that when it's like, oh, why did AI seem so surprised? Yeah, he was shocked.

Speaker 3 AI is always surprised.

Speaker 5 No, it's not architecture. It's a statue.
It's not a building we're talking about.

Speaker 3 It's an aesthetic.

Speaker 5 You don't appreciate the greatness that Alan Iverson brought to the city of Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 Landscaping architecture. Of course I...

Speaker 1 Come on, I grew up on AI.

Speaker 3 That was like the first fan I ever was of anyone.

Speaker 5 Landscaping and architecture.

Speaker 3 Yeah, landscaping architecture.

Speaker 1 I think that's a thing. You weren't a fan of your dad first?

Speaker 1 The first jersey I ever bought was AI. I don't know.
Everyone was afraid of the first time. That was the first jersey I had, too.

Speaker 1 I was at a Brett Favre jersey. Wayne Corbett.

Speaker 1 Do you ever take a picture in that brett favre jersey with your cock out i was like four so probably

Speaker 1 not me so honestly yeah probably the same size i was that too i was a naked boy too

Speaker 1 big big meaty clankers oh naked knacks quick break i'm it's only going to take 20 seconds so you should buy bye bye bye rough and rowdy tonight in west virginia we have 20 new fights 20 new fights i'm telling you this is going to be incredible this is how new legends are made rough and rowdy.

Speaker 1 West Virginia, 20 new fights. We have 40 new people.
So it's going to be chaos. They're going to be knockouts.
I'll be on the call. I got a brand new suit for the people.
I'm doing the anthem.

Speaker 1 Buyrnr.com right now. Buyrnr.com.
It's going to be awesome. We've had a bunch of old fighters in the past.
Shout out all those guys. But tonight we're going new blood.

Speaker 1 We're going to get new storylines. We're going to get new chaos.
We're going to get new weirdos. It's going to be incredible.
If you got nothing to do tonight, buyrnr.com.

Speaker 1 Even if you have something to do, buyrnr.com. Support us.
It's going to be awesome. Back to the show.
All right. So, Hank,

Speaker 1 do you have your draft prep? Because we have draft week coming up. We have Todd McShay coming on the show on Monday, and then we have Daniel Jeremiah on Wednesday.
Do you have your draft prep ready

Speaker 1 for internally? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 5 This is a big occasion for you. How do you want me?

Speaker 1 Do you actually, one of these guys is going to be your quarterback? Yeah, so I broke down the film for everyone. I didn't, I mean, I can rank them right now.

Speaker 1 I have just kind of notes on everyone, and I do have my consensus of who I would prefer the Patriots to take.

Speaker 5 Your own consensus, your personal consensus? Well, yeah, you know,

Speaker 1 you can trust the analysts out there, but like until you make your own decision.

Speaker 5 Do you know what a consensus is, though?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's me, myself, and I made a kind of came to a consensus.

Speaker 5 All right, so do it in order then, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, do it in reverse order so we can get the unveil of number one. So start at the start at the bottom and then go go to one.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 J.J. McCarthy.
That's, he's the bottom. He's the bottom.

Speaker 1 He's the bottom of this entire exercise. So Michael Pratt is ahead of him.
Spencer Rattler's ahead of him.

Speaker 1 Oh, I just did the, I did the, I thought I was going for the people the Patriots are going after. Oh.
Top five. Oh.
Okay. So top five.

Speaker 1 I'm not worried. Like, it's, it's number five.
I thought we were getting all the quarterbacks. But the Patriots aren't drafting Spencer Rattler.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Why not?

Speaker 1 Yeah, why not? Because that's just not.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't know. You didn't watch the tape.

Speaker 1 I think he's dating Caitlin Clark.

Speaker 1 Saw it on Instagram comments. Definitely not.
Okay. Okay, maybe not.

Speaker 1 Greg Doyle is dating McCaffrey's son in his head.

Speaker 5 All right, so wait, Hank, you have your top five, which means that you must have watched the film on the other quarterbacks if you knew that these were the top five.

Speaker 1 Good point, PFT. How many

Speaker 1 what's the other quarterbacks I'm supposed to watch? Michael Pennix?

Speaker 5 Wash him. Bo Nix.

Speaker 1 Didn't watch him.

Speaker 1 Bo Nix.

Speaker 5 Who is Bo Nix?

Speaker 5 No, like he's.

Speaker 1 Where is Bo Nix projected to go? Probably, like, could be a first rounder, probably a second rounder. Okay.
Probably should have watched him. Okay.
I got Bo Nix.

Speaker 1 I mean, I got Michael Pennix Jr., JJ McCarthy, Drake May,

Speaker 1 Jaden Daniels. Okay, sorry.
So JJ is your fifth. JJ's my fifth.
And what are your notes? Short throws. Okay.

Speaker 1 Everything across the middle, but throws it well across the middle. Okay.

Speaker 1 Better zip than Drake May.

Speaker 1 That was a big contributing factor.

Speaker 1 I really care about the zip and how quickly the ball comes out. Okay.

Speaker 1 Gutsy runs, big ball sack. Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
Number four.

Speaker 1 Wait, wait, but

Speaker 5 those are all positive traits. Why is he ranked number five? What's his downside? These other guys must be incredible.

Speaker 1 He doesn't throw it. He didn't see any long balls.
All the long balls are wide open. Short throws.
Okay. Short throws.

Speaker 1 Which, again, you kind of watch it. It's like he's seen the game manager, system quarterback.
How long was the YouTube video that you watched? 13 minutes. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 That's a good amount of film.

Speaker 1 Number four,

Speaker 1 it's Drake May. Oh,

Speaker 5 he slid.

Speaker 1 He's deceptively fast. Okay.
Quick. Quicker than I expected.

Speaker 1 Great at selling pump fakes. That's good.
Sliding. He's smart.
Jayne Daniels, there's a lot of runs. He was taking a lot of hits.
Drake May, a lot of slides.

Speaker 1 Gets out of the pocket, moves around well, but slides. Knows when to slide.
That's good. Franchise quarterback.
You want him there for a a long time. Can't be taking big hits.

Speaker 5 Does he try to kick his opponents in the balls when he slides?

Speaker 1 I didn't see any of that.

Speaker 5 Okay, because that would be a good system fit for you guys.

Speaker 1 Well, no,

Speaker 1 we got rid of him. And that was Robert Kraft.
Pelchik

Speaker 1 wanted him out. Quick feet.
Okay.

Speaker 1 But this was

Speaker 1 the biggest deterrent and the thing that I see happening the most. The ball seems very heavy in his hands.
Oh.

Speaker 5 So he's got weak wrists, maybe?

Speaker 1 It just seems like it takes him a long time to get the ball up and out, and it seems like he's putting a lot of effort into throwing it. It seemed, you know, he's playing in the ACC.

Speaker 1 The film that I was watching, if you're, you know, simulating NFL guys come at him, it seems like he's going to take a lot of hits. Guys are coming at him.

Speaker 1 He's not going to be able to get the ball out fast enough because it's heavy in his hand. Ball heavy in his hand.

Speaker 5 How do you like his frame?

Speaker 1 A little short, but good frame. No, no issues with his frame.
I don't think he's a six-hour shot.

Speaker 5 I don't know. Remember that picture you took with Sam Howell? He's actually 6'4.

Speaker 1 Looks short in the film that I was watching. Okay, all right.
But yeah, that was

Speaker 1 the ball ball seemed like I want it.

Speaker 1 I want to see a QB. No world short.

Speaker 5 That's the perfect size for a quarterback.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I guess if, you know, what if he was doing which quarterback could play in the NBA? 6'4 would be short. But if he was that big, you'd think that he would be able to just zip the ball out.

Speaker 1 It's heavy in his hands.

Speaker 5 Okay, got it.

Speaker 3 Memes had this exact same take.

Speaker 1 Heavy in his hand? No.

Speaker 3 He was like, Drake May's too short to be a good quarterback.

Speaker 1 And then I looked it up and I was like, he's 6'4. And he's like, well, he looks short.
Okay. Like, we had this exact conversation.
Short energy.

Speaker 5 He plays shorter than his body.

Speaker 1 All right. Next.

Speaker 1 Michael Pennix Jr. I think he, the only reason he's this far up is just because he's a lefty.
I'll just say that bias, lefty bias. I would just love to have a lefty quarterback

Speaker 1 leading my franchise as a lefty myself. So beautiful throwing motion.
Accurate. Does a little bit of a heavier ball as well.
A little slower coming out. Seems a little bit interception prone.

Speaker 1 A lot of throws off his back foot, which, again, you're trying to simulate how this would look in the NFL. Guys coming at him.

Speaker 1 If he has time to set his feet, he's accurate, but it seems like he will kind of get a little wild, throw off his back foot, throw a duck.

Speaker 5 He does the fadeaways, but the thing about his fadeaways are they're insanely accurate. Like, he will put the ball on a dime on an out route, even though he's falling away from the ball.

Speaker 1 But that's one of those things when you're playing in college and you're the guy that works when you're playing in the NFL and everyone's fast. That's not going to work.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But he's a lefty, so he got bumped up above Drake May. Yeah.
I think lefties look good in college, but they look like witches in the NFL.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tua, though. Tua.
Good or bad? It's good. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jayen Daniels. Is number two.

Speaker 1 Caleb Williams is number one. Oh, nice.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Jayen Daniels, I didn't even watch. I just.

Speaker 1 You've told me a million times we're not taking Caleb Williams.

Speaker 1 I was thinking of this as just like

Speaker 1 Patriots.

Speaker 1 Jayen Daniels throwing on the move. Great on the move.
Quick feet. Gets out of the pocket.
Maneuvers. Maneuvers Sacks and stuff well.
Does take a lot of hits.

Speaker 1 Little Josh Allen, smaller, though, than Josh Allen. That's definitely a concern.
Again, franchise quarterback. You want this guy as your QB for 10, 15 years.

Speaker 1 He scrambles a lot, takes a lot of hits. That's a concern.
But

Speaker 1 great, fantastic. The best QB I've seen at hitting the sideline in the corner of the end zone.
Oh, okay. Like JJ McCarthy just throws everything over the the middle.

Speaker 1 Jaden Daniels, deadly accurate to the corner of the end zone, deadly accurate to the sideline. That's huge in the NFL.

Speaker 1 That's the thing I like the most.

Speaker 5 What about his elbow?

Speaker 1 Elbow's weird, but... Ding him? Yeah.
I definitely ding him for the elbow. And again, it's like if you get hit and you get hit in the elbow, then I feel like it's just

Speaker 1 you could see his bone coming out of his arm. This has been a great exercise for one reason.

Speaker 1 Hank has just, without realizing, admitted that he really wishes he could have both of our quarterbacks

Speaker 1 and also said that the quarterback that he's most likely going to get is ranked either fourth or fifth.

Speaker 1 So I love this exercise. This won't hurt.
Is Ryan Thomas Jr. in the draft? Was another question I had because he's stud.

Speaker 1 What are we, Google? No, I just,

Speaker 1 I have to, I guess I didn't do my follow-up. These are just notes I was writing as I was watching this.

Speaker 1 I don't believe so.

Speaker 1 But that you want him?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, his receiver is like, I think all of his deep balls were just wide open. I think that's

Speaker 1 a receiver talent thing. If it were up to me.
No, he's not. Wait.

Speaker 3 I think we talked about him with McShea.

Speaker 1 Ryan Thomas? Brian Thomas. Brian Thomas.
Yeah. Maybe it's Brian.
I was just, I was listening to you. He said Ryan.

Speaker 1 He just said Ryan Thomas.

Speaker 1 I was listening to the video. Oh.
So it probably was Brian. It is Brian.
Okay. Steve.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 1 He is in the draft.

Speaker 3 You didn't watch. You just listened to the market.

Speaker 1 What the team's saying, they didn't have fucking subtitles. I was like, Brian, like, touchdown, Ryan Thomas, Brian Thomas.

Speaker 1 I heard Ryan, but clearly it's Brian.

Speaker 1 That guy's a stud. This is the best draft preview ever.
If it were up to me, Marvin Harrison Jr., trade up Michael Pennix.

Speaker 1 That's my best case scenario draft.

Speaker 5 Okay, so

Speaker 5 you draft Marvin Harrison third overall. Yep.
And then you trade up to what?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 To get Ryan Thomas. To get Pennix Jr.
Got it.

Speaker 5 Pennix Jr.

Speaker 5 Probably top 10.

Speaker 1 Is he projected to go top 10?

Speaker 5 Maybe not. Maybe.
It depends on if there's a one-on-quarterback.

Speaker 5 But it happens from time to time when there's a bunch of first-round graded quarterbacks. Once a few of them get drafted, then teams start to freak out.
And that's how we ended up with, like,

Speaker 5 who is it? Brandon Whedon getting drafted in the first round.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but teams might have gotten smarter because like Will Levis fell because it was like, all right, everyone could just wait and get him in the second second round.

Speaker 1 But there is that phenomenon of wanting to get that extra year of control, too. Yeah.
Like the Lamar Jackson trading back up into 32 and getting him. So

Speaker 1 that's my analysis. Like, I'll watch

Speaker 1 some more film. Maybe there's other guys that they could trade up for.
The Spencer Rattlers. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He just, he just, we just did an entire exercise where he's like, I really want PFT and Big Cat's quarterback.

Speaker 5 So you have, you have Caleb number one, Jaden Daniels number two. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And then a long sounds like there's a big gap.

Speaker 1 Big gap. Panic shooter.
Panic shooter. Big gap.
Yeah. Drake May, J.J.
McCarthy. Probably undrafted.
But strength, no,

Speaker 1 Drake May can be good. He's just got to.
He's got the head grow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He can get some strength there. Yeah.
He can do some bicep curls. He just looks like, yeah, he looks like he's throwing a medicine ball.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 He would look short in that Patriots uniform, too.

Speaker 1 Did you watch any of the games that he played in the rain? Is that maybe part of this?

Speaker 1 I didn't see many of those on the camera I was watching. Literal heavy ball.

Speaker 1 All right, this was great. Do we have anything else before we get to our interviews? This is great.
Yeah. Oh, Jante Porter.
He's gone.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was gambling. He was betting against the Raptors in some games.
Yeah. Like, betting on them to lose.

Speaker 1 Banned for life. What was this of a? What if this was Jokic?

Speaker 1 I don't think he'd be banned for life. But I also don't think Jokic would ever do it because he's making enough money that that would be the dumbest thing ever.

Speaker 1 That's why it happened is he's a fringe guy.

Speaker 1 NBA money is so ridiculous. I don't think he was getting that much.

Speaker 5 The crazy thing is, he was betting parlays against himself. So he was betting the unders and like rebounds.
I forget what else, maybe assists, points.

Speaker 5 And he put down 80 grand to win, I think, $1.1 million

Speaker 5 on a Jante Porter under parlay.

Speaker 5 And it hit, obviously, because he was controlling it. And then the sports book was like, well, we're just definitely not going to pay this out.
One of the dumbest things ever.

Speaker 5 One of the dumbest ways to go about it.

Speaker 5 How much action do you think that sports book see on any given night on Janta Porter prop bets in general right it's probably nowhere close to eighty thousand dollars ever yeah he was on a two-way hank so he was getting nothing

Speaker 5 I mean they had to do it I think that's the right move like you can't have someone betting on you against yourself yeah so if it had been different if he had bet his overs in a parlay and if he had bet on his team to win and that had that had actually happened, what do you think the punishment would have been?

Speaker 1 Probably similar because he's a fringe guy. It's also he was telling other people too.

Speaker 1 Like he was using proxies to bet him, which that is very, very bad because then it's just the integrity of the game. So I, yeah, the NBA probably had to do it.

Speaker 1 And it also, I know people will then make an argument about gambling and like the legalization of gambling. Without the legalization of gambling, this probably never gets caught.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Now, you could be. Every sports book has things in place.
where they see these like giant anomalies. Yeah.
And then they flag them to the league.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't be shocked if there is maybe a little bit of a correction where some of the fringe players don't have props on a night-to-night basis.

Speaker 1 That would make sense just because those are the guys, like Jokic would never do this because he's making hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 But a guy who's the tenth man on a bench, who knows that if he bets something, checks into a game for a minute, and then comes out, he can win.

Speaker 1 That is, I can understand where people are like, this is kind of a weird area where it can be manipulated.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I like his excuse, too. He He was saying that he had like a headache or his eye hurt to come out of a game.

Speaker 1 He got hit in the shoulder, and then he's like, my eye.

Speaker 5 Yeah, my eye hurts.

Speaker 5 My eye hurts so bad. I can't play anymore, coach.

Speaker 1 Can't play.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get to our interviews. Incredible interviews.
We got Joe Missoula, Boston Celtics head coach, wins us over big time. And then we have Michael Malone.
Denver Nuggets head coach.

Speaker 1 We had him on last year. Great interview.
Great guy.

Speaker 1 And then we'll do Firefest and we'll have Mr. Pear come back out here.

Speaker 8 The Pro Football Football Show is presented by the Chevy Silverado, Built for the hustle, ready for the game. Chevy Silverado is America's most dependable full-size truck.

Speaker 8 Whether you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff, the Silverado is one ride that's always game ready. Just like football, it's about grit, grind, and getting it done.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest.

Speaker 1 It is Boston Celtics head coach, Joe Missoula, getting ready for the playoffs, the number one seed, the best team in the NBA in the regular season this year. Coach, let's start there.

Speaker 1 How are we feeling just vibes going into the playoffs?

Speaker 1 Because you've been coaching a team that knew they were the number one seed for a long time, knew that you were in the playoffs for a very long time.

Speaker 1 How are we feeling knowing that this is the start of the new season?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, I think you hit on a great point there.

Speaker 9 The balance of, you know, you have to understand that you're a really good team, but you got to understand that like none of that really matters as much anymore because everyone's got the same record.

Speaker 9 You know, we're all zero and zero. And every series takes on a life of its own.
So we've had a really good week of practice. I think it was good for us.

Speaker 9 You know, a couple of those games that we had at the end of the season that didn't necessarily go our way.

Speaker 9 But I thought we handled the regular season about as well as you can from a mental standpoint. And, you know, we got to go into the playoffs with that same balance.

Speaker 9 We are a really good team, but we can lose at any time if we don't do the little things. And so it's important to have that mindset.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Do people think that this season's been easy for you guys just because you've had so much success? Is that something that kind of gets lost in it, that it has been a grind?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, I think, obviously, on the outside, it probably looks as like, you know, we didn't hit a ton of adversity or, you know, we've only had two game losing streaks. It could look that way.

Speaker 9 But, you know, I kind of said this a few times. It could be just as hard handling winning as anything else because you can get complacent,

Speaker 9 you know, you could get prideful.

Speaker 9 You could take the details for granted. And I thought like the coolest part about our guys this year is they never took winning for granted.
I thought they handled it really well.

Speaker 9 Like, every film session, every walkthrough, every practice we had, there was a high level of attention to detail and execution.

Speaker 9 And, like, even though we were winning, the guys wanted to grow and get better. I think that says a lot about just who they are as players.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
So, enough of the cliche basketball talk. Let's get to the real interview.
When was the last time you were choked out?

Speaker 9 The day after we lost to Atlanta,

Speaker 9 I kind of punished myself there. I took it really hard on myself.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 can you explain the jiu-jitsu? Because that story came out last year.

Speaker 1 It seemed really cool because it's like just learning about other guys in the height of their profession. They have these hobbies.

Speaker 1 You have a jiu-jitsu instructor who, for a while you didn't know, lived in Colorado and would come at the drop of a hat and do jiu-jitsu sessions with you.

Speaker 1 And also, he talked about feeling the pressure of playoff basketball, and it's similar to being in a chokehold. So you're just, you're just getting choked out by this guy who's flying in.

Speaker 1 You have a guy flying in to choke you out.

Speaker 9 So we'll start there. So when I,

Speaker 9 the coolest part about, you know, becoming the head coach of the Celtics and like, you know, achieving your dream at a relatively young age, you kind of look back and you look at all the stuff that you regret.

Speaker 9 And so like two of my biggest, not biggest regrets, but like two things I wish I stuck with were chess and martial arts. So I did those as a kid growing up.

Speaker 9 And, you know, once my dad passed and my kids started to get older, I started to like rekindle the passions of the arts like chess piano martial arts um and i started to rekindle those with my kids and then i get the job and i'm like all right like you know coaching the celtics you're in a fight every day like so let's just simulate that and i was like let's rekindle my love of the arts and so you know my assistant and i we find a jiu-jitsu instructor and i fell in love with this guy like right away so apparently he was in denver when we called his his office was in Boston, but he was living in Denver because of COVID.

Speaker 9 And we were like, can you come by the house tomorrow for like the an initial training session? And he just was like, this is a, you know, apparently this is the head coach for the Celtics.

Speaker 9 It's like a once in a lifetime opportunity. I'll be there tomorrow.
So this guy gets on a red eye and shows up to my house, full gi, black belt, like standing in the

Speaker 1 driveway.

Speaker 9 Like we have our first lesson in the guest house,

Speaker 9 in the guest room of our apartment. And from then on in, he he

Speaker 9 he's the guy that i go to to help simulate the stress the pressure the anxiety like all the that you got to be able to overcome like if you're not doing that as a person then you can't do it as a coach and like and i like i give my players our players so much credit like being in the arena all the time like i feel like one of the ways i can connect with them is by feeling like them so like on a day where if it's a back-to-back hey i just trained too so like i'm tired too so it gives me a way to connect with the guys but it it gives me a way of being empathetic.

Speaker 9 Like, I know what they're going through. No coach understands what their players go through, what they sacrifice physically and mentally.

Speaker 9 So, if I can get the shit kicked out of me from time to time, that's only gonna help me get better.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 5 I like that strategy a lot. And for listeners out there, do not look up online guys to fly in to come choke me out.

Speaker 1 That's a bad Google search to have on your head.

Speaker 9 Hey, so we lose, we lose the Atlanta game, right? We blow the 30 point, and I'm just pissed, right? So, I go to the

Speaker 9 I go to the gym. We find a gym in most cities, and for like two hours, we're just like, I still, I still got a little piece of like the black eye from it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So do, do you do that? Um, I, I mean, I appreciate what you said about how you want to put yourself through strenuous situations so you can empathize with your players and be tired just like they are.

Speaker 5 Do you find that the more you get put in those situations where you're either getting the crap kicked out of you or you're getting choked out, uh, you're able to stay calm in those moments?

Speaker 5 And that translates to being in a game in high-pressure situations?

Speaker 9 Yeah, so like one of the things Alex does, he's tremendous, is he finds these concepts and themes that correlate to competition in general, right?

Speaker 9 And so one of the themes is like most people tap before it actually, like before the submission actually hurts, right? It's like the fear of being in the submission is when you tap.

Speaker 9 And so like that can be applicable to handling championship expectations or success or being in a tough spot and like, you know, thinking that you can't get yourself out of it.

Speaker 9 So, you know, it's a little dark, but like one of the things in most submissions is you do want to find a comfort level because there usually is a way out.

Speaker 9 You just can't see the way out because of the stress that you're under or because of the panic that you're under.

Speaker 9 So like you're breathing skyrockets and you don't even notice the exit strategy because you're in a disadvantaged situation.

Speaker 9 So that's kind of one of the concepts that we work on is like, okay, you know, you're in this disadvantage. Can you recognize the exits?

Speaker 9 Can you recognize the contingency plan, you know, using the details and the skill?

Speaker 1 That's badass. I would have tapped out the minute he showed up in my driveway.
I've been like, all right, never mind. I'm tapping out.

Speaker 5 If a man with a black belt and a gi is knocking on my door, I would just move.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just start tapping immediately. Just reverse.

Speaker 9 Two of the other cool themes are like the closer you are to winning, the closer you are to losing, right?

Speaker 9 So like you saw it at UFC 300 where Jalen Turner knocks the guy down, walks away, and then loses next round. And then you see.

Speaker 9 you know, when Wei Li Zhang like pretty much chokes her out.

Speaker 9 Most people can't handle the fact that you think you beat your opponent, but now you still have to fight them.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 9 we like, that's a major mindset shift in a game of like, okay, they look like they're dead, but they come back to life. How do you shift your mentality to like keep winning?

Speaker 9 Or like in Jalen Turner's case, like you knocked a guy down, but he gets back up. Now your expectations like haven't been met.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 9 So how do you like, so we work a ton of those like situations, like, okay, you know, one minute left in the round, you're in a disadvantaged situation. You got to get yourself out of it.

Speaker 9 Or like one minute left left in the round, you got to go for the kill.

Speaker 9 Like you've got to find the submission because if you don't, if you give your opponent life, then, you know, he could come back and kill you.

Speaker 1 That's, I mean, it's genius.

Speaker 1 You can see how applicable that is to basketball, especially a seven-game series where there are those ebbs and flows where it's like a team goes up 2-0 and you're like, all right, they won.

Speaker 1 And that's just not how it works. It just always, there's always a wrinkle and a team can get momentum back.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Wow.
All right. That was a, I mean, it does incredible answer.

Speaker 5 It sounds like Sun Tzu. You mentioned before we started taping, you read Art of War.

Speaker 9 Or do you take like we listen to Art of War when we train?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 5 what's an Art of War lesson that you can apply to basketball?

Speaker 9 Also, one we use with our offense, like with the guys, is now this is, I don't, you know, this is obviously different from when he wrote it, but like there's only five musical notes, there's only five primary colors, and mixing all those together, you know, having the simplicity of only five, but when you add them all together, you get this beautiful,

Speaker 9 you know, this, this array of colors with a beautiful music, using simplicity to,

Speaker 9 you know, get complexity out of it um and really just like how you view your opponents like you have to have the ultimate respect the most respectful thing you can do for your opponent uh is understand that they can beat you at any time yeah

Speaker 9 but you can't have too much respect right like i think it's a balance and it kind of talks about our team so when we were fighting the first couple months once we started fighting he stopped around and he was like you have too much respect for me you're better than you think you are but because i'm a black belt you're treating me as if you suck He's like, if you believed in yourself and if you knew that you were better than you were, you would actually, you could have tapped me, you could have beat me a couple of times.

Speaker 9 And so it was a really cool like balance of like what humility really is. Like humility isn't like, oh, I suck and this guy's a black belt.

Speaker 9 It's like you got to find the right balance of knowing like, I'm pretty good, but this guy's better. I can still, I can win, but he could also beat me.
And I thought that was a major shift.

Speaker 9 in our in our training was when like I didn't have too much respect for him, but I had like enough, like, appropriate fear. You hear a lot of people talk about that? Like, that's a real thing.

Speaker 1 You can, you can, by the way, in this room right now, Hank, our producer, is a die-hard Celtics fan. He's smiling ear to ear because

Speaker 1 you can feel it shifting in the room that PFT and I are becoming huge Joe Missoula guys 10 minutes into this interview. Like he can, he's he's looking smiling.
I told you. Yeah, I told you.

Speaker 1 This is my guy. All right, so, so there's very few of those around, so I appreciate that.
Yeah, PFT, do you want to ask a question about the town or do you want me to? Well,

Speaker 1 I had a question for you.

Speaker 5 I was was just going to ask you how much a dollar bill weighs.

Speaker 10 Ooh.

Speaker 9 I mean, that's great. Huh? I got to think about that scene, right? So they're in the bar.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 9 It's not even worth its own weight.

Speaker 1 It's not even worth its own weight. Do you have it playing behind you right now on a big TV?

Speaker 9 So let's clarify that.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 9 So as an assistant, I watched it two, three times a week. Easy.

Speaker 1 That's too many. That's too many, just so you know.

Speaker 9 Well, you got to think, like, we do most of our work after the games. And so, like, you got to stay up late at night.
Like, I never liked waking up with

Speaker 9 work to do from the day before. So, like, when I was an assistant and I would have to turn in my post-game edits, I would go home and

Speaker 9 like just work from like 11 to 1 a.m. And so, I needed something to like kind of keep me up or keep me going.

Speaker 9 So, there was like a three-movie shuffle that I would turn on in order to get me through the game so that I could get to bed. And the town ended up being one of them.

Speaker 9 So, like, I'm not, it's not something that I'm like,

Speaker 9 you know, I obsess with to the point where i'm still watching it but that that was a part of my post-game process that kind of helped me okay what were the other two movies whiplash and the dark knight oh okay those are good those are good ones those are ones where if they're on tv i will i will always watch it all the way through yes if i stumble upon it yeah but you did like i i you have to watch those three movies yeah i think you're downplaying your your obsession with the town just a little bit because you did make t-shirts from the town well i mean like there's so many great

Speaker 9 like lines from that like the one

Speaker 9 the one where uh he he finds out that Dougie McRae's sleeping with

Speaker 9 the bank manager,

Speaker 9 Jeremy Rennick's like, smart?

Speaker 9 I'm blowing the assistant manager. Am I being smart?

Speaker 1 He just flips out

Speaker 9 randomly throughout the day. There's some of the assistants will just

Speaker 9 throw phrases out there from the movie.

Speaker 9 Anytime I walk down North End, I'm like, say your prayers.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 5 I would imagine the tie-in with Boston probably has a lot to do with

Speaker 5 your love of that movie, too, where it's just like, okay, this makes me feel like a Boston guy watching this.

Speaker 9 I went to Fenway the other day and I was literally looking at like exit strategies.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we decided to rob Fenway.

Speaker 9 I was like, we could probably really get away with this.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you?

Speaker 9 Did you not go to Fenway and think that you couldn't rob it?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The blueprint is right there.

Speaker 5 I was thinking about that this morning, actually. I was just driving.
I was like, fuck, I really want to rob Fenway Park.

Speaker 1 It would be awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 9 You can't look at an armored truck the same. No,

Speaker 1 definitely not. Definitely not.

Speaker 1 Are you

Speaker 9 Joe in there with where he ties his pants into his bootstraps?

Speaker 5 Yeah. That guy's a Boy Scout.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you officially retired from trying to block shots?

Speaker 9 I got forced into that.

Speaker 1 Okay. So for people who don't know, there was the Suns game this year.
The Selves were playing the Suns, and Jalen Brown stole the ball in the backcourt, dunked.

Speaker 1 The Suns called the timeout, but they'd already advanced the ball. And I can't remember who it was who was trying to heave one from about 40 feet.

Speaker 1 And Joe Missoula got onto the court and tried to block it after the whistle. But were you reprimanded for that?

Speaker 9 I was slightly a little slap on the wrist.

Speaker 1 Okay. So I mean, I like the energy, though.
Like, the guys probably liked it.

Speaker 9 I mean, that's out of war at its finest. Like,

Speaker 9 I don't understand how you could give your opponent any opportunity to feel good about themselves on your half of the turf.

Speaker 9 we've been doing that for two years.

Speaker 9 Like we, it started last year where at Cleveland, Donovan Mitchell took a free throw and one of my assistants just watched them and I berated him and I was like, bro, what are you doing?

Speaker 9 Like you can't allow the best player on the other team to just take a shot in front of him. I don't think there's anything more insulting

Speaker 9 than allowing your opponent to do that.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 9 and so we just put a stop to it from then on out. And so we've had about four or five, you know, really, really good closeouts by the staff.

Speaker 9 And, you know, unfortunately, that one was on you know live tv and and people saw it and uh you know so we can't do it anymore but it's it's one of those little it's a it's a gamesmanship thing like

Speaker 9 you know the nba basketball is is competitive and um you know uh i just think you got to be able to find any little advantage that you can and so i'm not going to let a guy and he hadn't been shooting the ball well the entire game so like what if that one kind of gets the gets him the rhythm that he needs to make one.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 5 What about if a fan takes a shot? So hypothetically, if the ball goes into the crowd, the guy in the first row gets it, and then they want to put up a shot from the sideline.

Speaker 5 If they're on your team, if they're hypothetically, again, a Celtics fan, would you want them to shoot it and let it go in?

Speaker 10 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Okay, because we have actually a guy that's here that lived out that hypothetical situation. Hank, got the ball.
What game was that, Hank?

Speaker 1 How's Warriors Finals game three, I think?

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, but he didn't have the courage to put up a shot. He did the pump fake on it instead of actually taking the shot.

Speaker 5 Do you wish he had shot that?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 1 I got Jordan Poole to bite, though.

Speaker 9 So he like jumped at the pump fake?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 he was ready to block me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe. You got to shoot that.

Speaker 9 You got to shoot that.

Speaker 5 Let it be known. So Hank is a massive fan of yours.
He's a big Celtics fan, and

Speaker 5 he's agreed to shave his head and his beard if the Celtics win the NBA championship this year. So there's a lot at stake here.
Hank, do you have any questions for Coach?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got a couple.

Speaker 1 I saw J.J. Reddick and LeBron were talking about how, like, every player in the league will kind of, when they're down, they'll look up their highlights, you know, they'll go on YouTube.

Speaker 1 How often do you look up 2010 West Virginia versus Kentucky 216?

Speaker 9 Never.

Speaker 1 Never? What?

Speaker 10 Never.

Speaker 9 Never.

Speaker 9 Oh,

Speaker 9 that was such a lucky game from like from my standpoint.

Speaker 9 You know, the one thing I always try to prevent is like the older you get, the better you were. And I was not good.

Speaker 1 17 points, first start. John Walt, Demarcus Cousins.

Speaker 9 I don't want that to ever become a thing where it's like the older he gets, man, he was such a good player. It's like, no, I wasn't.

Speaker 9 I was like the worst player on the court at all times in the Big East.

Speaker 1 What about how many times did you have to hit Huggy Bears treadmill?

Speaker 9 A decent amount. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We've had Huggy on a bunch of times and that treadmill, it doesn't sound like it was fun.

Speaker 9 It depends on what your definition of fun is.

Speaker 1 My fun is not running.

Speaker 9 No, my fun is

Speaker 9 being as combative as possible in a high-stress situation. So there was a few times where we would exchange words while I was on it and he wasn't.
And I let him know that he couldn't,

Speaker 9 he wouldn't have been able to run on that treadmill.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think you just like depriving your brain of oxygen in any form, whether you're getting choked out or running long distances. You just like you, you like getting that runner's high going.

Speaker 9 It's better than an arm bar.

Speaker 1 Yeah, true, true. You don't want to get on bar.
Yeah. Or leg lock.
You don't want to get leg locked.

Speaker 5 Thank you. Anything else?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Who, you know, vibes are good. It's after a practice, maybe after a win.

Speaker 1 Who's the guy on the team that will kind of chirp you the most or like is the most outgoing to try and get a rise out of the other guys on the team?

Speaker 1 Like who's the guy that will kind of come at you a little bit to get the other guys going?

Speaker 9 Who are players that come at me?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like chirp. Like, you know, it's like after a good practice, after a win, like they're just kind of, you know, they'll chirp you, though, to kind of get a laugh out of the other guys.

Speaker 9 They probably do that more when I'm not around. I think that's probably like the nature of coaching is like if your team's not making fun of you, then you're not a coach.

Speaker 9 Probably like, you know, I'm sure they also probably spend zero time thinking of me outside of basketball, which I'd be perfectly fine with also.

Speaker 9 Uh, but after practice, you know, it's a really cool environment. I've really enjoyed being around these guys.

Speaker 9 Um, you know, you, what you learn is like you can go to each guy and kind of each guy has their own thing that you can bust balls with. You know what I mean? Like, so I try to do that after every.

Speaker 9 practice or shoot around is like just get a quick touch point with the guy. And like, if it needs to be a serious conversation, but I don't really enjoy being serious ever um

Speaker 9 if not it's like you know what could we bust balls about and so i i really enjoy that so you're like derek like thank god you shaved your head

Speaker 9 no derek's more like he loves sarcasm so like we'll pick something and just like just stop mocking it with like severe sarcasm i like that i like that like we lose one game and it's like oh my god how how could we ever lose like

Speaker 9 or like he'll he like we'll he'll have like a turnover in a game and i'll be like bro what were you thinking?

Speaker 1 Does Paul Pierce just live at the practice facility?

Speaker 9 No, but I enjoy having him around. He comes around a decent amount.
He's very good.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 We did a little research on you. Maybe some questions that you didn't think that we would ask you.

Speaker 9 Those are the ones I love the most. Okay.

Speaker 5 The first one is that your dad and you went to a baseball field together when you were a kid, and something unusual happened. Would you care to elaborate on that?

Speaker 9 That is one of the reasons why I am today, and I think it's it's an important thing in society is the alpha male challenge. It's kind of what me and my brother call it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Yeah.
I was killing myself that day.

Speaker 9 And he put his money where, you know, he tried to have me put my money where my mouth is. So it's a little rainy.

Speaker 9 Baseball field on the side of the road.

Speaker 9 Head out there and he closes the gate, kind of like where the guys do batting practice.

Speaker 9 And he just said the winner walks out of here alive.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 did he win or did you win?

Speaker 9 I mean, so I remember vividly, like it was a little bit of rain. I saw some mud and I really didn't have a plan.

Speaker 9 So like my goal was to like get mud, throw it in his face and kick him in the nuts and like, you know, at least like try to, you know, get him a little bit.

Speaker 10 But he

Speaker 9 mud wasn't great, catches my heel, and then it's just a pulverizing beatdown, get back in the car. And he gave me like the Will, uh, the Will Farrell old school.

Speaker 9 Like, if you tell anybody about this, I'll kill you.

Speaker 1 Alpha male challenge. I love it.

Speaker 9 So we end up going to, we always ate dinner most of the time at my grandmother's house, like a typical Italian family.

Speaker 9 So I'm just sitting there like in mud, like sniffing, crying, like just eating my food, like the

Speaker 9 loser that I was at the time. And like, just no one's talking to me.
And I'm just licking my wounds.

Speaker 5 Oh, the alpha male challenge is just locking yourself in a fence and fighting your dad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's good.
Okay. I like that.
Yeah. What about from that on in?

Speaker 9 It was like, you know, you better, if you, if you better run your mouth, like, yeah.

Speaker 1 You better be able to handle it. Yeah.
What about the fact that you're a head coach in the NBA? Uh, you know, obviously, nice contract, very successful, still driving a minivan?

Speaker 9 That 90,000 miles, I got to get it to 100 G's.

Speaker 1 What's up with that? What kind of minivan?

Speaker 9 I mean, it's a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica.

Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, you're putting some miles on that thing.
Damn. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 9 It's nicknamed Free Willie.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 9 Kind of shaped like an orca, my favorite animal.

Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, that's good.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 At the time, it made a lot of sense. I understand why it doesn't now.
But, you know, I got to finish it out.

Speaker 1 Okay. I like to see it through.

Speaker 5 So once it gets to 100,000, are you getting a new minivan or are you moving up in the world?

Speaker 9 It depends. I haven't really seen something that I like.

Speaker 9 So it started because we were living in West Virginia and we were always driving like either to Ohio or to like, you know, beaches around the area, like in Ocean City or, you know, down south.

Speaker 9 So it made a lot of sense. Our kids were a little bit young.

Speaker 9 And so I was like, and, you know, my kids had a bunch of friends living in the area and so we always had like five six people around so it made sense living in West Virginia didn't see all this happening doesn't make as much sense living in the city of Boston being the head coach yeah yeah I'd say I like it though that's a commitment to the minivan going to a hundred

Speaker 9 if you were to describe it from the outside black leather interior automatic doors TVs in the back you wouldn't know that it's a minivan town always on for your kids yeah

Speaker 1 I like that I like that a lot it's a good car yeah Hank, you have any more questions for Coach?

Speaker 1 I got a tip for Coach while you think about it, Hank. I'll take that.
All right. Okay, so here's the tip.
So we are taping this right now on Thursday.

Speaker 1 Bulls heat on Friday, decide who the Celtics play. If it is the Bulls, could you please let the Bulls win one game? That's just my only request.
But I got, so I've done a little scouting for you.

Speaker 1 Whether it's the Bulls or the Heat, I got one player I picked out on each team.

Speaker 1 So I'll start with the Heat. Tyler Hero.

Speaker 1 Here's my scouting report. Scores in transition, especially after makes, have to connect and direct to take away pull-up threes.
Prefers left-hand drives, likes to drive the slot.

Speaker 1 And then for Kobe White, he runs in transition. Half his shots are threes, no open looks, can't let him split pick and rolls.
So just a little tip for you. That actually is from...

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's from Joe Missoula. So Joe Missoula's Quizlet, where he scouted every player in the NBA, leaked online, and everyone has his scouting report for every player.
It's a little dated now.

Speaker 1 What happened there? I mean, it's such a funny story. It also shows how like attention to detail because it's just a huge PDF of every single player.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So

Speaker 9 one, I didn't see any of this coming. So I wonder I just thought I was going to be like the behind the bench, you know, slapdick, you know, for most of my career.

Speaker 9 And so I, you know, that was kind of my...

Speaker 9 introductory to like people actually give a shit about me thing. And I was kind of pissed about it.
But I mean, when I made my Quizlet, I was like, I didn't know how to make it private. Yeah.

Speaker 9 I also didn't think people were going to hack into it. So

Speaker 9 I always work with rookies. So that I would, I would give the rookies well detailed.
And Quizlet gives you different types of quiz that you can, you know, decide to get through information on.

Speaker 9 So we would, I would, the rookies and I would always take those before the game.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 9 And that was like, that was my way of learning the league because I went came from D2 to the NBA. And then it was my way of like building a relationship with the rookies that I worked with.

Speaker 9 Like, how detailed can we be? And, like, what are all the different ways we can retrieve the information? Whether it's like, and some of them, some players learn differently.

Speaker 9 So, some liked matching, some liked fill in the blank, some liked,

Speaker 9 you know, multiple choice. So, like, it gave, it helped me learn, but it also helped me learn how the rookies learn.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
It's very cool. I mean, again, it's the attention to detail.

Speaker 1 Have you, have you had a conversation with Derek White, though, about him you had on his wants to throw his body into you and draw fouls. Have you talked to him about it?

Speaker 9 Yeah, that was one of the things I was really excited about when we got him. Is we'll get to the free throw line more.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's smart. Yeah,

Speaker 5 it is interesting, though, that any coach can get instant access to your mind, though. Yeah.
When they looked that up, you should have put some like

Speaker 5 fake stuff up there.

Speaker 9 That is not, that's, that's, that's just scratched the surface about what's going on up here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a Quizlet. It's just a quick, like, hey, let's, let's look at it.

Speaker 9 You don't want to know what's really going on in my mind.

Speaker 5 What's really going on in your mind?

Speaker 1 He's trying to rob Fenway Park.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, literally, how can I win every single situation or environment? Like, how can I, how can I win the environment no matter where I am at any particular time?

Speaker 9 What are the threats, the strengths, and the opportunities?

Speaker 9 And like, can you look at every single situation as a life or death situation from the standpoint of like, this person's a threat, this situation is like, I won't walk through revolving doors. Okay.

Speaker 9 Because like if one of them gets stuck, then you're just a sitting duck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 I haven't, I haven't thought about that, but now every time I go through a revolving door, I'm going to think about it.

Speaker 1 I'm going to avoid them.

Speaker 5 You're screwed. So what about, okay, you go to get your coffee in the morning, stop and dunking donuts.
And what goes through your mind? How do you win that situation?

Speaker 9 Just figure out where the exits are.

Speaker 9 Look at the line on the way in, study all the people.

Speaker 9 Don't have your back to the door. Like in a restaurant, I never sit with my back to the door.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. You've always got to sit.

Speaker 9 to where you can have a vantage point of like everything that's going on around you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
That's fascinating.

Speaker 5 That is. And And you never turn that off.

Speaker 9 No, that's an unfortunate thing for my family.

Speaker 5 So like you're at home, you're sitting on the couch, you're watching cartoons with the kids. What's your mindset then?

Speaker 9 What can I take from this to like teach my kid a lesson? Like you can't just watch this just to watch it. Like there's got to be something here that's going to, that you got to learn from it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I am, I'm falling in love with Coach Missoula. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 10 it's not all positive, right?

Speaker 9 Like it's not, I'm not saying I'm a good person person for it. There are a ton of negative ramifications to that type of mindset.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Like your wife or kids come to you with like a very empathetic situation and it's just like,

Speaker 9 yeah, you're just telling yourself that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Right. You're breaking it down like it's, yeah.
Like it's trying to bust up someone's pick and roll strategy. And you're just like, no, I.

Speaker 9 It's like, okay, well, you know, well, how'd you get to this point?

Speaker 1 You know, I'm like, yeah, it's like, no, dad, I just said

Speaker 1 I had a bad day.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes your wife just wants you to be like, yeah, that person was very unfair to you.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 It's like, no, like, you can't let that person be unfair to you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Hank, what was your, you thought of one? Yeah, you roll, you roll a jiu-jitsu mat on the, on the floor after practice, whole team tournament.

Speaker 1 Who's walking out? There are no injuries. Injuries are impossible.
Whole team tournament.

Speaker 1 Who's walking out on top?

Speaker 9 Man, so that's kind of the beauty.

Speaker 9 of jiu-jitsu is like you don't know everyone's a weapon and everyone has a different weapon and you don't know that weapon until you get into the fight like if you're ever gone to a jiu-jitsu class one of the most debilitating things to your own ego is like the three guys next to you that are like overweight just came from like work they can barely do like the push-ups and the sit-ups like in the warm-up but they're like brown belts and you get into a fight and you you you last like 10 seconds and it's like how did i lose to this guy

Speaker 9 yeah but like it actually teaches you to respect everybody around you but study each guy and like you study each guy's body type and it's like okay like if I get into a fight with that guy, like, he seems more of like a leg-dominant guy.

Speaker 9 He'll probably have some like leg triangles, or, you know, that guy's a little speed athlete. Like, so it'll, it, it, you can't take anyone for granted.

Speaker 9 And you have to have the ultimate respect for everyone because everyone's a weapon in their own way. Like, that's the beauty of it.

Speaker 9 So I, I don't know because you don't know what any one person's capable of.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I bet it's Brad Stevens. I bet Brad has a plan too to kill everybody in the room.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 He seems like the kind of guy that would have that.

Speaker 1 Speaking of Brad, has he ever told you you're coaching for your job?

Speaker 9 Doesn't everybody tell me that?

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, I mean, your job is to coach.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good point.

Speaker 9 I kind of tell myself that.

Speaker 1 We have an old friend, internet friend, who would always tweet Brad Stevens' coaching for his job, and people would get so upset. And he's like, well, his job is to coach.

Speaker 9 I tell myself that, though. Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's a good mentality to have. How much do you guys miss having Blake Griffin on the team this week? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 9 Man, he's awesome, isn't he?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was on the show on Wednesday. He just, he was, he's one of our good friends.

Speaker 9 When I told this story yesterday, like, I have the utmost respect for him. So, when he, when I get the job and we sign Blake Griffin, and I'm like, shit, like, this guy was a number one pick.

Speaker 9 Like, I don't know anything about this guy. I knew everyone else on the team for the most part.
And I'm like, how am I going to coach this guy?

Speaker 9 You know, like, it sometimes the hardest people to coach are like the guys that are a little bit aging. Like, they may still have it.
They may not. You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 And so I make a, we make a decision to kind of be like, we go away from him for a couple games or whatever the case may be. And he comes up to me and he's like, what do I have to do to get better?

Speaker 9 And I was like, damn, like that said everything I need to know about the type of person that he is, like of his stature and like experience,

Speaker 9 to have the respect for a first-time head coach who, you know, didn't know what the hell he was doing, to ask that question and to like take it serious to where he was out there every single day.

Speaker 9 Like I have the utmost respect for him.

Speaker 1 Did you, did you tell him learn how to dunk again?

Speaker 9 I told him we need to get a car out there so we could jump over. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Blake is the best.
And he had nothing but high praise for you guys. And he said that he was like very close to wanting to come back, but

Speaker 1 he didn't want to cheapen it and like come back at the end of the year and not be with the guys all year, which I respect the hell out of him.

Speaker 9 I refrained from begging him to come back because he told me he wanted to be with his kids.

Speaker 9 And so like, you know, I know how hard that could be, but I would have done a lot to get him back in our locker room. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So on that note, we always would say that like Blake's the most important player on any team that he's on, regardless of how much he was playing, just because he's a good guy to have around.

Speaker 5 He's kind of like the straw that stirs the drinks sometimes.

Speaker 5 Outside of like the superstars on the Celtics right now,

Speaker 5 who would you say would be the most important guy?

Speaker 9 I would tell you like that range from like

Speaker 9 eight and a half to like 14.

Speaker 9 Like those guys don't get enough credit because they really hold the locker room together because they could easily shut it down halfway through the year or have like a negative mentality.

Speaker 9 You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 9 You know, so like, like, you know, like Peyton and Sam, they have their minutes and they've gone through that grind of like the inconsistencies and they've played their butts off this year and have been great.

Speaker 9 But like the O'Shea, the Luke, the Tillman. uh the Sfee, I don't want to forget anybody here.
So help me with that.

Speaker 9 But like those group of guys that like don't get it every single day and then you have a guy that gets an injury and now they're starting, or like it's a second night of a back-to-back, and one of them's playing 20 minutes, and like you're being hard on them because you know you need them to help you win.

Speaker 9 Like, that those group of guys, really grateful because, like you said, I don't think they get enough credit for how they helped the culture of the locker room. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, well,

Speaker 1 yeah, well, coach, this has been awesome. We really appreciate it.
I got one last question for you: it's roback. Uh, roback question, r-h-o-b-a-c-k.com.

Speaker 1 Promo code take uh, q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, even bathing suits now. Roback.com promo code take.
So we did have an inside source for this interview, your brother. He brought up

Speaker 1 something about an Italian bakery. There's two of them maybe in your hometown, and there's a big debate about it.
So can we settle the debate? Can you tell us the debate and settle it?

Speaker 9 I mean, the debate, I guess, is which one's better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So which one is?

Speaker 9 I mean, I don't want to do that to either company.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 9 I do want to talk about the Italian discrimination to the Big East conference. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
Speak on it. Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 I couldn't. I can't.

Speaker 9 When I heard that, I was like, yes, like, you got to think.

Speaker 9 Like, Massimino, Carnoseca, Gavitt. Like, of course, there's an Italian discrimination to the league.

Speaker 5 You think that's why they didn't get enough bids in the tournament this year?

Speaker 9 Yeah, everyone's just tired of the tallies.

Speaker 1 Max is pumping into the business.

Speaker 1 This is bullshit because I'm a Sixers fan. I'm not supposed to like you, but that rock.
That was awesome. Yeah, you've even won over the Sixers fan here.
That's hard to do.

Speaker 9 I mean, I don't, when you said that, I was like,

Speaker 9 there's been so much mafia run through the Big East over the years.

Speaker 9 People are probably tired of it. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay, so who's on your Mount Rushmore of Italians? Oh, good question.

Speaker 9 That's a great question. Thank you.
Great question.

Speaker 1 Putting you on the spot here. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Oh, I know.

Speaker 9 I mean, Mario Balatelli's got to be up there. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Play for the national team.

Speaker 9 They're goalie also. He's been around really Buffon.
Buffon.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He's played for like 30 30 years.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 9 There's a whole bunch of like naturalized citizens that have been

Speaker 9 up there along the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can go with, you can go old school, like a little Leonardo, you know, Da Vinci. You can go with some of that stuff.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Donatello, all the Ninja Turtles.

Speaker 1 All the Ninja Turtles.

Speaker 9 I think I appreciate Donatello and Leonardo.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 it should just be the Ninja Turtles.

Speaker 1 And Mike Florio, who's an Italian from West Virginia, so you got to mention him, Mike Florio.

Speaker 9 But I think the Ninja Turtles are probably up there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
All four of them.

Speaker 1 The best Italians.

Speaker 5 You should have your Jiu-Jitsu guy come over dressed as Michelangelo and choke you out.

Speaker 1 That would rock.

Speaker 9 Or use a one of the, who's the guy? Who's the one with the Numchucks?

Speaker 1 Numchucks is Michelangelo.

Speaker 5 Michael Angelo with party. Party dude, yeah.
Yeah, Calabonga. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 That's my favorite.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, he's the best.
Agreed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would take you as more of a Raphael guy, but that's more calculating. But Michelangelo.

Speaker 9 Raphael is more of my personality.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Michelangelo

Speaker 1 is my son's favorite so I I flock to him okay that makes sense yeah it's good to have it's good to have Italian represent representation in media like the ninja turtles

Speaker 1 yes no question

Speaker 1 um well coach in bakeries yeah in bakeries coach this has been awesome we are you you've won us over um good luck in the in the rest of the uh in the playoffs If it's the Bulls, I hope that you can at least give us one game.

Speaker 1 If it's the Bulls, you got to come by the office and maybe put us through a drill, maybe choke us out.

Speaker 9 If it's chicago we go through a jiu-jitsu session at the facility

Speaker 9 done i mean done and we work on like contingency plans exit strategies yeah

Speaker 1 uh-huh yes yes point a way out yes i feel like you would hate going to an escape room oh no we went to one this year

Speaker 9 were you panicked in there were you like i don't know how to get out i think i i i i wanted to make a room in my house an escape room

Speaker 9 because like you get so so we move into so we i get the job right and we buy a house and uh you know my wife's like super excited like it's one of the goals of her life like to have the a house like and she picked a really nice one and uh so what we have a we have jiu-jitsu mats at the house so alex comes over and he's like you know this might not be a good thing like you know the guy that lives in the town home isn't the guy that lives in this nice house you know the guy that uh drives a car to work is not the same guy that used to walk to work.

Speaker 9 Like you can't let this, you can't let this change you.

Speaker 9 So like all, so then like the the classes for that week were like all demoralizing to make sure that I didn't like enjoy the fact that we moved into this house.

Speaker 9 So I'm sitting in bed with my wife and I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's a nice house, but we just, we just can't let this get the best of us. Like we got a big, we got,

Speaker 9 we got, you know, stuff coming up. We got to stay locked in.
Like we can't let this change us. And she like almost started crying.

Speaker 1 She's like, it's my dream.

Speaker 1 She was like, you are an idiot.

Speaker 5 You develop a rivalry against the house. Every day you're trying to beat the house.

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely. Alpha Mill challenge with the house.

Speaker 9 Walk into the house and like kick the door on purpose.

Speaker 1 This house is shitty.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, coach, this has been so, so much fun.
And yeah, you have won us all over. And best of luck in the playoffs.
And we'll talk soon.

Speaker 9 I appreciate it. And last thing I want you guys to know, I came into coaching because I think NBA players get a bad rep.
And

Speaker 9 you always hear about college coaches or people who say they can't coach. I got the best group of guys.

Speaker 9 I think NBA players in general are misunderstood with what they deal with on and off the floor, like what they put their bodies through.

Speaker 9 And like, just because they make a lot of money doesn't mean that it's easy. And so I got the best job in the world coaching the Celtics.

Speaker 9 And I got the best job in the world because I got great players and they allow me to be myself and allow me to coach them. And, you know, I can't take that for granted.

Speaker 9 So I want you guys to know that. And I'll come on anytime and bust balls with you.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And just so you know, what you just said, that doesn't mean we can't say like, oh, I would have made that free throw. Because I will say that from my couch.
Okay. absolutely.
You have to say that.

Speaker 1 Okay, good, good, good. Later.
All right. Thanks, Coach.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is Coach Michael Malone, Denver Nuggets,

Speaker 1 NBA Champs. We haven't seen you since you won the NBA championship.
So let us be the last people to wish you congratulations on winning the NBA title. We had you on last year around this time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 we want to talk about playoffs, the season, everything. But the first question, very important question, how are we doing with the Mike versus Michael thing? Are people following the rules?

Speaker 1 Are they actually following the rules?

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 10 I think I scared most people away

Speaker 10 when I was very rude to Cassidy Hubberth on the sidelines of

Speaker 10 a playoff game. But no, most people are following the rules.
I think the streets are talking. They know that if they don't call me Michael, my mother's going to come looking for him.

Speaker 5 No, I appreciate it. You got to put your flag in the ground.
Let people know. You were actually the Michael police last year.

Speaker 5 When you saw people referring to you, using the wrong word, we would jump down their throat and say, no, you get it right.

Speaker 5 That's a future NBA championship coach right there and put some respect on his name.

Speaker 5 But yeah, it was great. We were rooting for you last year.
Obviously, we believed in the Nuggets from, I think, like two years ago, we started to say, get ready for the Nuggets because they're coming.

Speaker 5 They're a great team. So thank you for making us look like we know ball.
It's a very rare occurrence where we look smart on the show. So we want to make sure to give you your credit for that.

Speaker 5 And I just want to say that I'm looking forward to another potential Michael Malone championship parade because

Speaker 5 you had the best time ever at that parade. And I think everybody watching was like, yeah, if I ever won a championship, that's exactly what I would do.
So

Speaker 5 how long did it take you to feel normal after the parade?

Speaker 10 Oh, I tell you, a while. And the worst part about that parade was that night we went to Las Vegas.
And, you know, I started early that day. So I didn't last late into the night, unfortunately.

Speaker 10 But the parade was awesome. My wife was next to me on the fire truck.
She kept on telling me to slow down, slow down. And I really didn't know what that meant.
And we just won a championship.

Speaker 10 And I definitely went all out. And hopefully we can find a way to celebrate another parade because this city turned out.
And that was one of the coolest moments.

Speaker 10 of my life with not only winning a championship, but celebrating with a city that had waited for 47 years to win their first NBA championship.

Speaker 1 Yeah, even Jokic had fun at the parade. That's how you know that it was a good parade.
So, all right, so last question about last year, and then let's turn the page, all focus on this year.

Speaker 1 How many times have you looked down on your arm and been like, I really did get that tattoo?

Speaker 10 Sometimes I forget I have it, and then obviously I get out of the shower, I look in the mirror, and I remind myself I got Maxi the minor holding the trophy, and he's going to be with me every step of the way moving forward.

Speaker 10 And I did save some room, though, for some more trophies and more tattoos. So we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 5 So you said almost immediately after you won, you might have even said it before you won your first title that the goal was to establish something long-term, to establish a dynasty in Denver.

Speaker 5 When did you start thinking that it would be possible to even compete for multiple championships?

Speaker 10 You know, I go back to the bubble, and I know we lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals, but that's when I felt, you know what? We have a special player in Nicole Jokic.

Speaker 10 We have a special player in Jamal Murray. And now we have to make sure we bring the right pieces in to help those guys.

Speaker 10 And we had injuries after the bubble where we weren't whole in the playoffs. But finally, being whole and healthy and adding guys like Aaron Gordon, adding guys like obviously Cantavius Caldwell Pope.

Speaker 10 We have Michael Porter, who's just continued to get better and better.

Speaker 10 And last year, having veterans like Jeff Green and Bruce Brown, and a young player in Christian Brown, who showed out and helped us win a play, a finals game on the road in Miami.

Speaker 10 And it was, we knew if we were healthy, we had a chance to beat anybody. And last year was the first time in a while where we were completely healthy and

Speaker 10 it all came together at the right time.

Speaker 1 So talking about this year, you've been coaching for a very long time. This was the first time that you're coaching and you have a championship team that just won a title.

Speaker 1 What were the challenges like

Speaker 1 day in and day out? Coaching a team, knowing like, you know, we talk about it all the time with sports, there's a switch that you can flip.

Speaker 1 Was there moments where you're like, you could feel that maybe the focus wasn't there because everyone's been there, done that, and they're just waiting for the playoffs?

Speaker 1 Was it a different set of challenges as a coach to get that motivation day in and day out because you already hit the top of the mountain and you've got to climb back up?

Speaker 10 Yeah, it definitely was. I mean, and that was our whole mindset going into this year, starting a training camp in San Diego.

Speaker 10 And, you know, I told our players, listen, we've gone from being one of the 29 teams that's hunting a championship. And now we're going to be the team that's being hunted by everybody else.

Speaker 10 And with that success comes responsibility to understand that and to own that. And now that means you have to work harder every day.
You have to be more prepared and understand 82 games this year.

Speaker 10 You're getting everybody's best. And I tell you what.
We tied a franchise record for 57 wins this year. We went 21-6 out of the all-star break, tied for the best record in the NBA.

Speaker 10 I give our players a ton of credit for handling that responsibility in a very mature manner. Were there times this year where I felt like I had to jumpstart the guys and remind them of that?

Speaker 10 Of course, 82 games is a long season, but here we are, number two seed, getting ready for the first round.

Speaker 10 And again, I think our players have done an outstanding job of handling that success while also not being satisfied and staying hungry because we want more.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 You mentioned responsibility.

Speaker 5 Do you feel a sense of responsibility knowing that you have maybe, you know, certainly a transcendent player in Jokic, a guy whose skill set we've never seen before in the NFL, or excuse me, the NBA, and a guy who moving forward could be an all-time great?

Speaker 5 Do you feel responsible that you have to make sure that he's able to tap into all this enormous potential and tap into his ability to like the highest extent? Is that something that you think about?

Speaker 5 Like, I don't want to let this guy down.

Speaker 10 Of course. And for Nicola, but for all the other players, too.
You know, we won a championship last year, and I think think we did something that I don't think any other championship team has done.

Speaker 10 We went younger in hopes of trying to repeat. So now developing Christian Brown, Peyton Watson, Julian Strother,

Speaker 10 while having our five-man starting lineup, who we know what we're going to get from them every single night.

Speaker 10 But I always feel a responsibility to not only help Nicola, but to prepare our team, to put them in the best position to have success. And if we don't win a game, the first person I look at is me.

Speaker 10 What could I have done better? What could I have done differently to help my team? And, you know, we always bounce back. We always stay together.
Very connected group.

Speaker 10 And that's why I love coming to work every day because I feel our locker room of players, my coaching staff, our front office, our ownership group.

Speaker 10 I think we have something special that I don't think you find in all pro sports very often.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
So bad memory question, but I'm very interested in your response. So you guys were fighting for the one seed.
Friday night, you lose to the Spurs. get the two seeds.

Speaker 1 Still an incredible season. Like you said, franchise record in wins.
But what Wemby did on Friday night? Can you tell us standing there and watching him? Like,

Speaker 1 there's never been anything like that in the NBA in terms of just his ability. Like, he's so much bigger than everyone.
He's shooting threes.

Speaker 1 Did you ever catch yourself while playing him at any point this year being like, what am I even watching right now? This is insane.

Speaker 10 Oh, definitely. And obviously, we played them four times.

Speaker 10 And what was really impressive about watching Wemby this year from early in the year to we played him in game 81 is the improvement within one season.

Speaker 10 And early in the year, you could tell, wow, this guy is really tall. He can block shots.
He's pretty skilled.

Speaker 10 By the end of the season, and I think Pop did a great job, and that's why he's a great coach.

Speaker 10 You saw Wemby handling the ball in the open court. You saw him shooting pull-up threes.

Speaker 10 But the one thing that really jumped off the page for me that I saw a huge improvement was Wemby's ability to be a playmaker, his passing ability. He was making all of his teammates better.

Speaker 10 And for me, that's always a mark of greatness.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you can be a really good player, but can you make those around you better? And obviously, it was a tough loss for us.

Speaker 10 But yes, you're watching Wemby and you're saying, wow, this guy is a future of the NBA. He impacts the game offensively, defensively, playmaking, and he's a competitor.

Speaker 10 I mean, he's only going to get better. He's going to get stronger.
But I don't see any weaknesses in his game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it was the game that he scored, I think, 17 points in three minutes. And it was just like, what is going on right now?

Speaker 1 It's crazy to watch.

Speaker 10 He was shooting pull-up threes from 35 feet.

Speaker 10 You're not used to seeing that from a player at 7-4 or whatever he is.

Speaker 10 You see that from Steph Curry, but now you have a seven-footer. doing all those things and it's kind of like, wow, this guy's going to be unguardable at some point.

Speaker 5 Yeah, with the longest arms ever. So it's almost like he's got the arms of a 7-foot six guy guy and he's 7'4.
It's like impossible to stop something like that.

Speaker 5 How do you go about game planning for a great individual player like that?

Speaker 5 Because we saw it just a couple weeks ago in March Madness in the NCAA tournament where Hurley's strategy against Edie was basically, you know, he's going to get his points and we can let him get his points, but we're not going to let everybody else on the court beat us.

Speaker 5 When you're going up against a superstar player, and obviously in the NBA, everybody's good, right? Everyone can shoot the ball.

Speaker 5 But is that more often than not your strategy of just accept the fact that the superstar is going to do some damage and try to limit everybody else?

Speaker 10 Well, I think it depends on the player, the matchup, who's around that player.

Speaker 10 There are definitely games and opponents will all say, listen, we know he's going to get his, but they're at their best when everybody else gets going.

Speaker 10 So you let that certain player maybe get his 25 to 30 points, but you take away the three-point line for their other players.

Speaker 10 Then there are certain nights where you say, listen, we can't let this guy get off. He's scoring way too easy.
We have to send a double team. And that's not just in the post.

Speaker 10 That may be a player on the perimeter like an Anthony Edwards, like Jalen Brown, who are just really tough covers on the perimeter, where you may have to send a secondary defender and then look to fly around behind that.

Speaker 10 And obviously, you know, Danny Hurley, a tremendous job at UConn winning another title. And his game plan against Zach Eady in the post was terrific.

Speaker 10 They took away all the Purdue shooting and made Eady be the one guy that was scoring.

Speaker 10 And then there were times where they decided to double team, but their multiple effort and fly-around mentality was outstanding.

Speaker 10 That was what impressed me about UConn: just their defense on the ball, off the ball

Speaker 10 for 40 minutes was just incredible.

Speaker 1 So I had a question about that. So it's, you know, New Jersey high school players are having a moment right now with Danny Hurley winning his back-to-back.

Speaker 1 You're, you, you know, you went to Seton Hall prep for a couple of years in New Jersey trying to go back to back. Did you play against, it would be Bobby, right? Like, he was at the time.

Speaker 1 Did you have games against him?

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah, no, I played against Bobby and, you know, the other St. Anthony's players, Jerry Walker, all the guys,

Speaker 10 Jasper Walker, different players. But yeah, Danny was younger, but Bobby was more my age.
And obviously, Bobby was an incredible player at St. Anthony's, at Duke.

Speaker 10 And unfortunately, his career in the NBA was

Speaker 10 cut short. But yeah, I mean, that era of, you know, that tri-state New York City, New Jersey basketball was incredible.

Speaker 10 Yeah, Talentine High School, who had, you know, Malik Steely, Brian Reese, Adrian Autry.

Speaker 10 You had Kenny Anderson at Malloy.

Speaker 10 There were a lot of great players in that area at that time. And I always looked forward to playing against a guy like Bobby because he was considered one of the best point guards in the country.

Speaker 1 Yeah, tough, tough New Jersey high school players into coaches are having a big moment right now.

Speaker 1 The other one I had for you was your start in coaching.

Speaker 1 Greg Campy, who just won his first NCAA

Speaker 1 tournament game with our guy Jack Golke. Did you talk to him after it all? Because that was a very cool moment.
And for people who don't know, you basically got your start

Speaker 1 doing anything for him way back in the day at Oakland University. He's been there for 40 years and he finally gets that one big moment beating Kentucky.

Speaker 10 Well, you know what, the great thing is, so I got that job at Oakland because my father was an assistant coach in Detroit with Chuck Daly, and they used to practice at Oakland University.

Speaker 10 So my father had a relationship with Campy. And when I was getting out of college, I wanted to get into coaching.
And my father put in a good word with Greg Campy, who hired me.

Speaker 10 Now, Oakland was Division II at the time, but I was a volunteer assistant coach. And the coolest part about that job was Barry Sanders used to come over and play Open Gym.

Speaker 10 And here he is, the greatest, arguably the greatest running back in NFL history who loved hoops. And having a chance to play with him was a memory I'll never forget.

Speaker 10 But Coach Campi and I have stayed in touch. My father passed away this past October.
Coach Campi was one of the first guys to reach out to me. And when they beat Kentucky that night,

Speaker 10 I hit him up right away. I'm sure I was one of a thousand messages, but for him to be there for 40 years and him to have that kind of a win behind the unbelievable shooting of Jack Golke

Speaker 10 was incredible. And I was so happy for Coach Campi,

Speaker 10 the Oakland program, and obviously Coach Campy's entire family.

Speaker 1 Yeah, wait, wait,

Speaker 1 you just glossed over something. Barry Sanders playing pickup basketball.
What was his game like?

Speaker 10 Well, I tell you what, I couldn't get over the size of his legs and the size of his neck.

Speaker 10 He was an incredible athlete.

Speaker 10 And it's funny, man, he was just, he was

Speaker 10 for the player he was and all the success he had and all the records that he had, very, very humble, very quiet, but loved basketball, wanted to come in. My sister Kelly actually worked for the Lions

Speaker 10 at that time. So I got to know him a little bit.

Speaker 10 Unbelievable person, just humble, selfless love to hoop and you wouldn't eat if you didn't know who he was you'd think he was just a regular guy in there playing hoops and that's what i loved about him yes he was a great running back uh who carried those lions teams for years but uh i was just impressed with how he carried himself as a man what was his comp though player comp player comp oh i'm trying to think uh

Speaker 10 I don't know. Nate Robinson.
Okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a very good one. Did he travel with the ball a lot?

Speaker 5 Did he just stop dribbling?

Speaker 10 Strong, explosive.

Speaker 10 Yes, I don't know. Nate Robinson popped into my head.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing just to go try to guard Barry Sanders in any sport. It would be incredible.
Dude, do you know Jack?

Speaker 10 I made sure he was on my team.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That's smart.
That's a smart move. You should bring Golki in for a tryout.
Yeah. He needs to look.
The kid can shoot.

Speaker 10 Well, I tell you what, Hubie Brown, who I got to know, my father was on his staff back in the day, one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game of basketball.

Speaker 10 And Hubie Brown had a saying, shooting makes up for a multitude of sins. If you can shoot the ball in today's game, there's a place for you.

Speaker 10 And what Jack Golke did on the biggest stage in the country was really, really impressive. And I think there are a lot of Jack Golke fans.
I think Campbe even talked about it.

Speaker 10 That night after they won that game, people from Louisville were buying Oakland gear.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 They wanted to wear it in Kentucky and rub it in the Kentucky fans' faces.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so let's give him a try because we're big Jack Golke fans. We actually had him in our office and we have a full court basketball course.
So he got to do a workout.

Speaker 1 We got to do some drills with him. He can shoot.
We'll tell you right now. We'll be your advanced scouts.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you knew this. Guy can shoot.

Speaker 1 Philadelphia.

Speaker 10 Here's my question. At a big cat PFT, who is the better shooter?

Speaker 10 Who's got the

Speaker 10 shot?

Speaker 2 That would be Big Cat.

Speaker 5 I'm more of a facilitator. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You should, listen, next season when you're in Chicago, you should come by because we do run fives on Friday, and it's probably the worst basketball you could ever watch.

Speaker 1 It's like those when you run pickup basketball, and maybe the first game is like 15 minutes, and then the second game, everyone gets tired, and it's like 35 minutes to get to 11, and you're like, this is just atrocious to watch.

Speaker 10 I look forward. I will stop by.
If the schedule permits, I'd love to stop by and see you guys.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, coach us up.

Speaker 5 I actually have a pointer for you. I know that you've accomplished a lot as a coach.
You can always get better, though, right? We're always looking to improve around the margins.

Speaker 5 You're great at getting in the ref's face, at giving them a piece of your mind. When you feel like your player has been fouled, they don't call it.
I saw it a couple times at Aaron Gordon this year.

Speaker 5 You're not afraid to let the ref have it. But there's one player that you don't do it enough for.

Speaker 5 And that's Jokic when he's trying his like three-quarter-length three-pointer when he's getting fouled and they never call the foul on him. And it's a foul.
They get him on the arm.

Speaker 5 I know that the refs are like, oh, this is weird. Why is he shooting it from the opposing foul line?

Speaker 5 I think you need to get in the refs' face when they don't call that and let them know that's a foul.

Speaker 10 Well, I tell you what. So, to clarify, they are calling the foul, but what they're not giving him is the free throws.
They're saying it's a non-shooting foul. And

Speaker 10 the funny thing is, I've had a lot of conversations with the refs as well as the league about it because I don't think people understand how smart Nicola is.

Speaker 10 He sees it before it happens. And so he knows a player is about to come up and he'll stop around around 70 feet from the basket, raise up and let it go.

Speaker 10 And I asked the ref one time, I said, be honest, the reason you're not giving him free throws is because of where it happened.

Speaker 10 Because, you know, well, what right-minded player is going to shoot a shot 70 feet away? And I go, but you shouldn't be worried about the location.

Speaker 10 It's more about, is he in his upward shooting motion? And it's an ongoing debate. And hopefully at one point, we'll be able to get that.

Speaker 10 But if I have to get thrown out one time, obviously I have no problem doing that.

Speaker 1 The day that he gets that call, it's going to be incredible.

Speaker 5 It's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 He's been trying for it for so long.

Speaker 5 He also might ruin the NBA forever the second that he gets that call because then everyone's going to be doing that. But I want to see it happen the first time.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, I want to see it as well. I think he deserves.
He's probably an 0 for 12 in those attempts, and hopefully, we'll get it one day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so speaking of Jokic,

Speaker 1 is there ever a time where you're like, hey, can you shoot more?

Speaker 1 Because he's so good at sometimes, you know, like a game will start and he's just facilitating to everyone and he's maybe passing up shots to get everyone else involved.

Speaker 1 Do you ever have to say like, listen, thank you for passing to everyone, but I need you to shoot because every time you shoot, it goes in.

Speaker 10 Yeah, well, he's one of the more efficient players that we've ever seen. And that's why obviously he's a two-time MVP and potentially a three-time MVP.

Speaker 10 But, you know, there are times where I have to say, listen, you need to be a little bit more aggressive. You know, certain teams choose to double team him from the get-go.

Speaker 10 Other teams choose to play him straight up. It's picked your poison poison with him, like we touched on earlier.

Speaker 10 But there are games where he's such a great passer. He's always reading the defense and he wants to get other people involved.

Speaker 10 That's why he's great because he's going to be one of the top three assists for game players in the league every year.

Speaker 10 But yeah, sometimes it's like, joke, you got to be more aggressive. Look to attack before the double team or when you have one-on-one coverage.
Go to work.

Speaker 10 He's proven to be unguardable, and that's not a knock on anybody.

Speaker 10 That's just speaking to his greatness and his ability to find and solve any riddle thrown at him and we've seen him do it time and time again and none better than last year during our run to the to the finals and ultimately winning our championship but um he is a great player he's a great passer he's really unselfish so usually i trust him 1000 to read the game and play the game the way he sees but there will be an occasional time where yeah hey listen like go to work look look to score and uh and he we know he can do that yeah and i think he's in really great shape too I think that's a very underrated part of his game is his conditioning.

Speaker 5 People look at him sometimes, and he might not have like the muscle definition on the biceps that some other guys have.

Speaker 5 But I feel like people don't give him credit for it.

Speaker 5 Do you think teams underestimate how in shape he is?

Speaker 10 I couldn't agree with that more. And I think the perfect example was: you go back, I think six years ago, our first time making the playoffs.
We had a game in Portland that went four overtimes.

Speaker 10 I think Nicola played 60 minutes.

Speaker 10 And I don't know how many players can do that and play effectively and efficiently. But Nicola,

Speaker 10 I think people always judge athleticism on how high you can jump. Well, if that's the only way you're going to judge his athleticism, well, you're going to say Nicola is not a great athlete.

Speaker 10 But it's more than just jumping. It's hand-eye coordination.
It's the ability to have unbelievable stamina. He loves horses.
And I say, you like Secretariat, man. He's got like a huge heart.

Speaker 10 Nicola can run for days. And you look at how much we play him.

Speaker 10 And now that the playoffs are about to start, how much more we're about to play him because we know that when he's on the floor, good things tend to happen for us.

Speaker 5 I think it goes back to that picture that always goes around of him as a kid. And so people see that picture and they're like, oh, this guy can't run.

Speaker 5 But no, he's always out there and he's always running. Yeah.
I do think it works to your advantage, though, that sometimes teams don't really recognize how great of shape he's in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 10 Well, I think the other thing that, like, you talk about the athleticism, I think the other really common misperception about Nicole Jokic is, oh, well, because he's not a good athlete, he's not a good defender.

Speaker 10 And I don't think that could be further from the truth. I think Nicole is actually a very good defender.

Speaker 10 And you don't have to be a good defender to be a guy that's jumping and blocking shots above the rim. He has unbelievable hand-eye coordination.

Speaker 10 He's one of the top guys in the NBA in terms of deflections. You guys have seen him break up a lot of passes with his feet and his timing anticipation.

Speaker 10 He's one of the few players in the NBA that's got over 100 steals and close to 70 blocks.

Speaker 10 So I think that's also an area that people try to pick him apart, but he's proven people wrong time and time again.

Speaker 1 So one thing you're elite at, and I've read a bunch of stories, and it's very clear when you talk about your team, is your ability to connect with each guy person to person.

Speaker 1 And like the stories of you going to visit Jokic at his home. Did you ride a horse, by the way, when you went there?

Speaker 10 So I didn't ride the horse, but Nicola let me ride the carriage.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right, that counts.

Speaker 10 He took me to practice one day, and he goes, Coach, come on. And he told me what to do.

Speaker 10 And I went around and he was really mad at me because he said it was a practice and I was supposed to go a lot slower. And I was like, man, her, man.

Speaker 1 I was like, let's go.

Speaker 10 And yeah, so I did that one time and he'll probably never let me do that again.

Speaker 1 That's fantastic.

Speaker 1 So your ability, though, connect with guys, you know, one-on-one, you know, when you had that quote about Jamal Murray's injuries and how he's going to be back, I think, you know, when it comes to coaching, the best coaches are able to get their teams to trust them on such a level that it's like, you know, what I'm doing is going to get you to a place where you can win a championship.

Speaker 1 Was there a moment in these last few years where you could feel like my team is finally in?

Speaker 1 Like, they're finally all have bought into what I'm selling, and they all are going to trust me no matter what I say.

Speaker 1 They might not agree all the time, but they trust that what I'm doing is trying to put them in the best spot.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question.

Speaker 1 And thank you.

Speaker 10 I go back to,

Speaker 10 you know, the bubble,

Speaker 10 but even our first time making the playoffs, you know, we played San Antonio in the first round, and here we are playing the Spurs, right? And Coach Popovich, and we've won in seven games.

Speaker 10 And that was brand new for Jamal. That was brand new for me.
That was brand new for Nicola. And I think that's really helped that Nicola and I have been together for nine years.

Speaker 10 Jamal and I have been together for eight. And then we've added pieces around.

Speaker 10 I think Aaron Gordon's been here for four and a half now. Michael Porter for five.
So what you have with that continuity creates chemistry and trust. So I've never felt like I had to like

Speaker 10 win them over. I felt like we've always been connected.

Speaker 10 And for me,

Speaker 10 it's never been, this is what we're doing, and it's my way or the highway. What I learned from a guy like Coach Popovich is when we talk about trust as part of our culture, I got to trust our players.

Speaker 10 So last year during our run to the finals, we're going through games and scouting reports and opposing plays. I'm giving our players input.
What do you guys see? What do you want to do in this play?

Speaker 10 So now I'm empowering them so we all feel a part of it.

Speaker 10 And so I'm not a dictator. I'm very much a coach that wants to give our players input.
And not so I hope it fails, but hey.

Speaker 10 you're out there playing and i i think through all those conversations and all the time that we've been together

Speaker 10 I think that's allowed us to get to a place where we trust each other. It's not just them trusting me.
I also trust our players, and we have great dialogue within that.

Speaker 1 So off that question, you mentioned Aaron Gordon, who has been phenomenal for you guys.

Speaker 1 And what is it, though, putting a guy like Aaron Gordon, who is with the magic, he's the best guy in the magic, then he comes to the Nuggets and his role is going to be a little different.

Speaker 1 And he's not the best guy anymore, but you need him to play winning basketball.

Speaker 1 How does that process work when you have a new guy on the team and you're like, look, you were the man, you're still the man, but there's other guys here who are going to be the man and you're going to play off them a little bit more.

Speaker 10 Well, I think Aaron Gordon deserves the credit here. I mean, I could sit here and say, hey, we had conversations about this and that, which we did, but ultimately, it's up to the man.

Speaker 10 It's up to the person, the player, to understand I'm coming to a team that's really good. They've won.
They haven't won at the highest level yet, but I can help them get over the hump.

Speaker 10 And the funny thing is, right when we got Aaron Gordon after that trade deadline, we beat the Clippers in L.A. when they were fully loaded and healthy.

Speaker 10 And that's when I think we all realized that we got a chance, if we stay healthy, to win and win big and win a championship.

Speaker 10 Unfortunately, injuries happened that year, the year after, but then we finally had that chance last season. But Aaron.

Speaker 10 came in understanding that, listen, I'm going to do whatever it takes to help this team. I'm playing next to a great player who's one of the most unselfish players, highest IQs, and great passers.

Speaker 10 I'm just going to play off of him. I'm going to play off of Jamal Murray.
I'm going to defend. I'm going to rebound, and I'm going to be completely selfless in everything I do.

Speaker 10 And I think guys like Aaron Gordon, guys like KCP

Speaker 10 embody

Speaker 10 being truly selfless every single day because when people talk about the Nuggets, it's Nicole Jokic, it's Jamal Murray.

Speaker 10 And Michael Porter, Aaron Gordon, KCP don't get as much of the attention, but they're all all just as important in our success.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's awesome watching a team come together like that where you have pieces from all over the place and it's everyone kind of steps into their role.

Speaker 1 It's beautiful to watch when basketball works that way.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and Christian Brown, too. You mentioned him earlier, like as a spark X-Factor.

Speaker 5 What would he have to do to get into the starting rotation? Because I know he's great in certain aspects of his game.

Speaker 5 I think I've heard you talk about him in transition before and how that is a key factor in his game. Is that a guy that you see ever becoming a rotation guy?

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, he's a rotation guy for us now. And when we've had injuries, he started a bunch of games for us this year.
His versatility is what you love about him.

Speaker 10 He can be a small fold, a two guard. And he's actually been, when Jamal was out for a while this year, Christian's been our backup point guard at times.
So there's not a position he can't play.

Speaker 10 And you talk about transition. I felt probably maybe halfway through this season, Christian wasn't playing the way I was hoping he would have played this year.

Speaker 10 He didn't have the same aggression, didn't have the same defensive disposition that I thought he needed to have. And I called him in.
We met.

Speaker 10 We watched film from last year of how he helped us win, even clips from him in the NBA Finals. And I said, this is what we need from you.

Speaker 10 You know, for you to be the best player for this team, we need you to be more aggressive. We need you to be tougher.
We need you to be more disciplined and to lock down on defense.

Speaker 10 And to his credit, from that meeting through the end of the season, I thought he was tremendous for us. He's put a lot of time into his game.
He's shooting the three-ball really well.

Speaker 10 He is a hell of a finisher. If you go back to that Minnesota game, some of the dunks he had in transition were just incredible.
highlight dunks with his left hand on a guy like Rudy Gobert.

Speaker 10 But he's an important piece because he can fill so many holes. And for me with Christian, CB is what we call him, it's always about his intangibles, man.
He's got an edge to him.

Speaker 10 He's one at every level. I wanted to go out there and just be a dog and get after people, hit people, be aggressive.
And when he does that, he's a difference maker.

Speaker 10 And the other young guy that I think has really improved this year is Peyton Watson.

Speaker 10 You know, Peyton Watson is doing things defensively, blocking shots at the rim, a lot of plays defensively that most guys in the league can't make. So Peyton didn't play at all last year.

Speaker 10 He's in the rotation this year, and it's going to be a great opportunity for him these coming playoffs to really step up because we all know the playoffs is a lot different than the 82-game regular season.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you guys got a lot of weapons. Coach, we ask this question to everybody.
It's a fun little segment that we do.

Speaker 5 It's called Who Would You Rather Play in the First Round of the Playoffs? The Kings, the Warriors, the Pelicans, or the Lakers?

Speaker 10 Well, the lucky, the good thing for us is that we know we're either playing the Lakers or the Pelicans.

Speaker 10 They have their play-in game down in New Orleans tonight. And

Speaker 10 I like to play whoever wins that game.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's smart.

Speaker 5 That's what's going to happen. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a good answer. That's a good answer.
Good answer.

Speaker 5 That's the best answer we've ever had in that segment.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
So I had a couple of last questions.

Speaker 1 So we're ball knowers. We know ball.

Speaker 1 And these West playoffs are going to be great. There's so many talented teams.
The one seed, though, the Thunder, they have had an incredible season.

Speaker 1 Some people, non-ball knowers, are being like, well, they're too young. They don't know how to get through the playoffs.

Speaker 1 We obviously know that they're so talented, any team could win the West.

Speaker 1 Playing them, though, and seeing their young talent kind of go from, you know, they were not a playoff team last year. Now they're in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Obviously, they had to do with a lot of injuries, guys coming back. But

Speaker 1 how impressive is it watching a team that young? I think their roster age is like 23 years old. It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 10 Oh, it really is. And one, you have to give credit to Sam Presty.
Their GM who's done a terrific job of, you know, handling the roster and building that roster up to what we see today.

Speaker 10 Very young, but very talented. A lot of high lottery picks in there.

Speaker 10 And it's not just about bringing talent in. They brought talent in that fits, that complements each other.
Then you go down to Mark Dagnalt, who I think is coach of the year in the NBA.

Speaker 10 I think he's done an outstanding job of building that team on both ends of the floor.

Speaker 10 And then you mention the players. I mean, Shea Gilgis Alexander is an MVP candidate for a reason.

Speaker 10 Unbelievable talent, can score the ball, ball can guard i think he led the league in steals uh you have ched holmgren who unfortunately isn't a rookie class but victor wembanyama but ched holmgren we we look at his upside and his ability to impact offense and defense uh young jalen williams that guy isn't just He's becoming a go-to player for him.

Speaker 10 He'll be a future all-star, in my opinion. Lou Dorts, one of the best defenders in the NBA.
And I give a guy like Josh Giddy so much credit.

Speaker 10 There was so much noise around him early in in the year with the investigation, all the stuff off the court. He was being booed in every arena he played in.
And he fought through that.

Speaker 10 And I think he's quietly a really important piece to that team because he can playmake, he rebounds, he defends, and he makes all of his teammates better. So I don't buy into the hole.

Speaker 10 They're too young to win it.

Speaker 10 Last year, people thought, well, we've never won a championship. They can't win a finals.
And I go back to year one.

Speaker 10 We beat the Spurs in round one, and we took the Blazers to game seven in the second round. It's they have the talent.
They have the coaching.

Speaker 10 And I think these Western Conference playoffs are just going to be so fun to watch. I would not be surprised if there are a ton of upsets.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going to be crazy to watch.

Speaker 5 Have you done any breakdowns or even thought, allowed yourself to think about the best teams in the East? Or are you just in the mindset of let's handle our business in the West?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, I'm just locked in in the Western Conference. The funny thing is, going into our game against Memphis, game 82, all the games in the West started at the same time.

Speaker 10 And I knew all the different, like, oh, this team wins or this seed. In the East, I knew Boston was one.
And after that, I had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 10 So it's going to be hard enough getting out of the first round this year.

Speaker 10 So we're going to take it one round at a time. And if we're able to get out of the Western Conference again, then we'll turn our attention to whoever is coming out of the Eastern Conference.

Speaker 1 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 11 Sebastian Menuscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 1 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht and the boxes keep coming.

Speaker 11 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 1 So we talked about the Hurlies. Have you thought about maybe

Speaker 1 getting on the court and pushing a player during action?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 10 Did Danny do that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he did that in the finals with like when they were up 15 with three minutes left. He just kind of blacked out and he pushed Cam Spencer to be like,

Speaker 1 go and run the play.

Speaker 1 Have you ever caught yourself getting too far onto the sideline? Shaka Smart does it as well, where he's basically a sixth guy out there playing defense in the corner.

Speaker 1 But have you ever had to like stop yourself and be like, oh, I'm basically standing on the court right now?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, sometimes I'm like,

Speaker 10 you know, the scene in old school where I'm having an out-of-body experience, man. And I find myself like, why am I on the other side of half court?

Speaker 10 Coaching my team. Years ago, Terry Stotts, who was coaching in Portland at the time, he took a screenshot of our game.
And I was all the way on the other side of the court in the other coaching box.

Speaker 10 And sometimes my wife and my daughters will make fun of me because as the game is going on, I am, that's why I like, we don't have to wear suits anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I can get in a defensive stance and do my slide up and down the sideline like I'm guarding, like I'm having any impact on the game.

Speaker 1 No, it does. That does.
That absolutely has an impact. The coach getting up and slapping the floor a couple times, that absolutely has an impact.

Speaker 10 I think the players probably laugh at it, but I think they respect it. I'm not a guy.
Like there are certain coaches that you look on the sideline.

Speaker 10 They'll be over there sitting on the bench with their legs crossed.

Speaker 10 And I actually said to my assistants, if I ever sit on a bench with my legs crossed, punch me in my face. I said, I am a coach.
I'm into the game. It's an emotional game.

Speaker 10 And, you know, we're all competitors, man. You don't get to this level if you're not a competitor.
And, you know, sometimes I definitely overdo it. And I got to remind myself to.

Speaker 10 to calm down a little bit. But at the end of the day, like my mother always tells me, you got to be yourself.
And that's what I try to do.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Maybe if you just get one technical, then have the Jokic brothers be your get-back guy.
And so if you get too far out there, they come down, they grab you back.

Speaker 10 Well, that was one of my best moments last year of winning the Western Conference final at the NBA was going to hug.

Speaker 10 Nemanya and Strahina, Nicola's big brothers and really big brothers, and them taking me like a ragdoll and throwing me in the air. And I mean, those are moments that you'll never ever forget.

Speaker 10 And that's what I love about our group. It's not just our players, but we have a very connected group, and I love being a part of it.

Speaker 1 Well, hopefully you get some more of those moments coming up in the next couple of months. Coach, we really appreciate your time.
We love having you on, and best of luck in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 And let's not wait a whole year if you guys win again. Let's have you on right away.
So, maybe at the parade,

Speaker 1 we'll have you zoom in at the parade if it happens again.

Speaker 10 I tell you what, that would be awesome to do. If not, I will see you guys in Chicago.
And always being great being on with you guys, and let's do it again soon.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks, Coach.
Thank you, Coach. Appreciate it.
And don't worry, we'll police anyone who says Mike. We got you.
We got you.

Speaker 1 We're your silent protectors. We got you.

Speaker 10 Appreciate it.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we'll wrap up the show with Firefest.

Speaker 1 I'll actually go first this week with my Firefest because it's the fact that we have a gambling turtle that's going to probably probably cost me a lot of money.

Speaker 5 Well, he's 0-1 right now.

Speaker 1 0-1.

Speaker 5 I wish there was some sort of metaphor, though, Big Cat, for

Speaker 5 some like Kids' Fable that started out very slow, reminded us that this was a marathon, not a sprint.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I have to stick with Mr. Perry, you're saying

Speaker 5 he might be the Moneyline guy.

Speaker 1 We don't know. We might have gotten accidentally a Moneyline turtle.

Speaker 5 Tortoise.

Speaker 5 He's a Russian tortoise.

Speaker 1 All tortoises are turtles. So is that true? Can we say that? It's Max only.
so oh well Max Jesus Max didn't do that

Speaker 1 all tortoises are turtles

Speaker 1 where'd you find that out all tortoise no no no

Speaker 1 oh he's got oh all tortoises are turtles not all turtles are tortoises so he's a tortoise but also a turtle

Speaker 5 so that might have been the turtle pig oh

Speaker 1 yesterday he's looking so cute mr.

Speaker 5 Pears very gorgeous mr. Pig what's on his mouth

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's looking.

Speaker 5 He's got a lot of white. Calcium?

Speaker 1 What has he been doing? Has he been drinking milk?

Speaker 1 No, it's calcium powder. They need it for the shell.
Wait, so did you put that on him?

Speaker 7 No, you put it on his food and then.

Speaker 1 Oh, no way.

Speaker 5 Look at you, Memes. He looks like a Coke guy.

Speaker 1 Memes is really. He's doing a great job as a papa.

Speaker 5 Zoom in on his face and just make the I fucking love cocaine meme out of him.

Speaker 1 Look at this guy. Why do you have a.

Speaker 1 Excuse me. Why do you have a jersey underneath?

Speaker 1 Did he poop on you And come on you?

Speaker 3 Apparently that's what their pee looks like.

Speaker 1 Is white?

Speaker 5 Okay. And what if it's a female tourist note, squirt?

Speaker 1 We don't know if he's male or female. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a mister. Oh,

Speaker 1 you've checked it? Nope. Oh, okay, so we don't know.
All right, so that's my firefress, is that whatever this turtle picks. I'm going to bet.

Speaker 1 And we've somehow gotten ourselves back into this situation where a turtle is now deciding whether I win or lose money.

Speaker 5 He's going to be good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. So he's going to pick the Bulls heat game.
Hank, why don't you go with your Fire Fest while Mr. Pear picks?

Speaker 1 No real Fire Fest for me. I mean, the sleeping the other day, dozing off, not great.
Yeah, especially after you slept until 11:30 on last Thursday. Yeah, I might have a sleep problem.

Speaker 1 Well, I've just been waking up early, which I think is a good thing long term. Okay.
Mr. Pearson's not moving at all.

Speaker 5 He's taking his time. He's not moving.

Speaker 1 All right, Hank, you just let us know. Keep going with your fire fest.
I'm just addicted to

Speaker 1 watching old Masters broadcast before I go to bed, and that's been keeping me up. What have you been watching? Have you seen Scotty Stradler? No, no.
Greg Stradler.

Speaker 1 Greg Stadler. I've been like 2002.

Speaker 1 They're four-hour broadcasts, but I'm like, I'll just turn this on and fall asleep. And I watch for like two hours.

Speaker 5 You get really into it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You are addicted to golf.

Speaker 1 It's good. It's good.
It's a good watch. Join.
Gym dance.

Speaker 1 He hasn't moved. He has not moved, folks.
Not one. He has not moved.

Speaker 1 I I think we put it down for him. If he doesn't move by the end of the Fire Fest, we have to just do

Speaker 1 the game to go to overtime.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so wait, why don't we put food down? Yeah, put some food down. He's not going to move if there's.

Speaker 1 Or Max, just show him your ass.

Speaker 1 All right, so no Fire Fest is just Hanks watching too much golf.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Okay.
PFT? Good Fire Fest. My Fire Fest, kind of along the same lines of.
Also, taxes.

Speaker 1 I did fire taxes.

Speaker 5 I would like to clear for the record.

Speaker 1 Why were people asking? Yeah, well, people are chirping me and they're saying I'm going to get audited and shit. I take the most out of my taxes so that I don't have to.
Do taxes?

Speaker 1 Not due taxes, but

Speaker 1 it's not like, oh, fuck, I'm going to be done. Oh, here he's moving.

Speaker 3 He's going to the heat.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. He's going to the heat.

Speaker 5 He only turns right so far.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're going to have to figure this problem out.

Speaker 5 He's not an ambient turner.

Speaker 1 Okay, keep going, Hank. So you did your taxes, even though you did them late? I did.

Speaker 1 They're on the way. Would we're good.
What's today's date?

Speaker 1 It's the 18th oh do you owe money I will owe money but not you know I'm not gonna get like they were late go to jail okay and if I have to pay a fine I pay a fine

Speaker 5 all right PFT what's yours along the same lines as just the tortoise that stinks at gambling I've I tried to do something good and tried to get some advice and learn from experts on tortoises so we can find out more about our beloved Mr.

Speaker 5 Pear and I signed up for an account on tortoise forums okay and a lot of hot discussion going on on tortoise forums tortoises in the news, advanced tortoise topics.

Speaker 5 And I made a post there under advanced tortoise topics asking for advice with a gambling tortoise because I assume this is a problem they've dealt with in the past.

Speaker 5 They know which types are good, which types are not good. I got banned from Tortoise Forum.
What? They hit me with a banhammer. The mods came after me after about...

Speaker 5 It was one post.

Speaker 1 You're the Jante Porter of Tortoise Forum.

Speaker 5 And I specifically said we're not doing weird sex stuff with him because I know a lot of those freaks on the tortoise message board are into weird sex stuff. Yep, you let that be known.

Speaker 5 I let that be known, and I had several real questions about the tortoise, and then they hit me with a banhammer right off the bat. So I'm no longer blocked by OJ, but I am banned by tortoise for him.

Speaker 1 Wait, OJ unblocked you?

Speaker 5 No, he's dead, so he's

Speaker 1 not blocking me.

Speaker 5 No, but

Speaker 5 he can't be blocking me if he's dead. But his account still blocks me.
The account still blocks me. Yeah, we got to get that fixed.
No, I'm okay with that. I'm okay.
I wear that as a badge.

Speaker 5 But the tortoise forum thing is a real issue because we are going to have questions about it, and that's the place to go to get your questions answered.

Speaker 1 I'll sign up.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you should.

Speaker 5 And then do a little intro post about you.

Speaker 1 Just so you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to have sex with any turtles.

Speaker 5 No sex stuff. We've been very clear about that.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'll say, listen, guys,

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to have sex with my turtle. He also is a tortoise.
We're not going to talk about that part. Yeah.
Just let everyone know. Yeah.
Or separate.

Speaker 5 I looked around on the forum, though, and there's some great, great topics. Like, what did your tortoise do during the eclipse? Was a hot one.
That was in the advanced topic section.

Speaker 1 He's turning back to the middle. He's turning.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's 50. He's turning.

Speaker 5 He's trying to escape right now.

Speaker 1 I think he's leaving. He's leaving.
This guy, Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 He's got a problem. I mean, we can.

Speaker 1 If he leaves, we can say, oh, pick.

Speaker 1 He's looking

Speaker 1 bulls?

Speaker 6 He's like 60% bulls right now.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. All right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't really have a Firefest other than Mr. Pear.

Speaker 5 You want to do a Taylor Swift album review?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, no, actually, no, I don't, because it isn't officially out yet, right?

Speaker 5 But it's out by the time this is released.

Speaker 1 But Swifties have been very upset about leaks.

Speaker 1 They've been doxing each other. They've been infighting in the Swifties.

Speaker 5 Well, I did hear one song that I did not care for on the album. Okay.
It talks about. So wait.

Speaker 1 You listened to it before it came out?

Speaker 5 No, so I was forced to listen to it. Okay.
I was forced to listen to it.

Speaker 1 Are there any music videos?

Speaker 5 No, somebody kidnapped me and they said, you have to listen to this. I said, no, Taylor's Queen.
Let's not take away from her streams.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is there any videos I could watch?

Speaker 5 I don't have any videos of it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Let me know when it's in video form.

Speaker 5 I've heard that there might be a very interesting video of her and somebody else.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 there's one song that I don't like at all, and I don't think anyone should listen to.

Speaker 5 It's about how her boyfriend's friend is super annoying and always trying to get him to schedule things and trying to get him to stop coming to her concerts, trying to get him out to drink beers and just carry on and be a big psycho dumb jock.

Speaker 5 Don't listen to that. And that's not who her boyfriend is, but he has one bad, really bad influence of a friend that's very unorganized.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 5 So whatever that song's about, I don't like it. Yep.

Speaker 1 Agreed.

Speaker 1 Jake, finish this off. Is he just not moving anymore? He's not moving.
He's in the middle. It might be a no-pick.

Speaker 1 Or we could just keep it running. He's racing the bulls, but he's in the dead center.
Yeah, we'll keep him going. Come on, Mr.
Penn. Come on, Mr.

Speaker 5 Penn. Can't rush greatness.

Speaker 7 All right, Jake, what's your feeling? The other day, I was walking back from the grocery store, and it started pouring right in the middle of the walk.

Speaker 5 Oh, I didn't know you like to get wet.

Speaker 1 We did have a crazy, a couple crazy weather days. Thanks, Hank.
Oh, that's our

Speaker 1 baseball game got canceled. Yeah, but it was like there was one day where it was...
Softball. It was raining, then 70 degrees, and raining again.
It's nice. Little.
It's like Florida. Mix it up.

Speaker 1 The weather's been fine. It's been fucking 70 degrees.
No, there was just one day where it... Oh, a little rain.
Oh, a little rain.

Speaker 1 Did you just do your Mr. Pear voice to me? Oh, a little rain.
I'm excited for your softball team. I want to play.
I also think Hank is not going to be a good pitcher. He's not taking it seriously.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 I asked who was pitching, and everyone was like, I don't know. And then it seems like you're pitching.

Speaker 1 I'm going to come and

Speaker 1 come. I'm going to come.
Don't come. And Max, are you the manager? Pug.
Pug's the manager? We're the Pugs. Pug,

Speaker 1 will there be a short hook on Hank if he's not throwing strikes?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's a zero tolerance policy.

Speaker 1 Love that. Yeah.
All right. I'll be ready.
I'm going to throw it. It's softball, so they're going to get hit.

Speaker 1 Strikes is one thing. I'm fine with that.

Speaker 1 Well, no, if you don't throw strikes, they're just going to walk on it. No, I'm saying that's fine.
Yeah. If we're giving up runs, there's nothing I can do.
That's my field.

Speaker 1 I don't know about it. It's softball.

Speaker 5 Sounds like you're okay with getting shelled. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sounds like you're giving up meatballs. It's softball.
Sounds like you're throwing it too slow. I have no choice.
We'll see.

Speaker 1 It's game zero. Cut me some slack.
All right, I'm going to show up in a big starter jacket with just over my right arm. I'll be ready.
Maybe I'll stand. Maybe I'll just sit in my car.

Speaker 5 We should find out what teams are playing against Hank, and then we should get you in the starting lineup for one of those teams. Just take pitches.

Speaker 1 Take pitches.

Speaker 5 Take him yard.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, just take pitches.
Walks are way more embarrassing. Grab the plate.
Oh. Oh.
Is he going?

Speaker 1 Not really.

Speaker 1 Popped his head out.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 I found how you can tell the difference between a male and a female tortoise online.

Speaker 5 Should we check?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Maybe he doesn't like the food that's being presented. I don't know.
What is it? Lettuce?

Speaker 1 Let's check next time he does a pick because he's already in the middle of a pick right now. We can't rush this.
Yeah. It might take a while.

Speaker 1 All right. Should we do numbers? And then you just want someone to stay with the camera and we can just have our pick be whenever he decides.

Speaker 1 Yep. And maybe

Speaker 1 Max or memes say what the pick is after we do numbers so people who are listening can get the pick. That's fair.
All right.

Speaker 7 Numbers. Oh, he's walking towards the bulls.

Speaker 1 Eight.

Speaker 1 Go, Mr. Pear.
Go, Mr. Pear.
Scared him. Oh.

Speaker 1 Go, Mr. Pear.
Go, Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 That's a big boost. He's hauling out.
Oh, he's doing it. He's doing it.
And bulls. Yes, Bulls.
Let's go, Mr. Pear.
Let's go, Mr. Pear.
Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, fuck the heat. That was actually good to know that he can go the other way.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he was very torn on it. He actually probably, you can probably put in the graphics when he found out that Jimmy Butler was out.
Because he started going to the heat. Yeah, he's eating.
Yes, Mr. Pear.

Speaker 1 Mr. Pear.
I love you, Mr. Pear.
All right, numbers. 8, 40.
I'm going to go 73 for Mr. Pear.
61 plus 12 is the 6112 is the number for turtle.

Speaker 1 61 plus 12, 73. 20.
20 for Max. 18.
3. He's hungry.
99, Po.

Speaker 1 He just.

Speaker 1 Are you? Yeah, I just fed him.

Speaker 3 He's supposed to eat one time a day.

Speaker 5 He did all that Coke. He's not hungry.

Speaker 1 Max, we should go on the Mr. Pear dial.

Speaker 1 79

Speaker 5 Love you guys.

Speaker 5 I don't know what

Speaker 5 to say. I'm staying anyway.

Speaker 5 Today is on my day to find Shyada.

Speaker 5 Shy it away.

Speaker 5 No, I've been coming for your love of day. grace

Speaker 5 only

Speaker 5 I'll be

Speaker 5 your love

Speaker 5 Say I'll be

Speaker 5 life's no better to be saved for something.

Speaker 5 Say I'll be

Speaker 5 like it to be safe and something.

Speaker 5 I'll be

Speaker 5 right.

Speaker 5 I'll be

Speaker 5 gone.

Speaker 5 Things that I say,

Speaker 5 every little I hope. Just a way of worrying away.

Speaker 5 You are things I've got to come in.

Speaker 5 Shining away.

Speaker 5 I'm coming for you to play.

Speaker 5 Shine and away.

Speaker 5 I'll come for you to play light.

Speaker 5 Come on me.

Speaker 5 Take on me.

Speaker 5 Take me

Speaker 5 on me.

Speaker 5 Take on

Speaker 5 Take on me,

Speaker 5 take on me. I

Speaker 5 don't

Speaker 5 take on me,

Speaker 5 take on me,

Speaker 5 take on me,

Speaker 5 take me

Speaker 5 up,

Speaker 5 take on me.