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

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Speaker 1 See Mintmobile.com. On today's part of my take, we have our good friend Ryan Rosillo for our 2019 NBA preview.

Speaker 1 Why did 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.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about our vacations. We're still on vacation until tomorrow.
We'll be back in studio together on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 Who's back of the week? And our first Sunday without football. So, great show for everyone.

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Speaker 1 and then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're

Speaker 1 It's part of my take.

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Speaker 1 Welcome to part of my take.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 People are always going to be mad about the dunk contest. I like the floor.

Speaker 1 I like the light-up up floor.

Speaker 5 They're doing everything they can to like make it look as much like a video game as possible.

Speaker 5 But there's really no way to fix the dunk contest. I think they've jumped over the biggest human that they can find.
I don't know where you go from jumping over Shaq.

Speaker 1 It's so funny because every year people get upset about the dunk contest. They're like, they got to fix it.

Speaker 1 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 used his left hand.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We've seen all the dunks. It is what it is.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I want to see somebody get absolutely teabagged and like knocked over on one of those attempts. Like I want to see, I want to see a dunker not be able to make the leap.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe it should just be an Alley Oop contest and it's like live action.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 I'd watch that. Who can dunk on a 14-foot rim? Yeah.
They They'd come to the barstools,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 Or we could just lower the rim to like eight feet and we could do our own dunk contest. Yeah.
We probably shouldn't be able to dunk.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 6 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 win the NBA dunk contest, you should play in the NBA.

Speaker 6 I have to play in the NBA.

Speaker 6 That should be a pretty simple rule.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you're saying Maclaur is doing great. Mac McClung should be ineligible because he's in the G-League.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 That is the NBA dunk contest.

Speaker 6 Not the G-League dunk contest.

Speaker 1 Okay. So Jalen Brown should have won with just dunking with his left hand.

Speaker 6 Well, no,

Speaker 1 he paid

Speaker 6 homage

Speaker 6 to a bunch of past dunkers. Obviously, like you guys said, it's tough to be original.
I thought he, I thought he did great, okay. And Mac McClung's not in the NBA, okay, so illegal.

Speaker 5 He should, Mac McClung should be in the NBA. Like, what are the magic doing? Just let the kid play.

Speaker 1 Should he, though?

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure. Why not?

Speaker 1 He's played in fact.

Speaker 1 He's good. Yeah.
Four career NBA games. If you...

Speaker 6 Yeah, like, that's a joke. It's the NBA dunk contest.

Speaker 6 Like, just bring people off the street if that's what you're going to do.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, that sounds good, too.

Speaker 5 But also, Mac McClung, if you win the dunk contest and you're on a G-League team, you should get like a two-week contract.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
I'm cool with that. I mean, the Spurs or the Wizard should take him.
Why not? Yeah. Just have him dunk.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 All right. So, other things from NBA All-Star weekend.
We had Steph beat Sabrina, who she was phenomenal. People got very mad at

Speaker 1 Kenny the Jet.

Speaker 1 That was fun. We got a good old-fashioned witch hunt online, which I, you know, why? Because he said afterwards, maybe I know.

Speaker 1 Steph beat Sabrina 29 to 26, and Kenny afterwards said, This is why she should have shot from the women's line.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't like who actually is watching this on a Saturday night being like, This is, this has to be taken seriously.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I watched the highlights.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 That was bound to happen. If she won, if she lost, if Reggie Miller told Kenny, like, what, are you going to tell her to go play with dolls instead?

Speaker 5 That was a wild comment from Reggie, too.

Speaker 1 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 feel like we don't do those anymore.

Speaker 1 I feel like the internet has calmed down to a point where it's like, everyone gets upset.

Speaker 1 It used to be everyone would 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.

Speaker 1 So it's good to see people, you know, 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.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I have a prediction. I think that in the next couple years, we're going going to see this contest get run back a little bit, and it's not going to be Sabrina.
What's your last name, Big Cat?

Speaker 1 Ionescu?

Speaker 5 Yonescu.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know that. Ionescu.
Yeah, I do. I say it phonetically.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so

Speaker 5 I think in a couple of 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.

Speaker 1 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 finals with Dame.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a statement loss. And the home team won the skills contest again.
That is just what happens every time.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 A lot of confusing things that I don't really follow with the NBA All-Star weekend, but

Speaker 1 seemed like a good time. Seemed like they had fun.
They had a great time.

Speaker 5 Yeah. The biggest storyline I thought coming out of this,

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And say he's 50-50 about whether or not he wants a retirement tour.

Speaker 1 He doesn't like praise, he said. He's uncomfortable with praise.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, introvert LeBron James, we need to protect him. He doesn't want everyone saying, hey, LeBron, you're really, really good.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He might. He might.

Speaker 5 I do believe him 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. 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.

Speaker 1 The fact that he's pretending that he will be reluctant in any way on this retirement tour is the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 5 I think there's actually a possibility that LeBron just does an extra year in the NBA where he just plays home games.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And every and just standing ovation.
No, but he needs the presents.

Speaker 1 Every city needs to give him a present.

Speaker 5 Every team brings the present to him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was like when, who was it? Was it 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?

Speaker 5 The coolest 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But yeah, LeBron pretending he doesn't want a retirement tour is very funny.

Speaker 1 All right. What else is going on in the sports world?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I love it. Like the Jay Williams saying that she's not the greatest all time because she didn't have a ring, all this stuff.
I just, Caitlin Clark gets people very upset.

Speaker 1 And I'm all for anyone who just agitates the world like she does. And

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So I'm in on Caitlin Clark all the way.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and it's funny, like everybody out there has a take on Caitlin Clark. Yeah.
Everybody. And they're all shocking.
Like I was, Jason Whitlock did his live show. I know you're a big fan, Jake.

Speaker 5 And in his show, he was like,

Speaker 5 she's the biggest basketball player in the world. Men's, women's, pro, college.
She is bigger than the sport right now.

Speaker 5 It's like, God damn, even Jason Whitlock's bringing fire about women's college basketball right now. It's good for the sport.
Jay Williams had a very funny comment when he was talking about her.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I got the mamba mentality. And then you can just, you can just shit on all of people's accomplishments and it's totally fine.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's also crazy because she plays at Iowa. If Caitlin Clark could have gone and played at Yukon or South Carolina or Tennessee and like won titles, she plays at Iowa.

Speaker 1 She stayed home and has gotten them to the championship game, a program that doesn't do that. So

Speaker 1 she, yeah, 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.

Speaker 5 It's good for sports discourse.

Speaker 5 I'm just looking at Hank right now and his big, swollen, red face.

Speaker 1 Did you drink wine today, Hank? Your lips are a little red.

Speaker 1 No. Oh,

Speaker 1 no.

Speaker 6 I'm having a great time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, what else?

Speaker 6 I hear every other third word, but

Speaker 1 is that because of the internet or because of the cocktails?

Speaker 6 It's probably a combo.

Speaker 1 I miss football. I'll say that right now.
Today was a tough day.

Speaker 1 And we're just living off football takes. You guys see Florio now thinks that

Speaker 1 the NFL has an age discrimination problem because of of Belichick and

Speaker 1 Carol

Speaker 5 so I'm in for that I just miss football it takes a couple weeks for me to fully acclimate to like 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 it threw off my 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 that I wake up today there's no football and it's like well today can't be Sunday possibly.

Speaker 5 There's no chance. But we get the Combine back in

Speaker 5 two weeks, week and a half. And there'll be some good takes.
I'm very excited about Caleb Williams'

Speaker 5 smokescreen season. Very excited about all the takes that are going to come out of him.
Like, did you see he wore a dress?

Speaker 1 Like, these, all, all the debates. It wasn't a dress.
It wasn't a dress. It was like it was a new age

Speaker 1 suit that men wear.

Speaker 5 That, yeah, that doesn't have pants.

Speaker 1 It's got one big pant hole in it.

Speaker 1 It was like a poncho.

Speaker 5 He wore a poncho, not a dress.

Speaker 5 But if any other team besides the Bears gets him, he wore a dress. Oh, 100%.

Speaker 1 It was a dress. And what the hell is he thinking? Yeah.
Without a doubt. Without a doubt.
We can flip that. And

Speaker 1 no problem. We can flip that.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it is sad without football. It does.
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...

Speaker 1 Like, I've caught myself watching highlights of uh all the mic'd up from the super bowl any take any like 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 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 the patriots dynasty documentary that looks awesome is that out of that is that out yes two episodes are out okay yeah it came out yesterday yeah have you started it hank i'm excited to watch i watched some of it last night.

Speaker 6 I was pretty 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.

Speaker 6 All right, well, I'll watch it on my teammate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll have to do a review of the documentary. How many parts is it? Yeah,

Speaker 6 hopefully, Infinity. I think there's two out right now.

Speaker 1 Imagine like Infinity Parts. It's still going.
The Dynasty party.

Speaker 1 It'd just be Infinity Parts.

Speaker 1 It's just they cut up every single game from the dynasty into little pieces. Or

Speaker 5 it's It's like Judge Judy. It'll be on every night at 5 p.m.
for the next 40 years.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah. There's so many people to pick from, it's impossible.

Speaker 1 Where was Jules?

Speaker 1 Hank's gone.

Speaker 1 Hank, where was Jules?

Speaker 1 Top five. Where was Jules? Top five.
Top five.

Speaker 6 Top five.

Speaker 6 I was arguing for Jules, and my friend was like, no. I was like, he Super Bowl MVP, three rings.

Speaker 1 Where was Bill Belichick?

Speaker 6 Well, players. We were doing players.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Where was Aaron Hernandez?

Speaker 5 Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 6 Aaron Hernandez was non-list. Didn't win a ring.
Randy Moss, also, it's crazy to say, but like, I don't know that he's a top 10 patriot of all time.

Speaker 1 Didn't win a ring.

Speaker 5 Where was Danny Woodhead?

Speaker 6 Danny woodhead also didn't win a ring unfortunately

Speaker 1 what was the one that you were most upset about

Speaker 6 not upset i was definitely i was arguing on jules behalf and it's like you have to factor in both dynasties defense offense

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 5 there's a lot of players

Speaker 6 i can't i can't hear anything you guys are saying defense off jules jules played i think like three snapshots no no no no no no no no no well he did play defense especially i said 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

Speaker 1 all right well i would i would like you to release your your top 10 maybe on on uh maybe you can give it to us on on wednesday if you get a consensus top 10

Speaker 1 yeah gladly okay perfect Perfect. All right.
Anything else going on in the sports world before we do who's back?

Speaker 1 And then we have an extra long interview with Rosillo, which was awesome that we taped Super Bowl Week. Anything else?

Speaker 5 Hideki Matsuyama won on Max's home course.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And Tiger had diarrhea.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 He also had like some back shit going on. And then he said he had influenza.

Speaker 1 I think Tiger might be a little bit over the hill. I think it might have happened.

Speaker 1 I think it might have happened. 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.

Speaker 1 And we had an ambulance gate where I think our own colleague Dan Ratport was first on it. There was an ambulance parked outside of the Riviera clubhouse waiting for him.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 5 I think it's just Tiger's car that he drives. So it's got sirens and loud flashing lights and shit so that people know get out of the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And there was also, I mean, I thought Matsuyama's ball oscillated.

Speaker 1 I'm not a rule stickler, but I am rooting for Will Zalatoris.

Speaker 1 That bummed me out because I feel like old PGA, we would have been all over that. People are just kind of...

Speaker 1 They all were just showering praise on Matsuyama, not saying, hey, dude, the guy's ball oscillated on the seven. It oscillated.

Speaker 5 It oscillated.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And if we're going to make Speeth get withdrawn from the tournament over signing an incorrect scorecard, we need to take a look at the oscillation.

Speaker 5 I would have expected Matsuyama's caddy to be more on top of that. Matsuyama's catty is the best, by the way.

Speaker 5 He's awesome. He's a dude that bowed in praise of Augusta when they won.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 7 Chris Crawl's applesauce.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's beautiful.
It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that Jordan Speeth rule was the dumbest rule ever because not even his, it's his partner filling out the scorecard and he signs it. Yeah.
That's stupid.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 I guess you can't...

Speaker 5 Not every tournament has every shot televised like that, so it might be more difficult.

Speaker 1 But there's a guy walking with them. There's a rules person walking with them.

Speaker 5 There should be a guy that keeps score for each pairing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And if he gets it wrong, executed.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 The whole,

Speaker 1 he has to stay, yeah, he has to be a human bullseye at the driving range the next day.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I like that rule, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, uh, let's do who's back of the week, then we'll get to Rosillo. Give it up for Chicago.
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Speaker 1 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

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Speaker 1 The road trip might be over, but dinner's just getting good. Okay, Hank, who's back of the week?

Speaker 6 My respect had LeBron went over that. We can do shorts.
Shorts are back. Vacation.

Speaker 1 Great time for shorts.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 6 UFC 300 got announced, kind of a letdown. I'm not a die-hard UFC person, so I didn't.
It was like Jamal Hill and someone else. I was expecting fireworks.

Speaker 6 I think true UFC

Speaker 1 fighting.

Speaker 1 Jamal Hill's fighting in UFC 300. Yes, Jamal Hill.
Jamal Hill.

Speaker 1 Yes, so everyone

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 people are going to think I'm carrying water for Dana right now because he did let us go to the tunnel of chaos.

Speaker 1 I think that the reason

Speaker 1 why Ariel Hawani was explaining this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and Ariel Hawani was explaining this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But he was saying that when you have a

Speaker 1 title fight, everyone shares. If you have multiple title fights on a card, anyone who's fighting the title fight shares in the pay-per-view money.

Speaker 1 So if they put Conor McGregor on UFC 300, everyone would get to share and Conor McGregor's going to sell a million plus pay-per-views. So there's no point.

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you take two dips from this and be like, we'll do UFC 300 and then we'll do Conor McGregor. So

Speaker 1 he kind of was stuck where it's like 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.

Speaker 1 So he couldn't, it was very hard for him to do that, but I think people were pretty disappointed.

Speaker 5 Yeah, just because 300, you would expect like it's a nice round number. I want to see like some big names fighting against each other.
And you don't get that.

Speaker 5 That's why people are upset. It's like if this was 299 or 301, people would be like, okay, yeah, good card, I guess.

Speaker 5 But you see 300 and you want, I don't know what you want, like a bunch of angry Spartans in a ring against like 40,000 Persians.

Speaker 5 That would actually rock.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know what he was doing, but Zuck would be, who wouldn't buy that pay-per-view? Zuck is a fight. Have him fight in the underwear.

Speaker 6 Zuck would take us down. I hate to say that.

Speaker 1 Is he Kevin Anthony?

Speaker 5 He did not get choked out. His PR representative was very clear about that.

Speaker 1 I think, so Hank, I think 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.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, obviously.

Speaker 1 Well, he's not a beast then.

Speaker 6 A little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, yeah, he would get smoked.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Give us Zuck. Smash him in the wall.

Speaker 5 I would just, I would give him wet willy. I'd sneak behind him and give him a mega wedgie.
Then I'd drag his ass to the bathroom and give him swirly. Just give him the nerd treatment.

Speaker 1 I'd just be like, hey, Zuck, remember when you thought threads was going to be cool? Fucking loser? And you'd probably cry into a puddle. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Done. Tapped.

Speaker 1 Okay, PFT, your who's back of the week. Good who's back, Hank.
Good job, Hank.

Speaker 5 My who's back of the week is Jesus.

Speaker 5 Potentially Jesus. Okay.

Speaker 5 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 It's just a bunch of sharks.

Speaker 5 So either we're going to get a shark stingray hybrid baby, which would be fucking awesome. That would rock.
That's what I'm rooting for. Get like the Maury Povich to announce who the dad is.

Speaker 5 Or it was Immaculate Conception and this Stingray just got herself pregnant, which is kind of hot.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ooh, that's a, I kind of want to see the shark stingray.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the shark stingray would rock.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 If you're not rooting for shark stingray, I don't know what to tell you. But yeah, I'm on Charlotte Watch.
I've been checking the the social accounts for the uh Hendersonville Aquarium every morning.

Speaker 5 I need to know, I need to know what this is.

Speaker 1 What's the due date? Like

Speaker 5 uh, it could be any day now, like sometime in the next week or two.

Speaker 1 They pop those things,

Speaker 5 she's she's mad pregnant, too. You can see the like bump, yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 Uh, my who's back is whales having seen all these whales, yeah, Hank. If it's a half, a half half human, half human.

Speaker 5 There's one guy that just quits the day that

Speaker 1 he's like, like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Looks just like,

Speaker 1 shit, is that Stingray? Got ginger hair? God damn it.

Speaker 1 I'll stay in the water. 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 St. Lucas.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Again, I did the math in my head. I was like, I feel like 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.

Speaker 1 They're fucking awesome.

Speaker 6 Yeah, no, I have been jealous.

Speaker 6 I'm curious, because obviously I've only seen them online, and I really want to see them in person like you have.

Speaker 6 It seems like it's ass advertised. It seems like

Speaker 6 it's beautiful a sight as you could have.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Although...

Speaker 1 This might have been because I was very drunk, but we watched, well, there were so many whales jumping. We watched it for like an hour.

Speaker 1 About an

Speaker 1 hour in, I was like, all right, I think I've seen enough. Like, I've seen enough of the whales.
I'm good.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so Big Cat Cabo is incredible for that.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 That's sick. You know what they call it?

Speaker 5 They call that a podcast.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, there was a seal seal that was just jumped on the back of a boat and people were saying it looked like Max. That was very unfair.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 So I got on my flight today to come back and I stopped. at a kiosk and I bought two cherry cokes just to bring it on the plane.
And I sat down.

Speaker 5 I was sitting next to a random woman and she looked looked at me and she was like trying to figure out why I had two sodas, two sodas, like two 69 sodas. In that moment, I realized, yeah, this is

Speaker 1 very unhealthy.

Speaker 1 Aborrent behavior.

Speaker 5 Disgusting behavior.

Speaker 1 Max, how's your 20 ounce sodas? Mine were 12. So, how'd your hungover flight go today? Any ripping of farts? No, I didn't even fall asleep this time because I was in the middle seat.

Speaker 1 I was fine. I got, I'm, I can never order soda again at an airport.
I got some two of them.

Speaker 1 I got a body armor before I got on, and then I had a, I got a seltzer water when I was, when I was midway through.

Speaker 1 I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be honest.

Speaker 5 When you sat down, did you look around and see if people were like noticing you and scoping you out?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 no.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I got lucky on my, the two flights that it was pretty obvious that I was sitting next to people that did not know the show.

Speaker 1 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:

Speaker 1 is he getting sodas?

Speaker 1 Is he having a burrito? So, like, every person that I like see walking through the airport, I'm like, yeah, I'm not getting sodas today. And it's just like, yeah.

Speaker 1 But they're probably like, he still is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you get two, if you're a two-soda guy, you can't just quit soda.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I had no soda.
I had body armor and then, and then

Speaker 1 I'm just going to be the biggest seltzer water guy on a plane ever now.

Speaker 1 I can't have

Speaker 1 a picture

Speaker 1 on Twitter of just me ordering a soda. It can't have it.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 What'd you have for your pre-flight meal, Max?

Speaker 1 Bacon, egg, and cheese, English muffin. That's smart.
That's farts.

Speaker 1 That's a farts. What do you want me to eat?

Speaker 1 What do you want me to eat? Air.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The AWO who did that at the Auburn, Kentucky game,

Speaker 1 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.
That was, I still, like, don't believe that was real. I mean, that was real.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's real. It's real.
Also, shout out Coach Cow, who ripped an awesome wrestling promo after they beat Auburn. Just like, I'm the worst coach in the country.
I like that.

Speaker 1 I need Cal to get a little swagger back, little, little, little shit to him. You know?

Speaker 5 Yeah, because for a long time, Cal just pushed back against the very notion that he could be an underdog. Now, like, embrace that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you are. Go after it.
All right, Jake, finish us off.

Speaker 7 My who's back is Coach Dougs. We had an official, official announcement from EA Sports.

Speaker 7 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 we're getting it this summer.

Speaker 5 This is like when Dan Snyder sold the team. There's been like 20 different announcement dates that have come up being like, the game's coming back.

Speaker 7 But none were from the commanders besides the last one.

Speaker 1 Yeah. True, true.
So this is officially official.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then the first thing I thought of was poopy stinks.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 Well, the chat's also gotten better in the last like four years. They've learned, they've adapted, and they've grown, and they're more powerful than any of us.

Speaker 1 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...

Speaker 1 angrier and better at what they do. And that's driving the content creators insane.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 I'm saving them for a potential cool throne if they can win the championship series, which is today.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 If they lose the championship. And if they lose like a place

Speaker 1 season? Yeah.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 5 It's like the preseason tournament, but it's regular season.

Speaker 1 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 preseason tournament. I think if we win the preseason tournament, we're screwed for the regular season.

Speaker 1 I think if we win that,

Speaker 5 Max should raise a banner for it, but we shouldn't acknowledge it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't. This isn't like, we're not getting a ring.
Which, where are our rings? Do we know? We have them.

Speaker 7 I gave them to you guys at the old office.

Speaker 5 We don't have them then. No, they survived the championship.

Speaker 1 You know where they are?

Speaker 5 I think I saw them.

Speaker 7 I hand-delivered them to both of you.

Speaker 1 That doesn't sense. I think I saw them.
It's not definitive. We have them.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 The only thing we've actually won. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, we did win that.

Speaker 5 Also, we defeated Frank the Tank, who I guess is a fan fan of not the Water Dogs.

Speaker 7 Well, his team's not in this championship series. They didn't qualify.

Speaker 1 Who did we play today? The Whipsnakes?

Speaker 7 Archers.

Speaker 1 Ah, the Archers.

Speaker 1 Or Nemesis, the Archers. All right, well, so if any Water Dogs are listening, don't even try tomorrow.
We don't want to win this.

Speaker 1 If we do win it,

Speaker 1 Max is going to be the only one who acknowledges it. Fair? Yeah.
It's preseason?

Speaker 7 The championship is Philly versus Boston today at 11:30 a.m. ESPN 2.
So,

Speaker 7 thanks to Philly guy now.

Speaker 6 Let's go water dogs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Max, you agree with this? Yeah, I mean, that account is just turned into a Max Meme account where they just pull up every bad video after each win. Have they done a two sodas thing?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think so.
They've done everything. Okay, so if we win and the account has one of the players celebrate with two sodas, I will then acknowledge the victory.

Speaker 1 Fair.

Speaker 1 If you do the stone cold with like two Cepsies, if they just pour Coke on themselves for the entire after party, I'm surprised you haven't said anything about them finishing second for the first time as Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 Well, he said it's only second place.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, that's on the table, but I've already said I'm not acknowledging this. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Let's get to Ryan Rossillo.

Speaker 1 Before we do that.

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Speaker 1 okay we now welcome on one of our favorite guests great friend of the program

Speaker 1 for the February 19th NBA preview. It is Ryan Rossillo.
We have some first of all, thank you, Ryan. Good to see you guys.
We're taping this before the trade deadline. We are.

Speaker 1 Where did LeBron get traded to?

Speaker 1 I didn't see this coming.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 I don't think there's going to be any good trade deadline jokes.

Speaker 1 I just don't. I mean, unless you guys are into the tax savings.
Oh, I'm into that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you do really well on this show when you talk about tax savings.

Speaker 1 You're really selling the NBA well.

Speaker 1 I know. I'm reading those HR block ads and I just start cracking up.
And I was like, well, HR Block is there to help. And they're like, dick.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 PFT and I actually were completely innocent bystanders to the cover art, which you, you, you can't, you, you did a whole bit on your show.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 he's our artist, knew, obviously knew because he was doing it. We had no idea.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you looked like Dana White on the last one.

Speaker 1 I love that he did it. I wish I'd looked like Dana White in the last one.
When did you?

Speaker 1 All right, so when did you, so for people who don't know, for the cover art for the podcast, Triggs, who is unbelievable, he's been making Rosillo a little bit bigger every single time he's come on.

Speaker 1 And he's come on like 15 times. So he's now like Mondo Rosillo.
When did you catch on that this was happening? Well, so Max, you knew.

Speaker 1 So what was what was Nick saying to you? I

Speaker 1 this was all him. This was kind of out of nowhere.
Right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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, just a little bit.

Speaker 1 But then he was like getting into 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 the Trey Young fan club t-shirt.

Speaker 1 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 DM'd him and said, you're making me too jacked.

Speaker 1 I was like, make me fatter and fatter and fatter. And then I'll blame them.

Speaker 1 So actually, Nick. The last few? All of them.
This was actually my idea. Was it really? The whole thing was my idea.
Shut up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Shut up. Swear to God, I'll show you the DMs.
That's incredible. Nobody knows.
Nick kept it a secret. He first got us.
Yeah, it's kind of like lost when Henry's sitting there. No,

Speaker 1 I don't believe this. He didn't see Tyrion on his own.
Are you lying, Ryan? I'm calling Triggs right now. All right, call him right now.

Speaker 1 I mean, the fact that you said Nick makes me think that this is you're telling the truth. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 That's pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've been working on this for months. Almost a year.
Wait, wait. This is great.

Speaker 5 Just to clarify, you own.

Speaker 1 Hey, Triggs, Rosillo's here right now. He came up with the idea.

Speaker 1 Was that? Did he come up with the idea to make him fatter every time?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 he gearing.

Speaker 1 I was all along gone. That's it.
We go over like over a year. That's incredible.
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, February 19th, NBA preview. Ask him if he wants me to just make him fucking enormous.
He's right here. He's sitting right next to us.

Speaker 1 He just told the story. We told the the story being like we didn't know that triggs was doing this and he's like actually i was the one who was doing it yo dude he dm me like a year ago

Speaker 1 that's incredible december 22

Speaker 1 you know what you can make him whatever you want either really small or just like maybe make him

Speaker 1 like a t-rex godzilla tiny arms tiny arms that'd be worse

Speaker 5 so ryan to clarify your big prank on us was making yourself look really fat and then blaming us for making you fat.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 What do you get? Some socialist in charge of this?

Speaker 1 That's incredible. Yeah.
So as you guys were doing that, I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 we never actually talked about it because I...

Speaker 1 I once finally some listener, I was waiting for listeners to figure it out because it was getting absurd. Right.
But I was like, you're making me too jacked.

Speaker 1 Like, you're making me, you're doing me too much of a favor. I'm like, just fatten me up, but stages, stages.
So, again, this is like 15 months of this, I think. And

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 that's you know but i didn't like get really mad because i didn't want you to 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 have just been like great joke by us i guess we've done it yeah that's why i think you were so normally this would have a hundred percent been something you would have done yeah since you knew that you had nothing to do with it

Speaker 1 you kind of weren't you're like you didn't know what to do you're like all right there was no victory left i'm gonna show these guys i'm gonna i'm gonna look so fat next the payoff really there really wasn't a payoff no

Speaker 1 I'm thinking about it. You should have, the only thing you could have done differently is have Triggs tell us that he was doing it so then we felt complicit in making you fatter.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's kind of a perfect, like, the pretty humor joke. Yeah, it's not even that funny.

Speaker 5 The prestige.

Speaker 1 But now it is. But that moment with you just calling him and not believing that.
That's great. And then I knew I was like, let me me find the DMs.

Speaker 1 I mean, I knew I did it.

Speaker 5 No, I mean, I respect the fact that you basically, you commandeered our own employee.

Speaker 5 Like, you work for me now.

Speaker 1 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.
That's good stuff, Ryan. All right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 where I was like, all right, I'm just going to 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.

Speaker 1 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, I was like, no way.
I was like, that guy's thin.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 it's actually a compliment. You look good.
It was me? It was you. Oh.

Speaker 1 So I walked past you into the main lobby going, that can't be Big Cat. Yes.

Speaker 1 And it was. It was.

Speaker 5 He's doing the reverse of the album cover, the art cover right now.

Speaker 1 Do Do you know what's a really, really good,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 A really good tip for all your listeners is

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You could be hot. I think you could be hot at some point.
You could be hot. But that is the key to fitness.
Just make a basketball court in your office, and you really can't,

Speaker 1 you can't be sedentary when that happens. No, I mean, when I see the clips and I see everything, I'm like,

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 This huge warehouse. Are you kidding? What is his setup?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.
Chiseled. That kid has a jaw.

Speaker 1 So you don't want to do the Hank thing right now?

Speaker 1 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 tell the story real quick, Hank. He told it on his stand-up.
It was actually perfect.

Speaker 1 Brusillo texted me asking if I was going out right when Hank's slide showed up that said, what was the exact phrasing of it?

Speaker 9 Well, just Ryan Rossello was the picture of short PFT, the slightly photoshopped,

Speaker 9 three inches shorter version of PFT.

Speaker 9 I still, to this day, think it was a bit just based off our interactions. Like, I've always been normal.

Speaker 9 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 and I was going to balls were hanging out.

Speaker 1 In the episode and covered him up this time.

Speaker 1 We were also the first people to be in your house in like three years. Yeah, no one had been there yet.

Speaker 9 You guys gave me advice because I was going to my brother's wedding like the week after or something. You guys gave me advice on the best man speech.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Obviously, my brother, who is a huge Rasilo fan, huge, probably listens, yeah, he listens to you more than he listens to us. Like, he's he's been a fan for a while.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, he's getting older.

Speaker 9 And after the episode, I was listening to the live episode. I was like, I texted him.
I was like, hey,

Speaker 9 I'd really, you know, you talked about the cameo thing. I'd really appreciate it if you could just do a little video shout out to my brother.
He's on his honeymoon. Like, here's some talking points.

Speaker 9 Rasilo texts back. Yep, no problem.

Speaker 9 Nothing. Crickets.

Speaker 9 And it was like,

Speaker 9 he was like, no problem.

Speaker 9 So I was like, he'll send it or maybe he'll DM it I don't know never came and then I think I we the next time I saw you I was like remember that video and you're like oh yeah yeah I'll send it I got you

Speaker 9 and then it just never came

Speaker 1 and so I was like I think he's doing a bit yeah

Speaker 1 I can never I can never figure it out every time I think about you I think about the video how often do you think about him well more than you'd 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 to be before that weekend

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But I think I thought there was this imaginary window where it was closed, and that's kind of what happened, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I was like, the next time I saw you, it was like maybe a year later, and I was like, oh, and it was still open?

Speaker 1 Well, you were like, you're like, I'll do it.

Speaker 9 You're like, should I still do it? I was like, yeah, it'd be funny. Like, because it was like, I think you said the same thing.
I was like, yeah, it'd still be funny.

Speaker 9 Like, you know, I'm sure it'd be a funny video.

Speaker 1 Yeah, got you. Sounds like the window never closed.
Yeah, so the window's still not. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So you kind of actually, I think Hank closed it last night, actually, when he told the story. Might have.

Speaker 1 We could still do it.

Speaker 5 It feels like this is coerced now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe we'll just give it another year.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 would be like, what's going on?

Speaker 1 So I screwed it up. I definitely screwed it up.
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.

Speaker 9 That's where I was, that's where I was confused. Yeah, no, you immediately responded.
You're like, no problem.

Speaker 1 It's like, great. Usually I'm pretty good when I'm like, no problem.
Yeah. I'm on it.

Speaker 5 It's kind of funny that it was a honeymoon pump-up video, too. Yeah.
Nothing will get you horny like having Ryan tell you, like, good job, buddy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So you know what? This is a bit like our NBA preview.

Speaker 5 This would would be perfect.

Speaker 1 I send a pump-up honeymoon video and they've been married for two and a half years. Yeah, yeah, three years.

Speaker 5 Maybe it reignites the spark.

Speaker 1 Yeah, three years.

Speaker 5 Second honeymoon.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Do you overthink things sometimes?

Speaker 1 What I was like, I was like, this has got to be good. And instead of just going,

Speaker 1 I can be done with this in five minutes.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 9 Will.

Speaker 1 All right. All right, here we go.
Do it right now. And so, what? Where are they going for their honeymoon?

Speaker 1 I don't really know where they went.

Speaker 9 I don't know. I think they went to Mexico.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 punch it in? Punch it in. These are are words being held here, like the office.
This is great.

Speaker 1 This is great too, because it's still not going to come out for another two weeks.

Speaker 1 Hey, Will, heard you're a big fan. It's Ryan Rosillo.
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.

Speaker 1 But I just want you to know we've all been there in those moments. where you're a little nervous.
And I'm just telling you, think of me. Think of my podcast.
Think of you emailing.

Speaker 1 I'm about to go for it. What should I do? What would I say? Run that through your head

Speaker 1 and do a good job making love.

Speaker 1 That's so romantic, Ryan. That was great.
That was awesome. Thank you.
There was a little stumble there at the end. Should we do it again later? Let's just do it later.

Speaker 9 I did also, I don't know if you have called your fans this before, but when I started, I was like, any resilience in here tonight? And it got a good pop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it did get a good pop. Never heard that.
What do you call your fans?

Speaker 9 I didn't know what to call them. I was like, it's Ron Rasillo.
I was like, any Resilience here?

Speaker 1 And people are like, yeah,

Speaker 1 I thought when Will Kane called his listeners the Wilicia, I was like,

Speaker 1 yeah, I just couldn't be top. So I was out.
The Wilicia. The Wilicia is really good.

Speaker 1 It's really good. And also, people would look at his politics and be like, no shit.

Speaker 5 Free percenters.

Speaker 9 Resilience, something to think about.

Speaker 1 Something to think about.

Speaker 1 What are you guys? You guys are what? AWLs? Yes.

Speaker 5 What What about Rossiliacs? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Whoa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What was Rome? Just you were in the jungle. You were in the jungle.
Yeah. Hey, Rome, thanks for the vine.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's what you'd say if he'd let you call in. You get a vine into the jungle.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We're just like, all right. I don't know.
Did that work at all?

Speaker 1 You know what? I feel like it's not personal. Don't overthink it.
Don't overthink it. I don't know.
No, I mean, he also, yeah, it was too much.

Speaker 9 You don't know what he saw me talk about it last night. He's like, that was funny.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 5 Maybe this will get him to listen to our show instead of Ryan's. Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That could help you guys.
Yeah. Make sure.
Yeah, that's another listener. Ever since this Kelsey pod popped, I've just been DMing Starlets left and right.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, we've been trying to DMs you slide. We're trying to get Hank to fuck Beyonce.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's aggressive.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 see.
Good leader. Yeah.
Life episode.

Speaker 1 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. Fact.
Just so you know,

Speaker 1 you know, house isn't bad. So, and then it was just seen.

Speaker 1 Melissa McCarthy is married, though.

Speaker 1 That's not funny. She is.
She's very funny.

Speaker 1 She's my favorite. Sounds like you really like her.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like her content. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Ryan, we don't talk enough about the fact that you have a good voice.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 1 I'm classically trained.

Speaker 5 Did you work on it?

Speaker 1 Base two. No, this is my voice.
My dad's got a good voice.

Speaker 5 You never had to lose the accent or anything?

Speaker 1 I never really had it because I was born in Connecticut.

Speaker 5 Oh, there's no accent there?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker 1 That's 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.

Speaker 1 Like you can have a South Shore kid who sounds like he's not even speaking English. Yeah.
And then you'll run into like a Concord Mass guy who sounds like he's from Connecticut.

Speaker 1 So So there was no, there was no like working on it, but I was in like the chorus for a bunch of years.

Speaker 1 Your voice is great. You're a singer.
Yeah, classically trained. Yeah.
I've never heard of a single great radio voice.

Speaker 5 What? I've never heard you sing. You have a singing voice?

Speaker 1 Well, it's pretty deep, yeah. Can you give us something? Can give us something? I don't know.
We used to, I was trying to find the sheet music for it. I couldn't find it.
Like, we sang this thing.

Speaker 1 We went to Germany when I was in high school.

Speaker 1 Like, you had to make the choir, and then there was like a special select choir, which I know sounds like Loserfest, but all these guys decided to try out because there was, there was a, uh, there was always hurting for guys.

Speaker 5 A youth group for males, young males, that gets to serve in Germany. Germany, got it.

Speaker 1 So, we, um, I never told a story before on the podcast. No, so

Speaker 1 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, this group's going to Germany.

Speaker 1 And like, if you can make this choir, like, we'll all go to Germany together, like at the end of our senior year, when we definitely won't give a shit about anything.

Speaker 1 And back then on the Vineyard, they used to let the seniors get out of class like in the beginning of May to work earlier in the summer to save money, you know, when you were going away to college and everything, which I know I don't think they do that.

Speaker 1 It's a long time ago, obviously. So, we all tried out and we all made it.
And I'd already been in the chorus before. I actually really liked it.
I don't know what it was.

Speaker 1 I mean, I know it's not like the coolest thing that you could ever say about yourself, but I was super into it. And like, we were learning like really hard stuff.
Like, one was

Speaker 1 Get Happy, like this old show tune.

Speaker 1 And then there was this other one called Requiem that we sang sang at like a college and then when we flew to Germany We got into Stuttgart and then we stayed in this little village called Heidelberg and Or excuse me not Heidelberg We visited Heidelberg We stayed in this village called Wenglingden and we had host families and so every kid is getting picked up like partnered up with his other buddy, right?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Every Russol story has to have tragedy. It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 So, everybody's getting picked up in like these beamers and fucking penzas, 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.

Speaker 1 You know, you might as well, even though we were traveling a lot while we were there. And I get picked up in like a piece of shit passat.

Speaker 1 And the woman couldn't have been nicer. And she was enormous.
And then the daughter was fucking enormous. They were like volleyball.

Speaker 1 Like, she would have been on the international like volleyball player. And the daughter was raised to be like this volleyball player.
And I'm like, where am I?

Speaker 1 Like, I need to, I need to be like near my buddies because they're right in the town. And they were like, hey, dude, we're sorry.
But like, there was no other host families in the town of Englingdon.

Speaker 1 You're going to be in Oberboygen. I'm like, where the fuck's Oberboygen? Like, it's like 25 minutes that way.
And they're all giants. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so 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're going to be kidding me.

Speaker 1 And I get there and their son was named Jens and he was nine.

Speaker 1 and he's like stecken Schespeer which means throw the javelin he told me he was training to be a javelin guy and we're just throwing a javelin like not back and forth but kind of

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 and I'm like god this I'm like this fucking sucks and so I call my buddy and you 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 überboygen or whatever throwing a javelin right right and I'm throwing a javelin with with Jens really nice kid sweetheart of a kid.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And now we're going out in town. I was like, you got to be kidding me.

Speaker 1 Right. And especially when you're 17, you're like, you guys are already drunk? Like, fuck.

Speaker 1 This is awful. So I'm sitting there and like at dinner.
with the family and like the girl played I Will Always Love You from the bodyguard soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 1 The son, I stayed in his room and he straight up like seven-year-old nine, nine, stereotype. He had the biggest Hasselhoff poster I've ever seen in my life right over the bed.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, going, I'm doing this for two weeks, and these guys are partying in Wanglington. Like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 Oh, okay, who's Mark? Who's this Mark character? And he walks in, leather jacket, tassels, pretty decent size, bicycle helmet, like motorcycle helmet. You know, that would have been not as cool.

Speaker 1 And he was like, I'm Mark. I'm the oldest son.
Let's go.

Speaker 1 And it turned out it was a classic. It won 80, 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.

Speaker 1 You just pull up on his motorcycle. You hop on the back.
Would you grab his arms around him? I did. I felt comfortable about it.
And so I was hanging out with all of his friends.

Speaker 1 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 he 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 you're 17 right and And the beer is good.

Speaker 5 That's a very long way to avoid singing a song.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not going to do it.

Speaker 1 For the longest time. I like that story.
I got to, you know, I want to try to find the, you know, I promise you I'll do this.

Speaker 1 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. Like, it was tough.

Speaker 1 We had to practice outside of school. You read music.

Speaker 1 When I was back then, yeah. I mean, I could figure it out.
You know what he's doing right now. He's just, you're now Hank's problem.
Yeah, yeah, I'll do it.

Speaker 5 I'll do it soon. Yeah.
I'll get that video to you soon.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to sing right now. Got it.

Speaker 1 That's fair. That's probably fair.
Well, let's talk about that. Was that story long enough? No, no, it was a great story.

Speaker 5 Shout out, Mark.

Speaker 1 You throwing a javelin with a nine-year-old. Yes.

Speaker 1 Pissed at 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 Russell.

Speaker 1 Dude, here's the thing. We went fucking crazy on the second half of the trip.
And then they had to do an announcement with all of us. And the problem was all the seniors are like, we're already done.

Speaker 1 Finals, like

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I'm just like, no, you're not. Like, it's not going to 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.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, you're up to them. And then it was like, well, that's awesome because Mark is picking me up every time.
Mark, Mark?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 all right. So

Speaker 1 let's talk some, let's talk some NBA. Yeah, what do you want to do? The association.
I want to start with the idea that

Speaker 1 are you on the precipice? I know we 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.

Speaker 1 Because the Clippers are good. They're really good.
They are good.

Speaker 1 It's finally, they've been a joke for the last, what,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's not a joke. No, we'll get to Chris Paul.
That's all right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So none of the stuff happened?

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, if he wins a ring, he can be like, fuck you to all the haters that said I couldn't do this.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know that's what's going to happen. The only thing that would be

Speaker 1 if we get Kyle Lowry on the Clippers, I think that would be

Speaker 1 the best thing that's ever happened for the discourse of Ryan Rossillo.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like he's the third option now. So I'm still in the clear for a decade worth of takes.

Speaker 5 So it's not his ring if he wins.

Speaker 1 He'll have a lot to do with it because he's been really good for him now for

Speaker 1 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 Hardin was. Remember they went 0 for 5? Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you have to submit. 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

Speaker 1 so somebody can play bad on purpose to get their way. Like, 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

Speaker 1 are connected.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 But with James Harden, I think he looks at the postseason as doing more work for less money. So he's like,

Speaker 5 I did did my time. I played my season.

Speaker 5 I don't have any desire to do more work.

Speaker 1 I get to leave at five.

Speaker 1 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 regular season of the NBA,

Speaker 1 I just can't get all the way into it because like, I just know that once we get to the playoffs, the teams with the best players and

Speaker 1 the shortened the rotations, like, sure, it's nice if a team has a great year and they win 48 games or 50 games, but it's like they're not going to do anything in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You know, it's the worst health bet of the four teams in the top of the West.

Speaker 1 Maybe you could argue Phoenix if you want to go the, like, if you're talking, I did, I think, nine teams where I said, if these nine teams won an NBA championship, you wouldn't say, well, how the fuck did that happen?

Speaker 1 Right. Right.
Like, I think there were nine, and even that was being a little generous.

Speaker 1 And then I had other teams that I was kind of like writing off of, let's mention them because they're good, but I don't really think they're going to be sitting there with a trophy at the end of this whole thing.

Speaker 1 And I still put Phoenix down as probably the ninth team because, you know, we still hadn't seen those guys play together enough with Beale Durant and Booker at the time of this taping.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 We started with the two teams that could be drastically different in two weeks. I know, right, right.

Speaker 1 At the time of this taping, they're 11-5 with those three guys. And it's pretty good.
And your bench isn't going to matter as much. And you're going to have more days off.

Speaker 1 And I think there's the biggest gap I've ever seen between playoff and regular season basketball.

Speaker 1 You know, if you don't believe me, like, listen to Bob Myers has done like extensive speeches on this thing at like some conference where I'm like, finally, like, listen to this guy.

Speaker 1 Like, 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.

Speaker 1 Like, in the playoffs, everybody knows everything you're going to run through.

Speaker 1 They know, like, oh, this green 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 because I've already seen it for three games.

Speaker 1 Uh, you figure most guys are prideful enough to stay as locked in as they can, as opposed to just you know, a lot of regular season games mailing it in.

Speaker 1 So, I think it's a different product entirely, and that's why, like, 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.

Speaker 1 Like, I know what Booker's going to look like, I know what Durant's going to look like.

Speaker 5 It sounds in NFL terms, it sounds to me like you're calling them frauds

Speaker 1 on the temple frauds? I know, but I know what you mean. It's effort.
Like, effort can continue games in February.

Speaker 1 I think that the best playoff teams have shot clock scorers.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's like a lot of times the ball is going to have been that guy's hands and he has to figure out a way to still score.

Speaker 1 And that's why everybody trades all these draft picks and that's why they don't care about Hardin's background.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 all.
It's just

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 we get to the playoffs, it's always the same thing.

Speaker 1 You're like, oh, the team that has like the best offensive option,

Speaker 1 one of those five guys in the league, like they're in it again. And there's always exception, but there's not many exceptions in that league.

Speaker 1 It's not like football where you're like, how did this happen? Right. And once you get into a seven-game series and it's like, okay, well, we can, we know how to game plan you games three, four, five.

Speaker 1 You don't know how to game plan Kevin Durant. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, Durant's just going to pull up at seven foot one, and you, you know, you 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.

Speaker 1 So, look, Phoenix isn't perfect, but every Phoenix stat is irrelevant because they just haven't had those guys for long enough stretches. You know, I think you can write off Golden State.

Speaker 1 You can write off the Lakers.

Speaker 1 Is LeBron

Speaker 1 stat patting at this point of his career?

Speaker 1 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, and 7 again.

Speaker 1 There are a lot of sevens in there. But he doesn't do the little things that I think are really important in basketball.

Speaker 1 Anymore. No, he doesn't do those things anymore.
And maybe he will in the playoffs, but look at his track record. If you go back 2018,

Speaker 1 his last year with cleveland he played 82 games since then and granted we had two shorten seasons what a 70 game season 72 depends because 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 right it's the same group because Basketball, man, is all of these little plays where you're like, hey, did you box out consistently?

Speaker 1 Oh, you didn't? You fucking lose your guy boxing out all the time. You don't get back in transition.

Speaker 1 You lose guys on these baseline cuts or you start ball watching when you're off the ball on defense.

Speaker 1 When you don't do any of those things, it doesn't matter if you're scoring big numbers. So like when you look at, if you had said, hey, this is what they're getting out of LeBron.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's those little things.

Speaker 5 You think maybe LeBron off the bench?

Speaker 1 Sixth Man of the Year. It's the only award he hasn't won.

Speaker 5 It's true.

Speaker 1 That would be.

Speaker 1 MJ never won it. Yeah.
I would gain so much respect for LeBron.

Speaker 5 Like, I would actually put him above MJ for that sixth man of the year.

Speaker 1 Sixth Man of the Year. When the trade stuff happened for like 48 hours,

Speaker 1 it was just great.

Speaker 1 And I remember when I was still at ESPN, there was like a weird story how, like, Stephen A had said that people close to Genie Buss were saying she'd explore trades for him or something like that.

Speaker 1 That was before they'd even won the title. And I like joked on my podcast, like, what is somebody in the Pilates class going, like, hey, what do you think you could get for him? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then it got back to Stephen A that I had said, like, he got this info from her Pilates class. So he thought I was like really dogging his credibility.

Speaker 1 And I was like, no, dude, that's not what I said. And we worked it out.
It was fine. It's not a big deal.
But it

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And the reason I was wondering if it would happen is Jordan guys would be like, Jordan never got traded. Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's great. You talked about the Suns were they 11 and 5 with those three playing together? Right?

Speaker 1 As of taping, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Isn't it crazy that they've played more games together than the Nets had with their big three?

Speaker 1 Wait, is it

Speaker 1 with Harden?

Speaker 5 Harden, Kyrie, and Kevin Durant on the Nets. Was it 13 games? I think it was 13 or 14 games.

Speaker 1 Do we get I'm going to play that? Eric Adams. Did you see Kyrie say that? Yeah.
That was awesome. 13 games?

Speaker 1 Some fan was like, Kyrie, you never played for the Nets. He's just like, blame Eric Adams.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 I know. I've had a lot of people come at me and be like, hey, when are you going to do the Kyrie was right about everything? Ooh.
And I was like, ooh, that's an interesting segment.

Speaker 5 What exactly was Kyrie right about?

Speaker 1 COVID, the documentary.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 It seems kind of new.

Speaker 1 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 Getz posters at home. So,

Speaker 1 you know, I just think we're a little hard on each other on having an open mind about anything.

Speaker 1 But I think the biggest problem with Kyrie was like, you watched three videos and then you decided that's, and so even if we look back at it retroactively, we'll be like, hey, he made some good points.

Speaker 1 It's like, yeah, we don't like how we got there. Yeah.
Which is totally unfair. Yeah.
The process. All right.
So

Speaker 1 in the East, the Celtics look like the best team. They do, but when the Clippers kicked their ass,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You probably not because you're a football guy's football guy. Football guy.
Never miss a game. You see the ratings? 97 of the top 100 view cable shows.
That's a fact.

Speaker 1 I love when guys from like, where's your check out of it? Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 nobody's arguing. It's not popular.
The ratings are.

Speaker 5 They think if you're an NFL reporter, you're like, I did that.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 that's what it feels like. That's the point I'm saying.

Speaker 5 My reporting about this league made it so exciting that people are.

Speaker 1 I'm going to stand up for football guys for a second. All right.
There was

Speaker 1 Crisco on a textbook.

Speaker 1 There was a very loud NBA push that was like, football's dying. NBA is going to be the next big sport.
Like, everyone's talking about it on social media.

Speaker 5 Oh, Cuban was into that.

Speaker 1 That did happen.

Speaker 1 And then, like, 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.

Speaker 1 That did happen. You have to admit that happened.
There was a window. There was definitely a window.
There was a window. And it was.

Speaker 1 So now we just smash them.

Speaker 1 I love basketball, but it is funny when anyone's like, NBA, like NBA is the next big sport. It's like, no, it's not.
Football is.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 That's basically what the stars play now anyways.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not anymore. Although it's going to be funny.
It wouldn't be great if there was one year like the top 10 guys didn't qualify for the MVP.

Speaker 1 You're like Tobias Harris, first time. Let's go.
It's awesome.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's plenty of stuff that Cuban I've agreed with, but but there have been times over, you know, his 20-plus years in the spotlight, you know, just basketball-related stuff.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he said, pigs get slaughtered. Yep.
Yeah, no, no, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. That's what it was.

Speaker 1 If you have a good phrase, like I bought it at the time. Yeah, and then he sold his team.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's one of like the all-time

Speaker 1 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 of the 30 assets in the world.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The Cuban thing, though. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Isn't it? I feel like no one talked about the fact that he sold 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.

Speaker 1 And it, like, that, shouldn't that scare people?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Cause then it was also sold to us. Like, no, but it's still going to be his team.

Speaker 1 Which made no sense. And it was 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.

Speaker 1 And then that kind of got shot down a little bit. Right.

Speaker 1 So 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.
What are you doing? Wow,

Speaker 1 loud. Wow.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 Max is watching the highlights over there, Max?

Speaker 1 I just, somebody's going to have to turn down your phone. Somebody would have to convince me of like how

Speaker 1 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 thought

Speaker 1 it was a great thing.

Speaker 5 And for sports, it's always going to be Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. So even if the ratings go down,

Speaker 1 if it's still the best rated thing,

Speaker 1 that's really what we're talking about here. Like whenever you're comparing historical ratings and be like, oh, it's down this, it's down that, it's down there.

Speaker 1 I said, okay, what are the other live audience shows? What are they doing? Right. So

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's owner transition because

Speaker 1 this deal is rumored to be shorter than people thought it would be. The new rights deal.
The new rights deal. Like, oh, maybe it'll be shorter.
Well, why would it be shorter?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that influenced him at all. Because 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.

Speaker 1 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, like you just, you're always going like, oh, but if I had done this, then.

Speaker 1 To your point, like, 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?

Speaker 1 And then I'll i'll hear about like three or four other teams where you know the analogy i've used is like the beach house that your 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 on to 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.

Speaker 5 Are people scoring too many points in the NBA?

Speaker 1 Well, scoring's never been easier. So it was really weird how when Embiid went for 70 and then Luca went for 73,

Speaker 1 it was like, oh my God, like, look what Embiid's doing. And then it was like, what the hell is wrong with the league? And I think a lot of Mavs fans took it real personal as if it was only about Luca.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like, if you were to go to somebody and say, 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?

Speaker 1 Or do you never, ever care or notice when all the other teams that you have no interest in were also criticized the same way? Anyway,

Speaker 1 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 lost two. It's just never been easier to score.
The pace is going faster and faster.

Speaker 1 Rising tides as the efficiency goes up. Like every year, a team sets

Speaker 1 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 into 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 it's Defenses are scared to death to even be in compromised positions because guys just fucking run into everybody now.

Speaker 1 So, you know, you let like, look at a guy like Harden. He's still getting away with that off-arm grab.
Yeah. He drives into somebody's hip.
He brings his arms up.

Speaker 1 And they also let him invent a new way to travel on threes. So you can't touch anyone.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 goes under Kawhi, knocks him out of that series years ago with Spurs and Goldstate in the playoffs. So then they're like, hey, we got to make sure the landing area is clear.

Speaker 1 Well, look, and fuck any Hardin fan that can't accept this.

Speaker 1 I want the Clippers to win so bad.

Speaker 1 Harden, when no one's around him, goes straight up on a jump shot. Like even J.J.

Speaker 1 Reddit, because he got a bunch of calls in this awful fourth quarter against the Clippers at the beginning of February.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I love JJ, but JJ's like, hey, look, I had a natural motion that kind of moved forward. And it's like, okay, but like put them side by side when no one's around him.

Speaker 1 Like 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.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're like, dude, he's probably going to get up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He almost died on Christmas.

Speaker 1 What a terrible day. It's hard to have.
I'd hate that. So, like, what do you tell your kids? What do you think of him in Jersey?

Speaker 1 I mean, he kneed Jalen Brown in the butt and he was down for 20 minutes. I know.
I know. Jalen Brown actually like left the gate.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 when I think of that, like with the Zaza Kwai 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.

Speaker 1 And Cam Reddish missed time. So the problem with any of these adjustments is like you worry about the unintended consequences.

Speaker 1 Well, the unintended consequence for that one is like now you can't even get like a clear contest. You have to do these drive-by contests.
You add all these things up.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 sometimes the stuff can be like a year ahead of the league before they figure like the rip through. They figured that one out.
They got better with flops and charges and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 But you're just adding it all up. I don't think it's because of ratings, PFT.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And they're all awesome players, too.

Speaker 1 Like 10 years ago, there was 20 players that were shooting over 40%.

Speaker 1 Right now, it's 49 players shooting over 40%. That's crazy.

Speaker 5 It's weird. They're just better players, too.
With Hardin, he is very, very smart. So if you tweak the rules, he will figure out a way to exploit it every time.

Speaker 5 After when he retires, he should be like that guy in, was it Frank Abendale?

Speaker 5 Was it Catch Me If You Can?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 The league should hire him when they think of making a rule, being like, how would you exploit this if you were a player?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Show us the unintended consequences.

Speaker 1 And then he'd be like, I want to work for the NFL. Fuck this place.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's king.

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Speaker 5 So do you think it is making the games worse?

Speaker 5 The scores, when you look at them after the fact, you're like, oh, shit, high scores are good.

Speaker 1 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 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 be like i've officiated in juco in high school that's absolutely a foul

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 non-legal guarding

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 What was going on there? I'd be 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?

Speaker 1 Oh, no, it was just a mistake. And in this case, it's like, was the attent to foul him?

Speaker 1 Or was the intent of the offensive player to be like, I didn't even want to take a shot, but I just dribbled into this guy backpedaling and then flung it up at the rim.

Speaker 1 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 it with this broad brush.
The player's individual skill, man.

Speaker 1 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 1.7 threes per game or like sharpshooter.

Speaker 1 And now, if you don't have like five scores on the floor, you're almost at a disadvantage. It's crazy.
These guys are incredible, the shot-making that they can do. So

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's a boring, not boring thing.

Speaker 1 I think I just have nights where I get frustrated knowing that, hey, once the playoffs start, like a lot of this stuff is just going to be different anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the, the, uh, I think it was Sam Decker, who's a friend of the program. I think he

Speaker 1 said, he said something, and you know, Sam was in the NBA for a while.

Speaker 1 He's now doing great in Europe, but like he, he had something about 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?

Speaker 1 And he said, like 90. And he's not in the NBA.
You know what I mean? That's how insane these guys are shooting. It's everyone can shoot.
Every guy on the team can shoot.

Speaker 1 Well, 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.

Speaker 1 And granted, he's at this size disadvantage on any dribble to the rim. And he started just taking off on the wrong foot.

Speaker 1 So like the defender, you're always timing it to be like step, step and like, okay, if he's right-handed, he's going up off of this foot. He started going up off the foot before you thought he was.

Speaker 1 And then he was already at the rim and finishing. And you're just like, oh my God.
And that's like everybody now.

Speaker 1 Everybody has all this stuff. Now,

Speaker 1 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 in these different angles takes away a little bit from, like, yeah, but you know what you're supposed to do when you don't have the ball.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 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? Some of these guys look like they have no interest.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
All right. So in the East, who can win the title?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But when people talk about Boston being a playoff failure, I'm just like, well, game six of the finals.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And their one-third eight's ridiculous. If Przingis is healthy,

Speaker 1 they're probably still the favorite.

Speaker 1 The Bucs thing is weird. I can't figure it out.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Doc Rivers, difference maker.

Speaker 1 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, but I want to shit on him for being a snake.

Speaker 5 Whoa, that's like, do you put any credence in that? And the fact that he got a young coach fired and he was like, now it's me. Now it's Doc time.

Speaker 1 Come on, dude. You really think that?

Speaker 5 I've been told that.

Speaker 1 I think Giannis never bought in.

Speaker 1 I think Dame had a bigger issue with Adrian Refin first.

Speaker 1 And then it was. Yeah.
So

Speaker 1 I can't figure out Dame. Like, I knew he sucked on defense.
And now it's like, oh my God,

Speaker 1 he's really bad.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but it's like the Bucks, they should have known that going into it, right?

Speaker 1 It's like, yeah, but it's back to like the offense stuff that we talk about because Dame's probably one of the 10 best guys at getting his own thing.

Speaker 1 But I think you're like, all right, we'll take the bad defense. Yeah,

Speaker 5 I'm surprised that they got rid of one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and they brought in Dame and they're like, wait, our defense stinks. Let's blame the coach.

Speaker 1 Well, they were going to blame Adrian Griffin, who, 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,

Speaker 1 his pickup team would win every single game. And you'd be like, did that guy even score? So I've always been a fan of his, but

Speaker 1 athletes are brutal, man. As soon as you give them a chance to, like, doubt you, they're just going to be like, this guy doesn't know what he's doing.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 What happened happened here so you know the yannis factor alone with dame gut cooking and

Speaker 1 i don't think you can rule them out but

Speaker 1 it's crazy how good the record is and then you look at all this stuff and you're you know and then you'll watch them one game and you're like what is wrong with you guys but so we're only what four games in five games into dock at this point so i don't know yet so bucks too anyone else i mean in bead obviously being out that kind of yeah ends that that's over yeah uh the next story is awesome I can't fathom them beating all those teams.

Speaker 1 Well, they go back to the, and I learned this

Speaker 1 firsthand. Tibbs can win a lot of regular season games.
There we go. He can.
He gets his guy. His guys play hard every night.
And Jalen Brunson is a star. I love him.
He's awesome.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he can. I don't think Ananobi is necessarily like that guy, but his corner three numbers are always ridiculous.
And

Speaker 1 in the first, what, 16 games with the Knicks, he's even beyond anything he's been.

Speaker 1 Like in Toronto, he's actually getting to the point where it's like, you're 26 and you're kind of like going in the wrong direction on some of these stats. But,

Speaker 1 you know, Randall was hurt and was, I thought, horrendous in the playoffs last year in that Miami series in particular.

Speaker 1 And it's a really cool story, but I've got to see it.

Speaker 1 I've got to see it play out more over,

Speaker 1 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 buck celtics well cleveland scared to death

Speaker 1 yeah yeah and i mean they won this match if they had lebron

Speaker 1 who knows he might be there next year i saw some cleveland fans being like well

Speaker 1 could add him this year the trade deadline he'd be the perfect piece yeah and by the way he would have to opt out and like sign for nothing to go there i don't think he's going to do that at the very end of his career uh yeah i don't think Cleveland, I mean, he came back and then they won in that town.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Not exactly like

Speaker 1 parade town. No, yeah, no.
He did his job. He did what he said he was going to do.

Speaker 5 He's supposed to go to the Knicks now, right? Like I could see myself playing there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, that was him.
It 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?

Speaker 1 You want to get wings or something?

Speaker 1 And then the next day they're like, did you see LeBron had a Knicks towel on? Yeah, yeah. See LeBron tweeting an apple? Yeah.
Hey, guess what?

Speaker 1 Let's start getting on the blowers here.

Speaker 5 Oh, when he tweeted the hourglass, he pulled the guy into work like two hours early that day.

Speaker 1 Right. And then people ask him about it, and he'd be like,

Speaker 1 what? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's got to be, he'd be a tough summer roommate. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah. For sure.
So he's leaving notes for you just so you know, you left a dirty dish in the sink. I clean it up.
No worries. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He was just put on like the whiteboard. He'd be like, all of you guys suck.
And then you'd come downstairs and be like, what was that? And be like, it's up to you to figure it out

Speaker 1 like wait which pretty seems pretty like self-explanatory and direct and you wrote it do you want to talk about this don't need to

Speaker 1 you know yeah like do you want to move out didn't say that do you think I want to move out

Speaker 1 and then you'd have to turn on the T V wind horse is like I don't think LeBron will move out nor wants to move out of the summer house and you're you're sitting there going like dude we're sitting right fucking next to you you could just say it to us.

Speaker 5 LeBron remains committed to being as good of a room as he can be.

Speaker 1 He loves Cohasset at this time of year.

Speaker 1 I know it's not your hometown.

Speaker 5 I do love how he just talked about the Knicks. He's like, Yeah, I could play here.

Speaker 1 I could definitely play for it.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 That'd be incredible.

Speaker 1 He goes,

Speaker 1 if you go to any city with nice weather that day, you're like, Man, I could see myself living home. Oh, yeah, you see.
That's what LeBron does for every place he goes.

Speaker 1 Rozzillo. Let's do a non- Yeah, because we have a segment called Rosillo,

Speaker 1 where, like, I went to New Zealand and I looked at property. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay, but it's going to take, like, when you order something on Amazon Prime, it's probably going to take forever.

Speaker 1 You're going to live with some ghosts.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Sweet. Allegedly.
So

Speaker 1 give me a place where you guys have been where you're like, I could do this. Give me the most aggressive place.

Speaker 5 Okay, I'll give you one from this summer. 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

Speaker 5 properties Donnie does. You know, Donnie, you want on Don?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love him. I love him.

Speaker 1 You do love the horns. He's the best.

Speaker 5 And I looked at properties in Dingle on the west coast of Ireland. And I was like, yeah, you know what? Like $300,000 house on the Dingle Peninsula.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 1 this won't work, but still, what if?

Speaker 1 I met with Adam McKay once, big sports fan, super nice to me, moved out to L.A., you know, hey, can we ever meet or whatever, talk and bullshit? He had to come on the pod.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I think he says that to a lot of people. I think he definitely planned on me never asking.

Speaker 1 He says that to everyone.

Speaker 5 I start telling people I've got a place in like in Spain. Like now we're outside of Barcelona.
I actually do have a place down there, Ryan, if you ever want it. It's yours.
Really?

Speaker 1 As long as you want to. I went to Barcelona last summer.
So you're thinking Ireland, 300,000. I heard you got a new deal.
Probably. See my socks? Yeah, probably not going to dent it too much.
300K.

Speaker 1 You might not even be a mortgage guy now. Who knows? Who knows? It's with these rates, although they are going down.
As of taping.

Speaker 1 What about you, big cat?

Speaker 1 Fantasy.

Speaker 1 For some reason, it's a lame fantasy. I've been in the Pacific Northwest a few times, and I, I just, something about the trees.
Is the movie Fear? They're so fucking big. I kind of, I think.

Speaker 1 You love big trees. I like big trees.

Speaker 1 I could see myself maybe like 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 like beautiful year-round.
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 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.
But no ocean is always anytime I think of a place like this.

Speaker 1 Lake's pretty big. Denver may have been,

Speaker 1 but the north winter. Oh, Denver's a good one.

Speaker 5 Boulder.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we went to Boulder once and ate mushrooms, and I was like, dude, I want to move here right now.

Speaker 9 Facts.

Speaker 9 That happened.

Speaker 1 But that was a great week. We did that.
I was literally like, I want to live here.

Speaker 5 If you wait like 25 years, Chicago's going to be awesome. Yeah.
All year round.

Speaker 1 Global warming. You probably don't believe in that.

Speaker 1 Depends on which charts you look at.

Speaker 1 Remember when they had the,

Speaker 1 like, it was, it was the smog thing. It was like the fires from Canada or something and then like New York City.

Speaker 1 And so all of a sudden, like people were just freaking out and they were like, oh, no global warming. And you're like, I don't know.
This just looks like smoke. Yeah.
To be honest with you.

Speaker 1 And then Sarudi and I talked about it. And somebody who hates me signed up Life Advice for every single climate change newsletter imaginable.

Speaker 1 Like I'm like, every time I open up Life Advice, it's all these different free newsletters on climate change, like trying to tell me as if I didn't believe in some form of it.

Speaker 1 But yeah, 25 years from now, I'm going to be too old. I can't be going to like Wrigleyville and be like, hey, you guys.
Yeah, you can. You guys remember my pod? Yeah, you can.

Speaker 5 I'm an accelerationist.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 I'm just, listen, the hotter it gets, the longer I want to live there.

Speaker 1 All your machines run on corn. Yeah.
Because remember that was the big thing? We're like, oh, it's going to be all corn. And then they were like, do you guys realize how much worse this actually is?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I remember that.
That was a big, like, people were trying to get in like long corn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, what's your place?

Speaker 1 New Zealand was

Speaker 1 up there. I've thought about doing like

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like when I get to the major city internationally, I want to get the fuck out of there immediately and go to villages.

Speaker 1 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. This is bougie as fuck.

Speaker 1 What about football, though?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I could never live any other country because of football. Okay, but this would be it.
It would be like

Speaker 1 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, if the NBA playoffs or the.

Speaker 1 Right, right before the NBA playoffs. Okay, so you're looking at basically a good chunk of February, March, April.
Yep. And then, you know, beginning of May, maybe I come back.

Speaker 1 But, like, live in another country for three or four months and really try. I mean, I'm likely not going to have a family anytime soon.
So I probably should just do it now.

Speaker 1 Like, I get really excited about, hey, what if I did this? And the crazy thing about New Zealand from L.A. is it's 21 hours ahead.
So when I was there, it wasn't really that.

Speaker 1 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. Was that a divorced parents joke?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 it's a time zone joke. Okay.
Those play. Berman told a good one.
Yeah, he did. Oh, John, two concerts.
Wait, so

Speaker 1 you would live in another country for four months? I'd love to.

Speaker 1 I don't hate that.

Speaker 5 Like, maybe I live in Saudi Arabia for four months.

Speaker 1 So you guys are just doing like the no kids talk right now. Get that.

Speaker 5 What are you talking about about live podcasting money?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I can't believe you didn't hold out. Was Liv involved with the negotiation? You just dropped Saudi Arabia and you already resigned.
So you really thought about it.

Speaker 5 I was in background discussions with being a live ambassador.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I wonder, like, could I just move to Tokyo?

Speaker 5 The discussion was no, by the way. That's how that ended up.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, I figured that was probably the answer, so I didn't have a follow-up.

Speaker 1 Like, I'll go, hey, they love basketball

Speaker 1 over there. So why, like, I could be a less informed Tokyo Woj.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 How would Ra?

Speaker 5 Are you a Woj guy or are you Sham's guy?

Speaker 1 I'm such a Woge guy. He's the ultimate.
He carries Woge's water.

Speaker 1 Yup.

Speaker 1 When he ruined that recruit for Rutgers commitment. Don't even know what you're talking about.
Yeah, exactly. But if it's bad, Woge didn't do it.
I did see Shams.

Speaker 1 Phrasing. Shams? Yeah, his name's Shams.
That's not what I was focused on. Oh, okay.
I did see Shams

Speaker 1 at, I think it was maybe a Blackhawks game or something. Oh, no, it was a college basketball game.

Speaker 1 Duke was playing Michigan State at the United Center. And I said to him, I was like, dude, when Woj beat you to that, what was the big overnight thing that happened right before the season started?

Speaker 1 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. He sends all those texts.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I asked Woj to come out of the boat when he was in Manhattan Beach, and he was like, No, why? He goes, I can't be that far away from the coast with no signal. And I went.

Speaker 1 He's dead serious. I go, Hey, I got Starlink on the boat.
Oh, and I go, Yeah. He came out.
It's awesome, dude. I anchor off a Malibu, watch Hornets games.
I can't believe I'm not married.

Speaker 1 It is great when people are like, touch grass for silly and you show a picture of your boat, and I'm like, I know he's watching games on that boat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was, I don't do that a ton, almost never, but I just felt, I was a little spicy that day. And it just, you know, everybody like give me a hard time.
And like, I get it.

Speaker 1 Like, I watch too many games and I'm supposed to have a kid by now and, you know, the shit that really matters.

Speaker 1 But if you're going to come after me when I've got a 46-foot prestige with twin DC albums 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,

Speaker 1 like you can fuck off. Yeah.

Speaker 5 How many TVs do you got in that thing?

Speaker 1 Just one. We tried to put a 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.

Speaker 1 You're going to be having me replace it. And like,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 One day.

Speaker 1 I thought I was going to do it already by now, but I'm not going to. Yeah.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry that you only have one TV on your boat. It's brutal.

Speaker 1 Actually, you know how it is. Actually, there's a slummet.
There are three TVs on the boat. There's two in the bedroom.

Speaker 1 I have two bedrooms. Yeah.
But there's only like one in a viewing area.

Speaker 5 Oh, so you have three TVs on the boat, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, but I thought you meant like in the living boat.
Yeah, no, right. Where you can watch.

Speaker 1 A lot of houses have been forced into a bad setup that I've lived in.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I was like, man, I'm fuck like

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.
Football, you can do it with basketball.

Speaker 1 Basketball is tough.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like if I'm like, okay, be super locked in, like DJ. DJ, you know,

Speaker 1 speaking of Vegas.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We still 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.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, no. I sent a LeBron book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we don't read that.
That one doesn't get read. I'm very underrated as a caring friend.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Hey, I got you a great gift.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Chris Paul. By the way.
Yeah, it's a crystal hologram of Chris Paul holding Ryan Rossillo like a baby. Have you not seen it, PFT? No, I saw it.
I saw it when he got it for you.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 on the stand with the light behind it.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, fucking chuck this.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 And I didn't.

Speaker 1 Thank God. You need it.
Chris Paul might win a title. I can't chuck it.

Speaker 1 Maybe a big three title.

Speaker 1 Where are we at with Chris right now?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's just really, really complicated to even make it happen. I'm not saying it can't, but I don't know,

Speaker 1 I don't know what that deal is.

Speaker 1 Back to the Clippers.

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Speaker 1 All right, so is there any other team in the East?

Speaker 1 Well, I feel like we were a little dismissive of just, you know, this is always like one of those deals where you go, like, oh, you know, give the Knicks.

Speaker 1 Like, I always hate the MVP conversation when 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.

Speaker 1 We talked about him. Everybody does that every year with this shit.
We're like, he like, it's like this huge offensive thing that we haven't spent more time on it.

Speaker 1 When it's like, are you voting for him? You're like, well, no.

Speaker 5 Like, okay. But we should talk about it.
Yeah, we should talk about it.

Speaker 5 We should talk about what if I did. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We just are like, who's coming in fourth? Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You know, to your point, like Tibbs teams look a certain way. When I look at their top nine guys, I never go, why is that guy getting minutes? Like, every guy serves a purpose.

Speaker 1 Really small guards.

Speaker 1 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 series against Miami,

Speaker 1 I just have a hard time believing that I'd be picking them to win four out of seven games against Boston. It's just,

Speaker 1 if they're both healthy, I'm not.

Speaker 5 All right, so you said nine teams that you wouldn't be shocked if they won. Oh, yeah.
Give us the real four, though.

Speaker 1 Let me go five. It's Clippers, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, and I would hold out a little hope for Phoenix

Speaker 1 are probably my five. Okay.
Okay, see if you go by age, which, you know. Well, Josh Kitty.

Speaker 5 They were all so feisty in the playoffs last year, right?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 It took you a while. Yeah, it took me a while.

Speaker 1 Talk about Josh Giddy.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 You're talking about France earlier.

Speaker 5 France has a much lower age of consent law.

Speaker 1 I'm more into the ocean thing. Okay.
All right, wait, so international water.

Speaker 1 All right, so. Forman Terra south of a biza.
That's your speed. So, yeah, the Thunder a year away.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just also... Josh Gady, you could say that, too.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 anyway,

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 so like

Speaker 1 the youngest teams to win titles, like their average age is like 24 or 20. It doesn't mean it's impossible.
Like the Golden State team that won in 15 was a really young team, really young.

Speaker 1 Historically, I think like a top 10, one of the top 10 youngest teams.

Speaker 1 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 1950 or two are in the 50s and three.

Speaker 1 It's been almost like a 40-something year thing that it's happened one time. And the NBA is very consistent that like...

Speaker 1 To win a title, you do have to go through the wars. You need those scars.
It doesn't happen. It just doesn't.
You don't see a team just all of a sudden, nope, now they just want a title.

Speaker 1 They have to, you know, get in the playoffs, lose heartbreaking playoff losses, and then fight, fight, fight. It happens

Speaker 1 every single time. Yeah, like even when Boston won it in 08,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Pierce had all these disappointments despite the 0-2 run. It was really good.
But you need, I really believe in that.

Speaker 1 know, you can sit there and argue exceptions all you want, but history tells you, like, it's pretty overwhelming that you need to go through some shit

Speaker 1 before you're going to be successful. And even with that, I, I don't like

Speaker 1 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 it play them.

Speaker 1 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 Eunice, who looks like Sabonis' older brother who doesn't like him.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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, they've got all this size.

Speaker 1 Like, look at his numbers against Minnesota. You don't look at him and go, oh, wow, they've done this great job.
Maybe it's harder in those 38 playoff minutes.

Speaker 1 And, you know, look, if you told me right now, like, hey, I'm riding with Denver still, they're the same team.

Speaker 1 35 and 16, 35 and 16. Offensive numbers, defensive numbers are basically identical.

Speaker 1 There's no Bruce Brown, but there's a couple of younger pieces where you're like, hey, certain night, a little bit more energy, a little bit more athleticism.

Speaker 1 So I think they did kind of a good job of at least finding something that's, you know, potentially in play there.

Speaker 1 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's so deep.

Speaker 1 But the shit he did in that Lakers series, like, that guy went crazy.

Speaker 1 So that would be maybe, you know, hey, can Jokic hold up enough defensively? Okay, check that box. Is Murray really somebody who can carry them offensively? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know, as I'm talking them out here, they're the better health bet.

Speaker 1 But if you had said, like, hey, by the way, when you get Kawhi, like, you're going to have a locked in Harden because he wants a new contract. Paul George is going to be healthy the whole time.

Speaker 1 And Kawhi is going to play like Toronto Kawhi. Like, that'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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I love the way he's, it almost sounds sensual. He might be a new Chris Paul.
He might be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's true. That's true.
He's not worried about this. Okay, so any other big NBA things that we should

Speaker 1 know or be aware of? I mean, the Mavs, what's

Speaker 1 Luca's awesome? You know, Luca's awesome, but,

Speaker 1 you know, this is something we've already talked about a little bit, but is Luca so awesome it's actually shitty for everybody else? Heliocentric. You came up with that word.
Heliocentric, yeah.

Speaker 1 The history of the heliocentric offenses are really bad in the playoffs. You basically had one NBA Finals guy for a top 20 usage rate in NBA history, and it Iverson.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I wasn't trying to call anybody dumb, man. I was just trying to share information and make all of us better.

Speaker 1 The counter being that any heliocentric offense only has that because everybody else is so bad, and that's actually why. Look, I think basketball.

Speaker 1 Back to some of these first things we talked about, it sucks watching somebody else have the ball all the time. If you're five or you're 35, it fucking sucks.
All right.

Speaker 1 And so when Westbrook would put up those absurd numbers, it's the highest usage rates we've ever seen, that it's ever been tracked.

Speaker 1 When he won 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.

Speaker 1 And it took us a little while to be like, wait, what happened there?

Speaker 1 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 they gave them to him.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, it sounds like I just like trying to tell the truth about some of this stuff. And by the way, his playoff history proves that whatever that was, it doesn't fucking work.
Right.

Speaker 1 Because for six months, you had everybody just watching him the whole time. Right.

Speaker 1 And then, oh, wait, they shut off your drive in the playoffs because everybody's locked in defensively now i have to shoot right i have to take bigger shots right not to say that obviously no one else is not taking a shot the whole season but um

Speaker 1 i when i look at luca

Speaker 1 like here's the list

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Think about having to defend that every night.

Speaker 1 I think Luca's number two, where it's like, if I needed a bucket, I might pick him over Jokic because he can put it and drive a little bit better than Jokic can. I think SGA is on that list.

Speaker 1 Then that might be where it cuts off a little bit. Kawhi is kind of playing at that again.
We're like certain. Like, you've got to look at some of these numbers Kawhi is putting up.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, my God.

Speaker 1 But with Luca, 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.

Speaker 1 So, I don't know what the perfect design is. Really, it comes down to Luca being like, How do you want this to go? And he's probably still a little too young.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He had a double team where it was like he might force this three, and he threw it out to like an open teammate, and he hit the three, and it was like a huge three in that game.

Speaker 1 So, he was still playing.

Speaker 1 Like, for any shit he got for that game, you could argue like his 73 is more impressive than Embiid's because Popovich just decided to fucking never double-team Embiid the whole time until the very end.

Speaker 1 But I worry about like the Luca 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 All right. My last question.
Victor Wemenyama, how much of a bust is he?

Speaker 1 Good question. Thank you.
He's incredible. He's an incredible bust.

Speaker 5 Not like 5% bust.

Speaker 1 No, it's not even.

Speaker 5 How many points did I beat scored against him?

Speaker 1 I didn't even give a shit. He scored 1,000 against him.

Speaker 1 Wembenyama, everything about him this year, individually for him is a massive success.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Everybody can be on the same page. People talk about this kid for three years, right? The guys that were really, really into it.

Speaker 1 Like, I remember the first time, I don't think I could pronounce his name right, like the first 10 times I tried to even talk about him.

Speaker 1 And then you're like, 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.

Speaker 1 I actually worry that, 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.

Speaker 1 But the way he carries himself

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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, you know, feels kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 1 But his personality

Speaker 1 just seems so genuine in that he's been mentally built to take on the responsibility that he's going to have to take on for a franchise at a young age.

Speaker 5 Yeah, like San Antonio, perfect spot for him, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, part of me was like, fuck them.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 seriously.

Speaker 1 And it's really like the Duncan thing because I remember being in college going like,

Speaker 1 you know, and then my buddy's like, dude, I fucking like John C. Billups, though.
And you're like,

Speaker 1 you're like, no, no. I was devastated.
I didn't didn't think I went out that weekend, which is saying something in college.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it's probably,

Speaker 1 except for the time where they were having Sohan play point guard, and you were like, this isn't fun.

Speaker 1 You know, and I love Sohan, but you're like, Wen Ben Yama is like, can I get a guard to get me the ball a little bit? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's going to be.

Speaker 1 He's going to be incredible. And then, look, some former player will fire up a podcast and that dope would be like, if he's so good, how come they weren't in the playoffs? Yeah.
I'll say that.

Speaker 1 Some idiot will say that.

Speaker 5 Like, what's the expectation? You said he's going to meet every expectation. Are we talking like minimum four NBA titles?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 5 How many rings, Ryan? I want to know what my expectation should be.

Speaker 1 I'll say

Speaker 1 were you on Caitlin Clark's side or Cheryl Swoop's side? Go. Caitlin Clark.
Caitlin Clark

Speaker 1 figures for those two. She did flop.

Speaker 1 She flopped against Ohio State. She flopped.
Yeah, it was bad. It was tough.
And when you say against Ohio State, you're really actually saying against an Ohio State fan.

Speaker 5 Actually, we're Sabrina UNESCO podcast.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just found out who she is.

Speaker 1 And you pronounce your name.

Speaker 1 Zero hesitation. Oh, they told me about her last week.
Pretty cool.

Speaker 5 I've known Sabrina for three years.

Speaker 1 You know, I said I. I didn't know who she was, so now I do.
I got to tell you, her kicks when they came out, I almost ordered them and was like, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 Is that cool? I saw them. Well, I think for you, like your genre, yeah.
I appreciate it, right?

Speaker 1 Looking at the money. I like you doing.

Speaker 1 All right, my last question, rollback question, R-H-O-B-A-Choo.com.

Speaker 5 Women's professional basketball.

Speaker 1 You're saying it as if you haven't already. No, sorry.

Speaker 1 You're like soft launching it to us.

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Speaker 1 What is a take

Speaker 1 that I, that we have gone head-to-head with that I've been wrong and you've been right?

Speaker 1 Conference realignment. Okay.

Speaker 1 Because I was right about Jared Goff and Cliff Kingsbury.

Speaker 1 No, I'm not giving you the Cliff point.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Jury's still out on Cliff.

Speaker 1 I'd say the Jared Goff won 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 article. I know, I did.

Speaker 1 Which I don't think I was. 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.

Speaker 1 I feel like this is a tie. No.

Speaker 1 No? He took the Lions, the NFC Championship game. He's a quiet leader.
So I never had any win when I was like, I don't think God, my point was, I don't think Goff's the guy.

Speaker 1 And then I didn't get any, there was no point scored still when he gets traded from a team he was in Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 If the Lions had drafted someone last year in his place, then you would have won.

Speaker 5 Let me ask you this. What's more impressive? Winning a Super Bowl with the Rams or getting the Detroit Lions took care of him.

Speaker 1 Also, you might be right about Tua.

Speaker 1 I am.

Speaker 1 I'll throw that in there.

Speaker 1 Excuse me. I'm very happy for you and your good friend, Jared Goff.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 PFT's good friend, too.

Speaker 1 When he was talking about how much it hurt him to be traded and everything, I was like, man, good for him.

Speaker 1 And by the way, apparently very good friend with Teddy Purcell, King's Manhattan Beach legend. Ooh.
So if he likes Teddy, then it must mean Goff is like the greatest dude ever. All right, there we go.

Speaker 1 Anybody who comes to town is like, can you call that Teddy guy?

Speaker 1 Is that the guy who stole my money on the squares, Super Bowl Squares? No, that was Diamond Dave. Okay.

Speaker 5 If you give money to Diamond Dave, that's on you.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I like if you, if you, 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.

Speaker 1 My barber in Brooklyn took $500 from me every single year, no matter what. I never saw a number.
My favorite when you did that.

Speaker 1 Never knew what my numbers were.

Speaker 1 When you did it with Diamond Dave, it was within seconds Ertie understood it was a terrible transaction. Yes.
Because you were like, it was like really late. It was really late.
Really late.

Speaker 1 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. And it was like, how's this all going to work?

Speaker 1 And Dave was like, I don't know. I just talked to Rasillo about it or something.

Speaker 1 And we're like, you may as well just lit that money on Friday but I had to do it you had to do it and then I never know and I also Venmo'Big Cat a hundred 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 you back a hundred because it was like because I was like yeah do it like I'm on it we'll figure it out and it was it immediately there was no record of it

Speaker 1 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 titty I'm like do you not want to hang out with me to want me to put you two guys on a thread so apparently he's very close with Goff.

Speaker 1 So it made me.

Speaker 1 All right, I'll give that one to you. But I was.

Speaker 1 I just gave you two. That's a 20.
That's a 3-1, down 3-1. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a big comeback. That was a 28-3 Falcons pass.
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

Speaker 1 very mediocre approval rating. Well, I pod after the Kyle thing.
But I almost broke up your podcast.

Speaker 1 You only like conversations. Well, actually, Kyle almost broke up your podcast by DMing me saying, hey, can I hang out with Rasilo? Yeah, but he's a salt of the earth guy.
He's a salt of earth.

Speaker 1 I like him. We've hung out.
Hey, you are all. The Scottish report on you is very simple.
Top line.

Speaker 1 All about content. Don't DM me.
Right. Ask me to hang out with the guy you work with every day.
Content first, friendship second. Whoa.
I mean,

Speaker 1 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, bro. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Be like, let me make a video.

Speaker 1 That's a good callback, Rob. But wait, what was, what was I think it's over now? What were you saying? What were you saying there?

Speaker 1 I just think you try to tell me like conference realignment because the

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I would agree, but I don't. 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.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't care about that. Yeah.
So I used to admit that. I used to care.
I admit that.

Speaker 1 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 actually have to play teams in your division.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm very aware. Yeah.
Our schedule is brutal now. It'll be funny when it's like five SEC schools and six Big Ten schools.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 Florida State.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 would rather it not happen. I'm going to still watch every Saturday.

Speaker 1 I'm still going to 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 it. I'll enjoy the playoff games.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 I don't like that there's this many NFL teams in the playoffs. I think it's stupid.
Oh, yeah, you hate the NFL team.

Speaker 1 I'm big on, I know it's going to shock you. I like leaving people out of things.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you hate the expanded playoffs. I hate expanded anything.
Yeah, the play-in. I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't like that.

Speaker 5 I don't like

Speaker 5 the play-in 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.

Speaker 1 Not Not the NBA. I'm talking about like, I don't like the NBA play-in.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And be like, isn't that good, guys? I hate it. It's a cop-out.
It's like the bowl guy. Be like, hey, played in bowl games four to five years.
Yeah. What are you talking about? Right.

Speaker 1 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, hey, no, I'll be like, I respect that.

Speaker 1 I'm not even disappointed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like how you guys operate. What's that?

Speaker 5 The old quote, like, I would never want to join a club that would accept me as a member. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The other great one was from Lords of the Realm, great book on baseball finance. If you want to dig into that history, sounds great.
Yeah. Marvin Miller, read about it.

Speaker 1 And the guy goes, What's the point of being rich if nobody knows?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I looked at Ferraris today, so I'm going with that.

Speaker 1 Did you really?

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, the guy was hazing me.

Speaker 1 Oh, I did.

Speaker 1 Every time I see one, I'm like, fucking A.

Speaker 5 Jake, I would like the blog from this interview to be Ron Rosillo owns a boat with a TV and is currently shopping for Ferraris.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 5 You're letting another man teach you how to swing a golf club?

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 talking.

Speaker 1 The guy's your club speed's like PGA level. Hell yeah.
Sure, they did. But.
but if you pay me $500, I can fix this for you. Right, right.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I love my, I love the guy that I took a lesson with. He was great.
Fucking New York guy, Long Island, I think. Terrific.
Shout out to Matt.

Speaker 1 Shout out, Matt. He's looking to get maybe an audio gig.
So, okay. Yeah, maybe forward you his resume.
Yeah, we'll take him.

Speaker 1 I like how he looks at me that way where I'll be like, he just goes,

Speaker 1 don't you work somewhere?

Speaker 1 Signed. Yeah, no, there was a guy, I can't tell.
It was a little Captain Phillips-ish.

Speaker 1 He was driving the taxi, and he was listening to this just absolutely 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was

Speaker 1 doing radio. It was brutal.
It was 30 straight minutes of this.

Speaker 1 Hold on, let's see.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 30 minutes straight. 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.

Speaker 5 He's probably listening to like Sports Talk Radio, but in his own language.

Speaker 1 They were doing, give us the nine clubs that you think can still win a title.

Speaker 1 And there was a Ferrari dealership right when I demanded to get out. And And I was like, this feels like a sign.
And then I went in there and was like, holy shit.

Speaker 1 Like, these things

Speaker 1 are pretty sick. Yeah.
And then I sat in one. It was great, too.
The guy was like, so this would be your first Ferrari show.

Speaker 1 I was like, you're good.

Speaker 1 You're very good. He's like, how are you getting back to Los Angeles? Have you canceled your flight yet?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, Christian Bale's one of my favorite actors. As skinny as possible, Empire of the Sun.
Did you guys ever see that when Bale's a kid? Yeah.

Speaker 5 I did not see that one. No.

Speaker 1 It's a great movie. I just say yeah to every movie.

Speaker 1 That is.

Speaker 5 I actually read the book, Ryan. Sure.

Speaker 1 The dick pic from Ryan Whitney.

Speaker 1 We share.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, Ryan, thank you.
Thank you as always. Thank you, guys.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 We can't wait to talk NBA playoffs when we get to that spot in June. In June.
But this was zero NBA preview. I think we hit it all.
I think we did.

Speaker 1 I mean, I never really want to talk NBA with you guys. I know.
Myself. I think it was good.
It was perfect. It was perfect.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're going to kick it to ourselves in a second for the lottery ball wrapping up. Thank you, everyone, for dealing with the Zoom episode.

Speaker 1 I feel refreshed from my vacation.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 and like felt normal again on Thursday. But it was a good vacation.
You guys feel good? Rested? I feel great. I feel great.

Speaker 5 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 with some great lotion on Tuesday.

Speaker 5 Slept for about eight hours during the day, woke up, had dinner, back to sleep for another eight hours after that. It was fantastic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we'll be back in studio on Tuesday. I think we're going to have our good friend Paul Bissinet on for Wednesday's show, talk some hockey.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Let's kick it to ourselves in lottery ball. All right, numbers:

Speaker 1 18. We'll be back in studio together on Wednesday.

Speaker 1 8. 20.
77.

Speaker 1 What if it goes back to back?

Speaker 5 55.

Speaker 1 This might be dumb. You got it? You feel like you got it? This might be dumb.
Why?

Speaker 5 99, 77, 55.

Speaker 1 67.

Speaker 1 I don't know what

Speaker 1 to say. I'm saving it away.

Speaker 1 Today's a moment

Speaker 1 are fine,

Speaker 1 shine

Speaker 1 away.

Speaker 1 I'll be coming for your love of the day.

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me,

Speaker 1 take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 God

Speaker 1 to your

Speaker 1 needless save

Speaker 1 I'm on the settings I'll be

Speaker 1 stone a little

Speaker 1 bit

Speaker 1 Say up to me

Speaker 1 It's the better to be safe than sorry

Speaker 1 Say up to me

Speaker 1 It's the better to be safe than sorry

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 in a day I'll take

Speaker 1 a look

Speaker 1 They

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 through.

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 and