NBA W/ Kirk Goldsberry, Randy Moss (Plus Special Appearance From Mike Tirico & Mage The Horse), Nuggets Up 2-0, Celtics/Heat & Fyre Fest

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
On today's Pardon My Take, we have Kirk Goldsberry in studio talking ball NBA playoffs with him. Some of the things we said, we taped it on Thursday afternoon.
Some of the things we said, we turned out to be prophetic with our knowledge of ball. we also have Randy Moss back on the show

talking Preakness, giving you some winners. He's got a couple races that he absolutely loves, both Friday and Saturday.
We're going to talk Celtics Heat Game 1. We're going to talk some PGA Championship and Firefest of the Week.
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Okay, let's go. There is violence and then a lot of work to be done.

No place to hang out or wash in.

And then I can't blame all on the sun.

Oh, no.

We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.

And then we'll take it higher.

Oh, we're gonna rock down to Electric Trait, presented by Barstool Sports. Welcome to Pardon My Take.
Today is Friday, May 19th, and Jamal Murray was on fire. The Jamal Murray game, PFT.
I was going to say, Jamal Murray has arrived officially as a clutch postseason player. That fourth quarter was awesome.
Go Nuggets. 23 points in the fourth quarter.
A game that it felt like for the first three quarters that the Lakers did what we expected. They slowed it down.
It was a a lot slower pace lower scoring than game one uh you know they had Rui Hachimura just being the Lakers I'm I'm expecting during this entire run one one of their guys will always step up and be that guy tonight it was Rui night I think he started seven for seven um but the story is Jamal Murray and him just absolutely being so on fire in the fourth quarter, winning that game for the Nuggets.

And also the story is LeBron James looking old for the first time

because he PFT, whether it was the missed dunk, whether it was –

I mean, the flops will happen, but he missed a layup like when they were down four with about 20 seconds left where he stole the ball.

He just, for the first time in these playoffs, he looked a little off.

You can maybe say it's altitude, but his three-point shooting is atrocious, which we'll talk to Kirk Goldsberry about.

And it felt like one of those games that if LeBron had played just

marginally better, the Lakers probably steal one.

Don't forget his late turnover either.

He also,

he lost the ball in the paint for the second straight game at the end of

the game.

Yeah.

He looked old.

The miss layup or the miss dunk was hilarious because he tried to do,

he tried to like send a message with a dunk.

He tried to do like a cool dunk on the breakaway.

Just kind of dribbled off his leg. Shout out Rick Pitino.
Went into the second row. And it was hilarious.
It was one of the more funny plays I've seen LeBron make recently. Two-handed layup counts for the same amount of points as a dunk, LeBron.
Just a message to all the youngsters watching at home. Put that thing off the glass.
High glass. Go up strong.
Come down under control. Also, at the end, he should have dunked it when he tried to lay it up and he missed that layup just dunk it lebron you're huge you can just dunk on people don't try to get cute with it and lay it up and also the flop was maybe maybe my favorite lebron flop of all time because he got he did get poked in the eye a little bit or near his eye he got his eye his eye attacked yokich's hand hand was his eye in the in the protected circle his eye went after Jokic's hand yeah his his eye poked Jokic's finger and then he fell to the ground and he slid about like 15 feet into the stands into the the front row knocked a drink on him so maybe he was thirsty maybe he wanted just a gin and tonic we know that LeBron likes a little sip every now and again.
And then I do have, as much as I love the Nuggets this year and last year, and I love their fans, they seem like they're a very chill fan base, except for the guy that got the shit kicked out of them at the Suns game last year. They are kind of a bad sports town for giving LeBron a towel to wipe himself off with after he slid into the stands.
You don't do that. You let him get up wet.
You don't try to make him comfortable. You don't dry him off.
You're not LeBron's towel boy. Okay, have a little respect for yourself.
You actually should Jason Kidd it and pour even more of your drink on him. Remember when Jason Kidd accidentally dropped a drink to get an extra time out? Like, that's what you need to do..
But yeah, I mean, this was a game I thought the Lakers,

like watching the first three quarters, you thought the Lakers were going to win

because they were doing a pretty good job with Jokic.

And I mean, he still had a triple-double, right?

Like, yeah, he still had an easily triple-double.

And three steals.

Yeah.

I mean, he's so ridiculous.

Like he rolls out of bed and gets a triple-double.

But with that said, like it did feel like they were at least making him work

a little bit more.

LeBron was guarding him in the fourth quarter, and then Jamal Murray just stole the game. 23 points.
23 out of the 32 points the Nuggets scored in the fourth quarter were Jamal Murray, who, by the way, when we talked to Kirk Goldsberry, we had forgotten or never knew that he's Canadian. So a big one for Canada.
Huge one. They can't win a Stanley Cup.
And Coach Cala, too. Yeah, they might be able to win an NBA title.
But, yeah, I mean, the Nuggets, they hold serve. Because I do think that this series is going to be who can win a road game.
I know the whole cliche. Series doesn't start to someone wins on the road the nuggets have struggled on the road it was clear the lakers were struggling in the altitude so will it just be one of those series where everyone just holds serve at home i stand by nugs in six and the dumb thought that i always have when it's hockey or when it's basketball that's being played in denver is does the travel indoors I don't know if they're playing inside a dome is is the air inside is a good oxygen or is it thin air I don't know the answers to these questions but it certainly seemed like the altitude played some sort of a factor especially you could make the argument on on a lot of LeBron's misses that he had he was missing long he was hitting off the back iron maybe the ball traveled just like half a foot further who knows oh for 10 now from three point in this series i just let him keep shooting them he can't make them he hasn't been able to make them so just let him keep shooting them um it did feel like they wasted the ruy hachimura game i did see a uh great anecdote come across my Twitter timeline that I wanted to share with you.
This is from Myron Medcalf, ESPN. He said, one of my favorite Rui Hachimura stories is that one time he was in practice at Gonzaga and Mark Few said he'd made a dumbass play.
Hachimura, who didn't speak much English then, smiled wide because he thought few was comparing him to Demantis Sabonis who is nicknamed Domas so I like that it's a Domas one guy yeah yeah that that also begs the question why how many more good Rui Hachimura stories are there if he says one of my favorite Rui Hachimura stories before this. Well, whenever a guy gets on fire this late in the playoffs, it's usually like anecdote season where everyone's like, hey, this one time I met Rui Hachimura.
So, yeah, that's true. What is he holding back? There's got to be some other good ones in the tank right there for sure.
Yeah, you're right. They messed up the ruohatchimura game and it feels like he's good for one of these each series it is it is also funny that you it's a great point by you like whenever someone has these games the anecdotes like it's almost like a eulogy on twitter like oh this guy that no one knows about let's just start him and telling weird stories.
Yeah, here's how weird this guy is that's scoring a shitload of points. Lonnie Walker, when we had the Lonnie Walker game, that happened.
The videos of him being in the hot car when he locked himself in a car with a dog to educate America about how hot it can get in a parked car when it's hot outside. Yeah, I love the weird stories where it's like, can you believe this is the guy that just dropped 20 on you? And this is like on our deathbed.
Hopefully we live long lives, but these are how sports fans pick up little stories about players that you'll never forget. Like you'll never forget Rui Hachimura.
You'll never forget Lonnie Walker. Like all these guys, when they have their moments, they're seared your brain forever, and you can answer trivia on them for the rest of your life.
And that's just – and, like, you know, you'll forget birthdays. You'll forget, you know, numbers.
You'll forget phone numbers, like, important stuff in life. To do your taxes, Hank.
But you'll never forget these random players. And Rui Hachimor is more than a random player.
He was a lottery pick, I believe. But still, this is how we gain knowledge as sports fans that we don't need that we'll always retain.
Yeah, so I watched this game with my mom again, and I made a couple notes because she's not what you'd call an NBA fan per se. I mean, she knows some of the players.
But she was giving me running commentary. So I want to walk you through her analysis of the game, if that's okay.
Yeah. So on Jokic, she calls him Jokyok, which is, I like that name.
I like the name Jokyok for him. She says, Jokyok looks like he should not be able to move at all, but he actually moves quite well somehow.
I hate his haircut. He would be more attractive with American hair.

His head's too small for his body,

but that's all right.

It is.

That's a fact.

It's a little small.

On Austin Reeves.

Well, his body's just so large.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a good point.

Like his head is probably massive.

Yeah, his head's probably a fine size.

It's just his body.

His body's too big for his head is really what it is.

But that's all right. She made sure to say, but that's all right uh on austin reeves he's the other white guy right out of all the white guys i like his haircut the best i like his haircut better than yoke yokes austin reeves has a little bit of like the alabama swoop going from like uh 20 years ago a little bit but it's not quite the full-on frat boy swoop it's like the frat boy's friend from out of town that comes to visit once in a while because he wants to see what it's like in a big state school i want to call my shot real quick austin reese is going to get a cool haircut next year he's definitely gonna he's definitely gonna like upgrade his look and maybe add some tattoos yeah i i would like to see him go with a mullet actually that would be sick that'd be sick show up on like a dirt bike.
On Rui Hachimura,

she said he was on the Wizards and I try not to pay attention to them like mother like son yep on on LeBron it would be hard to be him or be on a team with him facts and then that yeah I think that that puts it quite well like LeBron James probably yeah it, he's got a good life because he's rich as shit and he controls basically the entire media right now. But at the same time, probably probably difficult to be LeBron James.
Yeah. And then she said she asked me if he was better than Jordan.
And I said, that's a question that you're going to have to think about for yourself and answer. And she listening to this back no well her point was that he's played more years than jordan so he's kind of a stack compiler so what she wants to do is just take how many years did jordan play it was like 13 14 or if you don't count the wizards i want to say it's like maybe 15 let me pull it up well because also That's mean to just say if you don't count the wizards i want to say it's like maybe 15 let me pull it up well because also that's mean baseball uh that's mean to just say if you don't count the wizards like yeah that doesn't count as his nba career well if you don't count them uh you should you should also remind your mom that uh we've had a great advancement in medical sciences and hgh yeah i i did i did allude to the fact that he has a strict diet of sciences and HGH.
Yeah. I did,

I did allude to the fact that he has a strict diet of steroids and red

wine.

Oh,

I nailed it.

15.

Okay.

So if you take 13,

if you don't count the wizards.

So,

yeah.

So if you take,

if you take LeBron's first 13 years,

who's scored more points?

That was her,

that was her question.

I don't know the answer to that question,

but I think it's more fair way to join it to judge it. And then she just wanted to know over and over again why they don't call traveling anymore.
Yeah, all good points by your own. I think she knows ball.
Yeah, she definitely knows ball. Big time ball.
I mean, that's the Austin Reeves. Like, yeah, he's got the best haircut out there probably of all the white guys.
Of the white guys, yeah. Out of all of them.
Of the it would be uh yokich and then it would be christian braun christian brown right brown yeah brown yeah um all right so other things we got to talk about uh pga championship softest delay in the history of sports the frost delay i got into it with grass twitter this morning i i understand

like there was a bunch of uh you know i don't even know what the major is what is the major the the i think it's just golf course management that they take i believe in in college so the golf course management majors all came out and they're like look you can't step on frosted grassed grass. Totally understand.
I get it's a major, but when you see, I guess it breaks the grass, which is already broken because it's bent grass. Either way, if you can't just like, I woke up this morning getting like, I was waking up with my kids like, oh, I'm going to get to watch free sports early in the morning before like the world up here.
Frost delay. You see frost delay? That's soft.
That is soft. There's frost on the grass.
We can't play. It's a soft sport, but in its own weird way, you have to take into account that these are golfers.
Of course. This is the most hardcore thing that a course can do to set the tone.
That's what it did. Yeah.
It let the golfers know that it was there on day one, hour one. Although as course guys, which of course had a great day, I would like the course to just step up and be like, I don't care if I have frost.
Go ahead, step on me. You break a little grass, that's fine.
Either way, it was a great morning because i got to basically take the delay of the pga championship and instead just get a bunch of people mad at me about grass where i was just like literally laughing like after every tweet just being like who who who is even arguing about grass like i've started an argument about grass this is my favorite argument i've ever been in because there's nothing you can do to change my mind to tell me that you can't play golf on frost you could play golf side father right now you could play golf on frost you know what's going to happen we should there's probably going to be another frost delay on like maybe sunday on the final round and then they're just going to have to go out there and play so the course will hopefully give another frost delay and then just be like bring it on bitch yeah i'll take you i'll take you anytime anywhere but this is why golf should be played indoors yeah build an indoor course give give me your best um and then the other two stories from it so bryson did play well which was unfortunate although i guess the feud's over so we can't hate him anymore um any he also like i bryson just got skinny again. I liked when he was jacked.
I liked when he was just, like, looked like a freak and was just pushing the boundaries of how hard he could hit a drive. He went back to skinny Bryson.
Yeah, I don't like it, but he also did hit a guy on the tee. You see that? He had an errant drive.
I think he pulled it to the left, and this poor guy was about to tee off. I hope it was patrick cantley but i can't be sure who it was uh and he called four left and the guy like ducks out of the way and the ball just whomps him right on the tee box that's very relatable like that's that's that he is one of us now where he he misplaces drive so badly that it lands in the fairway of the other hole yes and um did you see the video of tom kim the golfer who i've never seen anyone have more mud on them from like we didn't even get to see the angle of how he got the mud on him but he was covered he was absolutely covered did you see the video it was incredible then he goes you want to smell my hand afterwards fellas we've all been there am i right it was yeah great yeah that was i mean great day for the course i give the course i give the course an a plus on day one of the pga championship i'd agree i'd agree all right anything else that we missed that we have to talk about uh oh go see go watch pm tv max's photo shoot that he didn't realize was fake and he came in on mond Monday morning and took a bunch of pictures with his soul patch.
Great PM TV. Max is just shaking his head right now for people who don't know, it's just me and PFT.
It's old school. We have everyone else back in studio with our guests as well.
But any other anything we missed? I don't think so. I think it's pretty clean, pretty clean intro there.
One thing that you did miss in the intro to the show not only do we have randy moss and kirk goldsbury on the show we also have mike tariko on the show today yes and may at least on the and may and may and may the kentucky derby champion horse yeah now they might only appear on the youtube version of the show so you have to subscribe to that to watch it yes go in the background and credit to us for not stepping over any lines when we saw mike tariko pop up because we we thought about saying a lot of things and we didn't should we put mike tariko and mage in the in the title yeah we should yeah yeah with special appearances from mike tariko and mage the horse It's a foursome for the boys today. Yes, yes.
Great guests for everyone.

Okay, let's kick it back to ourselves. Back in studio.
Also, subscribe to the YouTube because I think Sunday night we will all be in studio and we're going to stream Celtics Heat. So, Jake versus Hank, Sunday night.
Yep. Yeah.
Yep. Definitely subscribe to that.
We did miss talking about Dustin Johnson. Did you hear what Dustin Johnson said on Wednesday when he was getting ready? He was doing like his press conference that all these guys do, where basically all the Liv guys go out there and then they have to answer questions about Liv for 20 minutes.
They asked him about his bad back that he's been going through. And he insinuated strongly that he got a bad back from banging his wife too hard, which respect.
Massive respect. Big time respect.
Paulina Gretzky. Yeah.
Hey, I've got a bad back. Big guy, you've got a bad back.
Am I right? Yeah, it's true. You know.
Yeah, things happen. Also, Brooks loved having him back on.
I wish he had given us the quote, I would start stroking guys. Because he did say that when talking about penalties for slow play.
He said, I would start stroking guys. Could have used that on the show.
Yeah, stroke them until they finish, Brooks. Make them finish.
Make them finish faster. That's what you got stroke you got to stroke them harder if you stroke if you stroke them and then you keep stroking you show that you're not kidding about stroking them hard fast consistently and make that a thing that that they can come to expect they will finish maybe spit in your hand before you stroke them i don't get it what do you mean oh one last thing we did forget to mention hockey this the conference finals did start um the panthers won and then they they they didn't win so they scored a goal in overtime didn't count billy actually probably the first time in pmt history billy tried to beat everyone to the congrats uh text because usually when one of our teams wins everyone will congratulate them on on the text chain.
It's very nice camaraderie. Billy said, congrats, Jake.
And I was like, dude, that's not going to count. And so Billy, maybe the first time he ever beat everyone to it, didn't actually count, which is very Billy.
But the other hockey news we have is we are officially a Golden Knights podcast. So Alec Martinez is an AWL.
We found out. I still hate him for 2014 and the Kings scoring the overtime goal against the Blackhawks in game seven.
But we'll put the past in the past. We needed a team.
We are a Golden Knights podcast. We're rooting for the Golden Knights.
We want the Golden Knights to win the the cup well i i think that we said that we like the golden knights out of all the four remaining teams the best we said the nicest things but i think everybody else we gave what some might consider to be backhanded compliments towards when we talked about their cities uh the golden knights are fun i guess they're the funnest team left and alec also said that he listens to the show to not hear us talk about hockey yeah you picked the right podcast buddy especially this year yeah we almost forgot to talk about it also i just wanted to i people see i'm wearing an ace hat i feel bad for ace hands i ace fans i decided uh i've been getting it i listened to the sonic boom podcast i think came out like four years ago about the sonics seattle losing Sonics. And it just dawned on me that the A's are getting such a fucking raw deal and the city of Oakland is getting such a raw deal.
They lost the Warriors to San Francisco. They lost the Raiders to Vegas.
They're going to lose the A's to Vegas. So I'm standing with A's fans for all the – I don't know how many are left.
I don't think there are any left. So I'll'll be the last one standing I'll turn off the lights at the Coliseum what are they going to do about the about the possum that's living the press box you can't bulldoze the stadium you can't you can't explode a possum and its entire family with dynamite to get rid of a stadium right yeah to date they are uh yeah it's sad seeing every game where they're like no one's there.
It's basically they're doing major league, but there's no happy ending. That's essentially what's happening right now.
I actually saw a stat. Someone tweeted what each team would have to go for the remaining of the season to break the 116 wins in a season, and I think the A's have to go like 93 and 10.
Yeah, no, they're very bad. Are you, are you, my proprietary formula is right on the money again this year.
So I moved off the bucks, the buckos, the pirates, and I'm fading the A's every game this season. It's, it's a winning formula.
It really is. Yeah.
Yeah. Shout out to Oakland though.
I i do feel bad for them and also it seems like there's some funny stuff going on in arizona with the oh yeah we gotta talk to biz about that and figure out what we need to do to keep the in arizona yeah it just sucks whenever a city loses a team it fucking sucks and i was just i was buying a new cubs hat and i saw the aids i was, their logo is awesome, and I feel really bad for their fans. So I stand in solidarity.
Fuck owners. Fuck cities that won't help out, even though owners should probably pay for their own fucking stadium.
But either way, A's fans, I stand with you because it sucks. I also say something nice about the A's.
They have the best grass in baseball. When they get that pattern cut into it and mowed exactly correctly, I'm talking like light green, dark green, diamonds everywhere in the outfield.
That to me is like what I grew up watching. And that's what I'll remember the most about 90s baseball probably is how fucking sick the outfield grass was in Oakland.
And how big their foul territory is. Goes on for days.
So yeah, if you're an A's fan listening to this show, you're an AWL A's fan, tweet us and let us know that you heard it because we're going to stand with you. We can't do anything except maybe we'll just bash the owner of the A's like every couple weeks.
Who is the owner of the A's? Let's find out. Fucking A.
This guy, he's on our shit list. That's a meaningful world of hurt hurt yeah yeah actually it's kind of fucked up that he not only is moving the team but he's also somewhat anonymous john fisher fuck you john fisher piece of shit you fucking dick you greedy dickhead you're a balls john fisher if i saw you i'd hiss at you i would hiss i wouldn't know nothing physical i just go a nice right in your fucking face john fisher you i would dance you oh somebody should pull your pants down in public i would distract him so that you could pants him with your hissing yes the old double tap yeah fuck you john yeah maybe we tabletop him that's actually that i mean that's a pretty embarrassing thing to get tabletopped yeah it's been a minute since i've tabletop somebody all-time schoolyard prank the table we should get billy billy's definitely not gonna listen to this no way we gotta tabletop him we gotta table okay we'll tabletop billy yes yes all right i'll go.
Okay. Yeah.
And then he'll blame me. He'll just be like, God damn it.
You always fuck with me. All right.
Let's kick it back to ourselves in studio and a special fuck you to John Fisher. Okay.
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Okay. Celtics heat.
Oh boy. In it to quote the recently fired doc rivers.
Don't play with your meat. It feels like the Celtics have a proclivity to play with their meat.
Oftentimes they were at halftime. Looked like they were going to cruise.
You saw the heat give their best shot in the first quarter and then the third quarter started and eric spolstra made some uh halftime adjustments and joe mazula was either getting choked out or watching the town um yeah and is joe mazula a weird guy can we just do a side side like for sure he watches the town for four times a week for sure so that's i i saw that story and i did the math on it because the town is two hours long which means he watches eight hours of the town per week which means he watches 17 days worth of the movie the town per year he seems like he's giving off weird guy vibes well that's like no the town is the town is a classic yeah but hank that you have to admit, that's like Nick Sirianni level without all the coaching prowess. Four times a week is a little much, but I'm not going to sit here and say I haven't seen that movie, I don't know, 500 times.
Four times a week? Do you do anything four times a week? Besides golf? I knew that was coming. I do like the phrase, whose car are we taking? He had that sweatshirt.
That is kind of a rally the troops championship DVD type of phrase. But, yeah, that's a lot.
Four times a week of watching a movie is a lot. Either way, Spolstra made adjustments, felt like Missoula didn't, and then the Heat scored 46 third-quarter points, completely blitzed them uh no timeouts from joe missoula during that stretch no timeout zero timeouts and then and then perfectly uh the fourth quarter started in the celtics went on a 7-0 run in about 90 seconds and spo went immediate timeout timeout being like hey why don't we stop letting them score all these points uh yeah hank are you nervous or is this because this is one of those weird games where it was bad for the Celtics, it was bad for Tatum in the fourth quarter, but you can also point to last series having the same thing happen in the first quarter and last year having the same thing happen in game one against the Heat.
So where do you land? Yeah, unfortunately I am a little bit nervous. I wasn't, you know, overlooking the Heat by any means.
But this is just unfortunately how the Celtics are. This is the team you have to live with.
It was like this last year. It was like this against Philly.
Games that they should be winning. They just take quarters off and then they lose.
You know, not calling a timeout thing was crazy. Crazy that third quarter.
They couldn't get didn't call a timeout they didn't do anything they weren't getting tatum the ball in the fourth quarter well jalen jalen brown it like has had some terrible luck with just falling like getting these crazy wet spots on the floor it happened in the philly series where he was just driving and like hit a wet spot smash his arm happened again uh last night they were getting Tatum the ball. He traveled on two possessions back-to-back with under two minutes, which when was the last time you saw that in the NBA? Yeah, it was crazy.
And the second one, I think that ref should actually call up and downs. I don't like that it's a travel.
It's called the penalty. The violation is called up and downs.
Game two is a must win. Game two is a must win.
Oh. Okay.
That's smart. Now, I did see a stat that in the history of the Heat-Celtics playoff series, the Celtics are 0-4 against the Heat in game one.
So this is kind of tracking along with that. What is it? 2-2 lifetime? Whoa.
0-4. They're 0-4 now in game ones against the Heat.
They've played the Heat more than four times now. I don't think so.
Played them three times in the last. 2012 was the LeBron Stare game six, and then 20 last year, this year.
Those are the four off the top of my head. So they're 1-2 in those series where they start, I guess, 0-3 until this year.
Jimmy Butler in the playoffs is 7-1 in series when his team wins the first game. The only one is last year when the Heat lost to the Celtics.
So it can be done. So it can be done.
But this does take the Jake whomp off the table. It does, yes.
So Jake doesn't have to quit. Yeah, he doesn't have to worry.
So I do think the Celtics will win game two. But this is weird to watch they similar to last series they kind of fucked around and uh the Heat deserve a ton of credit because the Heat are better than the Sixers and more than that the Heat are just tougher mentally tougher than the Sixers Jimmy Butler has more mental toughness than the entire Sixers organization combined they aren't gonna like be scared of of a fight.
And you saw it when Jimmy Butler's like, I'm taking over this game. What do you have? I think he had six steals.
He was all over the place. Seven assists, six steals.
Shout out Kevin Harlan, by the way. He is the best.
Jimmy freaking Butler. Yeah.
He's like, he intercepts him again. I thought he dropped the hard F-bomb on that one.
Yeah. I love that.
Jimmy freaking Butler. Kevin Harlan is the best.
He is basically a fan watching the game, but obviously incredible at calling a game. His enthusiasm matches the moment of a fan watching it.
Jay Butt is also so smart. I don't think he gets enough credit.
I think that he's super tough, obviously, but he's a really smart basketball player offensively too.

And they're running a bunch of plays where Jimmy would drive towards the basket

and then drive away from the basket towards the baseline

and just find space on the court.

The lost art of the mid-range jumper.

Jay Butt's bringing it back.

And also to all the haters that said that Jay Butt wasn't athletic,

suck my dick.

Yeah, he's very athletic. They are tougher, though.
They're a lot tougher, so that has to scare you a little bit, Hank. Even like Bam.
One on four, there was one play where he just wrestled and got a jump ball out of it. Embiid is a better basketball player than Bam.
Bam is tougher. Yeah, I mean, it's not hard to be tougher than the Sixers.
That's kind of the thing where it's like pretty much anyone's tougher than the Philadelphia 76ers. But it still ultimately comes down to the Celtics beating themselves.
They had some open looks at the end of the fourth quarter. They just missed.
They missed a couple threes. They had those two turnovers.
I don't think the Heat beat us as much as we beat ourselves, which has kind of been the running theme with the Celtics the last few years. They missed a lot of free throws again, which is just infuriating.
But if they play their game, they will win this series. They just have to not let up in the third quarter.
They have to execute down the stretch. So it's not good to lose game one.
I think if we lose game two, I'll be officially panic-buttoned out. But I think if we win game two, we're back.
The Celtics as a team feel like they have ADHD. yeah like that they really like as a team they need prescribed they need to be prescribed like ritalin adderall vivence because they just go stretches where it's like are they even focused on this game and they don't have the kill they don't have they go up 10 and it's like okay this is when is this going to swing back they don't have the like all right let's just go up 25 except for game seven i guess against the sixers but most of the time that's also the six right yeah it's like that was more, let's just go up 25, except for game seven, I guess, against the Sixers.
But most of the time. That's also the Sixers.
Right, yeah. It's like that was more like the Sixers just rolling over and, you know, us patting their belly.
All right, that's enough. We're done.
There's no more Sixers talk here. No.
I think it's fair to compare. Why? I just got done with the series.
The Sixers are done. The Sixers are dead.
Right. You have to analyze what happened in the last game that they played.
Heat Celtics. The difference, yeah.
Before this game. Heat Celtics.
It is like night and day watching the Heat and the Sixers are dead. You have to analyze what happened in the last game that they played.
Heat-Celtics. It is like night and day watching the Heat and the Sixers compete.
Right, I think the Celtics are in more trouble. Who won game one of the last series? That's why we compared it.
Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens.
I'm talking about game seven which is the most recent game. If the Celtics win in five, do the Heat still have all this great, you know, rah-rah? Good question.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this game was crazy.
They shouldn't be here. But was it Matt Barnes that said, like, the Heat aren't your average eight seed? No.
And that's so true? Because Jimmy Butler just in the playoffs is totally different. My point, Max, that you got very triggered about, you're triggered.
It's okay, you're triggered. You mad.
Well, I mean, it was enough. Well, my point is, I don't think the Celtics have a margin to fuck around as much against the Heat.
That's really what my point is. Because you have not only the Heat being a tougher team, but the Heat being a superior coach team.
Spoh is the best coach in the NBA, so you can't mess around with the Heat. No.
What sucks is you kind of squandered a Robert Williams offense game because he looked really good offensively, and then so did Marcus Smart. What did he have, like 11 assists in the first half? Yeah, he was awesome.
He had some sick passes. He did have some sick passes.
He had some sick passes. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it wasn't the't the worst game the third quarter was bad and i think the fourth quarter i think horford had a miss three jalen brown had a miss three and then they had those two turnovers like two of those things goes the opposite way it's probably a closer game celtics might have win you can't you can't have you know five turnovers and two missed shots in the last five minutes and two travels yeah well that's the travel crazy turnover is to travel turnover is crazy.
Turnover is travel. All travels were nuts.
One was up and downs. As Joe Mazzulla mentioned, the Celtics did win three out of the four quarters.
I was about to say. Oh, huge.
He said it. He said it.
We'll go back to Hank's stat from last year. If you win the majority quarters, you should win the game.
That's enormous. That was correct.
So you're really up three to one. Yeah.
Yeah. On aggregate, you guys are doing just fine.

Yeah.

Just don't let a 46 piece get dropped on you.

I'm going to watch the town.

Q3 really killed corporate town.

And Hank, you will be in the building on Friday.

I'll be in the building Friday.

Shout out to game time.

Going to get some last minute tickets.

Code take.

DMT.

PMT.

Code PMT.

You know what's funny is that that means that Joe Mazzullo watches probably, I'm going to say, two minutes of RA per year. Yeah.
Yeah. Smoked it to the filter, Dougie.
Also, Denver, Miami, and the Lakers are all undefeated at home in the playoffs. Boston's 4-4.
Ooh. Bad sports sound.
I think the Celtics and Bruins are like 2-7. So, Hank, are you going to do something when you get there? Are you going to do maybe when Kyrie had the sage? That didn't work out.
The sage? I might drop another sausage, get the vibes going. You know what you should do, Hank? You should go dressed as the nun with the mask from the town.
Sit courtside, get Missoula pumped up. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah. Do you ever think – no, actually, I'm not going to do it.
Kyrie would be perfect for this team. No.
Jason Tatum has made the Eastern Conference Finals, I think, three out of his first five years or something, and the only two years he didn't was when Kyrie was on the team. Yeah, but I'm just saying like a super skilled ball handler who can create offense and not have, make it so that Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum don't have to handle the ball.
Marcus Smart had 10 assists in the first half. I know, but he also, you, you, I mean, there's times when Marcus Smart.
Kyrie Irving is a team killer. I agree with that.
The Celtics have been better statistically every year he's not on the team. Let me say it this way.
Kyrie Irving's skill set, not Kyrie Irving. A Kyrie Irving skill set would be perfect for this team.
One of the best ball handlers in the NBA. I'm not saying taking away Marcus Smart and having Kyrie Irving.
But skill set. I think it's Jiu-Jitsu, which is his least favorite type of Jiu-Jitsu.
I like Missoula. I just think again, it kind of is similar to last series.
Keeping the guys locked in, calling timeouts when the other team goes on a run. It's little things like that.
I don't think it's the team. The team build is good.
This team is built to win a championship. Okay.
We should talk real quick before we do some Kirk Goldsberry. Also, people that had to watch on YouTube TV apparently just didn't watch it.
Hey, victory for the Boomers I so I'm not I don't I'm not a cord cutter. I guess it was like with 10 minutes left.
There was a Little Mermaid commercial and then they just never went back to the game. Holy shit.
That would drive me insane. This is why, you know, I will pay all the money in the world for my cable bill to not have to deal with this.
But my immediate thought was they better fucking figure this out before NFL Sunday. Yeah.
So I was thinking that too. And I would expect the NFL would just stop the game.
They would have TV went down. They would just be like, okay, we're taking an extended commercial break.
The NBA, I guess they probably don't have that many people compared to the cable audience watching on YouTube TV. I'd imagine the younger audience does.
But yeah, that was, that was tough for everybody out there that thinks that they're better than cable. There's not a lot of things in life that I'm, like, super passionate about that I would, like, you know, put a lot of my effort and mobilize my energy behind.
But if the NFL Sunday gets fucked up with YouTube TV, like, I'll march on Washington. We riot.
I'll Jan 6 that shit. We riot.
No problem No problem. I'll be fucking sitting in the Capitol with a bear mask on being like, give me my games back on TV.
I'm being dead serious. That is probably the one thing where I'd be like, yeah, you want to grab some fucking guns and zip ties and roll on Washington? Let's do it.
I actually think that Roger Goodell, he could do it whenever he wants to the league. He can schedule games more unfairly based off rest.
He can have Tuesday night games, Wednesday night games. But if you can't watch the games when they're live, then there's going to be problems.
Then we riot. We take to the streets.
Yep. Guy Fawkes.
Yes. Okay.
One last thing before we get to Kirk Goldsberry, and we'll talk to him about this as well. The Victor Wembenyama hype has gotten so hilariously out of control.
There's a couple things that happened in the last couple days. Woj said he was maybe the greatest prospect in the history of team sports.
People are saying he is a bigger deal than LeBron James which is just factually incorrect because Victor Wembenyama is coming in a time when all the highlights are easily accessible. And I still think more people knew about LeBron James coming out of high school.
His games were on ESPN. Yeah.
And he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a junior with the headline, The Chosen One. Right.
And for all the shit that we give LeBron James, you have to give him massive amounts of credit for not fucking all that up well no remember it's we get the credit oh that's right yeah we called it correctly we called that correctly but still with lebron like he delivered on everything that we told him he would do so he held up his end of the bargain for what we put out there right but then you have to ask would he have been that great if it wasn't for all of us gassing him up in media and telling him how good he was? Probably not. But either way, LeBron was a bigger deal culturally than Victor Wembenyam.
Yes. I know that people just have somehow forgot what it was like 20 years ago.
But again, this pre-internet being what it is today, and everyone knew who LeBron James was. You know what the funniest part in retrospective to LeBron James hype was when they would play his game on ESPN and he would have to wear these big arm patches to cover up his tattoos because in televised high school basketball, you weren't allowed to show arm tattoos for some reason.
It was a weird world back then. He also, the craziest thing with LeBron, before his first game was ever played, he did a commercial where they got like the actual players in the first game to be in the commercial.
Mike Bibby in a Kings uniform guarding LeBron James. I think we talked about that.
It's crazy. And we were watching it, and we were like, holy shit, how do they NBA scripted? Look at this.
They're playing the game before the game. Yeah, they're playing the game before the game.
And then Broussard Brew Crew shout-out said he has expectations for when bonyama to be one of the best players ever if when bonyama is kd hakeem elijah one or anthony davis he has not met expectations uh he has to have a career like kareem jordan lebron shack or duncan that's pretty lofty expectations top five all time yeah um i did see if you're a Wimbenyama hater or a Spurs hater, you can go watch the video of Kenny Lofton Jr. posting him up.
Yeah, I retweeted it. Did you? Yeah.
It's a great video. Oh, yeah.
And it's probably very selectively edited. I'm sure that Wimbanyama just ate his lunch for the rest of the game.
He did block him on one of the shots. But Kenny Lofton Jr.
just putting his big ass right into Wimbanyama's waist and knocking him off the ball. Too skinny.

That was also probably, I'd say, 45, 50 pounds ago for Wimbanyama.

Yeah.

He's probably put on a little bit of weight since then.

But, I mean, people forget Kevin Durant couldn't bench 135 one time when he was going to the draft.

Either way, I think it's probably gotten a little too out of hand for him to be, if he's a failure,

if he is not better than KD, Hakeem Olawon and anthony davis combined that's insane insane he's got to cure cancer yeah or just be better than all those guys he's got to win at least three superbowls if he's not somehow if he's not the best nba player of all time bust bust huge bust huge bust would be now weembenyama podcast, but what if he actually was like a real bust? I mean, we might just, you know what we should do? We should just become Scoot Henderson guys. Yeah.
It's like Greg Goat and KD. It's also very- Second guys, actually.
Actually, shout out to Scoot Henderson. All the confidence in the world.
He said that he still thinks that he should be the number one pick. Ooh.
I like that. I expect Wembenyama to be so good that it changes how we play basketball.
And now no one under seven feet is allowed to play. Or just raise the rims.
Yeah. Like, what is it? I know he's so crazy, but still.
Akeem, Anthony Davis, and KD. And Tim Duncan.
No, he has to have a career like Tim Duncan. Okay.
So he has to win five titles and a few MVPs. Yeah.
He has to have a career like Kareem, Jordan, LeBron, Shaq, or Duncan. I could see it.
Yeah. So, yeah, Victor, no pressure.
You know what? I might root against Victor until he decides to play for the U.S. on the Olympic team.
I like that. Or I can't wait to root against him in the Olympics if he's on France.
I want everyone to dunk on him. We should get Vince Carter back on the U.S.
Olympic team, dunk over another French guy. Yeah, him and Rudy Gobert.
Yeah. Just dunk on both of them.
Okay. Should we talk? We'll talk more basketball, playoff basketball with Kirk Goldsberry in person.
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And now, here's Kirk Goldsberry. Okay, we now welcome on our good friend, in studio, Kirk Goldsberry.
midway through the playoffs. Thought it would be a great time.
You're in New York. Thought it would be great to catch up with you, maybe clean up some of the takes you had before the playoffs.
Did you have the Bucs winning at all? You guys gave me several chances to predict the finals. That's right.
That's right. Some of them are still in play.
Okay, but you also said Jokic is just terrible at defense and the Nuggets will not win anything because they suck at defense. I did say that he struggles on the defensive end, but he's the best offensive player in the league.
Did you write an article that was like the problem with Jokic? Yeah. I pointed out that some of his defensive stats were problematic, and I stand by that.
Oh, what it was, it was like a highlight reel of five bad plays by yokich yeah like this guy stinks aren't you happy you came in yeah i am i am very happy to be here the the playoffs are in full swing and nicole yokich and jimmy butler both look like the best players yes playoffs yes okay So let's start with heat Celtics.

And we talked a little bit about it, but if you looking at it from the numbers and watching the games,

what exactly is wrong with the Celtics?

And I say wrong,

knowing that they're in the Eastern conference finals,

this series is only one game,

but it does feel like there are times where they just kind of take their

eye off the ball and they play with their meat.

Like doc river says,

what,

what do you see? I kind of agree with that. I'll set it up with this.
They come into the playoffs as the number two ranked offense and the number two ranked defense in the NBA during the regular season. The teams that have done that in the last 25 years have all won the championship.
There's two of them, both Warriors teams. So you start there.
This team on paper is stacked a two-way juggernaut but they do they do sort of f around and we saw it in game one against miami they dominate the first half and they come out of halftime and they fall asleep miami scores 46 points and then the fourth quarter sort of on the offensive end that tatum sort of falls asleep doesn't shoot the ball once in the fourth quarter. So to me, that's sort of a fair thing to say.
They are a very complete team that sort of takes naps. Right.
And they took naps a few dangerous times in that Philly series, and James Harden took advantage of it. And then it's hard to reconcile how are they the team that did that in game seven on Sunday and then shows up for game one against against miami and sort of lays the egg especially in that third quarter yeah yeah so coming out of halftime uh we we were talking about missoula earlier he watches how many what four times a week four times a week he watches the town the movie the town um so that's about as deep as our analysis of his coaching goes well he gets choked out he gets choked out yeah but from your perspective it what what is different about the celtics offense or what was different in that third quarter that you can point out and be like this is the adjustment that missoula should have made that he didn't make yeah i think in that third quarter one thing that's been pointed out is he didn't take any timeouts you know ben affleck in the town needed a couple of timeouts you know when it got really hairy but uh he didn't take any timeouts did like jeremy renner disappear behind a light pole take a sip of sprite and then go out there and get shot to death take the 22nd t there i think uh they started with a nine point lead at the end of the halftime break and ended on 12 point deficit in that quarter uh for me that was more of a I'd call timeout.
I'd change the lineup around. They were getting beat in transition.
They needed a talking to, and he just didn't stop it. I don't think their offense was as much of a problem there as it was in the fourth quarter.
When the dude who just broke the record for points in a game seven on Sunday doesn't shoot the ball in game one on Wednesday, again, what are we doing? Call a timeout. Set up a play for this guy.
Right. I think that's a fair criticism, PFT, is knowing when to call timeouts, and we've seen it now multiple times in this postseason.
In that Sixers series, he didn't call a timeout in that key late game moment. I think it was game four or game five.
I forget. But if I had to pick one thing, it's like learn how to use those TOS.
Yeah, he hates timeouts. Yeah, it is.
And Jason Tatum to me, I can't describe it. I think he is obviously one of the top five, ten, whatever you want to call him.
The Sunday game, 51 points was out of this world. And I see that.
And I'm like, that guy should take over games because he has the ability to do it

whenever.

And then you see Wednesday night and he's got two travels,

which you rarely ever see.

He's missing shots in the fourth quarter.

I don't know.

Like,

is that just the next evolution of Jason Tatum?

The consistency game to game.

Yeah,

totally.

Right.

And there's,

I'll put it one back.

Like one of the bigger games of the season was game six in Philly.

Sorry,

Max,

but he was one for 14. Like he was.
He was en route to a major loss, and it would have been on him. And to his credit, guys, one for 14, then he makes the three biggest shots of that game and saves the season.
So he has that. But then one other big thing that's different in this series is a guy named Jimmy Butler, who is his primary defender.
And I don't know about you guys, but I could not score on Jimmy Butler. That guy is playing defense at as great a level as he's playing offense.
He's the leading scorer remaining in these playoffs, and his defense might be better. He had six steals in game one.
He held Tatum to, I think, two field goals when he was his primary defender. That's crazy.
Nobody could score on Jimmy Butler right now, and that's part of the deal with this series is jason tatum going to be able to do that against jimmy so how do you stop jimmy dude i mean i don't know like do you just let him score 50 i'd watch my boot holes or try to figure it out i watched tom thibodeau try to figure both those guys have won uh a coach of the year championships now we have this rookie head coach trying to figure it out. I watched Tom Thibodeau try to figure it out.
Both those guys have won a coach of the year championships. Now we have this rookie head coach trying to figure it out.
Jimmy is a vibe. Jimmy is the best competitor of any player who walks onto any court.
But you have to beat him in several different ways. He can start fast break transitions, PFT, with these steals.
He had six steals again. That's remarkable.
And then a shooting. He hit that three last night that sort of went in and out and then came back in.
He just seems to be built for this in a way that is unstoppable, to be honest. And I don't know how I would stop him.
Jason Tatum, Marcus Smart, they have a lot of defensive weapons they can throw at him. Yeah, would you call him himmy? I would.
Yeah. Is he the most him? Definitely call him him.
Could you imagine if the Bulls had a player like that? Oh, my God. Are the Sixers? Yeah.
God damn it. Speaking of the Sixers, which we've got to talk about a little bit right now, Max is shaking his head.
Is Joel Embiid a loser? Wait, did Max change his facial hair? Is Joel Embiid a loser? He's the winner of the MVP, but his his scoring average one stat i saw was his scoring average dropped significantly in the playoffs there were games where he just did not seem engaged you know and we make fun of like shack sometimes for his analysis on on on turner but one thing he is he's very fair with the big man he's like you have to demand the ball and own these moments right and at his worst i think joel in the playoffs sort of disappeared in a way that i don't think prime shack would have ever disappeared and i think one of the things we want to see if you're an mvp be the mvp in may as well yeah you know and i didn't see it in that game seven um and some of the bigger moments in that series he didn't sort of have that mvp series that i i had hoped he'd and obviously he's not a loser but he kind of is like there's a kernel of truth he's never been past the second round he's getting that uh chris paul sort of legacy i mean how much further do you go in your career where you can't you know tmack had this for a while chris paul is joel and beat the next one of those guys i mean maybe so how do you fix the Sixers? Oh, good question. Loaded question.
Well, they're changing the coach. I think you could still build a champion around Embiid.
He is an incredible two-way player. I think they need to play with a little more shooting around him.
You can probably win with James, but... Can you? Is he good in the playoffs? At the start.
I'm talking regular season or playoffs? Playoffs. Some people in this room thought when he scored like 45 points, like, oh, he's changed.
And we said, just wait. Just wait till game six and seven.
And the real James Harden will reveal himself. Well, he did it twice.
He did that twice. Yeah, right.
What games were those? I mean, he did it twice. Yeah, he did it twice.
Well, you were saying that after game one and then again yeah but then at the end but then at the end my theory my theory was the second one game five six or seven no it was game four game four yeah game four i actually think that james harden doesn't want to win the playoffs i think like at this point we have enough analysis and you can look at what he does at the end in important games where you could make the case. Like, why would you if you were James Harden and you're getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars, there's a case to be made for just not wanting to go to work.
I have a personal experience with. So when I was in the Spurs front office, we played James and Kawhi was hurt.
And I think Tony was hurt. And we went to Houston for a game six.
Yeah, I remember driving I remember driving we stopped at Bucky's me and Monty Williams on I-10 getting some soft drinks there and we just felt like we were going to a slaughter because we knew they were whole and we were beat up and if you remember that game that's the game where this dude just didn't show up yeah and uh we had Jonathan Simmons out there he looked like the best player in the game and that was one of the early data points in James's playoff resume that said, like, maybe this guy ain't it, but he just was invisible in a game. They should have walked all over us.
And, you know, it's kind of fair. We have a lot of these games.
We're just like two for nine in the biggest game of the year. It's weird, isn't it? And I think what happens, part of the explanation for James Harden in the playoffs is it gets ref different.
You get to see, you know, over and over and over. Obviously they changed the cruise, but he doesn't get the same calls that he gets in the regular season where he lives on the foul line, a free throw line.
And then you see the trepidation he has where he doesn't want to go and attack the rim. So like all kinds snowballs from there like peak james harden is when he's attacking the rim getting the free throw line over and over and over again and you saw in game seven he just wasn't he wasn't going to do it and one more thing about that is the regular season is checkers like teams greg popovich doesn't concoct a really hyper specific game plan for a regular season game in february in a game four or game five in a game six you're seeing coaching staffs it's rocket science now it is chess now and so they're getting they're getting hyper specific with pick and roll coverages and matchups in a way that james it's harder to play basketball against those defensive when all the coaches are laser focused in right you and your act it it's harder to perform well in those moments.
Okay. So that brought up something I was, I'm happy you're here because I wanted to ask you this.
The, in that series, you saw Joe Missoula not go to that big lineup, Rob Williams and Al Horford, both starting till game six or seven. When you were in the playoffs with the Spurs, would PFT's is talking to him shut up would you would pop ever deliberately hold back something like do coaches going into a series hold back a adjustment they know is going to work and being like we will wait until they make us get to this point so like they know almost in game one they're not putting out their primo you even see it.
Sometimes Steve Kerr would do it when they go to the death lineup and they'd start it. Like, do they consciously say we're not actually putting our best team on the floor at, to start this game, game one, or playing our best rotations.
Cause we want to keep something in the chamber to surprise them later on in the series. Hell yeah, they do.
I crazy though but i'll give you a great example that involved the milwaukee bucks collapse uh three or four years ago and and nick nurse uh was the coach of the raptors and and he didn't put kawaii leonard on yannis on to kumbo until they lost the first two games of the series and that's a really famous example of like oh that was staring us at the in the face right sometimes it's a matchup sometimes it's a lineup sometimes it's an ato play that they have like and sort of break glass in case of emergency we have this look we have this lineup we have this play uh that we know that we're going to save for those emergencies i love that aspect of a seven game series that knowing special The Philly special is another one. Shout out Max.
Yeah, but knowing – When do you use that? Yeah, knowing that you – Well, yeah, that's true. That's football, though.
But, yeah, knowing like, hey, we're going to almost anticipate they're going to make this adjustment, so we're going to save a counter-adjustment for later. I would have liked to have seen that double big lineup, and I know a lot of Celtics fans wanted to see it earlier in that six or series thing.
So late. I mean, that lineup is really what took Hank Celtics from mediocre at the beginning of last year when they're sort of struggling to find their identity to the juggernaut they became that won the Eastern Conference.
And the fact that we'd barely seen it at all in the playoffs when the Celtics were struggling against the Hawks and struggling in the early part of that Sixers series, it's like, yeah, that's another sort of fair question for Joe Mazzullo. It's like, what took you so long? Robert Williams and Al Horford at the same time, pretty good.
You see, I didn't know if that was what took you so long or he was like, I'm saving this for when we actually are backster against

the wall which seems like a dangerous game to play yeah it's a dangerous game i i don't think he would have saved it that long right like i don't think he would have lost what was that series it was three two yeah yeah three two yeah top river's up three two so you mentioned you mentioned ato stuff you mentioned like set plays from out of bounds set pieces as we call them in football uh which coach draws up the best set plays amongst the remaining four um

oh around from out of out set pieces as we call them in football uh which coach draws up the best set plays amongst the remaining four amongst the remaining four uh well let's see there's a clear number one part of it is who do you have out there and it's really good if you're mike malone to have nicole jokic in an ato play because the ball is going to go through him and there's going to be a cut that sort of goes the opposite way that the defense is expecting and he's the one by the way he created so many points with assists I think he created 32 points with assists alone in game one so Mike Malone has that luxury Michael Malone he'll get mad at you if you say Mike yeah well he called my piece on Jokic a hatchet job yeah that's right the first time I had a hatchet job in my career. So that's a rite of passage in sports writing, I guess.
Yes. And my hatchet job, Michael Malone.
And then I think, you know, Eric Spolstra is the best coach in the NBA. I think with all due respect to Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich right now, what he's doing.
But I don't know if if the ATO is his strong suit. You failed.
The answer is Brad Stevens. Is he still coaching? He probably passes.
He's definitely not because he would have given some plays to Missoula. Yeah.
Maybe he's saving them. Because you would probably say that Missoula is the last one amongst the four remaining in terms of designing set plays, right? He he has the limit most limited resume but it is true brad stevens is in the building and he has a great encyclopedia of atos they could use yeah what about what about hustle stats do you have any hustle grit stats any metrics that would look at the heat because when you look at heat and celtics it's like the the celtics have a lot of players that would fall in that category of gritty players.
But for whatever reason, it seems you don't think so. I wrote an article on ESPN last week about the Miami Heat, and it was all centered around this category of stats called hustle stats.
Because I was like, what is Heat culture? Does it show up in the numbers? And when you look at the four remaining teams, PFT, you're like, the Celtics are the two-way juggernaut. The Lakers are sort of this defensive team that has two superstars.

And the Nuggets are the offensive juggernaut.

What is the heat?

The heat is this heat culture thing.

And what stats can you point at?

Loose balls recovered.

Charges drawn.

Deflected passes.

Screen assists.

They're far and away leading the NBA playoffs in all of these pain-in-the-ass stats, the hustle stats.

I say they do the dirty work,

and I was finally able to track down a bunch of these numbers.

The most important play of their playoff run

is probably Kevin Love taking the charge on Giannis

when he got hurt, but that's not unusual.

They take more charges than everybody.

They dive on loose balls, and Jimmy leads the playoffs in deflected passes and loose balls recovered. He's setting the tone there.
But, yeah, that heat culture, that identity, they hustle more than anybody else in the playoffs, and it's not close. So they try harder.
Honestly, yes. And I think my favorite description, it sounds ridiculous to say that about pro athletes, but one of my favorite quotes from Spolstra this postseason is like, balls in the air, balls on the ground, that's what we take pride in.
And then he likened his own team to Navy SEALs. So I'm not going to say they're trying harder.
I'm not going to make the war comp, but there's a lot of that. PFT's like, wait, you're waiting so hard.
No, I just sat up. I was like, now I might be all in on the heat.
Yeah, you're talking my language. But the metric is they do hustle more.
And yeah, you can say they try harder. I'm fine with that.
They try harder. Julius Randle even said it.
He was like, I think they might just want it more. Great point.
Yeah, they do. That's the debate.
Do they try harder or do they want it more? I think those are two separate things. Yeah.
I think they want it. They want it more.
Well, if we can sort of zoom into a loose ball, if there's a loose ball on the floor in the Celtics series and you're saying, okay, I got under your head who's getting that ball, I'm taking Miami Heat every time. These guys do dive on the floor faster and more regularly than almost any team I've seen in a long time.
Did you see our friend Greeny, the stat that he was pointing to of why the Heat were dominating the Knicks when the games were in Miami? He said, it's so hot in Miami, and the Heat have a hard time, or the Knicks have a hard time traveling down there. Is that South Beach is undefeated, or is that something else? I think it's just it's hot.
I think Greeny was just saying it's hot outside, so therefore cold-weather teams play worse when they're in our city. I didn't know if there was any statistical background to that analysis.
Well, I was at a finals game in 2014 when the air conditioning. You were the person who turned it off.
You were upstairs at the time? Yeah, and before we fixed the 2023 lottery, we had fixed the air conditioning. But the funniest thing about that story is like the 2014 Spurs are all old dudes like manu and tony and tim are like in their late 30s and like if there's one team that's gonna break down because the air conditioning goes off it's not it's not the it's it's it's it's not the miami heat we're all 27 and like they're athletic primes it's like the old counterpoint if you ever been like you know to an old person's house they always have heat on.
They don't want that draft. They feel that traffic.
Oh, whoa. Yeah.
There's a little. Yeah.
There's a little draft coming in. Yeah.
Pop might have been like, we can't afford to air condition the entire neighborhood. Yeah.
Right. Remember that time when Manu Ginobili punched a bat out of the air? Oh, that's one of the most badass moments in like viral NBA history.
Yeah, of course. had to get rabies shots yeah that was insane there was a bat that was flying around on the court and man who just hit it out of the air and they're like man you're not supposed to do that man yeah i want to say it's like really cool but the team was kind of annoyed because like i think he had to miss a game or two because he had to get rabies treatment that would have been a very fun i want to go back and look at that injury report manu dinobobili, DNP, rabies.
So speaking of the elements, which is crazy to say in a basketball game, there's been a lot of talk about the mile high with Denver. When you guys would go there, what was the difference in game prep or conversations beforehand for the players? I mean, all the guys have played there so many times.'s just like you're gonna get tired before you think you are and you're gonna have to have like a little extra element of like toughness to get through a 48 minute playoff game now that's the thing that's different is the lakers are um a really good defense but the nuggets are the best offense in the n.
And so now you're trying to stop the best offense in the NBA at elevation. Right.
And so this series to me is a little bit about elevation, but for me it's mostly about will this really powerful Lakers defense that's been tops or tops in the West since the trade deadline find some answers. I think Denver scored 132 points, which is like an old school Nuggets 80 score.
Yeah. You know, I think the Lakers have lost all four games when they've given up 115 points.
They haven't played an offense like this. This series is going to be only won by the Lakers if they can bring that 130 down to 120, 110.
but if they're giving up 130 points, whether it's at elevation or down at sea level at the crypto.com arena on their home floor, they're in trouble. They need to get some stops, Big Cat.
So speaking of your experience as well, and this might be just a dumb take because we do have dumb takes on here, but how much can you attribute the change in series to series where the Lakers spend the series against the Warriors chasing Steph around chasing Clay around like all their movement and everything and then they go up against the Nuggets who have a big who can do everything and it's a completely different situation that they're trying to guard do you think this is stupid they they're pros they know exactly or is there something to be said for like we just spent a whole series doing this now we got to do the exact opposite it's a little bit difficult to switch how we how we guard yeah i think lebron described it to his own teammates before the nugget series is like a video game like you have to it levels up with each round of the playoffs and I think that's certainly been true they played sort of a broken Grizzlies team and a really depleted Warriors team and now they're playing the number one seed right and the best offense and they're healthy and they're deep I don't think as great as LeBron James his career has been he's ever had to play a player like Jokic in the. I was thinking about this on the walk over here.
I was like, I don't think there's been... Jokic is such a unique force.
But as a scorer, he's hyper-efficient and can put up 30. He's averaging a 30 point triple-double in these playoffs, which is insane.
And his assists are leading to 25 or 30 points more for the Nuggets. So it's really a hard player to beat because of his size.
And then if you double team him, he will destroy you and his teammates are going to create buckets on their end on those passes. The answer might be Dirk.
Dirk Nowitzki. In terms of the size, being able to shoot everywhere.
Yes. Hyper skilled big, right? Yeah.
And he lost that series yeah right exactly scored eight points in uh game three or four yeah and i mean the thing with yoke yoke is just like with all due respect to dirk one of my favorite players like 20 some rebounds right 15 assists it's like a 2k character who's like putting up these ridiculous stats a 30 point triple double nobody's averaged that this deep into the playoffs in the history of the sport. It is crazy.
On the altitude front, has there been an NBA team that's had the oxygen containers on the bench like you see in Mile High Stadium? I feel like I've seen that, but on the spot, I can't think of that. But maybe they should, man.
They should think about doing that. Yeah, getting some oxygen masks going.
As far as LeB james is concerned yeah i feel like we've started to appreciate lebron more on this show he's hilarious his lies are very funny he is a very good player he's lived up to our expectations that we correctly set for him at the start of his career uh but in terms of his game evolving his game has changed over the years right oh so if you were to look at it from your your like heat map breakdown or any other way that you can explain it to us what has lebron gotten better at later on in his career and what has he gotten worse at he's picking his spots better but i actually he was the first nba player i ever interviewed in 2013 it was just terrifying but i asked him then about the evolution of his game i didn't know at the time like tom brady he was at the end of the first half of his career. One Hall of Fame career is over, the second one just started.
And at that time, he had learned how to make plays a lot better for his teammates, and he had learned a little bit of a post-game, and he had, in that particular season, he had stopped shooting so many threes. The formula, generally speaking, PFT, as a scorer, remains the same.
He's the leading scorer of all time because he's the best paint scorer of our lifetime in terms of magnitude. He's led the league in points in the paint multiple times.
And his jump shot is mediocre. And that's still the same.
His mid-range shooting in his era, he sort of followed suit with the general trend. Like mid-range, ew, takes a lot more threes.
So almost all of his jumpers now, not almost all of them, but a bigger share of them are three-point jump shots. A smaller share are mid-range shots.
It does feel like, though, and obviously it's LeBron James, so you can't say, like, oh, this is what you want out of him because every time he has the ball, you've got to be worried. But it does feel like teams are okay with him shooting threes.
Yeah, they should be. I think in the playoffs, you can look it up, but I think it's like 31% or lower.
25%. 25%.
He's having a tough time. The thing I would say about both him and Anthony Davis on offense, they're a lot scarier in the paint than anywhere else.
And I would say the same thing about Anthony Davis on defense. He's not that scary on the perimeter.
He's terrifying if they keep him in there in the paint. But yeah, if you're game planning, if you're the Nuggets right now and either Anthony Davis or LeBron James are rising up for a jump shot, that feels good.
It's the same thing I'd say about Giannis. And I would normally say about Jimmy Butler, whose jump shooting numbers in the regular season are pretty bad but I wouldn't say that about him right now but yeah LeBron shooting a three doesn't scare anyone right now so we're taping this on Thursday afternoon it's before game two of the Nuggets Lakers who do you do you have who do you have winning I think Denver is so good at home they've been the best team in the West all year so I have Denver winning So that means game two is a must win for Denver.
It's a must win. Yeah, it's definitely a must win.
Because if they're so good at home, yeah, you've got to win your home games. Yeah, the Lakers, put it this way, if the Lakers win game two, they accomplished the cliche split, right? Like, we got what we wanted, now we just got to win our home games.
The series starts at that that point where max is so triggered that just the word must win has him shaking his head must what is the most infuriating two words in the english language to me right now one of my favorite bits is like when y'all guys at radio row or whatever ask the super bowl people like who does that who does that bit is this a must oh i think that's uh dave damashe bit. Is this a must win? Would you say this is a must win? But yeah, game seven.
Do you guys think this is a must win? Yeah. Well, James Harden, no.
Yeah. And we correctly told Max to pass.
We told him game three was a must win for the Sixers, and they didn't win. But if you split on the road, if you're the Lakers, then you go home, you hold serve at home for the rest of the series, boom.
Yeah. Going to the NBA Finals.
So now it's a must win. Yeah, it's a must win.
It's a must. No, it's not a must win.
I mean, the Lakers. I mean, LeBron James is the guy who came back from 3-1 against a 73-win team.
No, but the Nuggets, it's a must win. Oh, for the Nuggets? I do think so.
Yeah. Yes.
I have it as a must compete for the Lakers. Must compete.
No, no, for the Nuggets. I actually, looking at my notes now too, PFT, I don't have it as a must win.
I also have it as a must compete. Okay, yeah.
You have to show me some life. You have to fight.
You're not going to get... The crazy part about that first game was the Nuggets had all those lucky shots that went in.
Off balance, falling away. They probably had five shots that had no business going into the basket.
They made all five of them. And then they barely managed to squeak away at the end.
So that was, would you consider that a moral victory for the Lakers in game one? That was the other way to look at it. That was about the Lakers' best offensive shot.
I think AD had 40, LeBron had 26. They were shooting well.
If you look at their scores, like them scoring 126 is a pretty rare thing. I think that might even be their high in this postseason.
Maybe they had one more. But like I said earlier, this Lakers offense isn't good enough to win a game where they give up 130 points very often.
Yeah. I still like to think of the NBA in the NBA Jam terms.
Yeah. Growing up in the 90s, you played that video game, I'm assuming.
Of course, yeah. If you were to reduce every team to an NBA Jam duo, who wins the finals? And who would those players be? Jokic and Murray remind me of the Spurs because they're like two foreign guys that nobody cares about they think are boring in the national media.
But they're really badasses, obviously. And that's underappreciated.
But Anthony Davis and LeBron James would be hard to, because they're both powerful scorers, powerful defenders. The Celtics obviously have to.
And can I get two Jimmies for Miami? Yeah, I'll give you two Jimmies. I forgot that.
Then I'm taking two Jimmies. That's too many hems, though.
It can't be. It's them.
Yeah. They would be them.
No, Jimmy and Kevin Love, and you put Kevin Love in the corner for NBA Jam. Yeah, who would be the Heat's second guy? Bam yeah shooting maybe it's bad maybe it's jimmy that shooting green bar would be all the way yeah jimmy bam then kevin love you have the three or maybe max truce yeah one quarter i forgot jamal murray was gabe benson i did too when he said when he said two two foreign guys yeah i was like what the fuck yeah well jamal murray's canadian well there is a movement that pft has been following i'm sure about uh making canada the 51st state not quite there yet i have seen that so like alberta wants to secede from canada and join the united states first of all i'm going to need to see at least like a powerpoint from the government of albert tell me what you bring to the table your application but denied i would be i would be into it just because we would get connor mcdavid and then maybe the oilers would win a stanley cup and maybe like america still has yeah you could yeah and you could also tell canada like do you guys ever in the history of your country ever want to win a stanley cup again join us join us yeah join a guy i would also i i would say we'd have to kick one state out i like 50 stars on the flag flag.
It's easy to remember. One state's got to go.

Plus the shape of the map.

Like if Alberts is like,

now we have some kind of tumor

growing out of like Montana up there.

I think you just make it to Dakota.

One Dakota?

One Dakota.

One Dakota's fine.

That's all you need.

Just give Delaware to France or something.

Yeah.

Like I told you,

conference realignment's getting out of control.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Non-playoff. What are the Warriors going to do? I thought we were going Wemby.
The Warriors are going to have some big questions about Draymond Green coming back. He's going to either come back for one year or he's going to be a free agent.
The good news is they have Stephen Curry, who is a culture setter. They have Klay Thompson.
Almost any other team, I should say. About 25 teams would say, okay, I'll trade places with them.
You have Steph Curry. You have Steve Kerr.
You have Klay Thompson. You might have Draymond Green.
I'll take it. That's starting on second, if not third base, for your next season.
I think they tried and failed Big Cat to sort of develop their new core on the fly um wiseman's no longer there kaminga hasn't hit moses moody is not quite there uh jordan pool uh has has not quite meshed with the older players that's fair to say that's fair that's fair he stinks meshed with the older raymond did say that if he didn't punch him they would have won that series i didn't that's accountability yeah yeah or he said maybe it would have gone different or if you punched him harder maybe he said they'd still be playing yeah they'd still be playing if he had killed him with a punch they might have won that series that's true somebody else to say jordan yeah yeah but yeah i mean i i do think they should keep draymond how can you not i mean Draymond is that team, like I was talking about earlier with the Celtics. The Warriors dynasty is obviously about shooting and revolutionary shooting, but people sleep on their defense.
They've been a top five defense almost every time they've won, and Draymond has changed the way that teams play defense in this league. Switch everything, small player, skills at the center position, setting up his teammates, and Steve kerr deserves a lot of credit for building this motion offense that plays through draymond green um so yeah they should keep draymond in my opinion because he's such a core piece of their identity i said i went as far as the second most player on the most important player on their team who's the first steph i agree yeah yeah i think steph you kind of have to give it to Steph.
Yeah. But I do think like if they said like Draymond or Klay, like Klay is phenomenal career, but you saw that it's not maybe not the same.
Maybe he gets it back. He's gone through some crazy injuries, but like he, they were, LeBron was running away from Klay in that series to let him take open shots, to go guard Steph.
Draymond right now, I think, still has that defensive edge. But when I look at the failure of this Warriors season, it's based on depth and defense.
And Draymond takes accountability for that defense. And they have been top five when they won the championship, including last year.
And this year, they were middle of the pack. They were not good on the road, obviously.
And then the depth, the front office was unable to sort of surround that core of dudes with the sort of Otto Porter-type players they had last year. Andre Iguodala, Sean Livingston earlier in the dynasty.
JaVale. JaVale.
Yeah, championship teams, you can't have like weak links almost anywhere the playoffs are too hard uh and this this year's warriors team just didn't have like that iguodala livingston even auto porter type players in those roles you use the f word you said failure was it a failure did you mean to say that or was it you were gonna seize on that i mean if you look at it from a life perspective they got to travel a lot hang out with their friends they grew as individuals yeah yeah what

what if the spurs when they lose uh when you what year did you start with the spurs 15 okay so let's

say what year they lose in the playoffs if you walked in the offices after and you're like guys

i don't really think that was a failure like we we learned a lot about ourselves we walk in so the

first year i worked i was like finally playoffs are over we lost you know take a break it's like no now it's time to do the draft right so you walk in and it's like incredible effort on the draft uh nobody talks about it you're just like okay we have 29th pick in the draft like get to work and we have 59 too and we take that more seriously than anybody so it's like secretly the hardest part of a front office is after the playoffs when now you have to turn around and draft and prepare for free agency um but when we would lose to oklahoma city or we lose to the warriors in the playoffs it of course it hurt especially in the years where you think you could win the championship right when there's that window and you don and you don't strike, it's okay to say that we failed at our goal this season. Yeah.
It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that you wasted a year of your life.
And that's a nice sort of turn of the language. Like, yeah, we failed to meet our goal.
Like, that's what I'm saying. And like, I actually agree with what Yana said and what Damian Lillard said earlier in the season about rings culture and like Yana saying failure it's not a personal failure that's not what i'm saying obviously you guys know that but you know they they failed to meet their expectations with this title defense that is that is obvious yeah yeah so you mentioned the draft um let's talk about women yama so congrats on rigging the draft and san antonio great job pop third time that they've had the first overall pick third time they've gotten the best player ever to play on their team.
So that's big stuff. Congratulations.
We want to be first on the Wimbenyama is going to be a bust train. So can we say that he's too French? That's kind of the line that we're going with right now.
No. But he's very French.
Yeah, I heard of Democracy PFT. Yeah, but like Rudy Gobert, too French.
Maybe, actually. Yeah, right.
I don't think he's that french okay okay he's tony parker he's tony parker he's boris deal french he's the wine france yeah yeah the last surrender france no no we've we've you gotta make that distinction yeah you think there's the spurs sitting there being like, so how French is he? He's fully French.

Yeah, fully.

Like he's going to bring his own guillotine or what?

But there's different kinds of French.

That's what I learned from you guys.

That's true.

He's Tony Parker French.

He's got the heart of a champion out there.

He's a young guy.

And like Tony, when we drafted him a long time ago,

nobody expected him to become a finals MVP.

This guy has very high expectations. Oh, you think? A little out of control.
Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, you guys have followed the Zion hype, the LeBron hype.
It doesn't always work, but this guy is built to – I always say it's like if you challenge a 10-year-old to create a 2K player or draw on a piece of paper what an incredible basketball player would look like, a kid would draw a 7'5 guy who can dribble, pass, and shoot. Yeah.
So you think it's – How many championships? Yeah, and how – What would be failure for his career if you look at it? Let's set the line right now. I'd say if he wins fewer than four titles, failure.
Chris Broussard, your man today, I saw on social media, he said if he's not a Keem or KD, it's a failure. Yep.
That's a little rich. I mean, these are generational players.
So obviously we know how these guys turned out, but if you like went back the last 20 years, number one overall picks, LeBron, Anthony Davis,

Dwight Howard, Maple Jordan, Anthony Bennett.

Like, would you say he's on par with those type of prospects

just coming in in terms of everything you've seen?

I mean, even in a measured way, guys, like all jokes aside,

he deserves to be, in my opinion, the most hyped player

since LeBron James is coming to the NBA.

Okay.

And it's largely a physical thing.

Basketball is not rocket science, even though people like me

Thank you. deserves to be in my opinion the most hyped player since lebron james is coming to the nba okay and it's largely a physical thing basketball is not rocket science even though people like me try to make it that way if you're 7'5 and you can run and jump like just imagine big cat trying to shoot against this dude like just imagine trying to fucking put my ass into him and just he might not even be a center he might be this terrifying like help defender that can stretch out with these like plastic arms and block any shot just that so you're talking about one of the the the bullshit shots the nuggets hit the other night and i know one of them you're talking about is the akiokic at the three-point line and ad extending as far as he could to block it ad probably the best single defensive impact right now in the playoffs when yama blocks that exact shot hmm that you're telling me he's soft because he's not going to play center.
You said he was soft because he was French. I'm not saying that.
He's Tony Parker French. Two-ply.
No, he's going to be, I think his immediate impact is on defense. I would say, look, the Popovich dynasty is built on three things.
The first thing is lottery luck. The second thing is defense.
And the third thing is foreign players. What I like about this for the Spurs is he sort of represents all three of those things to extend that dynasty into the 2020s.
He's the perfect Spur. Congratulations.
He is. You got the perfect...
That's right. When you take into account the Greg Popovich factor, he's obsessed with wine, right? Oh, he's French.
I'm sure women... Yeah, but Pop is like a big wine guy.
Yeah. Tell us about Pop.
Did he ever take you guys out for like expensive bottles of wine? I've heard that he'll go in and like educate the sommelier on their own wine list in a restaurant. No, he loves his European wine, his Italian reds and his French reds.
He loves some Oregon reds, but he is very knowledgeable, but likes to learn a lot. He's got a growth mindset.
So if he comes out to New York and goes to Per Se or something like that, chances are the Somme knows a lot about wine and he's not sitting there teaching them. But yeah, those dinners with Pop are legendary, in part because of these international teams he's built and you're sitting across the table from somebody from a faraway land who's got an interesting story.
And that's a big part of that Spurs culture. All right.
So I had one last question. We love having you on Kirk rowback question.
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Four teams left. Hard to screw this up.
Finals and champion. You've now had the most predictions in part of my take history.
How many predictions do I get? You only get one. Give us finals and champion.
I'll give you three. Yeah.
I'll give you three. Okay.
So. Give us your first best.
I still think Boston and and denver okay their top top seeds remaining um lakers celtics would be man that's just a classic because they both i think i talked about this last time both hanging on the 17th title and like the battle for 18 head to head would be pretty sweet uh and then yeah i mean miami denver would be my third one okay okay uh but my my champion it's either going to be the nuggets the celtics the lakers or the heat okay but so the one combination you didn't pick though was heat lakers definitely not happening definitely not happening i don't think that's ever happened i don't think that's ever happened right now the bubble final see i'm adding that to my prediction list yeah in all seriousness boston denver boston denver they're the most winner teams and i would take denver dude let's go i did write the article about yokich's defense i still think that's an issue for that team but boston's a real jump shooting happy team that weakness would sort of be deodorized by the style play of the celtic squad so i'll be wrong i love being wrong on your show. It is fun.
Pardon my incorrect take. Yeah.
But like that nerd. I will also remind you, big cat that in our playoff preview in Austin, I was clear that this is the most effed up postseason.
You did NBA history. It's so weird.
We have an eight seat. Oh, two, eight seeds in the conference finals.
We have the first plan team winning a series. We have two plan teams it's just the it's parody it's a lot like march madness when we saw you guys in houston and we're looking at the final four we're like how did these teams make it to the final four yeah it's fun it's been an awesome playoff it would also be just a great if you if you're a fan of tuning into the show to hear us lose listening to lebron james beat hank personally in the finals that would be an all-time episode i would love that i don't want him to win but that's a great consolation prize that we would have yeah and there's there's a lot of good stories like if jimmy does this like that will be one of if not the most incredible runs of ever seen in the postseason yokich obviously would take his reputation to another level but yeah if lebron if LeBron wins this.
There's a lot of legacies at stake. Legacy talk.
Jimmy, yeah, Jimmy becomes something totally different. Tatum would be something different too.
Jimmy would become an all-time great if he won a championship this year. Yeah.
Legendary. Does he want it more? Is he going to try hard? That's the question.
I think yes. But you wrote him off that's fine yeah yeah you did uh kirk thank you as always great to see you great to talk ball and uh hopefully you're right thank you guys nugs celtics okay all right kirk goldsbury was brought to you by our friends at morgan and morgan if you been injured in an accident, Morgan & Morgan makes it easier for you.
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You only pay if you win. Morgan & Morgan, America's largest injury law firm okay here he is randy moss and now for something completely different okay we now welcome on our very special guest uh it is recurring guest randy moss ahead of the preakness we talked to him for the kentucky derby and he's wearing the recurring.
There you go. Randy, I don't think you understand what this means to us because I think when we started this podcast, we're like, this will be a really good idea.
We'll send recurring guest shirts to all of our recurring guests. I think we might have only sent like three of them out.
I know you have one. Rachel Nichols has one.
Blake Griffin is still waiting for his in the mail. Yeah, who else has one? It might just be two.
Spencer Hawes might have one. He might, yeah.
But it is as rare as rare gets for you to have that. Hey, I embrace the recurring guest shirt.
I really do. I wear it.
I've worn it before with you guys. Once before at Churchill Downs.
But I had to bring it. That's awesome.
And i didn't text you till yesterday because i've we've just been busy so you packed that i just in case i heard from you big cat i packed it and my daughter goes to the university of oklahoma as did two of my sons so i've got to fly the ou uh the ou shirt as well i love it all right so there you go great start to this uh not to get negative but i think derma so so so to gato just finished the kentucky derby he actually ran a good race when you go back and look at what happened to him at the start i'm not saying he would have won i'm not gonna make excuses but to finish six with that start that he had last, being way back there, I was proud of the way the old Dermasota got K. ran.
But he didn't win, and you didn't catch. That's loser talk.
Respectfully, Randy, that's loser talk. He finished the race.
If he had ran the entire race like you thought he would, he would have won. But he didn't, so he lost.
But everyone who bet on him gets a stamp on their ticket saying randy moss was proud of him hey up to the mark won the race before though so yeah some money to bet on derma soda gake and lose it all back that's actually exactly how my derby day went so thank you for extending my enjoyment of of that lovely saturday what what what was the issue with him out of the gate He lurched to the left, slammed into the side of the gate, and whereas they wanted to be sitting third or fourth on the outside tracking the pace, they were last when they left the starting gate and wound up being way back there. So was Mage, but Mage likes to run that way, and Dermis Odagake is used to being up close to the pace.
He rallied in front of Mage. Yes, I think when they turned into the stretch, but then Mage blew by him, and he sort of ran evenly the rest of the way.
Yeah. It was a crazy derby because we had the favorite be out before the race even happened.
What was your take on all of that? I know that there was some sensitivity around horses because there had been some tragedies that week. But for Mike Rapoli, it felt like he got kind of screwed because he had a horse that had beaten Meij twice in the last two times.
And they clearly felt, Rapoli and his trainer Todd Fletcher, that Forte was capable of running and would be just fine for the Kentucky Derby. But here's the deal.
We're going to be there were five scratches in all for the Kentucky Derby. That's the most since the 1930s.
There was one year in the 1930s that also had five scratches. But this is something that we're going to have to get used to because there is an increased emphasis and not just because of what happened at Churchill Downs this year on horse safety.
The veterinary examinations pre-race are much more stringent than they ever have been before, which is a good thing. But you're going to see this going forward, maybe not five every year, but there will definitely be more scratches right before triple crown races than we're accustomed to seeing.

What are those veterinary checkups like?

Do they feel the horse's muscles?

Do they watch it run?

Both.

They not only have a lot more eyeballs on the horses every morning when they train, but they also do up-close,

hands-on physical examinations right before the race. One day, two days before the race, they'll feel the horse's legs.
They'll watch the horse jog on asphalt, where sometimes if the horse has any problems, it'll show up more jogging on asphalt than it will jogging on a cushioned racing surface. they'll turn over every rock that they can uh in order to try to assure that the horses are perfectly 100% sound before the race and Forte had had a bruised foot that they were dealing with right before the race um happened on Wednesday they thought that uh that he had turned the corner and the horse would be just fine to race, but the veterinarians thought otherwise.
All right, so looking at the Preakness, Mays is going to be the betting favorite right now, but we have a Baffert horse back. So Baffert's back in the mix, national treasure.
Do you think from just like, you know, how it always works out is, you know, there's some horses racing in the Preakness that didn't race in the Kentucky Derby. What does that mean for Mage racing just two weeks ago and the advantage for all the other horses? You know, generally in the past, horses from the Kentucky Derby have come back and run their races two weeks later in the Preakness.
But a lot of that is because the primary horses they were running against, the toughest competition, also ran in the Kentucky Derby. So they were all coming back in two weeks, right? Now you've got a phenomenon where you have horses like National Treasure and First Mission and Perform who have more time off coming into the Preakness than Mage does.
And the two weeks, I think, is a disadvantage to Mage, even though they say he's been trained exceptionally well and seems to have bounced back. You can't really tell.
The best trainers in the world, Wayne Lucas will always tell you, that the better a horse is, the more difficult it is to read how much a race took out of the horse. Because the great horses, just like the great human athletes, they do things easily.
They make it look easy. And they're eager to train in the mornings.
And they're enthusiastic about doing their jobs. But then as my buddy, my colleague Jerry Bailey always says, you really don't know how much the Derby took out of the horse until you get to the quarter pole of the Preakness.
So I do think it's a disadvantage for Mage. And I also think that the pace that was a big advantage as it turned out for him at the Kentucky Derby, it was much faster than we had all expected, is probably not going to materialize that way on Saturday here.
And that also won't necessarily play in Bages' favor. Randy, I need you to talk me out of something because I feel like I'm being entrapped into making a bet that I will soon regret.
And that's on the long shot for this race. Because the long shot, 50 to 1 right now, chase the chaos.
You can't name a long shot. I can't have the long shot in the race be called chase the chaos and not bet on it because it's telling me that I need to chase the chaos because what if the chaos wins? So talk me out of betting on this horse.
The only chaos that you're likely to experience betting on chase the chaos is

maybe trying to explain to people afterward why you bet on chase the chaos.

Uh,

the odds are,

you know,

the odds are,

are representative of the horse's chances of winning.

Put it that way.

You're not getting a bargain.

If the horse is 30 to one or 40 to one,

if you want to bet a long shot,

and I don't know how much of a long shot he's going to be, he's 15 to 1 in the program, perform as an outstanding chance to win the race, despite the fact that he's likely to be double-digit odds. If you go back and watch his last race, which was here at Pimlico, trained by Shug McGahee, the horse got in more trouble than a sailor on shore leave.
I mean, it was like he had no chance to win watching the race. And he only got a chance to run like 100 yards when he finally got cleared.
And then he just erupts and he mows by horses and looks really good winning. Now, he's been in a lot tougher competition, yeah.
But he's got a great trainer. He's coming into the race the right ways.
And, you know, he's improving. He's got a really good chance to win at a nice price.
So what is your pick for the Preakness? Because we also, there's first mission as well. There's a lot of people are going to take National Treasure.
Which horse do you think is going to win the Preakness? I'll take National Treasure. Okay.
I think he's going to control the pace. This is obviously on dirt.
That's of primary importance. He's never been in a situation where he had that advantage before in any of his recent races.
They've always felt like he was a really, really good horse. Just never quite got over the hump.
Never quite showed them everything that they thought he had. They're putting blinkers on, which a lot of times will help if a horse maybe isn't 100% focused all the time.
And with the inside post and John Velasquez and a lack of competing early speed, plus the blinkers, I think you'll control the pace. To me, that gives him the edge.
Okay. This might be a dumb question, but do they monitor how much the horses sleep the night before the race? Monitor.
It depends on your definition of monitor. They have night watchmen on hand.
Even if they have a camera and the horse is tall, they don't go back and check that. So, no.
I just wonder if there's any correlation between a well-rested horse running a good race, just like a human, a well-rested human would perform better usually. Oh, I'm sure there is.
I'm sure if a horse had a restless, sleepless night for whatever reason, he would be tired on the race day and would not run as well. But they take every precaution to make sure that there are no disturbances around the barn.
They have the night watchman making sure that there's no commotion outside to wake a horse up or anything like that. It's hard to say if a horse has a restless night, but if they do, it wouldn't be advantageous.
I don't think it happens very often, though. Horses like their sleep.
Yeah. Just like they like to eat.
They like to eat. That's why I'm a horse fan.
So we can see you as well on Friday with the Black Eyed Susan. Let's talk about that race real quick.
Okay. Give us your take on the race and maybe even the exotics.
which horses you think are going to maybe not win but finish in one, two, three. Well, I'll give you what I think is a really solid exact.
It's probably not going to pay a whole lot. It's not going to be 15-1 like perform.
But Faza over Merle. And you got the Bob Baffert thing here again in the Black-Eyed Susan.
The thing about Faisa, she's undefeated, right? I think she's six for six. I believe it's six for six, maybe five for five, but she's never been beaten.
She won the San Anita Oaks by six and a half lengths. Normally, in most situations, per the Churchill Downs rule this year, the owner of FASA, who is a guy named Michael Lund Peterson, one of the founders of Pandora Jewelry, would have transferred the horse to another trainer, which would have permitted FASA to run in the Kentucky Oaks.
But Peterson said, no, and I'm not doing that. He said, Bob Baffert's my man.
Bob Baffert is the guy who's given me every bit of success I've ever had in thoroughbred racing. I'm going to stay loyal to the team.
I'm not going to give the horse to another trainer. We can't run in the Kentucky Oaks.
Okay, so what? I'm from Baltimore. We'll just run in the Black Eyed Susan instead of the Kentucky Oaks.
So the best three-year-old filly in the country was not in the Kentucky Oaks, but she will be in the Black Eyed Susan against a much easier competition than she would have faced in the Kentucky Oaks anyway. That's interesting.
I like that. Loyalty.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So I think FaZe is a standout in the Black Eyed Susan.
And I really like Marlaza's last race at Oakland Park. So I think that's a pretty solid exacto on Fridays.
I like Marlaza's, my favorite jockey's on Marlaza, Florent Giroux. He's got a- There you go.
His mother-in-law used to be a waitress at Arlington Heights where there was a racetrack. And every time that she would, like, if we had her, just bet Flora Giroux all day and he would win everything.
Yeah, he's a good rider. Joelle Rosario rode Merlaza in her last race at Ovalon Park.
They switched to Flora Giroux, and Rosario's agent was not particularly happy about that switch. So, you know, she is a horse that's got a good reputation.
Yeah. How many preaknesses does this make for you, Randy? Well, it was my 43rd Kentucky Derby here and I'm one shy on the preakness count.
So this would be my 42nd, 42nd preakness. So you gave us some, uh, some good flavor with what to expect.
If you're going to the Derby for the first time. I'm from the D.C.
area, so I know a little bit more about the Preakness and the port-a-potty relays that they do up there. But from your perspective, if you're going to the Preakness for the first time, what should you expect as a spectator? The Enfield, if your tastes run to raucous celebrations, to raucous sort of party atmospheres with good music, by the way.
The infield is much more, I think it's more fun at Baltimore than it is at Churchill Downs. They've tightened up security at the Kentucky Derby infield a lot more than they have the Preakness infield.
So, you know, if you really like that sort of thing, and who doesn't, then the Preakness infield is a whole heck of a lot of fun. It's a very classy way for you to say it's a shit show.
It's just a shit show there. You've seen the port-a-potty runs.
Oh, yeah.

The facility itself, I would say,

if people have never been to the Preakness,

have never seen the second leg of the Triple Crown,

and I'll try to say this in a diplomatic way, keep your expectations low.

The Pimlico is not exactly the garden spot of American horse racing. The grandstand is in various states of disrepair.
A portion of it is condemned down at the end where they can't put fans in it anymore. The plan, and it can't come soon enough, is to tear it down and rebuild the facility here, which the Preakness greatly deserves.
But on the flip side, it is traditional. You know, I mean, you can definitely come to the Preakness and say that the grandstand looks exactly like it looked 60, 70 years ago.
It just needs a little help, and it will get it. But it's a fantastic, fun event.
The people of Baltimore embrace it wholeheartedly. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year.
It's always a great week of racing. And as Chick Lang, the guy that used to run Pimlico for years, called him Mr called mr preakness what chick lang always liked to say the preakness has something that the kentucky derby will never have it has the derby winner that's true that's true good point that's a great point um all right last question uh any other race any other horse you're looking at that people can keep their eyes on either Friday or Saturday?

Do you have the entries in front of you there? What race? Go to the dinner party stakes on Saturday. I think it's the seventh race, maybe, something like that.
Okay. Hold on.
All right. Trainer Graham Motion has three horses that he has entered in the dinner party stakes.
and the only reason I'm asking you to do this is because I had to rush out here

and I meant to... motion has three horses that he has entered in the dinner party states and the only reason i'm

asking you to do this is because i had to rush out here and i've been oh wait wait i've got my computer with me as well if you can't find it there is a horse i gave you up to the mark there's a horse that i like just as much in the dinner party stakes and i've got it right here His name is Hurricane

Hurricane Dream

Alright

He looks so good

So good I got it right here. I got it.
His name is Hurricane Dream. All right.
He looked so good, so good winning his last race. He looked like he's going to be one of the best turf horses in America, just like up to the mark when he won the Old Forrester Turf Classic.
So I think you can, in my opinion, you can confidently bet Hurricane Dream in the dinner party stakes. Which race is that? That is race.
Dinner party stakes is the eighth race. Love it.
The eighth race Saturday. All right.
What is it? What is Hurricane? What are the odds going to look like for Hurricane Dream? I'm going to guess about seven to two, 72 three to one something like that in the program he is 72 i think he might go a tick lower than that but uh that would be a wise investment okay i love it i'm on it i love it all right well randy thank you as always you are the best we appreciate your time as always. And love the shirt.
Love the shirt. There you go.
There you go. All right.
Thanks so much, Randy. Talk to you later.
Thanks, Randy. Oh, and by the way, that is Mage.
I don't know if you can see in the little gap there. Can we say hi? Can we say congratulations? Oh, look at that.
Let's see if we can say congratulations. This is my favorite part.
I think we did this one year when a horse got busted for doping and we apologized to it. Was it Nyquist? No, we kicked Nyquist off to one of that fat pieces.
Hey, Mike Tirico. Hey, Mike Tirico.
You're a good hand boss. Go.
I'm not the VIP. He's over there.
Go. Mike Tirico, come on part of my take.
One of the many things that makes Mike Tirico so good, he's out here at the barn. Love it.
In the afternoon. Oh, there's Mace.
Hey, Mace. Just want to say on behalf of part of my take, congratulations on your Derby win.
But Derma Sadagaka would have beaten you if it ran its total race. Yeah, Randy was proud of Derma, not you, Mish.
All right. All right, guys.
Thanks, Randy. See you, Randy.
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Okay, let's finish up with some fire fest of the week. Hank? Yep.
You're stressed? I am stressed. I'm moving next week.
A lot of things going on. Not built for balancing, planning ahead, packing, organizing, scheduling.
It sucks. It's not great.
And I'm going home this weekend, which is part of my part of my fire fest so that just adds an extra wrinkle uh so i'm just i'm just stressed but it's really there's nothing to be stressed about other than just the fact that i have to like be proactive with a lot of stuff right that's not going to be stressed about other than uh stress itself moving buying a new house getting rid of your furniture and basketball team's down to one. Oh, and don't forget fixing the car that he crashed.
Yes. But besides that, smooth sailing.
Easy week. Easy week.
Yeah, these are being an adult rules for the most part, but you'll have these times where it's like, this sucks. I really wish I didn't have to.
Just the act of making decisions, planning things.

It sucks.

This is going to sound a little crazy slash dramatic, but I was packing yesterday and

I legitimately closed my eyes and was like, could I just fast forward a week and a half?

Yeah.

I just opened my eyes and I'm in Chicago and I'm moved in? It sucks, but I'm excited for a week and a half. I'll just say that.
Yeah. My other fire fest, so I am going home this weekend, Stella Blue Coffee.
Yeah. Just announced a partnership with Cane's Donuts.
Yes. Which is a donut shop in Boston.
They have some in Saugus. They have one downtown.
And future me, we were in a meeting talking about it. They said, Hank, are you going to be in Boston anytime soon? I said, yeah, I'll be home next weekend.
And then I said that I would go to a Cane's Donut. I'm going to give out some Celeblue coffee hats.
But I am playing golf at 930, so I'm going at 7 a.m. on Saturday, which future me was like, yeah, sure, I'll just do it first thing in the morning.
And now, again, adding that to the plate of things that I have going on just doesn't make me less stressed. Well, I mean, you've got to get up to play golf anyway.
Might as well have some great donuts. Yeah, Cane's Donuts.
There are multiple locations. Actually, when Massachusetts got gambling legalized, we went up to do streams.
And we were there for the weekend. I went to Cane's Donuts, walked in, got my donuts, walked to the car.
And the woman who owns Cane's Donuts poked her head out. And she's like, are you Big Cat? And I was like, yeah.
And she's like, oh, I'm a huge fan. And then they now carry Stella Blue Coffee.
So great story, great people. And Hank, you will get to meet them.
Yeah, I'm excited to go. I'm just not excited to wake up, and I got to make sure I get up for it.
But I will be there Saturday morning, 7 o'clock, downtown location. I will be giving out Stella Blue Coffee hats if you get there early enough, so come out at 7.
Get some Stella Blue Coffee. Get a donut.
We're going to have some custom six Boston Cream Pie donuts they're making for me. So yeah, come out and get some.
Also, if you are listening to this and you work at a donut place or own a donut place around Americaica let's talk let's get it going let's build dm the still blue coffee account on instagram or twitter because i want to carry still blue coffee in all the donut shops so shout out maria from canes donuts who was the first to uh jump aboard you can get still blue coffee if you're in the boston, you're getting donuts. Stella Blue Coffee at all Canes Donut locations now.

Beautiful.

You're fucked.

Again, like I'm everything.

I've spent a lot of the last two days just like.

Because usually it's like, you know, in the flow of a work, we give one or two things, extra things that you have to focus on.

Yeah, no, you're fucked.

I have like 10 things and every time I'm just like, just don't even think about it. to a week and a half yeah no you're fucked you're fucked you're fucked you're completely fucked but if the celtics fucking lose on friday i'll be i'll not be a happy camper suey season but i will be a happy camper suey season no just i'll be happy okay put a smile on your face yeah all All right.
PFT. My Firefest of the week is that I've become addicted to minus signs.
I go minus sign hunting. Yeah.
And for the last couple weeks, I've been betting pretty heavy on pretty heavy favorites or taking a lot of props where I'm doing the adjusted overs where it bumps it down a few slots. So the odds are terrible, but I'm I'm laying a lot of money on it and I've been winning on them and it's it.
I'm going to get doinked again is basically like, I know I see this train coming. I'm standing on the tracks and I'm going to get hit by it eventually.
Uh, but so far I haven't. And it's, uh, it's giving me a very false sense of confidence that I'm an excellent gambler.
Yeah. So I've been, my, my thing is I'm a big ass guy.
I've been going at the overs for assists for various players each night. And, uh, and so far the asses are pulling through, but again, that might have something to do with the fact that all the overs are hitting.
Yeah, no, every game has been, yeah. I mean, both the first games, uh, went like 30 points over the total.
So all the overs hit the overs hit. I know, Hank, you're a big plus sign guy, but a lot of people think that it's actually more courageous.
It takes bigger balls to go after a minus sign than it does a plus sign because you've got to lay so much on it. That's actually not true.
Yeah, that's like bail. You're like a bail bonds guy.
Yeah. What do you mean? That's definitely not true.
You're just like 30-year fixed income stocks stocks i agree with him no but i mean if you're not true you're putting more money on the line yeah just investing in apple mcdonald's google you're playing safe no but you're not playing safe when you put so much money on it to make like a third of what you just bet right but it's more likely to happen and you're you're basically saying i don't have the the balls to bet something that's wildly unlikely to happen. That's not what I'm saying at all because Billy is the worst gambler and crazy like not even really a gambler and he's agreeing with you.
That's all you need to know. Who had the best record in NFL gambling this year? But that was straight spreads.
Yeah, I'm just saying. That had nothing to do with it.
But Hank's bringing up gambling records. No, I'm saying Billy literally has a system where he just bets both sides so he can say he won like a dollar.
Right, he's not gambling. And he's saying that I agree.
Billy's actually so scared of gambling, he bets both sides, and he's saying, you're right. Because it would be worse to lose like a minus 200 bet.
But it doesn't take bigger balls. Like betting the unlikely outcome is the – most people can't bet like, oh, this plus 10 underdog, I'm going to bet a money line.
That's bigger balls. But the payout is so much bigger.
Minus 10, like taking like, oh, Celtics minus, let's say, 275 against the Sixers in game seven. If you were going to bet that money line, you shouldn't brag about that bet.
But the risk-reward's higher. You know what? Never mind.
Yeah, you're risking more money, but it's not like... Right.
Yeah, the risk-reward is higher, so you could lose. In my brain, every bet has the same ability to win or lose.
Okay, well, now I feel a little bit less happy about my recent wins. I like what you're doing.
It obviously doesn't take – It's riskier to do the long shots. When you put in the amount – I guess for me it feels riskier because I'm going into it fully well aware of the fact that this could lose in disastrous fashion because I have been doinked in the past, and that was a big wake-up call.
But I'm still – I'm addicted to minus signs on the course, hank and in my betting life hank said it was giving him anxiety when he saw it yeah so yeah takes i wrote exactly takes balls but then did you have what happened i like so we were texting last night and you said marker smart over four and a half assists like minus it was like minus 200 or something i bet it with you solidarity yep and then he had nine assists in like 10 minutes and i was like well that was stupid we could have won so much more money yeah so i did i did feel that way but then i also it was great because i got to spend the rest of the three quarters of the game worrying about my other bets right right that's just like let's check one off the board yeah um but yeah so that's that's one problem also lingering Fyre Fest is next week I have to go up in that F-18. And, yeah, now it's becoming scary again.
I was pumped, and then I was scared, then I was pumped, and now I'm scared again. Just schedule, just accidentally schedule, like, a reunion rugby tournament.
Oh, you know what? Same time. I actually did get an invitation.
Usually good for one of those a year. Odds are safe.
Yeah, I'm retired until next October again, and then I'll come back. You're like, I accidentally did this.
But the likelihood of getting injured is far higher playing in one rugby game than it is going up in one warplane. Yeah, true.
Although the injury is more severe in the warplane. Possibly.
I would say definitely. Possibly, yes.
I wouldn't even call it an injury. i don't think i don't think you like strain your uh you know calf muscle in a in a f-18 but if you are looking to go to the air show i think it's going to be next saturday and sunday we'll get a promo code up there so we're gonna have discounted tickets if you live uh in the scranton area or the poconos area nice um okay my fire fest it's pretty simple i just i i'm just never gonna uh like sleep again i just realized that uh this this week especially i'm just i think i'm gonna be tired for the rest of my life yeah it just happened it's just i think obviously the third kid helped with that but yeah i i had the realization uh like five to six hours of sleep for me now is like i did good and's ridiculous.
So going back to what we were talking about earlier about how being a grownup kicks ass, there are times when I'll just stay up late just because I remind myself, Oh yeah, I can stay up late whenever I want. But when you have kids that interrupt that, then it's not your choice.
And it's them messing with things. Um, a related thing, probably not, it's not impacting my lack of sleep as much as yours but i'm having to pee more in the night like i'm getting up twice in the middle of the night now to go take a piss which is that's pretty bad too that is bad you should probably get your prostate checked you want to check it well we're doing that together pft and i yeah we get them at the same time it's dangerous on our birthday kiss i gotta get on those kegels yeah but it doesn't it does suck uh i mean hank you can't relate to this i don't know a lot of people probably can't but uh just being like i'll never sleep again i don't know when i'll i don't know the next time i'll sleep uh sunday that's me that's a pga championship yeah but no i that won't even take a little nap i don't think so i i do i am the king now of 10 minute naps yeah i can fucking i'll nap for 10 minutes in everyone's face.
But yeah, it's a pretty shitty feeling being like, oh yeah, when's the next time I can sleep? Yeah, sleep... I think as you get older, sleep becomes better than sex.
It's the best thing ever. You have energy, you eat better, all that stuff.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Billy? I got cucked by Business Insider. But it's kind of my fault.
Okay. So the JP Morgan AI surveillance thing was all true.
Okay. But I was kind of like, I try to fire early on some of these stories, just like before all the facts are out and before I can confirm just to be first to it.
Yep. Yep.
Smart. That's how news gets made.
Exactly what Jake learned freshman year. Yeah.
Always be first. You'd rather be first than right.
Yeah. Exactly.
Be first or be a parody site. And then, so I fire off a lot of stories and they end up in the pending review tab of the blog back end.
So some don't get posted. And then this one just got caught up with all my pending, like crazy blog.
Can you read off your pendings real quick?

Okay.

I'd like to see that.

Probably got a lot of one of them.

This sounds like the worst thing business insiders ever done to us here.

Yeah.

Well, actually, they were the ones who took down the Reddit post.

Oh, I was getting DM because they wanted to be first to the story.

Oh, fuck them.

Yeah.

I mean, fuck them for a lot of reasons.

Yeah, for a lot of reasons.

Well, that's also, Billy, the fact that they took down the Reddit post, I think you said

was you saw a reply to a reply that told you that that's why it got taken down uh well no no that's ended up why oh all right we they first thought it was JP Morgan but then they're like oh no it's business insider because they didn't want to leak their uh their source because I was getting dms from JP Morgan managers like talking about AI because we were talking about it I was like okay then I once I saw the Reddit post i was like okay i'm writing this shit i want to see your last you just read off your last five blog titles by the way i forgot one other fire fest uh i think we're just chicks now uh so jason whitlock was writing about pat mcafee and he wrote no amount of money security and attention satiates a weak man he behaves no differently than a woman the moment a woman secures a Louis Vuitton bag, she covets a Fendi. The bag seduces men to act like women.
Pat McAfee is the latest example. So wanting money is female behavior.
It is. Fellas.
Unfortunately, guilty as charged. I think I'm a chick.
Fellas, is it gay to have a bank account? Yeah. Fellas, fellas, is it gay to have a 401 account is it fellas fellas is it gay to have a 401k dude imagine carrying around a bunch of wadded up pieces of paper with pictures of dudes on it imagine saving imagine saving money no female behavior that's chick behavior i also like the undercurrent and all that is just like at at all costs do be a female.
That's kind of what Jason said, which is that's us. Whitlock is like I would love to study his brain.
It's just it actually is a rotten. It's like a rotten apple.
Yeah, I think there's worms inside of his brain. The bag he's securing is fungents.
Yeah, okay. I got him.
All right. The results of the Mincy experiment.
Okay. Travis Kelsey spiked a Lombardi trophy.
Okay. We've all went through that.
Yeah. The Pinkertons raid a YouTuber's house over Magic the Gathering cards.
Bikini lady combats hunters with methed up deer in a duct tape bikini. Okay.
That one should have been posted. Okay.
Yeah. It turns out it was fake.
Oh. Yeah.
All right. I was trying to get on it first.
Besides the Mincy, I think think you're all fake. So, yeah, they're there.
I actually think that people are just writing stories specifically so that Billy will blog them because that meth bikini hunting zombie deer thing. That's that's like something that you dreamed while you fell asleep listening to Joe Rogan.
Yeah, they killed the world's largest toad. Dead animal not allowed to be posted.
Okay, Derek. That's literally a Billy rule.
Wait. That's literally a Billy rule at the top of the blog.

It says don't stop posting dead animals and Nazis.

Yeah.

So the second part had nothing to do with me.

We have two rules.

I'm looking at the back end right now.

Rule number one is be funny.

Don't be not funny.

Rule number two is no more dead animals.

Yeah.

That's it.

And that's it.

Derek Wolf saves town from giant cougar.

Falls under dead animals. And Nazis are off limits too.
That's the other part of under no more dead animals. Andrew Tate just caught a case.
I was on the Andrew Tate beat, but we didn't post them. Okay.
Tough beat. Sam Bankman-Fried made tens of millions of dollars of illegal campaign donations.
Is that true or false? I was getting there first.

Okay.

See, that one actually could get you sued.

Yeah.

Easily.

Baker Mayfield.

Imagine if Sam Bigman Freed comes out on top after all this.

He has to give back hundreds of millions,

but then he also gets to take hundreds of millions

from Penn Entertainment because of Billy.

The bank accounts equal out to defrauding people

of billions of dollars based on Billy's enormous

Thank you. hundreds of millions, but then he also gets to take hundreds of millions from Penn Entertainment because of Billy.
The bank accounts equal out to defrauding people of billions of dollars based on Billy's enormous amount of libel cases.

There's always money in the banana stand.

Baker Mayfield is anti-turf and thinks big turf is behind ankle injury.

Okay.

And then the rest were going to look around.

Well, that one sounded good.

Give us one more, that last one that you just kind of trailed off. A dead Nazi bear killed by Jewish bear.
Tom Brady taught Mac Jones a dirty trick. Oh.
That was also not real. Ah, damn.
Okay. Well, it's good we have filters in place.
You are Creed thoughts. Even for the internet, it's quite shocking.
Okay, good fire fest, Billy. So the story was real, but...
The other stories that I thought were real that didn't get posted sort of put it into that category. Right, got it.
You got a reputation. So it was a reputation foul.
Look, I just shoot from the hip. Yeah, you got a reputation tech.
You should start your own blog that's just things that I think are real. Yeah.
Please note is not real yeah uh all right jake finish us off yeah this one's pretty simple send you guys the picture right now but i ripped my jeans yesterday i was just sitting at my desk and i saw my boxers when i looked down this would not have happened if i was wearing mugsy i'd get myself more mugsy but it was a pretty big damn This is a graphic photo. This is Cake Marsh.
Pretty big rip. Jake, this is an extremely graphic thing to send to your co-op.
You're basically, you're like Roman Roy. Oh, damn, Jake.
Yeah. You're sending us graphic pictures in the chat.
Double-cheeked up on a Thursday. Tough.
That's a weird pose. It was just putting my foot up so I could get an angle.
I don't think anyone could see that you had a rip in your jeans jake who else have you sent this to some people would pay for nobody i wear ripped jeans like for like maybe two weeks after they actually but near your balls yeah no yeah yeah that's where they rip every time unless your actual dick can flop out i'll wear ripped jeans i also rip a pair of jeans once a month. What's up with that? I get cheap jeans.
Oh, okay. Got to go Muggsy.
Yeah, got to go Muggsy. This is a lesson that I need you to go Muggsy.
Max is allegedly going to the gym. He sent us a Photoshop picture.
It was not a Photoshop. That was a real picture.
Sure it was. On the elliptical? Yeah.
No, it was actually on the treadmill. I was doing an incline walk.
Whitlock's going to call you a chick if he catches you on that elliptical. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Let's finish off.
Memes. Where's memes? Has he ever gotten this? Memes! Let's do numbers.
I'll go one. 26.
I'll go 17. Hey, memes.
Have you ever gotten this? 20. Okay.
What would 26 18 Hey memes

Have you ever gotten this?

20

Okay what's your number memes?

1

17

99

Say your numbers real quick again

1

17

18

20

Come on memes

I'm actually rooting for memes

Thank you. 17 26 18 20 Come on memes I'm actually rooting for memes

12

12

12

13

Okay we'll see everyone on Monday

Love you guys

Chimps will hunt columbus monkeys I'm coming for you Thank you. Just the way I love you All the things I've got to remember I'm shying away I'll be coming for you anyway I'll be coming for you anyway I'll be coming for you anyway Take on me Take me on I'll be gone

You're deep