2024 NBA Preview With Ryen Russillo, People Keep Complaining About The Dunk Contest + Lebron's 50/50 Retirement Tour

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On today's part of my take, we have our good friend Ryan Rosillo for our 2019 NBA preview. Why do I say 2019? Oh, because it's February 19th.
Our 2024 NBA preview on February 19th, just in the nick of time. We're going to talk a little All-Star Weekend.
We're going to talk about our vacations. We're still on vacation until tomorrow.
We'll be back in studio together on Tuesday. Who's back in the week? And our first Sunday without football.
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Okay, let's go. Boys! Boys! Now in the street there is violence And there's lots of work to be done No place to hang out or wash in And then I can't blame all on the sun Oh no We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.
And then we'll take it higher. Oh, we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.
It's Part of My Take presented by Marshall Sports. Welcome to Part of My Take presented by DraftKings Sportsbook.
Today is Monday, February 19th and PFT. We're on vacation, but people are mad about the dunk contest for the 17th year in a row.
People are always going to be mad about the dunk contest. I like the floor.
I like the light up floor. They're doing everything they can to like make it look as much like a video game as possible.
But there's really no way to fix the dunk contest. I think they've jumped over the biggest human they can find i don't know where you go from jumping over shack it's it's so funny because every year people get upset about the dunk contest like they gotta fix it maybe it's just that we've seen every cool dunk and there's only so many cool dunks that you can do i mean credit to jalen brown he did do a very cool dunk where he uses left hand That was the first time I'd ever seen that where a guy was like, look, the difficulty is extremely hard.
I'm using my left hand for this dunk. But other than that, I don't really know what you can do.
We've seen all the dunks. It is what it is.
The last seven years have just been an arms race of jumping over progressively taller human beings. Right.
And that's like the guy that wins is who jumps over the big. I want to see somebody get absolutely teabagged and like knocked over on one of those attempts like i want to see i would see a dunker not be able to make the leap yeah maybe it should just be an alley-oop contest and it's like live action it's actually a game it's just whoever has the best dunk in the game wins a dunk contest so there's two thoughts that i have uh on how to fix it one trampolines incorporate slam ball into it a little bit with one guy playing defense also on a trampoline uh two somebody should actually try to light a ball on fire and then dunk that or light themselves on fire yeah either way they also like it it wouldn't be the worst if they just did progressively higher rims i'd watch that who can Who can dunk on a 14 foot rim? Yeah.
They'd come to the Barstool's HQ, Chicago HQ. All business Pete will make it.
He's the only one who's ever made a rim that's over 10 feet. Or we could just lower the rim to like eight feet and we could do our own dunk contest.
Yeah. We probably still won't be able to dunk.
Yeah, that we should do that though this week. So we are still on vacation.
How's everyone doing on vacation? Hank, let's start with you. How are you doing on vacation? Yeah, I'm doing great.
I miss you guys a lot. It's been a fun week.
I personally, not that you asked, but I think that to win the NBA dunk contest, you should play in the NBA. I have to play in the NBA.
That should be a pretty simple rule. Okay, so you're saying Mack McClung should be ineligible because he's in the G League.
Yeah. That is the NBA dunk contest.
Not the G League dunk contest. Okay, so Jalen Brown should have won with just dunking with his left hand.
Well, no, he paid a homage to a bunch of past dunkers. Obviously, like you guys said, it's tough to be original.
I thought he did great. And Mack McClung is not in the NBA.
Okay, so illegal. Mack McClung should be in the NBA.
What are the magic doing? Just let the kid play. Should he, though? Yeah, sure.
Why not? He's played in four career games. Patrick are kind of good.

Yeah.

Four career NBA games.

If you –

Yeah, but that's a joke.

It's the NBA dunk contest.

Like, just bring people off the street if that's what you're going to do.

Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good, too.

But also, Matt McClung, if you win the dunk contest and you're on G League team,

you should get, like, a two-week contract.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm cool with that.

I mean, the Spurs or the Wizards should take him.

Why not?

Yeah.

Just have him dunk.

I think he might be too good for the Wizards.

Thank you. should get like a two-week contract yeah okay i'm cool with that i mean the spurs of the wizard should take him why not yeah just have him dunk i think he might be too good for the wizards that's the only problem like we're trying to accomplish something right now he'd throw off the whole dynamic uh all right so other things from nba all-star weekend we had uh steph beat sabrina who she was phenomenal people got very mad at uh at kenny the jet i was that was fun we got a good good old-fashioned witch hunt online which i i you know why because he said afterwards maybe i know steph beat sabrina 29 to 26 and kenny afterwards said this is why she should have shot from the women's line but it was kind of stupid because 26 would have gotten her into the finals of the men's competition.
I think Dame's winning score was 26. Yeah.
But it was good because it was like a good old-fashioned internet. How could he say that? Let's have a witch hunt for this when it's like this whole thing is a joke.
Who actually is watching this on a Saturday night being like this has to be taken seriously? Yeah, I watched the highlights. I actually think that we were 100% correct about our prediction for this contest though which is no matter what happens people are going to get mad online about something yep that was bound to happen if she won if she lost if if reggie miller told uh kenny like what are you gonna tell her to go play with dolls instead that was that was a wild comment from reggie too well he was reggie was trying to pump the brakes and then he just went off the road and it was just like i i just i i feel like we don't do those anymore i feel like the internet has calmed down to a point where it's like everyone gets up used to be everyone get upset about something and like you know get so pissed off and it would be ridiculous now we i feel like people don't get as mad about everything so it's's good to see people take out their pitchforks for Kenny in a made-up contest in a made-up NBA night that no one really cares about anymore anyway.
Yeah, I have a prediction. I think that in the next couple years, we're going to see this contest get run back a little bit.
And it's not going to be Sabrina. Which last name, Big Cat? Ionescu.
Ionescu. Yeah, you know that.
Ionescu. Yeah, I do.
I say it phonetically. Yeah, so I think in a couple years, we'll see Caitlin Clark against Steph Curry, and they're going to do, like, logo threes, like extra long three-pointers, and that would be cool.
Yeah. I mean, Sabrina was awesome.
The fact that she had 26, like, she should have been in the real three-point contest because she would have been in the finals with Dame. And also, it's Steph Curry.
He's the best shooter of all time. So it's not like you lost by three to Steph Curry.
Oh, no. That's a pretty good accomplishment.
Yeah, it's a statement loss. And the home team won the skills contest again.
That is just what happens every time. Yeah, I don't even know what the skills contest is, really.
They just dribble around. Oh, no, I saw they were shooting from half court for a while.
Yeah, a lot of confusing things that I don't really follow with the NBA All-Star weekend, but it seemed like a good time. It seemed like they had fun.
They had a great time. Yeah.
The biggest storyline I thought coming out of this just, I think it happened today, LeBron gave a press conference. Yes.
And they asked him if he's, you know, his thoughts on his eventual retirement and how that's going to go. And say he's 50-50 about whether or not he wants a retirement tour.
He doesn't like praise, he said. He's uncomfortable with praise.
So, you know, introvert LeBron James, we need to protect him. He doesn't want everyone saying, hey, LeBron, you're really, really good.
I actually, if you had true serum with LeBron right now, and you were like, LeBron, you can either win a fifth title or we're going to do your retirement tour for a year. I think he might take the retirement tour.
He might. He might.
I do believe in that he's 50-50 on if he wants it. He's 50% that he wants it.
And he's 50% that he needs it.

Yeah,

exactly. Like,

and don't get me wrong.

He deserves it.

Like he has carried the NBA for a very long time.

It's not a question of whether he deserves it.

Sure.

He should get his retirement tour.

The fact that he's pretending that he like will be reluctant in any way on

this retirement tour is the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard.

Yeah,

I agree.

I think there's actually a possibility that LeBron just does an extra year in the nba where he just plays home games yeah yeah and just standing ovation no but he needs the presence we need every every city needs to give him a present every team brings the present to him yeah that was like when who was it was mariano rivero got like a surfboard from the padres like what the fuck are you gonna do with this dude they just gave you a surfboard the coolest gift he got i forget what team gave to him? It was a Mariano Rivera who got like a surfboard from the Padres. Like, what the fuck are you going to do with this dude? They just gave you a surfboard? The coolest gift he got.
I forget what team gave it to him. It was a throne made out of broken baseball bats.
That is cool. Because he had such a good cutter.
That's a great gift. Yeah.
But yeah, LeBron pretending he doesn't want a retirement tour is very funny. All right.
What else is going on in the sports world? I have a confession that I think even though I was disgusted by the flop in the Ohio State game, I think I'm going to become a Caitlin Clark superfan because she makes people so, so angry, and I love it. Like the Jay Williams saying that she's not the greatest all-time because she doesn't have a ring, all this stuff.
Caitlin Clark gets people very upset, and I'm all for anyone who just agitates the world like she does and she's she doesn't do anything like she's not doing anything other than being awesome at basketball and breaking records it's just other people's hot takes then get everyone else upset so I'm in on Caitlin Clark all the way yeah and it's funny like everybody out there has a take on Caitlin Clark yeah everybody and they're all shocking like i i was jason whitlock did his live show i know you're a big fan jake and in his show he was like she's a bit she's the biggest basketball player in the world men's women's pro college she is bigger than the sport right now it's like god damn even jason whitlock is bringing fire about about women's college basketball right now it's good for the sport uh jay williams had a very when he was talking about her, and he said, like, you know, I kind of got that Kobe mentality, so I'm not going to say that she's great yet. And it made me realize that you can say, you can be as big an asshole as you want about anything, as long as you preface it by saying, like, you know, I'm kind of like Kobe Bryant in this way.
I got that Mamba mentality. And then you can just shit on all of people's accomplishments, and it's totally fine.
It basically gives you a license to be the guy who's like, yeah, what's your weakness? Well, I just tell the truth. No, you're an asshole, but you tell the truth.
Yeah, I tell hard truths. It's also crazy because she plays at Iowa.
If Kaitlin Clark could have gone and played at UConn or South Carolina or Tennessee and like won titles, she plays at Iowa. She stayed home and has gotten them to the championship game, a program that doesn't do that.
So I, she, yeah, I'm, I'm all in. It just makes people every day.
You can just go online and just see a Caitlin Clark debate. And I just, I love that for us.
I love what she's doing for us. It's good for for sports discourse yes I'm just I'm just looking at Hank right now and his big swollen red face did you drink wine today Hank your lips are a little red no oh summer no no I'm I'm having a great time yeah yeah I know okay what else the why I like I like I hear every other like third word.
Is that because of the internet or because of the cocktails? It's probably a combo. I miss football.
I'll say that right now. Today was a tough day.
And we're just living off football takes. You guys see Florio now thinks that the NFL has an age discrimination problem

because of Belichick and Carroll.

So I'm in for that.

I just miss football.

It takes a couple weeks for me to fully acclimate to life without football.

It was really weird waking up on Sunday morning

and having no football at all to look forward to.

It was really strange, very disconcerting.

And it just threw off. My week has been off by a day anyways, going back to the free throw stream, where it's like on Thursday, I thought it was Friday.
Friday, I thought it was Saturday. Then I wake up today, there's no football.
And it's like, well, today can't be Sunday, possibly. There's no chance.
But we get the combine back in, like, two weeks, week and a half. And there will be some good takes'm i'm very excited about caleb williams smoke uh smokescreen season very excited about uh all the takes that are going to come out of him like uh did you see he wore a dress like these all the debates it wasn't a dress it wasn't a dress it was like uh it was a new age uh suit that men wear that yeah that doesn't have pants it's's got one big pant hole in it.
It was like a poncho. He wore a poncho, not a dress.
But if any other team besides the Bears gets him, he wore a dress. Oh, 100%.
It was a dress. And what the hell is he thinking? Without a doubt.
Without a doubt. We can flip that.
No problem. We can flip that.
Yeah, it is sad without football. I feel like once we get back in studio on Tuesday, we'll get back to our regular rhythm, but that first week is always...
I've caught myself watching highlights of all the mic'd up from the Super Bowl. Any residual takes from the Super Bowl I'm looking at and it's like, man, I kind of miss this.
I don't know. It's just, yeah, it's hard.
You lose something like this that's so important to your life, and it takes a couple weeks. One thing we got to do, though, is we got to watch the Patriots Dynasty documentary.
That looks awesome. Is that out yet? Have you started that? Is that out yet? The first two episodes are out.
Okay, it came out yesterday. Have you started it, Hank?

I'm excited to watch.

I watched some of it last night.

I was pretty wasted, so I can't say I remember much.

I will watch everything tomorrow, though.

Whatever's out there, I'll watch it all tomorrow night.

I'm excited.

All right.

We'll have to do a review of the documentary.

How many parts is it?

Yeah.

Hopefully, infinity.

I think there's two out right now.

Imagine if the infinity parts. It's still going.
now imagine it's still going the dynasty's not just the infinity parts it's just they cut up every single game from the dynasty into little pieces or it's like you hank it's like judge judy it'll be on every night at 5 p.m for the next 40 years yeah i mean you guys don't you guys don't want to hear it and it's like just Patriots, but I'm with my friends from Massachusetts. We were having a spirited top 10 Patriots debate for like three hours today.
Yeah? There's so many people to pick from. It's impossible.
Where was Jules? Hank's gone. Hank, where was Jules? Hello? Top five.
Where was Jules? Top five. Top five.
Top five. I was arguing for Jules.
My friend was like, no. I was like, Super Bowl MVP, three rings.
Where was Bill Belichick? Well, players. We were doing players.
Okay. Where was Aaron Hernandez? Yeah, there we go.
Aaron Hernandez was not on the list. Didn't win a ring.
Randy Moss also, it's crazy to say, but I don't know that he's a top 10 Patriot of all time. Didn't win a ring.
Where was Danny Woodhead? Danny Woodhead also didn't win a ring, unfortunately. What was the one that you were most upset about? Not upset.
I was definitely arguing on J arguing on Jules behalf and it's like, you have to factor in both dynasties, defense, offense. Yeah.
There's a lot of players. I can't, I can't hear anything you guys are saying.
Defense, offense. Jules played, I think like three snaps.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, he did play defense especially I was saying when you're going through the list of picking 10 people you have to think about defense offense multiple dynasties like there's a lot of people to pick from obviously Jules did play defense though alright well I would like you to release your top 10 maybe on maybe you can give it to us on Wednesday if you get a consensus top 10.
Yeah, gladly. Okay, perfect.
Perfect. All right, anything else going on in the sports world before we do who's back? And then we have an extra-long interview with Rosillo, which was awesome, that we taped Super Bowl week.
Anything else? Hideki Matsuyama won on Max's home course. Yeah Tiger had diarrhea yeah uh he also had like some back shit going on and then he said he had influenza I I think Tiger might be a little bit over the hill I think it might have happened I think it might have happened I I just I want him to be in these events because it's fun when he's there but it also is a bummer when he has to withdraw.
And we had an ambulance gate where I think our own colleague, Dan Rapport, was first on it. There was an ambulance parked outside of the Riviera clubhouse waiting for him.
Didn't end up taking him, but everyone was like, oh, my God, is Tiger going to have to go in an ambulance for diarrhea? I think it's just Tiger's car car that he drives so it's got sirens and loud flashing lights and shit so that people know get out of the way yeah and uh there was also i mean i i thought matsuyama's ball oscillated um i'm not a rule stickler but i am rooting for will zalatoris uh that but that bummed me out because i feel like old pga we would have been all over that are just kind of – they all were just showering praise on Matsuyama, not saying, hey, dude, the guy's ball oscillated on the 17. It oscillated.
It definitely oscillated. It oscillated.
You can't convince me otherwise. As pretty much a professional golfer who got a two on 17 at Sawgrass this week, I can tell you that that's a serious rules violation.
And if we're going to make Spieth get withdrawn from the tournament over signing an incorrect scorecard, we need to take a look at the oscillation. I would have expected Matsuyama's caddy to be more on top of that.
Matsuyama's caddy is the best, by the way. He's awesome.
He's the dude that bowed in praise of Augusta when they won. And then after the round today, they were waiting for everybody else to finish up because Matsuyama shot like a 62 in the final round.
He was just sitting on a hill vaping, just watching the action. Crisscross applesauce.
Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful.
Yeah, that Jordan Spieth rule was the it's the dumbest rule ever because not even his it's his partner filling out the scorecard and he signs it. Yeah, that's stupid.
You keep track of your partner's score and then you sign off at the end and they've got like cameras and everything tracking these guys around all the leaderboards i guess you can't it not every tournament has every shot televised like that so it might be more difficult which is why there's a guy walking with them there's a person walking with them there should be a guy that keeps score for each pairing yeah and if he gets it wrong executed yes that'd be live but yes or just have him do like butts up just like stand 50 yards away and you can fire a driver at him the whole he has to stay yeah he has to be a a human bullseye at the driving range the next day yeah i like that rule yeah okay uh let's do who's back the week then we of the Week, then we'll get to Rosillo. Who's Back of the Week is brought to you by our friends at GameTime.
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Okay, Hank, who's back of the week? I was back. We had LeBron went over that.
We can do shorts. Shorts are back.
Vacation. Great time for shorts.
That's true. And UFC.
UFC 300 got announced. Kind of a letdown.
I'm not a die-hard UFC person, so I didn't. It was like Jamelle Hill and someone else.
I was expecting fireworks. I think true UFC fans are disappointed.
Jamelle Hill's fighting in UFC 300? Yes. Jamelle Hill against Britt McHenry.
Yeah, so everyone... Alex Pereira versus Jamal Hall.
People are going to think I'm carrying water for Dana right now because he did let us go to the tunnel of chaos. I think that the reason why...
No, I'm excited. Ariel Hawane was explaining this.
Yeah, and Ariel Hawane was explaining this. UFC 300, everyone had worked themselves into this tizzy like it's going to be the greatest card ever because conor mcgregor is coming back at some point this year but he was saying that when you have a a title fight everyone shares if you have multiple title fights on a card and it was fighting the title fight shares in the pay-per-view money so if they put conor mcgregor on ufc 300 everyone would get to share and conor mcgregor's gonna sell a million plus pay-per-views so there's no point why wouldn't you take two two dips from this and be like we'll do ufc 300 and then we'll do conor mcgregor so they kind of he kind of was stuck where it's like they could they could put like six unbelievable title fights but then you have to sell a pay-per-view every single month like they do every single month so he couldn't it was very hard for him to do that but i think people were pretty disappointed yeah just because 300 you would expect like it's nice round number i want to see like some big names fighting against each other and and you don't get that yeah that's why people are upset it If this was 299 or 301, people would be like, okay, yeah, good card, I guess.
But you see 300, and you want... I don't know what you...
You want a bunch of angry Spartans in a ring against 40,000 Persians. That would actually rock.
They should have had Zuck in it. I mean, we saw Zuck at 298 looking as awkward as ever.
He was part of Volkanovsky's party. I don't know what he was doing, but Zuck would be...
Who wouldn't buy that pay-per-view? Zuck is a beast, though. Zuck would take us down.
I hate to say it, but he's kind of an animal. He did not get choked out.
His PR representative was very clear about that. So, Hank, I Zuckerberg if he went against any of us, yes because he's actually been training at this.
If he went against any actual UFC fighter, they would kick his ass in two seconds. Yeah, obviously.
Well, he's not a beast then. A little bit.
Yeah, he would get smoked and he yeah give us I would just I would give him wet willy I'd sneak behind him and give him a mega wedgie and I'd drag his ass to the bathroom and give him a swirly just give him a nerd treatment I'd just be like hey Zuck remember when you thought threads was going to be cool fucking loser and you probably cry into a puddle yeah done tapped uh okay pft your who's back of the week good who's back hank good job hank my who's back of the week is jesus potentially jesus okay because there is a stingray in a north carolina aquarium named charlotte and she's pregnant. But the thing is, there's no male stingrays in that tank with her.
It's just a bunch of sharks. So either we're going to get a shark stingray hybrid baby, which would be fucking awesome.
That's what I'm rooting for. Get like the Maury Povich to announce who the dad is.
Or it was immaculate conception, and this stingray just got herself pregnant, which is kind of hot. Yeah.
Ooh, that's a, I kind of want to see the shark stingray. Yeah.
The shark stingray would rock that. Yeah.
If you're, if you're not rooting for, for shark stingray, I don't know what to tell you, but yeah, I am. I'm on Charlotte watch.
I've been checking the, uh, the social accounts for the, uh, Hendersonvillearium every morning. I need to know.

I need to know what the due date like.

It could be any day now, like sometime in the next week or two.

They pop those things out.

She's mad pregnant, too.

You can see the bump.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

My who's back is whales.

It's a half human.

All these whales.

Yeah.

Hank, if it's a half human, half human human there's one guy that just quits the day that he's like oh fuck yeah looks just like shit is that stingray got ginger hair god damn it uh i'll i'll stay in the water my my who's back is whales i've been seeing a bunch of whales jump hank should be so jealous they just jump everywhere in cabo san lucas uh i was on a boat yesterday and i think this is also just the captain just knows that like hey i'll get a better tip he told us one of the whales that we saw was no more than six hours old um again i i i did the math in my head i was like i feel like he's that whale's probably been there forever it's just like a small whale but still hank you're missing out on all the whales they're fucking awesome yeah no i haven't just i i'm curious like because obviously i've only seen them online and i really want to see them in person like you have like is it it seems like it's as advertised like it seems like yeah it's pretty beautiful sight as you can have yeah although this might have been because I was very drunk, we watched well there were so many whales jumping we watched it for like an hour how big an hour hour in i was like all right i think i've seen enough like i've seen enough of the whales i'm good yeah so so big cat cabo is incredible for that and yeah i don't know if your boat had this but i so i went there last year after the super bowl and they put after we were done watching the whales for a while, they dropped a microphone into the ocean and you could listen to the whales talking to each other. That's sick.
You know what they call it? They call that a podcast. Yeah.
Also, there was a seal that was just jumped on the back of a boat and people were saying it looked like Max. was very unfair um and max is also back because there was an auburn fan at game day on saturday that was standing behind the desk that just said max had two sodas and that made me laugh very very very very hard so i i got on my flight today to come back and i stopped at a uh kiosk and I bought two cherry Cokes just to bring it on the plane

and I sat down. I was sitting next to

a random woman and

she looked at me and she was

trying to figure out why I had two sodas.

Two 16-ounce sodas.

In that moment, I realized, yeah, this is

a boring

behavior. Disgusting

behavior. Max, how'd you

have your hungover?

Mine are 12. How'd your hungover flight go today any any ripping of farts no i didn't even fall asleep this time because i was in the middle seat um it was fine i got i'm i can never order soda again at an airport i got two of them i got a body armor before I got on.

And then I got a seltzer water when I was midway through.

To be honest, when you sat down,

did you look around and see if people were noticing you and scoping you out?

No.

I mean, I got lucky on the two flights that it was pretty that they I was sitting next to people that did not know the show. But it does.
It did. It does suck like going through the airport because we see people.
It's just every time. It's the only thing that they're thinking of.
Is he getting sodas? Is he having a burrito? So like every person that I that I like see walking through the airport, I'm like, yeah, I'm not getting sodas today. And it's just, yeah, but they're probably like, he still is.
Yeah. If you get to if you're a two soda guy, you can't just quit soda.
Yeah. No, I had no soda.
I had a body armor and then I'm just going to I'm just going to be the biggest seltzer water guy on a plane ever now. Shut up.
I can't have that picture on Twitter of just me ordering a soda.

You can't have it.

What did you have for your pre-flight meal, Max?

Bacon, egg, and cheese.

English muffin.

Smart.

That's farts.

That's a fart maker.

What do you want me to eat?

What do you want me to eat?

Air.

Salad.

Yeah.

The AWO who did that at the Auburn-Kentucky game, shout out to him. And it would be a shame if we just had Max had two sodas at every single game for the rest of the year.
I still don't believe that was real. Oh, it's real.
It's real. Also, shout out Coach Cal who ripped an awesome wrestling promo after they beat Auburn.
He was like, I'm the worst coach in the country. I like that.
I need Cal to get a little swagger back, a little shit to him. Yeah, because for a long time, Cal just pushed back against the very notion that he could be an underdog.
Now embrace that. Yeah, you are.
Go after it. All right, Jake, finish this off.
My who's back is Coach Dougs we had an official official announcement from ea sports i feel like all the other previous announcements were kind of rumors and piecing things together but the ea sports college account officially tweeted that uh we're getting it this summer this is like this is like when when dan snyder sold the team there's been like 20 different announcement dates that have come out being like the game's coming back but none were from the commanders besides the last one yeah true true so this is officially official and and if we're in the trust tree right now obviously i'm very excited for the new game i'm worried that the new game's not going to be as good as the old game and i'm also like the battles i went through with the chat i don't know if i'm mentally ready to do that again. So I woke up and I saw it, and I was like, awesome.
And then the first thing I thought of was Poopy Stinks. And I was like, I'm back in a fucking torture chamber where these guys are going to say no sound, sliders, all that stuff, and just wreak havoc on my brain.
Well, the chat's also gotten better in the last four years. They've learned, they've've adapted and they've grown and they're more powerful than any of us they they've had places to get better whereas i have not like i haven't had a game to play they have had jerry after dark and all this other stuff to get to hone their craft and get angrier and better at what they do, and that's driving the content creators insane.

So I'm just going to have to like –

I'm going to mentally have to just put myself in a place like ready to go to war

because I will play and I'll play a season.

We'll do a whole thing.

But, yeah, that was exciting.

I thought I would have put it at minus 10,000 that Jake would have said

the Water Dogs are back because apparently we won a game today.

Well, I'm saving them for a potential cool throne if they can win the championship series, which is today. Okay.
And if they lose, they'll be second place. Is it the regular season? Yeah.
No, it's a standalone tournament. It's promoting the sixes format, which is what they're going to use in the Olympics in 2028.
It's like the preseason tournamentseason tournament but it's regular season i don't want to win it i'll say right now i don't want to win that i don't want to win the pre-season tournament i think if we win the pre-season tournament we're screwed for the regular season i think i think if we win that um max should raise a banner for it but we shouldn't acknowledge it yeah i don't this isn't like we're not getting a ring which where are rings do we know we have them i gave them to you guys at the old office and we don't have them then no they survived the trip you know where they are i think i saw them i hand delivered them to both of you i think i saw them is not definitive we have them it's also funny because we just got a trophy case and we didn't one time think to put our winning lacrosse championship rings in there. The only thing we've actually won.
Oh, yeah, we did win that. Also, we defeated Frank the Tank, who I guess is a fan of not the Waterdogs.
Well, his team's not in this championship series. They didn't qualify.

Who did we play today? The Whipsnakes?

Archers.

Ah, the Archers.

Our nemesis, the Archers.

Alright, well, so if any Waterdogs are listening, don't even try tomorrow. We don't want to win this.

If we do win it,

Max is going to be the only one

who acknowledges it. Fair?

Yeah. It's preseason? The championship is Philly versus Boston today at 1130 a.m.
ESPN2. So thanks to Philly guy now.
Let's go Water Dogs. Max, you agree with this? Yeah.
I mean, that account has just turned into a Max meme account where they just throw up every bad video after, after each one, have they done a two sodas thing? Uh, I don't know. I think so.
They've done every, okay. So if we win and the account has one of the players celebrate with two sodas, I will then acknowledge the victory.
Fair. If they do the stone cold, like two capsies.
Yeah. If they just pour Coke on themselves for the the entire after party i'm surprised you haven't said anything about them finishing second for the first time as well he said it's only second place yeah no we said we that's on the table but i've already said i'm not acknowledging this yeah okay yeah yeah uh okay let's get to ryan rossillo uh before we do that we're brought to you by our friends at Topgolf.

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Okay. Here is our 2024 NBA preview with Ryan Russillo.
okay we now welcome on one of our favorite guests, great friend of the program, for the February 19th NBA preview. It is Ryan Russillo.
We have some, first of all, thank you, Ryan. Good to see you guys.
We're taping this before the trade deadline. We are.
Where did LeBron get traded to? I didn't see this coming uh look i don't think um i don't think there's going to be any good trade deadline jokes okay i just don't i mean unless you guys are into tax savings oh yeah you do really well on this show when you talk about you're really selling the nba well i know i'm reading those h&r block ads and i just start cracking up. And I like well h&r block is there to help and they're like dick um we have some housekeeping though we got to do before we talk nba okay because i have something for you guys okay well first order of business uh pft and i actually were completely innocent bystanders to the cover art which you you you Okay, you did did a whole bit on your show you're like i'm pretty sure they're fucking with me and making me fatter every single time i come on every time max knew and our guy triggs who does a great job he's our artist knew obviously knew because he was doing it we had no idea yeah you looked like dana white on the last one i love that he did i wish i'd look like d looked like Dana White on the last one.
All right, so for people who don't know, for the cover art for the podcast, Triggs, who is unbelievable, he's been making Russillo a little bit bigger every single time he's come on, and he's come on like 15 times, so he's now like Mondo Russillo. When did you catch on that this was happening? Well, so you knew so what was what was nick saying to you i i this was all him this was kind of out of nowhere right he just he was just like i have a really funny idea and i was like oh i love this i was like i can't wait to tell the guys he was like no like this has to come out organically he has to realize it on his own he was like i just want to make him look a little bit fatter each time.
Yeah, it was just a little bit. But then he was like getting into like more absurd things because I went from the Chris Paul fan club t-shirt to then it was like finally I was 300 and something pounds.
And it was a Trey Young fan club t-shirt. So I was like, I think something's happening here.
I'll be honest with you. The moment I really did know is when I DMed him and said, you're making me too jacked.

I was like, make me fatter and fatter and fatter.

And then I'll blame them.

So actually, Nick.

The last few?

All of them.

This is actually my idea.

Was it really?

The whole thing was my idea.

Shut up.

Yeah.

Shut up.

Swear to God.

I'll show you the DMs.

That's incredible.

Nobody knows.

Nick kept it a secret the entire time. So you reverse got us.
Yeah lost when henry's sitting there no i don't believe that's he didn't start doing on his own are you lying ryan all right call him right now i mean the fact that you said nick makes me think that this is you're telling the truth yeah i know as i said it i was like i wonder if they'll be like hey he already remembered his name because normally i would just forget it immediately that's incredible so you reverse got us that's pretty good yeah i've been working on this for months almost a year wait wait it's great just to clarify you own you hey triggs russillo's here right now he came up with the idea did he come up with the idea to make him fatter every time yeah He's like that's incredible oh yeah february 19th nba preview he's right here he's sitting right next to us. He just told the story.

We told the story being like, we didn't know that Triggs was doing this.

And then he's like, actually, I was the one who was doing it.

Yeah, dude.

He fucking DMed me like a year ago.

That's incredible.

December 22.

You know what?

You can make him whatever you want.

Either really small or just like maybe make them like a T-Rex.

Godzilla.

Tiny arms.

Give him tiny arms.

That'd be worse.

So Ryan, to clarify, your big prank on us was making yourself look really fat.

And then blaming us for making you look fat.

Yeah, but then I was going to blame you at some point.

Yeah, that's good.

That was the whole point where I was going to be like, who's doing your fucking art?

Who is this guy?

You know? What, do you get some socialist in charge of this? That's incredible. Yeah.
So as you guys were doing that, I was like, oh. We never actually talked about it because I once, finally, some listener.
I was waiting for listeners to figure it out. Right.
Because it was getting absurd. Right.
But I was like, you're making me too jacked. Like, you're making me, you're doing me too much of a fair i'm like just fatten me up but stages stages so again this is like 15 months of this i think and by the time the third one came out i was like all right i think we're there kind of like you know like jokes they work in threes yeah yeah yeah so he was like are you sure and i'm like yeah better keep going but grosser and he was like all right and i loved it and then finally on the third episode it was posted listeners were like dude what is going on with your cover art and so then i was just going to attack you guys oh that's perfect that's you know but i didn't like get really mad because i didn't want you get mad at him it also would have been like you could you could have gotten really mad at us and we would have been like we would would have just been like, great joke by us, I guess.
We've done it again. That's why I think you were so, normally this would have 100% been something you would have done.
Yeah. Since you knew that you had nothing to do with it.
Right. You kind of weren't, you're like, you didn't know what to do.
You were like, all right. There was no victory left.
I'm going to show these guys. I'm going to look so fat next time.
Yeah, the payoff really, there really wasn't a payoff wasn't a payoff no i'm thinking about it you should have the only thing you could have done different is have triggs tell us that he was doing it so then we felt complicit in making you fatter because when you said on your show i think they're making us fatter i was like okay cool yeah i don't know that there really was when i did this i'm like oh boy when that day happens it's kind of a perfect like anti-humor joke yeah it's not even that funny the prestige but now it is but that moment with you just calling him and not believing that's great and then i knew i was like let me find the dms because i mean i knew i did it no i mean i respect the fact that you basically you commandeered our own employee you're like you work for me now i just thought he was making me look way too good so i was like let's just go the other way with it oh man that's good it's good stuff ryan all right so then we had the other thing we need to get to i know but let's stay on body type real quick okay this will be quicker okay so downstairs in the casino where i was like all right i'm just gonna walk over for mine i didn't realize it like we should probably hang out more. We're literally five minutes away from each other.
I walked by a guy in black, sneaks, hat on, and I was like, oh, that's got to be Big Cat. And I was like, no way.
I was like, that guy's thin. So it's actually a compliment.
You look good. It was me? It was you.
Oh. So I walked past you into the main lobby going that can't be big cat yes and it was it was he's doing he's doing the reverse of the album cover the art cover right now do you know what's a really really good uh because i know you do diet tips with your listeners and you do like you know with your life advice gym stuff yeah we're always doing stuff yeah all that stuff uh a really good tip for all your listeners keto uh start a 40 000 or get a 40 000 square foot office with a basketball court and full weight room in it that will get you in shape i always kid around with people about this but i'm kind of serious you could be hot i think you could be hot at some point be hot but that is the the key to fitness just make a basketball court in your office and you really can't you can't be sedentary when that happens no i mean that when i see the clips and i see everything i'm like this is this is incredible i was looking at matt holiday's setup and i go should i just do that yeah should i just move to north dakota and have square footage yeah huge warehouse are you kidding what is his setup well it turned into like the number one prospect in baseball his son yeah but there's like the whole they've got this entire warehouse where it's literally any activity you could ever want to do like how could you not be a great athlete with that at your disposal and the fact that his dad was like a sick athlete as well probably helps but yeah chiseled jaw chisel that kid has a jaw so you don't want to do the hank thing right now oh yeah i'll do the hank thing i just wanted to do that because it actually it was mean but it wasn't so so tell the story real quick hank he told it on his stand up it was actually actually perfect.
Rosillo texted me asking if I was going out right when Hank's slide showed up that said, what was the exact phrasing of it? Well, just Ryan Rosillo is the picture of a short PFT that's slightly Photoshopped. Three inches shorter version of PFT.
I still, to this day, think it was a bit just based off our interactions. Like've always been normal And it was the life advice In Los Angeles we did at the Super Bowl A couple years ago God that was a while ago I think you talked about it Oh yeah your balls were hanging out In the episode We were also the first people to be in your house In like three years Yeah no one had been there yet You guys gave me advice because i was i was going to my brother's wedding like the week after or something you guys gave me advice on the best man speech and then in the episode you talked about cameos and doing stuff like that and i prefaced it by being like i understand you know you guys get asked to do stuff all the time i know it's kind of a burden and not you know can be annoying so i try not to do it unless it's, you know, important.
Obviously, my brother, who is a huge Russillo fan.

Huge.

Probably listens to you more than he listens to us.

Like, he's been a fan for a while.

Well, you know, he's getting older.

And after the episode, I was listening to the live episode.

I was like, I texted him.

I was like, hey, you know, you talked about the cameo thing.

I'd really appreciate it if you could just do a little video shout out for my brother.

He's on his honeymoon.

Like, here's some talking points. Russ still a text back yep no problem nothing crickets and i i it was like i it was it was he was like no no problem so i was like he'll send it and maybe he'll dm it i don't know never came and then i think i the next time i saw you was like remember that video and you're like oh yeah yeah i'll send it i got you and then it just never came and so i was like i think he's doing a bit yeah i i could never i can never figure it out every time i think about you i think about the video how often do you think about them well i'm more than you think because you guys have a lot of content out there so anytime a hang thing pops up i'll be like was the window that it had be before that weekend? And then I think you would believe me in knowing that knowing your brother likes me that much.
Like I would definitely want to do that for him. But I think I thought there was this imaginary window where it was closed.
And that's kind of what happened, right? Yeah, it was like the next time I saw you was like maybe a year later. And I was like, oh, and it was still open.
Well, you were like, you're like, I'll do it. I'll do it.
I was like, yeah, yeah, it'd be funny. Like, because it was like, I think you said the same thing.
I was like, yeah, was still open well you were like you're like i'll do it i'll you're like sure i still did i was like yeah that'd be funny like because it was like you i think you said the same thing i was like yeah it'd still be funny like you know i'm sure it'd be a funny video yeah i got you sounds like the window never closed yeah so the window's still not yeah so you kind of actually i think hank closed it last night actually when he told the story might have we can still do it it feels like this is coerced now yeah maybe let's give it another year yeah i want to come up with something right i want to send the right message i think when you had said it i was like okay i feel like i have to do something funny and then i was like maybe i can get like the wrong name to whoever he's getting married and i was like actually that doesn't always work out because then it'll be like what's going on um so i screwed it up i I never did it intentionally going, ha, the fucking guy thinks I'm going to do this video because I would never actually do something like that. That's where I was confused.
You immediately responded like, no problem. Usually I'm pretty good when I'm like, no problem.
It's kind of funny that it was a honeymoon pump-up video too. Nothing will get you horny Ryan tell you, like, good job, buddy.
Yeah, see, I think that's why, and then I was like, oh, then I kind of was like, oh, he still wants it? So I think that's what it was. How long is this honeymoon? So you know what? This is a bit like our NBA preview.
This would be perfect. I send a pump-up honeymoon video, and they've been married for two and a half years.
Yeah. Three years? Maybe it reignites the spark.
Yeah, three years. Second honeymoon.
Maybe they're like, this isn't going that well. It also sounded like Hank just needed you to just be like, hey, Hank's brother, thanks so much for listening.
That's it. Right.
Do you overthink things sometimes? What I was like, I was like, this has got to be good. And instead of just going, I can be done with this in five minutes.
Less. I'd say 30 seconds.
Easily, yeah, less. Yeah, you're right.
Five would have been long with edits. Do you want to do it right now? Yeah, just do it right into the camera.
What's his name? Will. All right.
All right, here we go. Do it right now.
And so what? Where are they going for their honeymoon? I don't even know where they went.

I don't know.

I think they went to Mexico.

Maybe.

All right.

I think they went to Mexico.

All right.

Which is my camera?

Do we want the middle one here?

Are we going to...

Punch it in.

Punch it in.

These are words, James.

Handheld here?

Like the office?

This is great.

All right.

This is great too

because it's still not going

to come out for another two weeks.

Hey, Will.

Heard you're a big fan.

It's Ryan Russillo.

I heard you have a honeymoon coming up.

Hopefully, you're not a bigger fan of me than you are your wife, because that's going to get awkward.

But I just want you to know we've all been there in those moments where you're a little nervous.

I'm just telling you, think of me.

Think of my podcast.

Think of you emailing.

I'm about to go for it.

Thank you. There was a little stumble there at the end.
Should we do it again later? Let's just do it later. I did also, I don't know if you have called your fans this before, but when I started, I was like, any Resilians in here tonight? And it got a good pop.
Yeah, it did get a good pop. Never heard that.
What do you call your fans? I didn't know what to call them. I was like, it's Ryan Resilio.
I was like, any Resilians here? And people were like, yeah, Resilio. I thought when Will Kane called his listeners the Wilisha, I was like, no, it was a lot.
I like that. Yeah, it just couldn't be top, so I was like, any resilience here? And people were like, yeah, I'm Rosillo.
I thought when Will Kane called his listeners the Wilicia, I was like, no. I like that.
Yeah, it just couldn't be topped, so I was out. The Wilicia.
The Wilicia's really good. Yeah, it is very good.
And also, people would look at his politics and be like, no shit. Free percenters.
Yeah. All right.
Resilience, something to think about. Yeah, something to think about.
Thank you, about. You guys are what, AWLs? Yeah.

What about Rosiliacs?

Yeah.

Whoa.

Yeah.

What was Rome?

You were in the jungle?

Yeah, in the jungle.

Hey, Rome, thanks for the vine.

Yeah.

That's what you'd say if he'd let you call in.

You'd get a vine into the jungle.

We got lucky, though.

AWLs wasn't something conscious, but then it worked.

And then Dave would always say, like, you got your AOL things? was like all right i don't know did that work at all yeah that was great you know what i feel like it's not personal don't overthink it don't overthink it i don't know i mean he also yeah i was you don't know he saw me talk about it last night he's like that was funny you know what maybe this will get him to listen to our show instead of ryan's yeah there we go yeah that could help you guys make sure yeah that's another listener ever since his kelsey pod popped I've just been DMing starlets left Ryan's. Yeah, there we go.
That could help you guys. Make sure.
Yeah, that's another listener.

Ever since this Kelsey pod popped, I've just been

DMing starlets left and right.

Who's DMs?

We're trying to get Hank to fuck Beyonce.

That's aggressive.

I'm not going to say who it was, but

I looked at an actress. I was like, I think

this is obtainable. I think this

is obtainable. And I kind of went in with like, hey, if you Google me,

like you'll see a mugshot and it's not a big deal.

And, you know, here's just what you need to know.

It's a good leader, yeah.

Life episode, my balls were out.

Yeah.

But I've got great quads and I'm still, you know,

you're not going to run into a ton of guys my age

that are putting in this kind of effort.

Just so you know.

You know, house isn't bad.

So, and then it was just seen. Melissa McCarthy is married, though.
That's not funny. She is.
She's very funny. She's my favorite.
Sounds like you really like her. I like her content.
Ryan, we don't talk enough about the fact that you have a good voice. When we have Dan Patrick on the show, we just talk about how great his voice is.
You have an underrated voice for radio, for podcasts. I'm classically trained.
Did you work on it? Base two. No, this is my voice.
My dad's got a good voice. You never had to lose the accent or anything? I never really had it because I was born in Connecticut.
Oh, there's no accent there? No, there's no accent. I mean, there's certain words that have a little twinge of New England in it.
So instead of saying like got, I'll say like gut, you know, or something. But I just always think it's fucking stupid when people give other people like a hard time about like how they'll pronounce certain words.
Like I think New England has idea instead of idea. Yeah, that's a good one.
That's one. I love when Max talks Philly to us.
Yeah, but like that's a real accent. Now granted, the Massachusetts one is weird because there's just different pockets.
You can have a South Shore kid who sounds like he's not even speaking English, and then you'll run into a Concord Mass guy who sounds like he's from Connecticut. So there was no working on it, but I was in the chorus for a bunch of years.
Your voice is great. You're a singer.
Yeah, classically've never heard you sing radio voice what i've never heard you sing you have a singing voice well it's pretty deep yeah can you give us something i don't know we used to i was trying to find the sheet music for i couldn't find it like we sang this thing we went to germany when i was in high school like you had to make the choir and then there was like a special select choir, which I know sounds like loser fest, but all these guys decided to try out because there was always hurting for guys. A youth group for males, young males, that gets to serve in Germany.
Germany, got it. So we, I never told a story before on the podcast.
No. So a bunch of the guys, like our senior in high school, again, it's Martha's Vineyard, so it's a little artsy, a little weird anyway.
And they were like, hey, this group is going to Germany. And if you can make this choir, we'll all go to Germany together at the end of our senior year when we definitely won't give a shit about anything.
And back then in the vineyard, they used to let the seniors get out of class in the beginning of May to work earlier in the summer to save money when you were going away to college and everything, which I know, I don't think they do that. That's a long time ago, obviously.
So we all tried out, we all made it. And I'd always been in the chorus before.
I actually really liked it. I don't know what it was.
I mean, I know it's not like the coolest thing that you could ever say about yourself, but I was, I was super into it. And like, we were learning like really hard stuff.
Like one was a get happy, like this old show tune. And then there was this other one called requiem that we sang at like a college and then when we flew to germany uh we got into stuttgart and then we stayed in this little village called uh heidelberg and or excuse me not heidelberg we visited heidelberg uh we stayed in this village called wenglingen and we had host families and so every kid is getting picked up like partnered up with his other buddy right Like hey, who are you with? Oh, I'm with this guy.
Where are you? Oh, we're down the street here. Okay, we're going to that.
I'm like the last guy. And my host family is late.
Every Rissola story has to have tragedy. It's unbelievable.
So everybody's getting picked up in like these Beamers and fucking Benzes, like just sick as cars. You know, because if you're a host family, you're going to take on somebody for this much time.
You know you know you might as well even though we were traveling a lot while we're there and i get picked up in like a piece of shit passat and the the woman couldn't have been nicer and she was enormous and then the daughter was fucking enormous they were like volleyball like she would been on international like volleyball player and the daughter was raised to be like this volleyball player and i'm like where am i like i need to i need to be like near my buddies because they're right in the town and they're like hey dude we're sorry but like there was no other host families in the town of englandon you're gonna be in overboygan i'm like where the fuck's overboygan like it's like 25 minutes that way they're all giants yeah and so i we get all the way out there man and i'm like in the absolute sticks outside of like this really cool little village where everybody else was and i was like you to be kidding me and i get there and their son was named jens and he was nine and he's like steken she spear which means throw the javelin and he told me he was training to be a javelin guy and we're just throwing throwing a javelin, like not back and forth, but kind of. Blanket.
Yeah. Catch with the javelins.
And I'm like, God, this, I'm like, this fucking sucks. And so I call my buddy and just to your point, like, I'm like, are you serious? I don't even have a side guy.
Right. And I'm solo and I'm in Oiboboygen or whatever.
Throwing a javelin? Right. Right.
And I'm throwing a javelvelin with Jens. Really nice kid, sweetheart of a kid.
And so I call my other buddies. I'm like, what are you guys doing? They're like, dude, we're with these grandparents.
They're so lonely. They're like, we're already shit-faced, and now we're going out in town.
I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Stuck in Oiboboygen.
Right, and especially when you're 17. You're like, you guys are already drunk? Like, fuck, This is awful.
So I'm sitting there at dinner with the family, and the girl played I Will Always Love You from the Bodyguard soundtrack on repeat. The son, I stayed in his room, and he straight up.
Seven-year-old? Nine. Nine.
Stereotype. He had the biggest Hasselhoff poster I've ever seen in my life.
Love it. Right over the bed.
And I'm like going, I'm doing this for two weeks,

and these guys are partying in Wenglingdon?

Like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

And so I'm at the dinner table,

and then I hear this motorcycle pull up in the driveway,

and I'm like, what is this?

And they're like, oh, Mark is home.

And I go, who's Mark?

Who's this Mark character?

And he walks in, leather jacket, tassels, pretty decent size. and I go, who's Mark? Who's this Mark character?

And he walks in, leather jacket, tassels,

pretty decent size, bicycle helmet,

like motorcycle helmet.

That would have been not as cool.

And he was like, I'm Mark.

I'm the oldest son.

Let's go.

And it turned out it was a classic. It 180, where I had the best guy.

And so instead of parents picking me up after every event he was like you go with we ride you just pull up right you hop on the back would you grab his arms around i did i felt comfortable about it and so i was hanging out with all of his friends and then they were like all the other vineyard high school kids were like can we come with you now can can mark bring us to the things and then one of my buddies had a shaved head and he was getting jumped every time we went to these like late night clubs and bars and he was like what the fuck and they're like they think you're a skinhead and the other germans are pissed at you he's like just tell them i play high school football like well they don't they don't know that yeah uh awesome country one of the best trips i've ever had and it was great because you you never get hung over yeah beer because you're 17 and the beer is good that's a very long way to avoid singing a song yeah I'm not going to do it for the longest time I like that story I got to you know I want to try to find the I promise you I'll do this when I find the thing I was looking for this Requiem sheet music because I wanted to see it again because I remember how hard it was and how into it we were. It was tough.
We had practiced outside of school. You read music? Back then, yeah.
I could figure it out. You know what he's doing right now.
You're now Hank's problem. Yeah, I'll do it soon.
I'll get that video to you soon. I'm not going to sing right now.
Got it. That's fair.
That's probably fair. Well, let's talk some of that.
Was that story talk story long enough no it was a great story shout out mark throwing a ja you throwing a javelin with a nine-year-old yes the story the world we might actually have to do we used to do like little cartoon shorts for some of our stories we might have to do that for that story just a young ryan result and here's the thing we went fucking crazy like on the second half of the trip and then they had a like do an announcement with all of us and the problem was all the seniors were like we were already done yeah finals class like you don't own us i'm already going to school like we're done we're not coming back to anything so they it was like a really shitty timing for anybody being in charge but i remember like we were so wild that they were like had a meeting and they go hey we got host families complaining about people throwing up fights like we don't know what's going on with you guys but like we'll turn this plane around i'm just like no you're not like it's not gonna happen and they were like from now on every one of you has to get picked up by your host parent and leave with them and then you know you're up to them and then i was well, that's awesome because Mark is picking me up every time.

This is my dad. You mean Mark?

All right.

Shut up, Mark.

Let's talk some NBA.

Yeah, what do you want to do?

The association.

I want to start with the idea that are you on the precipice,

I know we've got a lot of basketball left,

of having the worst NBA playoffs of all time

if James Harden gets a ring?

This is an awesome question.

I didn't know we'd start here.

Because the Clippers are good.

They're really good.

air of having the worst NBA playoffs of all time if James Harden gets a ring? This is an awesome question. I didn't know we'd start here.
Because the Clippers are good. They're really good.
They are good. They're so good.
It's finally, they've been a joke for the last, what, since the bubble and the super team, but now they're good. You could have been a lot meaner because you could have just made fun of the Chris Paul era Clippers there too.
Yeah, no, I didn't. no we'll get to chris paul that's all right yeah uh i was wondering like the best thing you guys could do with me would be what would be like the hate list of if this guy wins an nba championship and like work its way down yeah right because of all the years of takes and you know i don't even know that like does it mean i was wrong about harden for 10 years if he wins it this year? Yes.
No. Yeah.
So none of this stuff happened? Yeah. No, if he wins a ring, he can be like, fuck you to all the haters that said I couldn't do this.
Oh, I know that's what's going to happen. That's how I'm going to feel.
If we get Kyle Lowry on the Clippers, I think that would be the best thing that's ever happened for the discourse of Ryan Russillo. No, actually, it was in Brooklyn when it was Kyrie and Harden together, but I liked Durant so much that I was like, okay, there's a sliver of, like, what would I be rooting for or rooting against based on, like, how I think about things.
But I say this a lot, like, just because I think somebody, like, hasn't won or I don't like that guy or I don't think he could be a winning player, to say he's incapable of any scenario to actually win this whole thing, he's the third option now. So I'm still in the clear for a decade worth of takes.
Okay. So it's not his ring if he wins.
He'll have a lot to do with it because he's been really good for him now. Yeah.
Ever since that beginning thing when they pulled that shit where they were pretending like Russ was actually going to start and play point guard and Harden was – remember they went 0 for 5? Yeah. And you were like, you know, it would have been really easy to go, ah, this is terrible.
Like, look, I just wouldn't want to be in the business of James Harden. I don't think asking for three trades and playing bad on purpose and then getting your way.
He did a piece with The Athletic where the first answer he had was like, I wanted to go somewhere I could be paid. Yeah, but you have to admit.
That was his first answer. When he got fat, that was funny.
It was definitely funny. That was funny.
But I don't know, man. I just think there's...
If somebody can play bad on purpose to get their way, what are you going to be like in a really tight spot in the playoffs? That's fair. And there's way more evidence that those two things are connected.
So I do think with James Harden, I've said this before, but I think that it's true in his case.

I don't think it's like a league-wide phenomenon.

But with James Harden, I think he looks at the postseason as doing more work for less money.

So he's like, I did my time.

I played my season.

I don't have any desire to do more work.

Yeah, I get to leave at five.

Right.

So, all right, let me ask you this, though. Can the Clippers win it all if everyone stays healthy i know that's always the if but is this i always find the the regular season the nba i i just can't get all the way into it because it's like i just know that once we get to the playoffs the teams with the best players and you know the shorten the rotations sure.
It's nice if a team has a great year and they, you know, win 48 games or 50 games, but it's like, they're not going to do anything in the playoffs. Obviously the Clippers are a lot better than that, but can they win the title? Yeah, I do think they can win the title, but it's a really bad health bet, right? You know, it's the worst health bet of the four teams in the top of the West.
Maybe you could argue Phoenix. If want to go.
Like, if you're talking, I did, I think, nine teams. Or I said, if these nine teams won an NBA championship, you wouldn't say, well, how the fuck did that happen? Right? Like, I think there were nine.
And even that was being a little generous. And then I had other teams that I was kind of, like, writing off of, like, let's mention them because they're good.
But I don't really think you're going to be sitting there with a trophy at the end of this whole thing and i still put phoenix down as probably the ninth team because you know we still hadn't seen those guys play together enough right with beal durant and booker at the time of this taping uh that's true we started with the two teams that could be drastically different in two weeks no right right uh at the time of this taping they're 11 and 5 with those three guys and it it's pretty good. And your bench isn't going to matter as much, and you're going to have more days off.
And I think there's the biggest gap I've ever seen between playoff and regular season basketball. If you don't believe me, listen to Bob Myers.
He's done extensive speeches on this thing at some conference where I'm like, finally, listen to this guy. It's totally different.
The stuff that works in the regular season, when people are just not locked in, they're not fighting through screens. Maybe you get them on some play, like in the playoffs, everybody knows everything you're going to run through.
They know like, oh, this screen to this screen means that this guy's going to be over here. So I'm not even going to fall for any of this shit anymore.
Cause I've already seen it for three games. You figure most guys are prideful enough to stay as locked in as they can as opposed to just a lot of regular season games mailing it in.
So I think it's a different product entirely, and that's why even though I really like what Minnesota has become, I'm not going to trust their offense late in the playoff series against somebody who I know. I know what Booker's going to look like.
I know what Durant's going to look like. In NFL terms, it sounds to me like you're calling them frauds.
Are the Timberwolves frauds? No, I know what you mean. It's effort.
Like effort can win you games in February. I think that the best playoff teams have shot clock scores.
Somebody who, when the ball is in their hands and there's like six seconds left in the shot clock and nothing else has worked, the first two actions got blown up. It's like a lot of times the ball's's gonna have been that guy's hands and he has to figure out a way to still score and that's why everybody trades all these draft picks and that's why they don't care about Harden's background they don't care about any of this stuff because like hey I'm actually getting one of those guys right and that's why we all lose our minds about these guys all the time so even though I love SGA history tells you the youth part of this would be an absurd aberration historically for them to win an NBA title.
And I don't like the fact they don't have another big that can match up with, say, a bigger matchup that they could get in the playoffs. Like, Chet, I love Chet.
This is a great rookie year. That's asking a lot of him and Jay Williams, too, to be the front line against some of the bigger front lines you'd face in the West.
So it's not fraud at it's just it's different it's very hard for me when i've never seen a team show me like in those conference finals moments what you look like offensively for me to just assume it's all going to work out right no that's i mean you you can look at the nba every single year and say okay this team's having a great year but once once we get to the playoffs... It's always the same thing.
You're like, oh, the team that has the best offensive option, one of those five guys in the league, they're in it again. And there's always exceptions, but there's not many exceptions in that league.
It's not like football where you're like, how did this happen? Right, and once you get into a seven-game series, it's like, okay, well, we know how to game plan you games three, four, five. You don't know how to game plan Kevin Durant.
Right. I mean, Durant's just going to pull up at seven foot one, and, you know, look, you can double team and get the ball out of his hands, but now Booker's on the other side going four on three.
So, look, Phoenix isn't perfect, but every Phoenix stat is irrelevant because they just haven't had those guys for long enough stretches. I think you can write off Golden State.

You can write off the Lakers.

Is LeBron stat padding at this point in his career?

I think LeBron is the best player I've ever seen.

At the end of the night, you're like, holy shit, he had 27-7-7 again.

There are a lot of sevens in there. But he doesn't do the little things that I think are really important in basketball that's anymore no he doesn't do those things anymore and maybe he will in the playoffs but like look at his track record if you go back 2018 uh his last year with cleveland he played 82 games since then and granted we had two shortened seasons what a 70 game season 72 it depends some of the teams played like an extra game.
But he usually misses like 25 games a year. They have been cranking.
He's been playing big minutes. He's played the full season.
Anthony Davis has played like a full season to this point. D'Angelo Russell can't miss a shot.
But then you're like, well, wait a minute. Why do they stink? It's the same group because basketball, man, is all of these little plays where you're like, hey, did you box out consistently? Oh, you didn't? You fucking lose your guy boxing out all the time? You don't get back in transition? You lose guys on these baseline cuts or you start ball watching when you're off the ball on defense? When you don't do any of those things, it doesn't matter if you're scoring big numbers.
So when you look at – if you had said this is what they're getting out of LeBron AD's been this healthy D'Angelo Russell who you know at times I think is unplayable hasn't missed a shot here for like seven weeks you know Rui's still around Reeves after the slow start clearly like he was the third most important guy for them in that playoff run last year you'd go oh they must be like a top four seed. Yeah.
And they stink. Yeah.
It's those little things. You think maybe LeBron off the bench? Sixth man of the year.
It's the only award he hasn't won. It's true.
That would be – MJ never won it. Yeah, true.
I would gain so much respect for LeBron. Like I would actually put him above MJ if he got sixth man of the year.
Sixth man of the year. When the trade stuff happened for like 48 hours.
That was awesome. It was and i remember when i was still at espn there was like a weird story how like steven a had said that people close to genie bus were saying she'd explore trades for him or something like that that was before they'd even won the title and i like joked on my podcast like what is somebody in a pilates class going like hey what do you think you could get for him yeah and then it got back to steven a that i had said like he got this info from her pilates class so he thought i was like really dogging his credibility and i was like no dude that's not what i said we worked it out it was fine it's not a big deal but it was it was it reminded me of that where it was like this media blitz of 48 hours of something that was like wait why would they even do that and

the reason i was wondering if it would happen is jordan guys would be like jordan jordan never got traded yeah it's great uh you talked about the uh the sons were they 11 and 5 with those three playing together right as of taping yes yeah isn't it crazy that they've played more games together than the Nets had with their big three?

Wait, is it

with Harden?

Harden, Kyrie, and Kevin Durant on the Nets. Was it 13 games? I think it was 13 or 14 games.
Can we get IT on that? Did you see Kyrie say that? Yeah. That was awesome.
13 games? Some fan was like, Kyrie, you never played for the Nets. He's like, blame Eric Adams.
I know. I know.
I've had a lot of people come in and be like, hey, what are you going to do that Kyrie was right about everything? Ooh. I was like, ooh, that's an interesting segment.
What exactly was Kyrie right about? COVID. The documentary.
Yeah, right? Yeah. I think a lot of the problems that Kyrie got was like, even if I might be on your side on some of the stuff like i don't look i mean i thought when covid was first happening i was like how come everybody's an expert on this already it seems kind of new like might we have questions a little bit later but then as soon as you say like maybe i have some questions about how this all went down it's like oh you got matt gets posters at home so uh you know i just think we're a little hard on each other on having an open mind about

anything but i think the biggest problem with kairi was like you watch three videos and then you decided that's and so even if we look back at retroactively like hey he made some good points it's like yeah but we don't like how we got there yeah which is totally unfair yeah the process all right so uh in the east the celtics look like the best team they do but when the clippers kicked their ass, I was like, man. I mean, that was like a really, that was like worth five losses.
Yeah. It was now, I don't know if you guys saw the game.
Probably not, because you're a football guy. Football guy.
Football guy. Never miss a game.
You see the ratings? 97 of the top 100 view cable shows. That's a fact.
I love when guys, but like, where's your check out of it? Yeah, no. Like, nobody's arguing it's not popular the ratings they think if you're an nfl reporter you're like i did that well that's what it feels like that's the point about this league made it so exciting that people i'm gonna stand up for football guys for a second all right there was a prisco on a text there was a very loud NBA push was like, football's dying.
NBA's going to be the next big sport. Everyone's talking about it on social media.
Oh, Cuban was into that. That did happen.
And then you could talk about it all you want on social media. Then you see the ratings.
You're like, oh, yeah, football is king and will always be king. That did happen.
You have to admit that happened. There was definitely a window and it was uh so now we just smash them the i love basketball but it is funny when anyone's like nba like nba is the next big sports like no it's not football is yeah i do think that the nba had like a single elimination championship and played like 17 regular season games the ratings would probably go up that's basically what the stars play now anyways yeah not anymore although it's gonna be funny it wouldn't be great if there was one year like the top 10 guys didn't qualify for the mvp you're like tobias harris first time let's go it's awesome uh the cuban thing i love talking about this because i did bring it up but i don't know there's anybody that's more convincing on topics i may disagree with yeah there's plenty of stuff with cuban i've agreed with but there have been times over you know it's 20 plus years in the spotlight you know just basketball related stuff i'm like what is he talking about but then i get done listening to him explain it and i'll be like am i wrong nine years ago cuban was like i'd rather own an nba team than an nfl team and he said pigs get slaughtered yep yeah no no pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered that's what it was right if you have a good phrase like I bought it at the time yeah and then he sold his team yeah I mean that's one of like the all-time yeah calls which was self like you know it was there was a lot of self-interest in the motivation behind him saying like hey I own one I own one of the 30 assets in the world.
I'm not going to tell you it's not going to be better positioned. But if you were to say to him, no, actually, you'll probably sell your team.
And by the way, the call of an NBA team being more valuable than an NFL team is, like, not even going to be close. It's going to be worse.
Yeah. Or a bigger gap.
But I don't know. Whatever, man.
The Cuban thing, though. Yeah.
Isn't it? I feel like no one talked about the fact that he sold his team it was not big enough news like he was the nba guy nba is a great asset nba keeps going and then he sold it and it like that shouldn't that scare people yeah because when the bucks were sold you're like hey you guys came in and sometimes like the private equity guys would just be like wait how much of a return are we going to get right like done like that's how i have that's how i've done my job for decades that's how i have to do it now even if you feel like there's some emotional attachment to something like a franchise that's far more you know emotional than anything in your portfolio but i'm with you big cat like because then it was also sold to us like no but it's still going to be his team yeah which made no sense and like, what's that about? Like, if I'm buying a team, be like, oh, and by the way, you guys get to make all the cool decisions. Yeah.
And then that kind of got shot down a little bit. Right.
The whole story seemed weird to me because it really does feel like if there's one guy who's going to sell his NBA team, Mark Cuban should be the one that sounds off all the alarms. There's a lot of transition happening right now with teams.
And, you know, whenever anybody like we're all bubble experts after the big short right you know like my everybody's just throwing around like oh you think there's a bubble i'm like i don't fucking know oh max wow wow that's all right max is watching highlights over there max i just somebody's gonna have down your phone somebody would have to convince me of like how like when is that time coming where a live television audience is no longer that valuable that's facts so i don't know when that's happening i know it's the one last great thing for sports it's always gonna be yeah right so even even if the ratings go down it's if it's still the best rated thing yeah that's really what we're talking about here like whenever you're comparing historical ratings like oh it's down this it's down that's down that so okay what what are the other live audience shows what are they doing right so there i don't know if there's owner transition because this deal is rumored to be shorter than people thought it would be the new rights the new rights deal like oh maybe it'll be be shorter why would it be shorter oh because you don't like the back end term so it means it was less money so now it's like oh well we don't like this so let's just do a shorter deal i don't know if that influenced him at all because you you would think cuban wouldn't be somebody who'd be like hey this is the best i can do financially and i have to have the ultimate win i've got to sell as high as i possibly can like anybody who's ever bought and sold stocks and won or lost money, you're always going like, oh, but if I'd done this, then. To your point, I don't think this should happen with a basketball team, especially that guy.
That guy, that's the point. So what does that mean? And then I'll hear about three or four other teams where the analogy I've used is like the beach house that your grandfather had, and then the kids you know use it and then you guys go with all the cousins and then it's like out of the next generation and there's just no way to making it work like you want to keep the house but there's too many people at it right yeah so so it seems to me like the nba is trying to pull like kind of a page out of the nfl's playbook which is you want to ensure more ratings.
Let's have high scores.

Let's have people score a fuckload of points.

Are people scoring too many points in the NBA?

Well, scoring has never been easier.

So it was really weird how when Embiid went for 70 and then Luka went for 73.

Yeah.

It was like, oh my God, like look what Embiid's doing.

And then it was like, what the hell's wrong with the league?

And I think a lot of Mavs fans took it real personal as if it was only about luca i can only look at things like nationally right i think people only pay attention to bias that they feel like negatively impacts themselves or their interests like if you were to go to somebody and say like oh hey you know does so and so hate your team they'd be like yeah it's like well do they hate your team or did you never ever care or notice when all the other teams you have no interest in were also criticized the same way anyway um i i thought it had more to do with like what the hell's going on like cat had 60 then booker went crazy and a loss too it's just never been easier to score the pace is going faster and faster rising tides as the efficiency goes up like every year a team sets that the the record for the most efficient offense in nba history we're on like a five-year spike the free throw rates wouldn't tell you that we're in this free throw trouble even though i got a lot of shit um well actually i didn't get a lot of shit but i had to talk to a few people about it when i kind of just went off at the nba officials the union account when they like came back at me to try to tell me i was wrong about something. I think the foul number isn't the really thing to look at.
I think defenses are scared to death to even be in compromised positions because guys just fucking run into everybody now. So you let – look at a guy like Harden.
He's still getting away with that off-arm grab. He drives into somebody's hip.
He brings his arms up, and they also let him invent a new way to travel on threes. You can't touch anyone.
No, and the landing area, and one of the things I bring up, like why are Kawhi Leonard's ankles more valuable than Cam Reddish's? Because Zaza goes under Kawhi, knocks him out of that series years ago with Spurs and Goldstein in the playoffs. So then they're like, hey, we got to make sure the landing area is clear.
Well, look, and fuck any Harden fan that can't accept this. I want the Clippers to win so bad.
Harden, when no one's around him, goes straight up on a jump shot. Even J.J.
Reddick, because he got a bunch of calls in this awful fourth quarter against the Clippers at the beginning of February. And I love J.J., but J.J.'s like, hey, look, I had a natural motion that kind of moved forward.
And it's JJ, but JJ's like, hey, look,

I had a natural motion that kind of moved forward.

And it's like, okay, but put him side by side

when no one's around him.

He clearly knows what he's doing.

It's like on a national broadcast

when LeBron's down for a little bit

and the national broadcast,

like the 70th time he's seen it,

like, oh, little gimpy.

You're like, dude, he's probably going to get up.

He almost died

on christmas what a terrible day it's hard to have it i'd hate that so like what do you tell

your kids what if you get him a jersey i mean he he need jalen brown in the butt and he was down

for 20 minutes i know i know jalen brown actually like left the game uh so when when i think of

that like with the zaza kawaii play and then cam reddish landed on harden who put his feet

Thank you. I left the game.
So when I think of that, like with the Zaza Kawhi play, and then Cam Reddish landed on Harden, who put his feet underneath the defender, and then they check to see if it's a flagrant on the defender. And Cam Reddish missed time.
So the problem with any of these adjustments is like you worry about the unintended consequences. Well, the unintended consequence for that one is like now you can't even get like a clear contest.
You have to these drive-by contests you add all these things up and i don't want to hear about how oh there's not really that much of a change of the officiating oh there is dude i watch so much of this stuff like i'm sorry i'm just not going to debate it with you if you can't see the shit that i see and i think the league will try to figure out a way to like you know the way it's explained is is sometimes the stuff can be like a year ahead of the league before they figure like the rip through they figure that one out they got better with flops and charges and that kind of stuff but you're just adding it all up i don't think it's because of ratings pft i think it has everything to do with like we're at a really weird place where the offensive player has never had this many advantages yeah and they're all awesome players too yeah like 10 ago, there was 20 players that were shooting over 40%. Right now, it's 49 players shooting over 40% from three.
It's weird. They're just better players, too.
With Harden, he is very, very smart. So if you tweak the rules, he will figure out a way to exploit it every time.
When he retires, he should be like that guy in Frank Abadnail. And that was it Catch Me If You Can.

The league should hire him when they think of making a rule.

Be like, how would you exploit this if you were a player?

Show us the unintended consequences.

And then he'd be like, I want to work for the NFL.

Fuck this place.

Yeah, it's king.

We're going to get back to Ryan in a second.

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And now here's more Ryan Russillo. So you think it is making the games worse? The scores, when you look at them after the fact, you're like, oh, shit, high scores are good.
But if you actually watch the games, it's like, yeah, they're getting more points, but the points are more boring. Well, I just don't know what the defense is supposed to do anymore.
Right. You know, like there's even times like the play that I tweeted out that, you know, turned into a bunch of people talking about it.
And then I just don't understand like guys on Twitter accounts. Like I've officiated in JUCO in high school.
That's absolutely a foul. Like you shouldn't want that to be a foul.
Right. Like, and it was like, oh, you know, Steph was in a compromising position.
It's like, so now I like, it's like bullfighting. Like I'll be sitting, if I were dribbling and I go, oh my God, that guy's turned a little bit.
Now I get to just dribble into your hip and now it's a foul because you were in non-legal guarding position. It's any type of contact.
I just wish there was, look, in life, I wish we were judged more on intent. You know, there's just so many times where I'll be like, hey, what was happening there? What was going on there? I'm like, okay, maybe that's how it could be perceived.
But what was the actual intent of the person? Was the intent for the person to be a fucking ass? Oh no, it was just a mistake. and in this case it's like was the intent to foul him or was the intent of the person was he was the intent for the person to be a fucking ass oh no it was just a mistake and in this case it's like was the intent to foul him or was the intent of the offensive player to be like i didn't even want to take a shot right but i just dribbled into this guy backpedaling and then flung it up at the rim and there's just too many refs that are falling for this stuff all the time but then it makes it sound like i'm painting with this broad brush the player The player's individual skill, man, when we grew up, there'd be like the two guys who could score, a rebounder, a ball handler, there'd be like the white guy that maybe hits 1.73s per game over like sharpshooter.
And now if you don't have like five scorers on the floor, you're almost at a disadvantage. It's crazy.
These guys are incredible, the shot making that they can do. So I don't know if it's a boring, not boring thing.
I think I just have nights where I get frustrated knowing that, hey, once the playoffs start, a lot of this stuff is just going to be different anyway. Yeah.
I think it was Sam Decker, who's a friend of the program. I like Sam.
He said something. Sam was in the NBA for a nba for while he's now doing great in europe but like he he's had something about uh practice and someone asked him if you were shooting in an open gym with no one on you how many threes would you make out of 100 and he said like 90 and he's not yeah in the nba you know what i mean that that's how insane these guys are shooting it's everyone can shoot every guy on on the team can shoot.
I remember when Nash, I don't know if he was the first to do it, but it was like the first time maybe I was noticing it, is he was dribbling, and granted, he's at this size disadvantage on any dribble to the rim, and he started just taking off on the wrong foot. So like the defender, you're always timing it to be like step, step, and like, okay, if he's right-handed-handed he's going up off of this foot he started going up off the foot before you thought he was and then he was already at the rim and finishing and you're just like oh my god and that's like everybody now yeah everybody has all this stuff now i've i want to do a deeper dive on it but i also think there's so much individual training that the individual ability to like get your shot and get a good look or make these absurd shots and these different angles takes away a little bit from like yeah but you know you're supposed to do when you don't have the ball right like do you know about any of that because if you're only working if you're prioritizing all the individual drills which are cool and all um you know there's a lot of positioning stuff that'll happen where you're like do you do you know actually what to do once you don't have the ball right some of these guys look like they have no interest right yeah all right so in the east who can win the title boston but you know the late game stuff i think is real even though there's not a lot of stats that kind of back it up but i feel like i've seen it enough but when people talk about boston like being a playoff failure i'm just like well game six of the finals and then you know granted they shouldn't have lost that miami team last year but i would take their playoff failures over a lot of these other teams that we talk about all the time and their one through eight's ridiculous if porzingis is healthy they have probably they're probably still the favorite uh the thing is weird.
I can't figure it out.

Yeah, Doc Rivers, difference maker.

Doc is awesome with stars.

I saw it firsthand when I was in Boston.

I know everybody wants to shit on him for the blown playoff series.

I want to shit on him for being a snake.

Do you put any credence in that?

In the fact that he got a young coach fired and he was like,

now it's me, now it's Doc Dime. Come on come on dude you really think that i've been told that i think giannis never bought in i think dame had a bigger issue with adrian really first and then it was yeah so yeah i i can't figure out dame like i knew he sucked on defense, and now it's like, oh, my God.

He's really bad. He's really bad on defense.

Yeah, but it's like the Bucs, they should have known that going into it, right?

Yeah, but it's back to, like, the offense stuff that we talk about

because Dane's, like, probably one of the 10 best guys

at, like, getting his own thing in the league.

And you're like, all right, we'll take the bad defense

because they're huge guys.

They acted surprised that they got rid of one of the best perimeter defenders

in the league, and they brought in Dane, and they're and they're like wait our defense stinks let's blame the coach um well they were gonna blame adrian griffin who by the way is one of my all-time favorite nba players saw the game slow pace just loved it like that guy would he his pickup team would win every single game yeah and you'd be like did that guy even score so i've always been a've always been a fan of his. But athletes are brutal, man.
As soon as you give them a chance to doubt you, they're just going to be like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. And yet they were winning all these games.
But they'd have something like once every 10 days where they'd get destroyed by somebody. And you were like, what the fuck? What happened here? So the Giannis factor alone and dame got cooking and i don't think you can rule them out but it's crazy how good the record is and then you look at all this stuff you know and then you'll watch him one game and you're like what is wrong with you guys but so we're only what four games in five games into doc at this point two.
Anyone else? I mean, Embiid obviously being out, that kind of ends that. That's over.
Yeah. The Knicks story is awesome.
I can't fathom them beating all those teams. Well, they go back to the, and I learned this firsthand, Tibbs can win a lot of regular season games.
Ooh, there we he gets his guy his guys play hard every night and

jalen brunt is a star i love him he's awesome he's so much fun to watch but back to your other point

how many guys on that team can get their own shot at the end of the shot clock yeah he can i don't

think ananobi is necessarily like that guy but his corner three numbers are always ridiculous and

um in the first what 16 games the knicks he's even beyond anything he's been like in toronto

I'm going to go it play out more over. I thought that was a really easy stretch of the schedule.
Okay. I did.
So is there, is there a third team in the East or is it going to be just box Celtics? Well, Cleveland scared the death. Yeah.
And I mean, they won this whole time. Imagine if they had LeBron.
Who knows? He might be there next year. I saw some Cleveland fans being like, well, good Adam this year, the trade deadline.
He'd be the perfect piece. Yeah, and by the way, he would have to opt out and sign for nothing to go there.
I don't think he's going to do that at the very end of his career. Yeah, I don't think Cleveland, I mean, he came back and then they won in that town yeah not exactly like parade town no yeah no that was he did his job he did what he said he was gonna do he's supposed to go to the knicks now right like i could see myself playing there yeah no that was him he just puts pressure on the front office he thinks like front offices show up to work and be like what do you want to do today like you want to get wings or something and then the next day they're like did you see lebron had a nicks towel on yeah yeah hey lebron tweeted an apple yeah hey guess what let's start let's start getting on the blowers here oh when he tweeted the hourglass yeah people got into work like two hours early that day right and then people ask him about it he'd be like what yeah nothing i mean he's gonna be he'd be a tough summer roommate, man.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
For sure. He'd be leaving notes for you.
Just so you know, you left a dirty dish in the sink. I cleaned it up.
No worries. Yeah.
He would just put on the whiteboard. He'd be like, all of you guys suck.
And then you'd come downstairs and be like, what was that? And he'd be like, it's up to you to figure it out. Like, wait.
It seems pretty self-explanatory and direct and you wrote it do you want to talk about this don't need to you know yeah like do you want to move out didn't say that do you think i want to move out and then you have to turn on the tv like wind horse is like i don't think lebrron will move out nor wants to move out of the summer house and you're sitting there going like dude we're sitting right fucking next to you you could just say it to us LeBron remains committed to being as good of a roommate as he can be he loves Cohasset this time of year I know that's not your hometown I do love how he just talked about the Knicks.

He's like, yeah, I could play here.

I also think there's something about LeBron where he plays in a cool environment.

He's on the road and he's like, yeah, you know, I could really see myself winning a title for the Knicks.

That'd be incredible.

He goes, like, if you go to any city with nice weather that day, you're like, man, I could see myself living here.

That's what LeBron does for every place he goes. You pull up Zillow.

Let's do a non, yeah, because we have a segment called rozillo where where like i went to new zealand and i looked at property yeah and i was like okay but it's gonna take like when you order something on amazon prime it's probably gonna take forever yeah you're gonna live with some goats unless you're opening up some sort of coinbase thing like sam there who they had private jets fly amazon packages from miami to the bahamas and then said they only did that to remain competitive for the top employees sweet allegedly so uh give me a place where you guys have been where you're like i could do this give me the most aggressive place okay i'll give you i'll give you i went over to dublin for my friend donnie's wedding i was there for about 36 hours and while i was there i looked at uh properties uh donnie does you know donnie wanton don yeah i love him you love you do love the one he's the best yeah and i looked at properties in dingle on the west coast of ireland and i was like yeah you know? Like $300,000 house on the Dingle Peninsula? And then there's one road that goes out there and you're three hours away from an airport. And yeah, I did the same thing you did with New Zealand where it's like, realistically, this won't work.
But still, what if? I met with Adam McKay once. Big sports fan.
Super nice to me. Moved out to LA.
You know, hey, can we ever meet or whatever? Talk and talk and bullshit he'd come on the pod and it was one of those moments where he was like yeah i've got this place out in ireland he's like if you ever want it let me know and you're kind of going i actually do want to ask you in a year can i stay at your place in ireland yeah but you almost have to like keep the relationship going on a very superficial level to then feel like it's not a weird ask.

Yeah.

So I don't know how to do that. I think he says that to a lot of people.

I think he definitely planned on me never asking,

hey, can I stay?

He says that to everyone.

I'm going to start telling people I've got a place in Spain

an hour outside of Barcelona.

I actually do have a place down there, Ryan,

if you ever want it.

It's yours.

Really?

As long as you want it.

I went to Barcelona last summer. So you're thinking Ireland, $300,000.
I heard you got a new deal. Probably.
You see my socks? Yeah, probably not going to dent it too much. $300,000.
You might not even be a mortgage guy now. Who knows? Who knows? With these rates, although they're going down.
As of taping. What about you, Big Cat? Fantasy.
For some reason, it's a lame fantasy. I've been in the Pacific Northwest a few times, and I just, something about the trees.
Is the movie Fear? They're so fucking big. You love big trees.
I like big trees. I could see myself maybe way northern California, Washington.
I don't know. But then it rains a lot, but I kind of like the rain.
Yeah, and Chicago's beautiful year-round. Yeah, it is.
We've had a mild winter. Very mild winter.
Really? Oh, yeah. Hey, if Chicago didn't have the winter, I would think about living there.
Yeah. But no ocean is always...
Anytime I think of a place... Lake's pretty big.
Denver, Manhattan Beach. Lake's pretty big.
We're a tie, but the no ocean thing. Oh, Denver's a good one.
Boulder. Yeah.
We went to Boulder once and ate mushrooms, and I was like, dude, I want to move here

right now.

Facts. That happened.
That was a great week. We did that.
I was literally like, I want to live here. If you wait like 25 years, Chicago's going to be awesome.
Yeah. All year round.
Global warming. You probably don't believe in that.
Depends on which charts you look at. Remember when he had the, uh, like it was, it was the, the smog thing.
It was like the fires from Canada or something. And then like New York city.
And so all of a sudden like people were just freaking out and they were like, Oh no global warming. Hmm.
You know, like, I don't know. This just looks like smoke to be honest honest with you.
And then Saruti and I talked about it.

And somebody who hates me signed up Life Advice for every single climate change newsletter imaginable.

Every time I open up Life Advice,

it's all these different free newsletters on climate change

trying to tell me as if I didn't believe in some form of it.

But yeah, 25 years from now, I'm going to be too old.

I can't be going to Wrigleyville and be like like hey you guys yeah you can you guys remember my pod yeah you can i'm an accelerationist i i i want chicago to be so warm i go in my backyard i burn styrofoam every day i bought three cows i have them farting all the time i just spray aerosol cans everywhere i'm just listen the the hotter it gets the longer i want to to live there. All your machines run on corn.
Yeah. Because remember, that was the big thing.
Like, oh, it's going to be all corn. And then they were like, do you guys realize how much worse this actually is? Yeah.
I remember that. That was a big, like, people were trying to get into, like, long corn.
Yeah. Wait, what's your place? New Zealand was up there.
I've thought about doing, like, the south of France or something and trying to find a village. I don't want to live in any of the big towns.
My new thing is villages. Like when I get to the major city internationally, I want to get the fuck out of there immediately and go to villages.
And I find myself, you know, look, if you're in Barcelona, it's great, but I want to go everywhere else. I don't want to be there.
I don't want to be in Nice. I mean, this is bougie as fuck.
What about football, though? Well, I could never live any other country because of football. Okay, but this would be it.
It would be like right about now, then I would move, and then maybe I'd come back for the beginning of the playoffs. So I'd live somewhere.
I mean, look. Oh, the NBA playoffs? Right, right before the NBA playoffs.
So you're looking at basically a good chunk of February, March, April. And then beginning of May, maybe I'd come back.
But live in another country for three or four months and really try it. I mean, I'm likely not going to have a family anytime soon.
So I probably should just do it now. I get really excited about, hey, what if I and the crazy thing about new zealand from la is it's 21 hours ahead so when i was there it wasn't really that i had two christmases but it wasn't that weird because it was pretty close to what my normal routine was when i was back home is that was that a divorced parents joke no it's a time it's a time zone joke okay let's play berman told a good one yeah he did i'll be john two concerts wait so you would you would you would live in another country for four months i'd love to that i don't hate that like maybe i live in saudi arabia for four months so you guys are just doing like the the no kids talk right now get that what are you talking about live podcasting money yeah i can't believe you didn't hold out.
Was Live involved with the negotiation? You just dropped Saudi Arabia and you already resigned. So you really thought about it.
I was in background discussions with being a Live ambassador. Sometimes I wonder, like, could I just move to Tokyo? The discussion was no, by the way.
That's how I ended up. Yeah.
Yeah, I figured that was probably the answer answer so I didn't have a follow-up uh like I'll go hey they love basketball yeah over there so why like I could be a less informed Tokyo Woj yeah how would rock are you are you Woj guy are you Shams guy uh I'm I'm suchj guy. He's the ultimate.
He carries Woj's water. Yep.
When he ruined that recruit for Rutgers commitment. Don't even know what you're talking about.
Yeah, exactly. But if it's bad, Woj didn't do it.
I did see Shams. Phrasing.
Shams? Yeah, his name is Shams. That's not what I was focused on.

Okay.

I did see Shams.

Uh,

and I think it was maybe a Blackhawks or something.

Oh no,

it was a college basketball game.

It was Duke.

Duke was playing Michigan State at the United Center.

And I said to him,

I was like,

dude,

when,

uh,

Woj beat you to that,

what was the big overnight thing that happened?

Uh,

right before the season started.

Harden. I was like, he beat you to Harden.
Like, are you ever going to sleep again? He's like, no. Dead serious.
He's like, that ruined me. Well, he doesn't sleep.
Yeah. And he sends all those texts.
Yeah. But Woj's story on that, how he was at the airport and he left, and he went home because he thought it was going to break.
He's like, I'll just take a flight tomorrow. Commitment.
I asked Woj to come out of the boat when he was in Manhattan Beach, and he was like, he goes, I can't be that far away from the coast with no signal. And I went.
He's dead serious. I go, hey, I got Starlink on the boat.
Oh, dude? And I go, yeah. He came out? It's awesome, dude.
I anchor off of Malibu, watch Hornets games. Can't believe I'm not married.
It is great when people are like, touch grass grass for sale and you show a picture of your boat and i'm like i know he's watching games on that boat yeah that was i don't do that a ton almost never but i just felt i was a little spicy that day and he just you know everybody like give me a hard time and like i get it like i watch too many games and i'm supposed to have a kid by now and, the shit that really matters. But if you're going to come after me when I've got a 46 foot prestige with twin diesel, and I'm anchored at that moment off the coast of Malibu with a sunset in the background and a CL in the hand and the almond brothers playing at halftime.
Yup. Like you can fuck off.
Yeah. How many TVs you got in the thing? Just one.
We tried to put a second second one on but i was worried about it just basically having to be replaced because of the salt water in eight months the guy's like i can put one on the back of this you're going to have me replace it and like i know there's other ones you can get and everything and i was but i also thought i was going to upgrade to a fly deck like a 51 azimuth so one day i thought i was going to do it already by now but i'm not going to yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry that you only have one tv on your boat it's brutal actually you know how it is there there are three tvs on the boat there's two in the bed like i have two bedrooms yeah but uh i there's only like one in a viewing area right oh so you have three tvs on the boat though yeah yeah okay yeah but i thought you meant like in the living yeah no right where you can watch boats a lot of houses have been forced into a bad setup that i've lived in uh-huh like i had like the last house you guys were at like the person installing was like i can't believe you're putting a second swinging tv in this gorgeous living room and i was like i don't like it's my house thank you for your commentary yeah this is the way the job is done yeah without those two tvs we're not in this house right that's right i have five in my basement it looks like a sports bar can you really watch five basketball games at the same time i think you can do it with football i don't think you can do it with basketball basketball is tough uh baseball is the best baseball is awesome you could just yeah you could have a million baseball games on unless you really want to get in the pause thing with college football like if i'm like okay be super locked in like yeah dj you know yeah yeah speaking of vegas usually though it's like peppa pig in the middle and then whatever games i want to watch how are those guys doing my kids yeah they're pretty good those guys we still haven't haven't, we still, like, probably, I'd say once a month,

when I'm putting my son to bed, I put him to bed every night,

but when I'm putting my son to bed and we're picking out books,

he'll grab the LeBron book that you bought him,

and I'll just put it back.

And I'm like, no.

I sent a LeBron book.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good.

We don't read that. That one doesn't get get read i'm very underrated as a caring friend yeah yeah yeah hey i got you a great gift yeah the chris paul by the way yeah it's a it's a crystal uh hologram of uh chris paul holding ryan rusillo like a baby have you not seen it pft no i saw it when he got it for you so I moved again like six months ago and you know when you're moving that last thing you have to be mad at yourself you have to be in a bad mood to move efficiently yeah you have to be like fuck this I'm never looking at this I haven't touched this in three years this is fucking stupid I don't need this paperwork from four houses ago like who gives a fuck throw it all away and i was in one of those modes just cleaning out the kitchen and i was just pissed how long it took me to clean out the other house before i moved and then in my hands like fucking the first raiders of the lost ark i've got the chris paul me holding him as a baby crystal on the stand with the light behind it.
And I'm like, fucking chuck this. No.
And I didn't. Oh, thank God.
You need it. Chris Paul might win a title.
I can't chuck it. Maybe a big three title.
Where are we at with Chris right now? Is it that bad now? Well, he's hurt again, and Golden State isn't any good,

and he's got a few hours to be traded.

So I don't really know what the move is because if Chris Paul,

you're trading for Chris Paul, you're a good team.

So you're not trading a good player back.

But then it's a $30 million salary.

It's just really, really complicated to even make it happen.

I'm not saying it can't, but I don't know what that deal is.

Back to the Clippers. We're going to get back to more Ryan in a second.
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All right, so is there any other team in the East? Well, I feel like we were a little dismissive of just, this is always like one of those deals where you go like, oh, you know, give the Knicks. Like, I always hate the MVP conversation where it's like Brunson deserves to be in it.
Okay, cool. He's not winning.
Yeah. It's Russell Wilson.
Yeah. Congrats.
Yeah. He was in the conversation.
Yeah. We talked about him.
Everybody does that every year with this shit. We're like, he needs, like it's like this huge offensive thing that we haven't spent more time on it.
When it's like, are you voting for him're like, well, no. I'm like, okay.
But we should talk about it. Yeah, we should talk about it.
We should talk about what if I did. Who's coming in fourth? And that's kind of how I feel about the Knicks right now.
I think they're really good. I think they're tough as shit.
I love the fact they have all these guards that play their asses off, that defend. To your point.
Tibbs teams look a certain way. When I look at their top nine guys, I never go, why is that guy getting minutes? Every guy serves a purpose.
Really small guards. A lot of GMs will tell you in the playoffs, that's not really what I want, even though Brunson had a really good series against Miami.
I just have a hard time believing that I'd be picking them to win four out of seven games against Boston. If they're both healthy, I'm not.
All right, so you said nine teams that you wouldn't be shocked if they won. Give us the real four, though.
Maybe go five. It's Clippers, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, and I would hold out a little hope for Phoenix or probably my five.
Okay. Okay, see if you go by age, which, you know.
Well, Josh Giddey. They were also feisty in the playoffs last year, right? No.
It took you a while. Yeah, it took you a while.
Talk about Josh Giddey.

No.

You're talking about France earlier.

France has a much lower age of consent law.

I'm more into the ocean thing.

Okay.

All right, wait, so international waters.

All right, so.

Forman Terra, south of Ibiza.

That's your speed.

Yeah, the thunder a year away.

Yeah, I just also...

Which, Josh Giddey, you could say that too.

Well, anyway, so like the youngest teams to win titles,

like their average age is like 24, 20.

It doesn't mean it's impossible. Right.
Like the Golden State team that won in 15 was a really young team, really young. Historically, I think like a top 10, one of the top 10 youngest teams.
If you take that team and then look at the other nine, like seven are in the 70s, and then one's in like 1980, and then maybe one's in in 1950 or two are in the 50s and three.

So it's been almost like a 40-something year thing that's happened one time. And the NBA is very consistent that to win a title, you do have to go through the wars.
You need those scars. It doesn't happen.
You don't see a team just all of a sudden, oh, now they just won a title. They have to get in the playoffs, lose heartbreaking playoff losses, and then fight, fight, fight.
It happens every single time. Yeah, even when Boston won it in 08, it almost felt like a little ahead of schedule.
Right, but those guys also had been through their own personal wars. Right.
Garnett couldn't get out of the first round except for that one year. Pierce had all these disappointments despite the 0-2 run.
It was really good. But you need – I really believe in that.
You can sit there and argue exceptions all you want, but history tells you it's pretty overwhelming that you need to go through some shit before you're going to be successful. And even with that, I don't like – like Sacramento, it's a great story.
They're too small. You know, I give you that Pelicans pick, I think, every time they play each other.
Because I was like, I've seen him play. I'm like, you've got Harrison Barnes deciding whether or not he's going to play Brandon Ingram or fucking Zion.
And then it's Valence Yunus, who looks like Sabonis' older brother who doesn't like him. You know, he's just so much bigger than him.
So some of those teams that are nice stories, I think you need some kind of big option for whether it's, you know, making Jokic's life a little bit harder, which is, you know, everybody talks about Minnesota having Gobert and Towns, but like, oh, they've got all this size, got all this size. Like, look at his numbers against Minnesota.
You don't look at them and go, oh, wow, they've done this great job. Maybe it's harder in those 38 playoff minutes.
And, you know, like, if you told me right now, like, hey, I'm riding with Denver still, they're the same team, 35 and 16, 35 and 16. Offensive numbers, defensive numbers are basically identical.
There's no Bruce Brown, but there's a couple younger pieces where you're like, hey, a certain night, a little bit more energy, a little bit more athleticism um so I think they give kind of a good job of at least finding something that's you know potentially in play there uh and Murray after that Lakers series for him last year like I didn't have him in that group with everybody else because the point guard position so deep but the shit he did in that Lakers series like that guy went crazy so that would be maybe you know hey can Jokoko hold up enough defensively okay check that box is Murray really somebody who can carry them offensively yeah and you know as I'm talking about here they're the better health bet but if you had said like hey by the way when you get Kawhi like you're gonna have a locked in Harden because he wants a new contract Paul George is gonna be healthy the whole time and Kawhi is gonna play like Toronto Kawhi like's the level he is at right now without having to be used as much because the other guys make it so much easier for him. It's going to be a lot of fun.
It really is. And then I still think Phoenix on certain nights because I love Booker so much.
I just fucking love the way that guy's built. I love the way he's – it almost sounds sensual.
He might be your new Chris Paul. He might be.
Yeah. I don't know if I can do that again.
You can't get hurt again? I just don't know if I can do that twice in my lifetime. And Chris knows how I feel, so he's not – That's true.
That's true. He's not worried about this.
Okay, so any other big NBA things that we should know or be aware of? I mean, the Mavs, what's – Luca's awesome. You know, what what's uh lucas awesome you know lucas awesome but i you know this is something we've already talked about a little bit but it is lucas so awesome it's actually shitty for everybody else heliocentric you came up with that word heliocentric yeah the history of the heliocentric offenses uh are really bad in the playoffs you basically had one nba finals guy for a top 20 usage rate in NBA history.
It was Iverson. Now, as soon as I brought it up, then everybody that's into the numbers told me I was a fucking idiot because they found a number that proved that I was dumb.
And I wasn't trying to call anybody dumb, man. I was just trying to share information and make all of us better.
The counter being that any Healers-centric offense only has that because everybody else is so

bad, and that's actually why. Look, I think basketball, back to some of these first things

we talked about, it sucks watching somebody else have the ball all the time. If you're 5 or you're

35, it fucking sucks. All right? And so when Westbrook would put up those absurd numbers at

the highest futures rates we've ever seen that it's ever been tracked, when he won MVP in 17,

no one's ever had the ball for a season more than he did okay more than Kobe's ever had the ball no one had the ball that much and it took us a little while to be like wait what happened there and then you know between all the rebounds that he gets as a guard that nobody else in the league gets and then all the other ones that gave him to him like yeah it sounds like I just like trying to tell the truth about some of this stuff and by the, his playoff history proves that whatever that was, it doesn't fucking work. Because for six months, you had everybody just watching him the whole time.
And then, oh, wait, they shut off your drive in the playoffs because everybody's locked in defensively. Now I have to shoot.
I have to take bigger shots. Not to say that obviously no one else is not taking a shot the whole season.
But when I look at Luka, here's the list. Jokic gives you the best chance on every possession of anybody in the league.
He is a genius. Every single possession, you're like, probably going to get a good look.
Think about that. Think about having to defend that every night.
I think Luka's number two two where it's like if i needed a bucket i might pick him over yokich because he can put it and drive a little bit better uh than yokich can i think sga is on that list then that might be where it cuts off a little bit kawaii's kind of playing at that again we're like certain like you're gonna look at some of these numbers numbers Kawhi's putting up I'm like oh my god but with Luka you go all right so do you just play five out in space at the whole time so who's stopping anything at the rim and they'll have nights where they look like shit on defense so I don't know what the perfect design is really it comes down to Luka being like how do you want this to go and he's probably still a little too young yeah like when he scored his 73 he was incredible he could have had even more and forced it but they had to still win the game so he was making like the right plays he had a double team where i was like he might force this three and he threw out to like an open teammate and he hit the three it was like a huge three in that game so he was still playing like for any shit he got for that game you could argue like his 73 is more impressive than in beads because popovich just decided fucking never double team and be the whole time until the very end but i worry about like the luka part of it where at some point you have to be able to not play on your terms to win like you have to kind of go through the wars yeah but you also have to go like all right the stats are fucking cool you're always going to make you're going to make any possible dollar that's even allowed under the cba do you like can you dial back a little of your shit to be a better team and he still might be it might be too soon for him to figure that out yeah um all right my last question uh victor women yama how much of a bust is he Good question. Thank you.
He's incredible. He's incredible.

Not like 5%. question uh victor women yama how much of a bust is he good question thank you he's incredible he's not like five percent bust no it's not not even i mean like how many points did him score against him i didn't give a shit he scored a thousand against him and when women yama everything about him this year individually for him is a massive success he He's, he is more than what you could

have hoped for. And I mean that because of his personality.
He, you know, there's something very real about like, you can do all the evaluation, you can talk to people, everybody can be on the same page. People can talk about this kid for three years, right? The guys that were really, really into it.
Like I remember the first, I don't think I can pronounce his name right. Like the first 10 times I tried to even talk about him.
And then you're like, okay okay what's it going to look like when he actually is out there and he's incredibly smart we know all the physical parts of it I actually worry like I don't know how anybody can move that well and not sustain two horrific leg injuries at some point you know like I'd be shocked if he didn't have that but the way he carries himself like through games the way he talks with a very earnest thing that's not bullshit, he seems to be wired to be the face of that place. He's going to meet the expectations that are on him.
I don't know if he's going to end up being one of the five greatest players of all time. That still feels kind of ridiculous.
But his personality just seems so genuine in that's been like mentally built to take on the responsibility that he's going to have to take on for a franchise at a young age yeah so like san antonio perfect spot for him too yeah part of me was like fuck them you know don't seriously it's really like the duncan thing because i remember being in college going like you know and then my buddy's like dude I fucking like Chauncey Billups though and you're like you're like no I was devastated I didn't think I went out that weekend which is saying something in college but it's probably except for the time where they were having Sohan play point guard and you're like this isn't't fun. And I love Sohan, but you're like when Binyama's like, can I get a guard to get me the ball a little bit? He's going to be incredible.
And then look, some former player will fire up a podcast and that dope will be like, if he's so good, how come they weren't in the playoffs? Yeah, I'll say that. Some idiot will say that.
Like, what's the expectation?

You said he's going to meet every expectation.

Are we talking like minimum four NBA titles?

Mm-hmm.

How many rings?

I don't know how many rings he's going to have.

I'm going to never do that.

Who are you talking to, man?

How many rings, Ryan?

I want to know what my expectation should be.

I'll say three.

He's going to win three.

Were you on Caitlin Clark's side or Cheryl Swoop's side?

Go.

Caitlin Clark.

Figures. Although she did flop.
She flopped against Ohio State. She flopped.
Yeah, it was bad. And when you say against Ohio State, you're really actually saying against an Ohio State fan.
Actually, we're Sabrina Ionescu podcast. Yeah, I just found out who she is.
And you pronounce her name like zero hesitation. They told me about her last week pretty cool i i've known sabrina for three years you know i i said i i didn't know who she was so now i do i gotta tell you her kicks when they came out i almost ordered them and was like wait a minute is that cool i saw them i well i think for you like your genre yeah i appreciate it yeah well looking like you could do it all right my last question rowback.
Rowback question. RHOBAC.com.
Women's professional basketball. As you're saying it, you haven't already decided.
No, you could easily. You're like soft launching it to us.
Rowback question. RHOBAC.com.
Promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase.
Cusips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Rollback question, Ryan.
What is a take that we have gone head-to-head with that I've been wrong and you've been right? Conference realignment. Okay.
Because I was right about Jared Goff and Cliff Kingsbury. No, I'm not giving you the Cliff one.
Yeah, Jerry's still out on Cliff. I'd the jared goff one with you and i is maybe the most contentious it ever got yeah because he's a friend because you dropped that in the text i know i did which i don't think i was like hey buddy back off he's a friend right and then he got traded after he'd been in the super bowl so i definitely felt like but then i feel like this is a tie no no he took the alliance the nfC Championship game.
He's a quiet leader. So I never had any win when I was like, I don't think Goff...
My point was, I don't think Goff's the guy. And then I didn't get any...
There was no points scored still when he gets traded from a team he was at in the Super Bowl. If the Lions had drafted someone last year in his place, then you would have won.
Let me ask you this. What's more impressive, winning a Super Bowl with the Rams or getting the Detroit Lions to the NCAA championship game? Also, you might be right about Tua.
I'll throw that in there. I'm very happy for you and your good friend, Jared Goff.
PFT's a good friend, too. When he was talking about how much it hurt him to be traded and everything i was like man good for him and by the way apparently very good friend with teddy purcell king's manhattan beach legend oh so if he likes teddy then it must mean goff is like the greatest dude ever all right there we go anybody who comes to town is like can you call that teddy guy is that the guy who stole my money on the squares, Super Bowl squares? No, that was Diamond Dave.
Okay. If you give money to Diamond Dave, that's on you.
Well, there's a two-week window where if you say you want to do these Super Bowl squares, I'm like, yes, and I never follow up. My barber in Brooklyn took $500 from me every single year, no matter what.
I never saw a number. My favorite when you did the- Never.
Never knew what my numbers were. When you did it with Diamond Dave, it was within seconds, Ernie understood it was a terrible transaction.
Yes. Because you were like, it was like really late.
It was really late. Really late.
You were super well behaved for the record, but it was really late, and it was a core group of us, and it was like, yeah, I guess I'll buy some squares some squares it was like how's this all going to work and david's like i don't know just talk to rissillo about her or something and we're like you may as well just lit that money on fire but i had to do it you had to do it and then i never know and i also venmoed big cat 100 bucks i was like i'll cover half of it as like an insurance policy like a hundred dollar deductible you're out but i'll give give you back $100. Because I was like, yeah, do it.
I'm on it. We'll figure it out.
And immediately there was no record of it. It's a good scam.
So that's a different guy. No, when guys come to Manhattan Beach, they'll be like, can you call that Teddy? I'm like, do you not want to hang out with me? Do you want me to put you two guys on a thread? So apparently he's very close to Goff.
So it made me, All right, I'll give that one to you. I just gave you two.
That's a 3-1, down 3-1. Yeah, I was a big comeback.
That was a 23 Falcons-Pats. Yeah, that was a big comeback.
But conference realignment, we actually called you out the other day on the pod. Oh, really? Yeah, you have a very mediocre approval rating on the pod after the Kyle thing.
I almost broke up your podcast. You only like Conferencing Alignment.
Well, actually, Kyle almost broke up your podcast by DMing me saying, hey, can I hang out with Vercillo? Yeah, but he's a salt-of-the-earth guy. He's a salt-of-the-earth guy.
I like him. We've hung out.
are all the scouting report on you is very simple

top line all about content don't dm me right ask him to hang out with the guy you work with every day content first friendship second well i mean yeah if if hank dm'd you saying hey do you think that i could hang out with big cat i would expect you to bring it up yeah yeah i'd be like let me make a video.

That's a good callback, Ryan. But wait, what was it? I think it's over now.
What were you saying? What were you saying there? I just think you tried to tell me like conference realignment because Arkansas at one point left. No, my point has been very clear about conference realignment from the beginning is I don't like it, but I also am going to always watch.
I don't care. I would agree.
Yeah. And people don't think about basketball because I do love college basketball and the new Big 12 is going to fucking rock.
Arizona versus Kansas every year, twice a year. Yes.
Yeah, I don't care about that. Yeah.
So I admit that. I used to care.
Once the Big East got destroyed in the way it got destroyed and it not being the same thing I just was never going to be a fan but I felt like because Wisconsin still can play all those teams in that division which I mean you should hate it because now you'll actually have to play teams in your division oh I'm very aware yeah our schedule's brutal now it'll be funny when it's like five sec schools and six big 10 schools yeah and then yeah see that florida state i i i would rather it not happen i'm gonna still watch every saturday i'm still gonna watch but i don't know why you would think it's cool now that ohio state michigan like i'll watch it and if it's a good game i'll enjoy i'll enjoy the playoff games but ohio state michigan the loser it's like okay cool see you in a couple weeks why is that good and by the way probably sucks i don't like that there's this many nfl teams in the playoffs i think it's stupid oh yeah you hate the extra i'm i'm big on i know it's going to shock you i like leaving people out of things Yeah, you hate the expanded playoffs. I hate expanded anything.
Yeah, the play-in. I mean, I don't like that.
I don't like the playing games for the NCAA tournament. I especially don't like it when it's somebody that wins their conference that has to then play in the play-in tournament.
Not the NBA. I'm talking about like.
I don't like the NBA play-in.

I don't like the NBA play-in just because as a fan of a team that has an owner who literally

will just stand and be like, hey, we made the play-in tournament.

Right.

And be like, isn't that good, guys?

It's a cop-out.

It's like the bowl guy.

Be like, hey, played in bowl games four to five years.

Yeah.

Right.

What are you talking about?

Right.

It's a cop-out for owners now to be like, we kind of made the playoffs.

I'm thinking about joining a country club. And if they go no i'll be like i respect that i'm not even disappointed yeah i like i like how you guys operate what's that the old quote like i would never want to join a club that would accept me as a member yeah the other great one is from lords of the realm great book on baseball finance if you want to dig into that oh yeah sounds great yeah marvin miller read about it and the guy goes what's the point of being rich if nobody knows yeah i looked at ferraris today so i'm going with that did you really well yeah the guy was hazing me i did i uh every time i see one i'm like fucking a jake i would like the the blog from this interview to be, Ron Russillo owns a boat with a TV and is currently shopping for Ferraris.
All right, do it. I approve.
Why would you join a country club? You don't play golf. Oh, I have been golfing.
I even took lessons the other day. I got to get the hands inside.
You're letting another man teach you how to swing a golf club? Well, apparently, I'm not able to figure out on my own. I just swing as hard as I possibly can because the guy was like.

No way.

Yeah, I know.

I'm talking.

The guy's your club speed's like PGA level.

I'm sure they did.

But.

But if you pay me $500, I can fix this for you.

Right, right.

You just got to get my hands inside and then I got to throw it out.

He was like, remember that Tiger drill?

I'm like, I do remember that Tiger drill.

He's like, we're going to work on it for a while.

I love the guy that I took a lesson with. He was great.
Fucking New guy long island i think terrific shout out to matt um shout out matt he's looking to get maybe an audio gig so okay yeah maybe for you his resume yeah we'll take him he looks at me that way where i'll be like, he just goes like, don't you work somewhere?

Signed.

Yeah.

No, there was a guy.

I can't tell.

It was a little Captain Phillips-ish.

He was driving the taxi and he was listening to this just absolute, like I thought I was in a torture chamber of the audio and I don't know what language it was.

I think I even sent it to you.

Yeah.

I was doing radio.

It was brutal.

It was 30 straight minutes of this.

Hold on, let's see.

Okay.

30 minutes straight.

I was like gonna throw up. I was like, just drop me off.
He's like, what number is it. I was like going to throw up.

I was like, just drop me off.

He's like, what number is it?

I was like, I don't fucking care.

Let me out of the car.

He's probably listening to like sports talk radio, but in his own language.

They were doing, give us the nine clubs that you think can still win a title.

And there was a Ferrari dealership right when I demanded to get out.

And I was like, this feels like a sign.

And then I went in there and was like, holy shit. I'm like, these things are pretty sick.
Yeah. And then I sat in one.
It was great, too. The guy was like, so this will be your first Ferrari, sir.
I was like, you're good. You're very good.
He's like, how are you getting back to Los Angeles? Have you canceled your flight yet? I don't think I'll do it. All right, well, Ryan.
I don't think I can afford it. To go full circle, Trigg sent me your cover art, and it's Rosillo Machinist.
Oh, yes. Christian Bale's one of my favorite actors.
As skinny as possible. Empire of the Sun.
Did you guys ever see that one, Bale's a Kid? Yeah, I did not see that one. No.
It's a great movie. I just say yeah to every movie that is I actually read the book Ryan sure the dick pic from Ryan Whitney we share yeah so Ryan thank you as always thank you guys thanks Ryan we can't wait to talk NBA playoffs when we get to that spot in June in June but this was your NBA preview I think we hit it all I think we did I mean I never really want to talk NBA with you guys I think it was good it was perfect okay we're gonna kick it to ourselves in a second for the lottery ball wrapping up thank you everyone for uh dealing with the zoom episode I I feel refreshed from my vacation I felt like there was no better time to take a vacation than after that 41 free throw thing because I don't know about you guys, but I slept pretty much all day Wednesday and felt normal again on Thursday, but it was a good vacation.
You guys feel good? Rested? I feel great. I feel great.
I went home. I didn't shoot any free throws, but I rebounded a little bit, so I was a little sore.
My hands were sore, so I heavily moisturized my hands. There was some great lotion on Tuesday.
Slept for about eight hours during the day. Woke up, had dinner.
Back to sleep for another eight hours after that. It was fantastic.
Yeah, so we'll be back in studio on Tuesday. I think we're going to have our good friend Paul Bissonette on for Wednesday's show.

Talk some hockey.

We're post-football world, but we do have the combine coming up.

And again, thank you to everyone dealing with us, doing a Zoom show for our vacation.

Let's kick it to ourselves in the lottery ball.

All right, numbers.

18.

We'll be back in studio together on Wednesday.

Eight.

20.

77.

What if it goes back to back?

55.

This might be dumb.

You feel like you got it?

You feel like you got it?

This might be dumb.

Why?

99, 77, 55.

67.

Love you guys I'm talking away I don't know what I want to say I'm saved anyway Today is another day To find you Shining. I'll be coming for your love of grace.
Take on me Take me on

I'll be gone

But I'll be so a little afraid But a little while is okay Say up to me Place the better to be safe than sorry Say up to me Place the better to be safe than sorry Take on me. Take me on.

I'll be gone.

In a day of change