NBA Playoffs W/ Kirk Goldsberry, USMNT Goalie Zack Steffen + Hank’s Huge Announcement

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 got a twofer for the people. We have our good friend Kirk Goldsberry on to talk NBA playoffs, and then the goalie for U.S.
Men's National Team and Manchester City, Zach Steffen Stefan, American hero on to talk a little soccer. Yeah, we did tennis.
Now we're doing soccer. We're doing it all.
And we have a recap of tonight's games, recap of Wednesday night's games. Looks like the Celtics are in control.
The bulls might be back. And then we're going to finish with fire fest of the week.
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Boy!

Boy! Now in the street 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 gotta rock down to electric it's part of my take present about martial sports welcome to part of my take presented by roman go to get roman.com slash take to get ten dollars off when you choose a monthly plan today is friday april 22nd and the minnesota timberwolves are dead i fucking hate that team we got swindled we got bamboozled and sold a bill of goods we're idiots actually i actually i gained a newfound sympathy for the good people of minnesota because we fell in love with the wolves after that play-in game The atmosphere looked electric. A-Rod was popping.
The biceps were popping. And we got Minnesotan.
We believed a little bit in this team. And now I understand just like the tiniest bit, just the tiniest bit.
I had a glimpse into the life of Minnesotans and I don't like it at all. That was the stupidest game that I've seen any team play in the NBA, probably in the last five years.
It was so dumb. I don't know if we got swindled.
We just really need someone to chain themselves to a basket to protest because the analytics do not lie. Well, I don't know what that was.
My computer just made a noise. By the way, we're recording the first 10 minutes in our apartments then we're back in the studio the analytics do not lie uh when there's a protest of glenn taylor taylor the minnesota timberwolves are 2-0 and when not they're 0-2 that game was so so stupid the timberwolves blew blew two separate 25 point leads is that right 25 but they were up like 47 to 21.
I it's two 20 point leads i don't know if it if they both got up to 25 but it was bad they were the the timber rolls went on a 21 oh run or sorry the grizzlies the grizzlies went on a 42 to 12 run in a 13 minute span it was we've talked about this before when we did the Mount Rushmore of sounds it was one of like the craziest stunned silent random screams sound arena has ever had Minnesota this is why we we stood up for you when you celebrated the playing game because that was an absolute disaster it was so bad I agree with you by the way I it out during the game, but they needed like an extra time out from the fans. They needed somebody to go down on the court, like climb up the net, handcuff themselves to the basket and stop the game for a while.
It was so out of hand. And the weird thing about the Timberwolves is they go up big and then they simultaneously stop playing offense and defense.
You can get away with one of the two. You can get away with a five-minute span where you don't have anything falling if you play decent defense, or at least you don't completely.
They did the thing where their controller was unplugged for about seven minutes on offense and defense, and it was so, so bad to watch. Patrick Beverly, I think Patrick Beverly needs to get more pissed off.
I think he's too I need him to like people have been respecting him too much as much is really what he needs to do there's that but he's been respected too much recently Patrick Beverly needs to get angry again he's too happy I think people have respected Patrick Beverly a little bit too much the last week and he earned that with his you know his performance definitely in the playing game but he's at his best when he's got a chip on his shoulder. And the last couple of weeks, it's been like Patrick Beverly.
We underestimated him good for proving the Clippers wrong. I need people to start writing the articles being like the Clippers were right to move on from Patrick Beverly.
So he comes out next game and actually, you know, plays a little, with a little bit more heart. And then, you know, you're right.
He shot the ball in the fourth quarter, and that's not his game. His game is not to shoot.
Yeah, so the Grizzlies won 37-12 in the fourth quarter. And as much as I want to be like, Patrick Beverly, you shot too much because you scored 14 points on 13 shots.
I don't think that you can say that because Carl Anthony Towns, your max player, was three for four. He shot four times.
They're so fucking weird done i'm done with carl anthony towns i'm definitely done with him i love anthony edwards d'angelo russell's nice i love patrick beverly i still will will ride with timberwolves fans not vikings fans it's very big difference there this is where i'm going to compartmentalize like i you know be like i ride Browns fans, but I hate little LeBron Cavs. I will back Timberwolves fans, but Carl Anthony Towns, he's a bum.
He's a bum. I don't know what to say.
Like, he has to basically, he now has a legacy series at his hands. He has to come out and dominate the next, like, three games to restore his legacy because now the play-in game and then tonight he was a complete no-show and I get it sometimes guys have bad playoff games you are you are supposed to be the Timberwolves best player their franchise piece their their guy that you build around and you just no-showed they're so weird I've never seen a team play like this before ever.
It's shocking to me still and credit to Hank. Hank saw it coming all along.
Hank. Congratulations to Hank.
His winning DNA continues to be Michael Jordan. Like I think Hank is up like a billion dollars.
Hank is the biggest winner in the history of game. Quite a run.
I'm on quite a run. That's it's a, it's a, it's a, though.
It's a system. If a team is down by like 10 to 15, 20 points, and it's still the first half, just live bet, money line, the other team.
It's a simple system. Worked for the Celtics last night.
The Sixers were down. They weren't down that much, but they were down.
Also, I bet them, live bet them. It's like I just wait for the game games to start and then when teams go down big it always comes back to even they may not win the game but no lead is safe in the nba especially in the playoffs and we we should say let's not just um shit on the timber rolls even though they deserve to be shit on for this because that was a baffling baffling game uh the grizzlies are awesome like they to fight back in that situation to be down 20 plus points two different times in a hostile environment john moran had a triple double desmond bain it felt like he he was just like he had every shot down the stretch i they were they they deserve a ton of credit for winning that game because that was that's hard to do to be down once come all you see it all the time when a team comes all the way back and they run out of energy.
They chip away, chip away, chip away, then they run out of energy. 37-12 in the fourth quarter is insane.
That's an insane score. Yeah, it's nuts.
It's so weird. It's infuriating.
I've been a Minnesota Timberwolves fan for a week. I can't imagine how the people of Minnesota have to feel.
And yeah, I'm with you. Like, I feel sympathy for them.
I feel empathy for the good people of Minnesota. But I'm done.
I got to cut bait. I root for enough shitty teams already.
I can't afford to attach myself to another stinker. Yeah, no.
This is this. So if they win game four, you're.
No, no, no't trick it. No, no, I'm not.
I'm not falling for it. PFT.
We got married in Vegas and we got an adult. Yeah, that's what just happened.
We just we got back. I'm sobered up and we're like, wait, well, what did we just do? No, no, no.
I'm just going to try the Warriors in my future and just not even worry about the rest of the West. Exactly.
For the Warriors. I'm a fan of a winning franchise.
Finally, up nation. What don't try to convince me.
Otherwise, you're bad friend right now. Hank, you're being a bad friend.
I'm not being a bad friend. We just talked about my gambling.
I have a, I have the Timberwolves to win the series and I have a parlay with the Timberwolves to win the series and the Celtics to win their series. So I'm, I'm still with the Timberwolves.
I'm riding. We just got to win game four, even series, best of three, all the momentum.
And I mean, I don't feel great about it, but it's when we win the next game, PFT, and it's tied. No Timberwolves fans should be upset that we're hopping off because they know.
I'm not hopping off. No, but they should know, like, we should have done that.
And maybe even you'll win now. We got excited.
Listen, the play-in game i don't i don't regret falling in love that's what life is all about is feeling these emotions feelings are never wrong big cat the way you react to them can be and right now i've i know that i felt i fell in love i got obsessed with the timberwolves and i'm recognizing that's a toxic relationship where we fell hard we fell fast we were addicted to each now, you know what? It's not going to work out. I understand that.
Better to move on right now before we have any kids and then damage it that way. So we're in the window right now.
We're in the post nut window. All right.
So we have some clarity. Let's just not because what will happen is we'll get our testosterone back up in two days.
We'll be horny again. We can't do it.
We've got to walk away. J.J.O.
Yeah, J.J.O. Two days.
You touched on Ja Morant a little bit. Back to basketball.
Ja Morant loves falling down. And the announcers were talking about a little bit of how he talked to Allen Iverson.
Allen Iverson was like, the court is the only thing that doesn't give when you run into it. And he's like coaching Jada, maybe stop falling down so much or leaping through the air without thinking about how you're going to land.
I just watch him and I'm like, it's awesome to be young. That's, that's the feeling.
Like if you're playing, whether it's like at recess or if it's like in high school or whatever, you just, you just jump around and you just land on your side all all the time and then you bounce back up and you're not even sore. John Morant is still in that window where his body can take that.
And he's he's a lot of fun to watch. Also, shout out to John Morant.
I know that I personally do this whenever I have a gambling pick that goes like a public gambling pick that goes well. I just search out everyone who doubted me after, but he's doing that like on steroids because he actually like caused the win and he went and searched Twitter after, and that's got to be the best feeling ever.
Really? Marty mush caused the win from tweeting at him last year saying they sucked. Yeah.
They don't remember years ago when he went, when we're working the year, I don't even want to talk about the jazz i i actually just tweeted like jazz fans this is a safe space uh like you're just as sick of this team as we are right and everyone's like yep yep yep so there's like what i can always tell if people are truly sick of their team like just based on how many how many reply tweets i get uh saying the bears suck and i only They got like two. So that means they're really sick of them.
The nice thing for Jazz fans is, according to their religion, they can always root for multiple other teams. And that's totally copacetic.
All right. We don't know what happens in the Warriors game.
Here's Stella Cam. We're going to watch the fourth quarter,

and we'll talk about it on Sunday.

Great night of basketball for everyone

that doesn't live in the state of Minnesota.

Pretty much, right?

Yeah, or us.

Or us.

Great night for Hank.

Hank always comes out on top.

Congratulations.

No matter what, Hank wins.

What an ace.

All right.

We're going to get to the rest of the show back in studio now. Big announcement coming up later, too.
Oh, yeah. I still, I stand with you, Hank.
Thank you. Yeah, Hank's underselling it, if anything.
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Womp bet. Looks like the Celtics might be doing the womping.
Well, there's no Womp that's going to happen for the Nets. The Womp was taken off the table, unfortunately, last night.
And I am playing the, um, I'm doing a couple things right now in my own defense of my own ego. One, I'm thinking to myself that I regret not taking the Celtics.
Now I'm talking myself into loving the Celtics because you guys are right about the Celtics. They're fun to watch.
I absolutely love watching this team. I wish that I had taken the Celtics.
I was wrong about that. So they're a very good team.
And Peyton Pritchard's right up your alley. Great guy.
What do Celtics fans call them? Weird mustache. Fast PP.
Fast PP. Celtics culture.
Yeah. I'm all about it right now.
I mean, the Nets are – they just – they have two really good players, but they have not been consistently good all year, and so their defense fails at key times. And Kevin Durant, we're going to talk about it with Kirk Goldsberry in a second, but the Celtics are just locking him down.
I think he'll still have a couple moments in this series, but you can't say anything other than the first two games the Celtics defense has been fantastic against Kevin Durant and the Nets do have moments where they look like they are capable of what 15 yeah they they whomped him for a little bit last night but unfortunately 17 yeah a whomping has to go for four quarters for it to count in the scorebook so how are you feeling Hank you got to be you got to be on cloud nine right now i would say cloud nine but i'm feeling good i'm feeling confident again winning that first game that was kind of the the confidence they needed i have a pretty large bet on the celtics to win the series four to one which feels now you're going to be rooting for the nets no i'm not but like i i agree that kd there's two games uh in brooklyn i'm going to both. Shout out to Game Time.
Greatest ticketing app

in the world.

He's going to have 50 in one of those

games. He's going to go off for

50 to 60 points and just absolutely

go crazy. It's due.

It has to happen. That's the other thing I'm telling

myself. A sweep would be crazy.
It's still going to be whomping.

That's the other thing I'm telling myself, which is that

if you told me that Kevin

Durant would go 0 for 10 in the second half yeah and and the nets would only lose by seven i'd say like great job by the nets yeah keeping it that close katie had like the maybe the worst playoff half that he's ever had probably and it can't get much worse from there right i mean i don't know i don't know because the defense was that good on him yeah and he was just exhausted even on offense he was exhausted i like what hank just did there uh for people who don't realize. Because the defense was that good on him.
Yeah. And he was just exhausted.
Even on offense, he was exhausted.

I like what Hank just did there for people who don't realize.

He just said, a whomping's going to happen, but it'd be crazy if it was a sweep.

That has nothing to do with the fact that he needs it to go exactly five games.

Yeah.

Like, there's no chance there's a sweep.

You're threading the needle big time.

Yeah, big time.

I'm mostly concerned.

I'm not that worried about losing the womp bet.

Like, it's going to ruin all the credibility that I've built up over the years of being an nba analyst but i'm more concerned with what it's gonna do to our darling jake him trying to do an entire tin of dip for the first time is gonna be i like jake might actually die he might become the first person to overdose from skull scared Scared. Yeah.
Yeah. You know what he said to me earlier? He was like, it says right on the label, this product can give you cancer.
Why does anybody do it? Why would people do that? They're like, don't do this. I mean, drinking's bad for you.
There's a lot of things that are bad for you. Drinking a Diet Coke is bad for you.
Nasal spray. Yeah, but it doesn't say this can give you cancer.
Right. I think it actually does.
I think it says this product contains aspartame, which causes cancer in lab rats. Yeah, you use your phone, 5G.
Cancer. You live near windmills? Yeah.
Cancer. Anything for the fans.
AWLs, they matter. There we go.
They matter. We are kind of over...
Look, the Celtics, that was a great game by them, but we are forgetting that game one was a buzzer beater. So it's not like this.
We wouldn't be sitting here on what would be Wednesday's show and be shocked that it was 2-2. I don't think anyone would.
But it was a very dominant second half by the Celtics. They do look like the better team, overall team, because they actually can get defensive stops when they need to.
Yeah, I mean, Marcus Smart, when he put on that robe and walked into the arena, at that moment I realized I was wrong about the Celtics. Yeah, that was pretty cool.
That was awesome. The other big story, the Bulls might be back.
Yeah, sure. Well, okay.
No, no, I'm not going to talk you out of believing it. Here's all I'm going to say.

Here's all I'm going to say. I was down on the Bulls, obviously, going into this series.
They played incredible on Wednesday night. DeMar DeRozan was insane.
I think it was like the fourth player in Bulls history to have a 40-plus playoff game. It was like him, Ben Gordon, and then Michael Jordan has 38 of them.
I wouldn't say the Bulls are back

if it weren't for the fact that chris middleton also got hurt like that actually makes it so i think the bucks are still the better team but the margin for error is a lot slimmer for them now because you're going united center on friday night that's going to be a crazy crowd first time first home playoff game in five years. And they don't have one of their best players.
They can't screw around. And I don't think DeMar DeRozan will score 40 every single game.
But we have the honest stopper in Alex Caruso. Caruso was money.
Caruso was money last night. He's the best.
You knew that he was going to show up on 420. Dude, he's the best.
The last to probably in the history of the united states to be arrested for pot yeah yes he actually was yeah it was it they ended the laws right there in college it wasn't even in college station i think it was a grinder yeah i don't even think it was like he had weed well he was in the flower as they say he was in the worst possible place like college station texas is they're the holdout They'll be enforcing marijuana laws until the year 2030.

He's the Giannis stopper.

I'm confident in saying it.

So you can say that.

However, he's not going to guard Giannis the entire time.

But when he needs to.

And when he needs to.

When he needs to.

But when Giannis needs to, I feel like he's the most

when this guy needs to guy.

He can take over a game.

Similar to the KD thing, I'm waiting for the Giannis nuclear game.

It's going to happen.

At this point, though, I'm in the mindset of making a three-game series.

Make sure you're going to happen at this point though i'm in the mindset of making a three-game series make it a three-game series win one of these next two make it a three-game series anything can happen just steal one at home steal one at home no but i mean i i was it was fun watching that game because that was the bowls that i watched in november december and january showed up for that game and it was like oh yeah this is awesome and a lot of fun. And where the hell have they been in the last three months? Yeah, so what you're doing is those Bulls could beat these Bucs.
And I know Bucs fans would be like, that was, I think, the first time the Bulls beat the Bucs in like 14 games. So I would say the odds aren't on my side.
But all I want to do is believe for a second. At Friday night, I'm already excited for it.
I'm going to clear my schedule, which I have nothing going on anyway, and sit on my couch and watch that game and be locked in, and I'm very pumped for it. I'm not going to talk about it because there's nothing like having a glimmer of hope.
I'm not going to get rid of that for you, but I would say that you could also make the argument that your win last night was everything that you needed because it was in Milwaukee. In front of Aaron Rodgers.
In front of Aaron Rodgers. Yep.
Big Cat did the – you're well within your rights during basketball season to tell Aaron Rodgers, I own you. Yeah.
No, I counted that as a playoff win for the Bears. You own him as a basketball fan.
Yeah, it was tough, though. The Bulls were like – I don't know.
Maybe't think it was the Bulls official account. It might have been a blog or maybe NBC Sports Chicago was like Aaron Rodgers used to witnessing L's.
It's like, all right, listen, guys, we got to crawl out of ownership before we can start saying that type of stuff. Those are my favorite accounts, too.
The ones that are from local sports channels that use the official team logo in their avatar. And every time I see it, I'm like, damn, the real avatar, the real account is feeling spicy tonight.
It's like, no, it's Comcast Bulls. Yes.
But listen, Chris Middleton's injury is significant. And he is...
I'm not going to... I don't care if we beat the Bucs without Chris Middleton.
I'm not going injuries lonzo balls hurt no of course not yeah why would you but that has that if the bulls are just one and chris middleton didn't get injured i wouldn't have been in believe mode now i'm fully in believe mode which for the awls jake just mentioned it's all for the awls there's nothing better than me believing because i will get my heart ripped out and that will be must watch for all of you. It's good content.

Yeah, Jake, do the thought occurred to me earlier today because I guess I've become the de facto lifeguard here on part of my take.

I know Big Cat thinks of himself as like the father.

I'm the granola crunchy mom, but I'm also becoming like the lifeguard.

I saved Billy's life after the video came out.

We all saw my foot. I saved your foot.

I saved TJ Watts life when Big Cat tried to poison him with almonds.

That's true.

Thank you. like the lifeguard.
I saved Billy's life after the video came out. We all saw that.
I saved my foot. I saved your foot.
I saved TJ Watt's life when Big Cat tried to poison him with almonds. That's true.
Do you want me to take your tin during the Wampus bet? Do you want me to do two tins and save you? Or do you want to do it yourself? No. Like Big Cat said, butts in the seats.
Yes. Okay.
I want to put it out there. For this specific thing.
Obviously, you guys are... I will save your life.
We'll do it on our YouTube channel. We'll get some subscribers.
We'll get the whole thing going. Maybe we'll play a game of Mario Party while we do Wampus Cats.
That's what we'll do. Yeah.
Remember there's a guarantee because Billy does it if it's six or seven. No.
If Billy does it we're not even going to tape it. We're going to make him do it and then we're going to be like that was awesome.
Billy just wants to do it. Yeah.
he's going to do it no matter what. He's a take-home for the team.
He really wants to do it. And then the other game, I mean, the Sixers, Hank, that's the other part.
The Sixers, your nemesis, are looking pretty spicy. If the Celtics play their best games and the Sixers play their best game, the Celtics win.
And, again, we're focused on the Nets. We're focused on whomping this series, winning this series with the whomping.
And then we have to play the defending champion. So then we probably have to play the defending champion.
I bet on the Sixers last night when they were down. So I was rooting for them.
I'm not like my Philadelphia hate is not really turned on. It's, you know, I'm paying attention, but I'm not, like, worried about them.
I don't care about them if they win or lose, whatever. You don't even think about them? No.
Ever. No, I mean, like, having a star player foul out when you go into overtime, that's not a great look for your team.
Well, that was actually by design because James Harden didn't want to have anything to do with that last shot. That's almost more disrespectful to the city of Philadelphia, the fact that you're saying that you're not even worried about him right now.
It's the first round. We wouldn't play them until the Eastern Conference Finals.
And if they make it that far, I'd be surprised. I do love the Sixers are winning these games, and James Harden is just ass.
Ass? He hasn't been total ass, but it is funny. He's not even— I wouldn't say ass.
No, he hasn't been total ass. I shouldn't say that.
He's like, yeah, he's... He was a non-factor in the fourth quarter.
It's funny because that's usually later in the rounds, James Harden. So it's good that maybe he's doing a switcheroo on everyone.
Like, what if he just goes nuclear next round? Yeah, it's too early to say that he's ass. He's had like some average...
He's Gucci right now. Not like Gucci as in like...
Yeah, he's taint. He's taint.
He's close to ass. He's taint.
ass no i i just want i love storylines and james harden sucking in the playoffs is one of the funnest storylines we have so that was a premature ass call but still what was he last night yeah he wasn't that bad last night i still want to call him ass he's ass compared to what james harden's supposed to be peak Peak James Harden is not. Yeah, exactly.

He had 19 and 10 last night, so he's not ass.

That's my favorite thing that they do on first take is they're like,

Chris Paul's supposed to be a superstar.

We were told Chris Paul is the best point guard of all time.

And that's like a debate that you've created in your own head.

Right. And so, yeah, we're creating like, yeah,

James Harden's supposed to be able to carry a team on his back in the playoffs.

He's not peak James Harden. Well, guess what? He's also like five like, yeah, James Harden's supposed to be able to carry a team on his back in the playoffs.
He's not peak James Harden.

Well, guess what?

He's also like five years older than peak James Harden.

But, yeah, he was actually pretty good last night.

Peak James Harden might suck worse in the playoffs than wash James Harden.

Yeah, true.

He was washed early.

And then the other big news we had rocked the basketball world.

Jay Wright retired.

Class act. Exit stage left.
Releases a note. That's it.
No retirement tour. Goes out as probably, you know, one of the, I don't know where he'd rank all time.
Top 20 coach all time, Jake? I don't know. I mean, he had four Final Fours, two titles.
He owned an entire – that was his decade, this last decade. Villanova became a true blue blood under Jay Wright.
So I just love the fact – Not even how he went out. Just never did anything wrong.
Everything you hear about him, the media – like he always gave the media time. He never belittled anyone.
It was – why are you rolling your eyes talking about Jay Wright I think talk about Jay Wright for a second I think he aged gracefully yeah I think that he always had his his student athletes I can't remember anytime they got in big trouble off the court or anything like that yeah right um you know no infractions nothing no he went out you know losing with grace in the national semifinal game i thought that was how crazy is that that that we want watch his last game we got to be in the building and we didn't even know we didn't know it at all yeah now it would be very funny if if jay wright were to then coach for the lakers or the knicks which some people are speculating yep in fact we speculated in 2017 yep with jay wright that he would end up as the coach of the New York Knicks. What about that, actually? Jay Wright to the Knicks, Tibbs to the Lakers.
Do you think Tibbs are the one? If you brought Tibbs in halfway through this, what's the run time on Tibbs before players get sick of him? It's like, well, this time with the Knicks, it's lessening as we go along. Like the Bulls, it was for a few years there.
Then the Wolves, I think it was for a year. And the Knicks, it was like a year at max.
So I think, yeah, bring him in at the all-star break next year to coach the Lakers, and Tibbs would be the perfect guy for that job. Get Joaquim on the team.
Have him be like, hey, look, Tibbs can do this. But yeah, Jay Wright, all class.
All class. The guy is...
Dress as well. You have to actually ask, was part of it the fact that his tailor unfortunately passed away last year and he stopped wearing suits? Good point.
He lost his Robin, right? I mean, COVID kind of went away from the suits too, but I guess that could play a factor too. Yes.
Now, would you say, I mean, have you ever heard a bad word about Jay Wright? No. Great guy.
He did a great job recruiting maybe the best player in the history of the Herndon-Reston, Virginia area in Scotty Reynolds. Scotty Reynolds.
Never forget the Elite Eight. Never forget Allen Ray when his eye popped out.
I don't remember that. You don't remember that? No.
Oh my God. It was very gross.
It was very gross. I think it was Alan Ray.
How do you not remember that? I don't remember that. You remember, like, the complete opposite things that we remember.
It was Kevin Ware before Kevin Ware. Yeah, it was.
Dude, how do you not remember that? His eye literally popped out. You remember all the eyeball, like, touched the floor.
That makes sense. His eyeball fell out of his socket.
He looked like he was in a haunted house. Look at where his eyeball is, Jake.
Look at that. It was a while ago, so you can't really see.
Have you ever seen that Kimbo Slice video where he punched the dude's eye out of his head? No. That's what he looks like.
Yeah, his eye came out. His eye traveled across the lane.
They scooped it up and threw it back in there. His eye got three seconds.
2006 Big East Tournament. Yeah, it was bad.
That's like right when I started enjoying the sport, when the Gators went back to back. It was like my first memory of watching.
Yeah. But Jay Wright.
Very cool. Class act.
What's your favorite memory of Jay Wright? Hank? Class act, don't you think? The way he retired? Probably he retired probably that alan rey one yeah be the most significant yeah didn't just went out what did you you like i one of my early barstle memories is you mushing i feel like you mushed villanova like you did the v's up thing and then everyone hated you yeah in 2015 i called them frauds and i was like they're not gonna make it out of the first first round the crying. Yeah, they lost to NC State and I was dead right.
And so Villanova fans were mad at me, but I was also right so they couldn't do anything about it. And then 2016, I picked them to win it all.
So we made up and it became family. Cat family came together.
I think it's a good time for Coach K, or excuse me, for Jay Wright. I don't know why it even brought up Coach K.
We didn't even bring bring him up different letter of the alphabet entirely but Hank thinks we did because he just kept rolling his eyes but we were only I didn't mention him being at the Celtics only talk about Jay Wright Jay Wright for Coach J Coach J Coach J I thought did a great job of you know he's letting all the recruits know like listen there's not going to be a lame duck you want to transfer, you can transfer. You don't have to feel like you have to come back and have my presence supersede your season here, especially if you're a returning senior coming to the team.
I thought it was nice to say that. I would like to see a coach just Irish goodbye his team.
Just not show up for the first game. Bobby Petrino, kind of.
That's true. I don't think he told his his team uh yeah no there there was a few people out there like well he should have stuck around to for a transition year um because it is tough like I don't know I'm gonna throw out a random program UNC Roy Williams left and Hubert Davis they didn't even make the tournament right they weren't playing that well but then Hubert Davis actually coached the boys up because he had that experience oh yeah okay so oh all right and jay wright hired a guy who knows villanova because he was assistant and actually was the head coach of fordham yeah it seems like the transition is going to be fine yeah poor fordham by the way they went 500 this year good season for fordham yeah and they just lost him yeah i Coach J, what can you say about the guy? Class act through and through.
Everyone in the media loves him. Everyone who was – college basketball lost a giant yesterday.
They really did. Hank, anything? Nothing? No.
You're so mad that we didn't bring up anyone else. Well, Coach J also did a phenomenal job with USA Basketball.
He did. No, we call him Coach J.
We've always called him Coach J. That's right.
Yeah, you know that. Coach J.
Jake. Yeah.
No, Coach J also made a – Not to rain on his parade, but I did find this Virginia men's basketball board. This looks like a big cat piece.
It says, why J. Wright is not clean.
Huh. Oh, it's a message board.
So you're just trolling now. Got it.
In 2009, he received multiple endorsements from convicted felon and former head of AAU outfit DC Assault. Why are you trying to bring down Coach Jay? No, it's just something to think about.
He gets one day retirement tour and you're going to bring him down? 2012, Villanova goes 13-19. Okay.
Have you guys factored that in?

Well, yeah.

We did because, in fact, those losses are on his record.

Yeah, he coached that whole season, right?

I don't know.

I'm just reading this message board.

Okay.

Anything else?

Number two, he's definitely willing to play the AAU game.

He tried to hire an ex-AAU coach as an assistant, which is generally a shady practice. Unsurprisingly, it backfired on him.
Case closed. Sounds like this person's done extensive research.
Shout out Coach J. What a fucking legend.
I mean, the sport has lost a true giant. J always comes with 4K.
That's true. We're not even bringing up anyone.
Why would you bring that letter up?

We're not.

Literature relevant.

It's making some people very upset.

Those who don't know the alphabet, just some context.

Yes, there are some people who, yes, that is true.

All right, Coach Jay, happy trails.

Crazy that, last thing crazy, that we now only have two coaches in college basketball

that have multiple titles.

Yes.

Wild.

Even.

Rick Pitino and Bill Self. Rick Pitino and Bill Self.
Excuse me. Well, Rick Pitino.
Asterix. Yeah.
Also love that Jim Boeheim's just going to outlast everyone. He'll be coaching longer than the new Villanova coach.
He's like, fuck it. I'm just going to keep.
I hope Boeheim keeps coaching until, because if you look at the trajectory, they keep getting worse and worse. I hope he just coaches until they're 0-30 in his last year.
Well, you can't fire him. Yeah.
Right. Well, this is their first non-winning season.
They've been trending that way, have they not? The tournament run saved them. All he needs is one more tournament run to, like, the Elite Eight.
Yeah. If he gets to the Elite Eight next year, it's like, okay, that's another 10 years that he can stick around.
Right. He is a legend.
He is basically a warlord in Syracuse, New York. He runs that town.
Yeah. You can't fire him.
He's going to have dudes rolling up in the back of, like, 1988 Toyota pickup trucks with machine guns. He's a good coach.
He's been a good coach. He knows the zone.
Waiting for it. He knows the zone.
Yeah, I was going to say he's just going to roll up himself. I'm waiting for it.
There it is. I don't know what you're talking about.
There it is. I want you to besmirch the character of a legendary coach.
Before the car jokes come in. I wasn't going to say it until you prompted it.
There's news coming. I don't know what you're talking about.
I wasn't going to, though. Hey, the Bayhimes are AWLs.
Yeah. Keep that in mind.
I love the Bayhimes. Jimmy and Buddy.
Jimmy and Buddy. They got another year eligibility? I don't believe so.
Damn. Okay, let's go to our interviews.
We've got great interviews. We've got Kirk Goldsberry talking some NBA playoffs, and then we have Manchester City goalie and U.S.
men's national team goalie, Zach Steffen. Big week of sports on this show.
Yeah. Huge week.
All over the place week here yeah we're a sports podcast baby yeah there's making a sandwich and then there's crafting a sandwich and when i want something perfectly crafted i go straight to boar's head for over a century boar's head has been dedicated to crafting premium deli favorites every ingredient is carefully chosen every recipe made with a purpose. Their oven gold turkey, smoked master ham, and ever roast chicken are made from premium whole cuts, hand trimmed, and perfectly seasoned.
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So next time you're at the deli, don't settle, get the best. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.
Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite at boarshead.com. All right, we now welcome on our good friend, recurring guest, and the man who single-handedly ended the Nets dynasty last year.
Yeah. It is Kirk Goldsberry.
You can find him on ESPN. You can find him on Twitter.
He's got the best Father's Day gift you can buy out again this year.

It's the NBA map, the Naismith International Park.

Go buy that at – what's your website, Pornhub?

Thegoldenhexagon.com, big cat.

You'll just find it on the top of my Twitter page.

Okay, perfect.

So Kirk is here.

Talk some NBA.

Hate to start with injuries, but I think we have to because there's two big ones devin booker with the sons strained calf chris middleton with the bucks uh i don't know what was there any update on it he has a strained mcl yeah we're waiting for the update and and don't forget luka donchich Yes. Still not playing as well.
So for those guys, in terms of what they do for their teams and what it changes in terms of like the ceiling or even the series they're in right now, how do you see that playing out? Like, let's say Devin Booker doesn't play the rest of the series. Let's say Chris Middleton doesn't play the rest of the series.
Do you still think Suns and Bucks advance? I got to say yes for the Suns, big cat. But man, that is a big loss.
I'd ask anybody, any playoff team, you take away their number one score, are they still getting out of the first round? The Suns are the best team in the NBA when they're healthy. But with Devin Booker on the shelf, obviously they're not healthy.
And New Orleans is frisky. So they have a big couple games coming up in New Orleans without Devin Booker, and it remains to be seen how they'll perform.
The good news is they have Chris Paul. The good news is they have Monty Williams and one of the best defenses in the league.
This is a deep team, arguably the deepest team. So I think they'll be okay in round one.
I would not say that in round two. And as for Chris Middleton, he won them big playoff games in their championship run last year.
They don't get there without Chris. Same thing I would say.
I think they have enough to get by Chicago, but that's not guaranteed, especially the way Chicago played last night. It's those future rounds.
The Eastern Conference is stacked too, Big Cat. So I think they'll get out of the first round, but they better get well soon if either of those teams wants to get to the finals.
Now for the Booker injury, this seems like almost a perfect storm for the Chris Paul debate that rages on, where people that probably understand the game a little bit would say, missing Booker is a huge part of the Sun's success. And so if they were to lose in the second round it's legitimate to be like yes they this was a guy that could take them to the next level he's a great player but then on the other side you've got the chris paul haters or at least the people that like to have the chris paul is uh not a clutch performer debate that can then use that as further ammunition and say look chris paul couldn't get on his, if he, he's supposed to be great.
He should have won this series all by himself. Which side would you say would have more ammunition? Oh man, the haters always have more ammunition.
It's a lot easier to be a hater than a supporter, especially when the guy hasn't won one championship. So therefore he's trashed, right? In today's discourse today's discourse, PFT.
But I'm not quite Rosillo levels of Chris Paul support. No one is.
Yeah, not even his parents aren't even. Chris Paul isn't.
Yeah. Chris Paul's like, I have some weaknesses as a human being.
Like, I could probably be around my family more. And all these little things.
And Rosillo's like, nope, perfect, perfect, perfect. Except for those ham hamstrings and now it's Devin Booker's hamstrings that threaten Chris Paul's postseason run here uh you know what the Western Conference is stacked as well you have teams like Memphis and Golden State playing as well as anybody in the NBA right now it always comes down to the old NBA cliche the best ability is availability uhvin Booker, again, their number one option, how many teams can survive this, guys? How many teams could lose their number one option and still get through a playoff series in this league? Not many.
And if Chris just gets them to the second round or the conference finals with a hampered Devin Booker, that's an achievement unto itself. But Phoenix wants to win their first career, the franchise's first title this year.
And I think they can if Devin Booker can get back from this hamstring injury. So talking about the Chris Middleton, and you mentioned the Bulls played great last night.
It was an awesome game. I find myself unfortunately believing again, which I shouldn't do.
But you are a nerd. You break down all the stats.
You have all the beautiful charts. How much does DeMar DeRozan break the nerd community's brain? Because he is truly like a 90s player where it's like ISO, long two-footers.
The last start of the mid-range jumper. Insane efficiency.
Last night, 41 points. How much does that break your brain? It doesn't, Big Cat, and I'll explain why.
Analytics are agnostic. We don't care about shot selection.
We care about efficiency. And for the last few years, DeMar DeRozan has been one of the most efficient offensive players in the league, particularly as an isolation scorer.
And he's one of the few guys that could dribble into a mid-range shot and hit it at acceptable rates, like Chris Paul, like Kevin Durant, like Kawhi Leonard, where he gets the whole scoring area and all the nerds are happy. He's that good at it.
He doesn't break my brain. And as what we saw last night in the biggest possession of the game, after a few offensive rebounds, uh, I should say in game two, we saw that DeMar DeRozan still can get to the rim and make a big play as well.
This guy is one of the most talented and versatile offensive weapons in the league right now. And along with Alex Caruso, uh, the defensive leader of that team, it started to look like those early season bulls in game two big cat uh i'm not mad at you for believing because they looked great they were getting all the 50 50 balls caruso was making big plays but tomorrow scoring over 40 oh man that was that was great so i'm not mad at you for believing but geez they were not playing well at the end of the regular season no they weren't and people have given me shit and it's like i i watched them they were not they weren't a good team like what do you want me to say caruso by the way he's the honest stopper if you want to just refer to him correctly um even though he didn't act well he did he stayed in front of him enough the thing that does break my brain about derozan is how good he is as a mid-range jumper uh jump shooter and then when he shoots three, it's like, how can't you just hit this like six feet farther out? It's crazy.
It's crazy. Kevin Garnett, I would say the same thing about.
For some guys, it's psychological. For other guys, it's mechanical.
DeMar is obviously an incredible jump shooter, but you're exactly right. For whatever reason, he can nail 20-footers all day, but footers, he can't make them.
And Toronto spent a lot of time in the last year or so there trying to get him to expand his range. It just never happened.
And to his credit, in the face of a bunch of people telling him you can't shoot mid-range anymore, he's built another four, five, six, seven years into his NBA career, defying that sort of newfangled conventional wisdom and playing beautifully, by the way. The lost art of the mid-range is gorgeous to watch when it looks good.
And he is one of the most striking players because of that shot. What about the Nets sticking in the East? So I feel like we have a golden opportunity here as a podcast.
You can be part of a moment in sports talk history. Can we be the first to say that Kevin Durant is officially washed up now? Kevin Durant, I don't know if he's washed or he just can't win without Joe Harris, guys.
It's one of those two. I actually did some exclusive analytics for you guys.
We'll call them Wompa-lytics. I know you guys have been talking a lot about the Womp.
Womp talk, yeah. So I looked at the history of the seven-game first-round series.
There's been 152. Did you know exactly 50% of those guys ended in either four or five games? And the other 50% ended in six or seven.
So 21% ended in sweeps, 29% ended in five, 31%, the most common, six, and only 19% end in seven. But if you consider a WOMP four or five games, it's a coin toss, whether a first-round series will end up in a four- or five-game series.
As it relates to Kevin Durant, if they don't get their offense going, and Kevin Durant especially, this could be a sweep or a five-game series in the first round. Now, Kevin is one of the best offensive players on planet earth, but what he's been doing and what Boston's defense has been able to do.
PFT has sort of made Kevin look washed. Now, nobody in their right mind is obviously going to say Kevin Durant is washed, but he's 13 to 41 in the series.
He has 12 turnovers and he has eight assists. And he played one of the worst halves of his playoff career in game two as the Celtics came back the other night and stole that one.
So he is not washed, but he hasn't played up to his standards here. I have a coaching tip, and you can tell me if this is the dumbest thing ever, but it's a true meatball.
It's the perfect for this podcast. It's a meatball combined with our allegiances.
They need Blake Griffin to get in there and get dirty on them because they're playing really physical with Kevin Durant. I think that bothers him a lot.
They are running him through a lot of screens. They're making sure that he gets hit constantly.
They need to hit back. Old school hockey, Blake Griffin needs to come in and do the same to Jason Tatum.
Yeah, for whatever reason, they've gone heavily with Claxton and moved away from both LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin here in this series so far. And you're exactly right.
Kevin's postgame comments after game two, he was describing that was quicksand out there. He was getting beat up on every cut he was trying to make.
And yeah, welcome to the Eastern Conference playoffs. And the other thing I'd say is another NBA cliche is defense wins championships.
The thing that great defenses do is they make great offensive players and great NBA offenses look bad. And that is what they've done so far.
They made Kevin Durant look bad. They've pretty much suffocated Kyrie in game two, at least.
And they've been just ugly physical games in ways that Brooklyn isn't thriving. I would say this is not like the 86 Celtics.
This is more like the 85 Bears. The Celtics are just a brutal defensive team, even without Robert Williams, one of their best defenders.
They're very fun to watch. I wish that I could be rooting for them.
I fully admit, I picked the wrong side, not just in terms of the Womp is off the table now for the Nets, but also I would much rather be rooting for a team like the Celtics that are playing so hard defensively. To me, that's fun to watch in the playoffs.
The good news is for the Nets, if they need a spark on offense, it looks like Ben Simmons is coming back on monday night so i expect that to fully turn around what impact if any do you think that ben simmons could make on this series yeah well i'll have a piece on that exact thing coming up on espn this weekend uh it it remains to be seen obviously there are big question marks but the big thing is he provides depth he provides defensive strength this is a guy who almost won defensive player of the year, finished second in the voting his last full year in the league, PFT. So I think he brings a perimeter weapon, especially on defense, to slow down people like Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum on that end of the court.
They don't need much from him on offense. So I think if it's true that the nets weaknesses, defense PFT, the simple answer to your question is Ben Simmons helps on that end of the court, matching up against two of the best wing scorers in the Eastern conference and Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown.
The other thing I'd say, you know, if Brooklyn wins their home games, the whole narrative of this thing is different coming out of the weekend. And all of a sudden, all the pressure is immediately back on Boston.
And if Ben Simmons is part of that lineup going back to Boston for a game five, that is going to be one of the most intense games I've ever seen in the first round. Yeah, it is funny, though, because going into this game, you know, the Nets are coming back home and you think, OK, what are the two X factors that can help them? Well, they've struggled offensively, so you're going to get a guy that can't shoot, and then they need home court advantage, so they're going to play in front of a fan base that doesn't care.
And so it's like you're 0 for 2 on those. Yeah, it is true.
I'm curious to see what the vibe is at Barclays this weekend, right? That is not Madison Square Garden. That is not TD, where you can count on the home fans to go crazy.
I'm really interested. Maybe Brooklyn fans show up and make that a very loud pro Brooklyn crowd, or we see a little more green than we're expecting.
I don't think we've, we've seen a quite a big intense Eastern conference playoff matchup with a team as close to Brooklyn as Boston is. There's a lot of Celtics fans in New York.
You guys know that. And they're going to come out and make some noise there I think that's going to be interesting do you have a MVP vote no I don't in fact I'm glad I don't because then you get into all this talk about bonuses and players and guys money and I don't I don't have it uh that's it I think anybody who's picking between the three main candidates has a good choice this year.
So have you – what would your pick have been if you voted? Because we've talked about it on this show, but it's very – it's annoying that the MVP discourse continues into the playoffs when it's like that's not what the award is. It's a regular season award because, you know, and Sixers fans are just defending their guy, but they see Embiid hit a buzzer beater and be utterly dominant in toronto and they're like how's he not the mvp it's like well it's that's not what the award is based on yeah i'm not going to cop out i'll answer your question but my vote would be for the the the playoffs to be part of the consideration don't don't give me this it's a regular season award crap yeah well then what what else is a regular season thing? We're going to kill guys who don't show up in the playoffs.
We already do. Yeah, I agree.
If Embiid is getting this team to the finals, and all my friends, all the nerds are for Jokic because the numbers are simply outrageous, and he carried that team. I think he was the first player ever to lead in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and field goal percentage.
This guy is just killing it on the regular season. But if they're gone from the playoffs in four games and Joel Embiid is in the finals, I think a lot of people will wish they could change their vote.
And I wouldn't be mad at them. So I get that it's a regular season award.
And under that sort of condition, that precondition, I'm going Jokic. But if Embiid keeps doing what he's doing in these playoffs, man, that's not going to look smart in a few years, is it? Yeah, but that's, yeah, I mean, the hindsight thing, I get what you're saying, but it's like, you know, like when Dirk won his MVP as the one seed and they lost and it looks stupid, but maybe make a regular season MVP and a playoff MVP.
But obviously the playoff MVP would just be whoever's in the finals. But it's a regular season award.
I agree it should count the playoffs, but it doesn't. So Jokic, as bad as it's been for the Nuggets, that shouldn't count against what the season he had.
No, those are the rules, as they say. And by those rules, yeah, Jokic is definitely, as a representative of the nerd community, clearly the nerdiest choice out there.
And, you know, it's too straight for him. He's an incredible player.
He's one of the funnest guys to watch, too. You don't have to be a nerd to appreciate.
He's so skilled. Yeah.
But, man, like everything, the other thing I'd say is just one of the big themes in the NBA right now, guys, is it's up for grabs. Everything's close.
There's no dominance. Think back to the end of the last decade.
It was Warriors and Cavs, and we kind of knew it every year before the season started. We're here in the middle of the first round.
Nobody has a strong finals play. Nobody has a strong MVP pick.
And I think that's sort of fruit from the same tree. We're just in a really high parity era of the NBA.
And I think it's great. Yeah, I agree.
And now that's actually good for your profession. Now stats are more important than ever when the margin between, you know, making the finals and bowing out the first round is so small.
As a nerd, what is your favorite stat? Oh my gosh. Well, in this era of basketball, I think you have to look at jump shooting efficiency.
I'm obsessed with shooting day that anybody who follows me in my writing or my social media knows I'm over-indexing on shooting content. So I think what I've really started to do is really isolate efficient and inefficient jump shooters, sort of like the Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook paradigm.

And I think that really helps us understand the efficiency and inefficiency of today's superstars in an important way. And it sort of bakes in the shot selection stuff we were talking about earlier.
So I'd say jump shooting efficiency, PFT. Okay, so along that same line, who superstar or uh the the biggest remaining star in the playoffs that has the worst the worst efficiency on their jump shoot somebody that goes out there will get their points is looked at as being a team leader but is ultimately according to your numbers he actually sucks can i guess yes please help me out i've got one too i would i mean he doesn't suck but his efficiency i feel like is a little out of whack donovan mitchell that's a very strong choice uh that's a very strong choice pft you said you had a guess i was gonna say trey young those are both strong guesses now both of these players are very young and this is a metric where you know you have to let these guys grow up a little bit.
So both Donovan and Trey are at the stage of their careers where inefficiency is sort of part of the equation. Very few young players, especially jump shooters, are dominant.
Donovan Mitchell reminds me a little bit of DeMar. His shot selection is tough, and his shot making isn't as good as DeMar's.
So I think that's the right answer. And Big Cat, I like it too because Utah is teetering, not just this year, but as a team building experiment, they feel like if they don't get out of round one, especially against a Luka-less Mav squad, it certainly feels like this Donovan Mitchell-Rudy-Gobert experiment is ending, too.
So I like that answer. And, yeah, Donovan's jump shot isn't as good as it will be in a few years, and overall I would say he's inefficient as a jump shooter.
He's a hell of a player. Oh, yes.
It's not a knock on him, but I do think game two he was like 30 points on 30 shots. It's like, well, that's – Right.
I mean, that's just – can't you can't live with that in the playoffs no that's old school in a bad way uh you know that's like end of the career Kobe stuff where we got 30 but man it took 30 to get him right so all right uh I can't believe it took us this long to ask this question are the Warriors back sure looks like it doesn't it fellas uh I'll give you two reasons why I mean not there at the end of the regular season. They played very few minutes together.
This was supposed to be the spring where Klay came back, Stefan and Draymond got the vibe together, and that just really never happened. And now they're trying to make it up on the fly.
Everybody's been banged up. Now they're mixing in Jordan Poole.
But the early returns in round, it screams. Yes, this is looking like not only a very, very dangerous offensive team, but once again, with Draymond, they're a very good defensive team.
And that was their formula to get to five straight finals. And what I keep telling people is if the Warriors get out of the West, that's six trips to the finals in eight years.
Are this really a surprise? Yeah. Are they really back? Did they really go anywhere other than to the orthopedic office? This is a great set of basketball players.
And with Stefan coming off the bench early in the series, Jordan Poole becoming such another great scorer. Andrew Wiggins is now a fourth or a fifth option.
Andlay back in there. God, it seems like they're back, guys, and that's bad news.
And the last point I'd say, in the context of a weakened Western conference where you have Luka, big question mark, Devin Booker, big question mark, I also think the Warriors are rising by default there. Yeah, you used a word right there that I'm shocked to hear come come from an analytics guy because it's like a term that I would fully embrace, which is vibes.
I think that the Warriors vibes are the highest in the West. I would say the Celtics vibes are the highest in the East right now.
Maybe the Heat have strong vibes. We've got to mention the Heat.
That's another, actually I have a segment coming up about that. But in terms of vibes, how do you quantify vibes,

and would you agree that the vibes of the Warriors are actually at championship level?

Well, like John Madden said, winning is the best deodorant.

And I think good vibes come from enthusiasm on the court

and both the teams you mentioned, in addition to Miami,

Boston, Miami, and the Golden State Warriors

have had great two-game runs. Yeah.
There were a lot of question marks in Boston. Could they get over those two games? They had that huge win in game one.
Obviously, that brings some good vibes into game two. And the Heat just destroying Trey Young, that's got to be very enjoyable if you're a Heat player or a fan.
So I think that's fun. But Golden State's always had those vibes.
They've always had that edge. They've always had that insane camaraderie and that sort of confidence that only comes with PFT.
Here's the number, three championships. That's how you quantify vibes.
You can go into a playoff series with some kind of confidence that a team like the Grizzlies or the Suns or a player like Chris Paul just can't bring into a series

because these guys have been to the top of the mountain.

Chris Paul, bad vibes.

That's the stat that I'm looking for.

That's why you're a heavy hitter.

Yeah, good point.

We're going to put that on a quote card and tweet it out,

blast it out at Rosillo.

Chris Paul fact sheet.

Send it to Ryan Rosillo.

Great player, no rings, bad vibes.

You mentioned something with the Warriors, and I'm curious from an analytical perspective, how do you quantify Draymond's impact on the defensive side as a whole? Because I think we all know he's one of the best defenders in the league, and it's not just who he's guarding. It's everything that he's doing, switching, getting his hands in the lane, protecting the rim.
Is there a way to quantify what he does for the entire team when he's on the court and playing healthy? How does that work, just as a stupid brain question? Ultimately, it comes down to defensive efficiency. How many points per possession are they allowing when Draymond is out there? He is far and away the defensive leader of that team.
He's the most important defender on that team, but that doesn't really explain his greatness. And we're getting a little bit better at that.
Quantifying exactly what you mentioned. So Draymond enables the Golden State Warriors to do the cool thing on defense, which is to switch everything.
His versatility as an athlete, his intelligence as a leader of a defense enables them to do what they want to do on defense, which is a pretty aggressive switching scheme, which you can't do if you have Brooke Lopez at the five, for instance. You can't do that if you have Vucevic or somebody like this who can't go out and keep a great player in front of them.
So it starts with Draymond's individual sort of uniqueness as a defender, as a small ball center, and his versatility to almost guard anybody in the NBA and hold his own. And that's been his calling card.
In addition to, he keeps getting smarter and smarter. If there's a Chris Paul on the defensive side of the ball, it's, it's Draymond.
He knows what's going to happen. He knows everybody's plays.
He knows their calls. He knows where the rotations are.
And he helps mentor guys in practice. If you watch Draymond in a practice with his teammates, he's like another coach out there, especially on defense, teaching all these guys the right way to play on that side of the court so there are some quantities but ultimately it comes down to his IQ and his ability to do um almost everything on the floor as a defensive player who and a side question from that I saw the NBA nerd community was a little upset that Marcus Smart won defensive player of the year who who would have been your defensive player of the year? Or who is based on your metrics alone? So no opinion.
I'm not making you give an opinion so people don't get mad at Kirk. I'm just asking for your numbers, truly numbers.
I'd say Bam Adebayo was the most versatile and most influential defender. There's a reason the Heisman goes to quarterbacks every year.
You know what I mean? With a few exceptions. But if you look at the last 20 Heismans, that's what we're talking about here.
The center position, the big man position, as we just discussed with Draymond, is the quarterback of the defense. They are by far the most important defenders.
And I don't think Marcus Smart is even the most impactful defender on his own team. He might be the best perimeter defender in the league.
I'm not mad at people who think that. But Robert Williams, Jason Tatum, these are guys who are also truly elite.
Players like Bam Adebayo, Draymond, and Rudy Gobert, the numbers suggest their defensive efficiency in a can. If you have a defense with those guys anchoring it, you start off on third base.
And you can't say that about a perimeter player. And that's what I think the nerds are saying out there on Twitter.
No disrespect to Marcus. He's phenomenal, as we've seen in the last few games.
But I think that's the main point, that centers are like quarterbacks, and quarterbacks always win MVPs and Heismans. Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
That's a great answer. It's a fair point.
This is the segment I was alluding to earlier. It's called Remember to Talk About the Heat, because I feel like at this point the Heat has become – Are they even in the playoffs? Yeah, they made it.
I think they're probably a sixth seed or something. I haven't checked it out recently.
But I feel like they've been talked about a lot in the sense that everyone is saying no one's talking about them so at some point the pendulum starts to swing back and we are talking about the heat but we're just talking about how disrespected they've been you mentioned jimmy butler shutting down trey young i feel like that is the type of uh of statement like if jimmy butler gets his dog his inner dog going that's another advanced stat for you um he's able to like completely emasculate another player and get so far in their head that they lose their confidence entirely I feel like the Heat are gonna have a cakewalk this round but do you think that they're when we put them in the conversation with like the Celtics and the Bucks you think that they would have a chance against Oh, yeah. Nobody wants to see these guys.
They won these two years ago. They are healthy.
They're firing on. They have Kyle Lowry now.
They have one of the best coaches in the league. And they have, of course, the vibe, the culture that's gotten famous.
And Jimmy Butler, as Draymond loves to say, there's 82 game players and 16 game players. Jimmy Butler is built for this.
And he proved it. Trey Young is going to be built for this.
He's proved it in flashes, but I don't think he's ready for this smoke in Miami. I don't think he can handle it.
And at the end of game two was any indication, Jimmy's going to come and take it from him. I think in game two, Trey Young ended up with 25 points and 10 turnovers.
Jimmy Butler had 45 points and zero turnovers, took the ball out of Trae's hands, intercepted a pass, dunked it, and then just picked on him in a pick-and-roll setting at the end of a close game and just went out there and took it, guys. This team is mean.
The kind of mind tricks that Trae Young was able to play against Cleveland and New York and Ben Simmons in earlier playoffs last year, that's not going to work here. That stuff's not going to work against this vibe.
This is the toughest team in the NBA, in my opinion, and it shows up on defense. So statistically, what we see with Miami is one of the best defenses in the league, just like Boston.
So it's very hard to score on them. And, you know, they have offense.
Kyle Lowry, Duncan Robinson, Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo. They could score.
Tyler Hero's having a great year as well. So this team is built for a deep run, and nobody wants to see that in the bracket, a seven-gamer against this team.
Yeah, the East looks, I mean, incredibly loaded. The Sixers, which we haven't even mentioned except, you know, a quick note about Embiid's buzzer beater, they've looked unstoppable.
In a series that I know that once we get to, you know, the Sixers are up 3-0, everyone will be like, oh, yeah, of course, they're a better team. But going into that series, there were a lot of people who were picking the Raptors.
That was absolutely a take that was happening. But, yeah, oh, there we go.
So you were – Can – like, the Tyrese Maxey – we know Embiid is Embiid. I called him the most dominant player right this second in the NBA because it does feel like when he wants to take over a game, there's no one who can stop him.
You could probably say it's Giannis, whatever. But Tyrese Maxey, like, is this going to just keep going on for the playoffs? Because if it is, then the Sixers can absolutely win the title.
One of the cool things about the playoffs, Big Cat, is guys like Tyrese Maxey show up and we're talking about him. And he's been awesome so far this series.
Obviously, Joel has been even better with that shot to win game three. But the big question for the Sixers is depth.
And one of the things that Maxie does is he takes some of the pressure, not only off the bench or Harden, who's not playing great, but Embiid. If they can count on him for 20 points, 25 points a game, that's going to be huge for them.
He's electrifying. He's showing remarkable signs of growth and potentially most important, he's one of the few guys that seems to get better in those big situations.
He loves these moments. And I was one of the people who picked Toronto, hand up, as you guys like to say.
They were a hot team coming in, 12 of the last last 15 the regular season they won they were great

defense okay on offense the loss of scotty barns gary trent's inability to go and be himself and

uh you know they just haven't been right and if they had won game three maybe they have a chance

but that shot that joel and bead made the signature shot of the playoff so far aside from maybe tatum's

uh is the difference of a 2-1 or a 3-0 and now he's teasing Drake as we saw about taking the sweep in the 6 which will be a pretty interesting situation and what is that game 4? Yeah game 4 I wanted to look out west again at a team that I was high on earlier this year mostly because I just put a future on them the Nuggets becausegets, because I kept expecting them to get healthy. You were high on the Nuggets.
Yeah, I was very high on the Nuggets, and it just turns out they're mids. And I'm hoping that this is a team, in order to make myself look smart, that this is the season before the season for the Nuggets, that next year they're going to be a team that can actually do some damage.
Am I completely insane to be like, keep your eye on these guys? Or is it going to be one of those things that you think that looks good on paper but never comes to fruition? Well, it could be either one. I think the nerds have loved the Nuggets for years because the on-paper big three of Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray, and Nikola Jokic is arguably one of the best big threes in their prime anywhere in the NBA.
And who's going to stop these guys? We saw how good Jamal Murray was. Seems like a thousand years ago in the bubble.
And he's an all-timer. In terms of his score and getting hot in playoff games, just go watch some of those highlights from the bubble.
You'll be reminded. And Michael Porter Jr.
is an absolute stud.

He can shoot it.

He's big.

He can score.

And then, of course, they have Nikola Jokic,

arguably one of the top three or four players in the world right now.

So these guys are all young PFT.

I'm thrilled if they're going to be healthy.

The thing I'd say is the West is stacked.

Not only do you have the Warriors, but the Grizzlies aren't going anywhere.

I look at the Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns, whatever happens to the Lakers, if the Clippers come back whole. Nobody's walking through the West for years.
So you need to be healthy. And that's something that these three dudes haven't been able to say in years.

So that would be the haters' take on the Nuggets.

Yeah.

All right.

So this has been great.

I have one last question.

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Greatstuff, Roback.com. We never actually send it.
Yeah, we never actually send it. Just so you know.
Do you want some? We can make an exception for you. Well, yeah, I'll send you my address after the show.
Well, are you going to come up for Dead & Company? Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, so then we'll do it then.
Yeah, we'll do it then because I think this is their last year. The T-Wolves.
Let's talk about the T-Wolves Grizzly real quick because we never mentioned their series. We have – we've been – we're not raised by Wolves.
We're adopted by Wolves. We adopted them.
Yeah, we adopted them. We've been rooting for them.
It's like a rescue situation. Yeah.
It's 1-1. You're going to – I'm going to put you in a spot because you might look dumb.
We're going to air this tomorrow. Give us your game three prediction and take.
Guess what? You might be wrong, but you were very, very wrong about the Nets last year. We don't bring that up every time we see you.
To be fair, injuries cost me my Nets take last year. I will go out on a limb and say Minnesota holds court in game three.
This team has a big chip on its shoulder. They've had a big personality transplant.
I love Ann Edwards. Pat Beverly is obviously just like a menace in a can for a team that needed somebody exactly like that.
So credit to them and credit to Pat Bev for changing the vibes. That's the theme of our talk today.
This, this was a soft team and now it's not, now it's the opposite. And it's all because of Pat Bev and Ant-Man.
And it's funny you bring up the, the, the wolves you adopt. They remind me of like the Josh Allen bills.
A lot of people love them. They're very exciting.
The future is bright and they're in a smaller market. They haven't seen the top of the mountain in a very long time.
The NBA hipsters always latch onto one series that the casuals don't like. And it's the NBA TV series where you're subjected to a bunch of ointment commercials.
But hey, that's a start. It's so perfect.
You're absolutely 100% right. Everyone likes to have that one series where they're like, oh, yeah, Nets and Celtics, but have you been watching Grizz and Wolves? That's what we're talking about here.
It's the reason it's the last segment. I love both of these teams.
One of them is going to lose. Both of them are going to be a problem for a long time.
It is like Josh Allen and Pat Mahomes. These guys are both going to be a factor in the west for for years i love the cross sport analogy it always helps our our stupid

brains it does yeah anytime you can tie that in like just it's not even cross sport just like

relate to football yeah but it's just always great to be like this one sports thing is like

this other sports thing yeah yep got it now like you yeah so you take somebody in like a top three

pick oh they hit a home run with this pick thank you for yes for making that analogy now what about

Thank you. yep got it now you take somebody in a top three pick oh they hit a home run with this pick thank you for making that analogy now what about one last last thing team not in the playoffs but people talk about a lot the Lakers they're looking for a head coach is there a head coach that you think that could become available that could step into that role and actually be able to turn this was it chicken shit into chicken salad I always heard chicken soup as the last part of that but yes potentially I mean you have LeBron James I mean so it starts with a pretty solid number one piece on the roster there's still a lot of question marks there and one of the crazy stats about the Lakers right now is between 1948 and 2013, I think that's 65 years, they missed the postseason five times.
In the last nine years, they missed it seven times. This is a franchise that is sort of reeling based on its own illustrious past.
Now, of course, they won the title in the bubble. They have LeBron James.
But the organization itself, there's a reputation around the league that, man, this is kind of a sketchy place. It's a weird blend of this is the most prestigious franchise in the sport.
And man, in the context of the West, this is pretty brutal, especially when you consider, is LeBron James going to be there in two years? So there's big question marks. That said, PFT, if anybody calls any coach in America, they're going to pick it up when it's the Lakers.
That's my opinion. Quinn Snyder, Doc Rivers, Nick Nurse.
These are the names that they mentioned. Jawan Howard.
And yes, there's a couple recently retired college coaches. Coach K.
Coach K, he flirted with him. You remember that like 10 years ago, 15 years ago? You might have to get out the fact sheet and add a few more bullet points, folks.
Yeah, you know Coach K. You think he killed that puppy, right? Like, did he ever give you those vibes? We were talking about vibes.
He never gave me the puppy-killing vibes. Now, I haven't spent enough time with him to really get to know the real Coach K.
So maybe that's layers deep. No, he won't let you in.
He's got that hard exterior, but he's got a very close circle. It all knows that he kills puppies.
It's basically like bad news kennels. But I'll say this, guys.
Anybody who gets the phone call is going to be serious, but ultimately, it's questionable. For a coach like Nick Nurse or Quinn Snyder, it's a pretty stable situation or choices if they want to move.
A very tenuous, stressful situation with Russell Westbrook, Rob Polenka, Magic Johnson doing stuff. That is not that attractive right now.
So they're going to get somebody. I'm not sure who that is, but they need somebody to build the defense back up.
That's what they were when they won the championship. And this year they were a tire fire on defense.
It wasn't Frank Vogel's fault. That roster needs some work.
And whatever coach comes in there is going to have their hands full. If they don't, You know, they lost Caruso.
Look at what we see from Caruso this week.

That guy is like Pat Bev.

And they just dumped these guys and brought in Westbrook.

And there's a lot that needs to be cleaned up there, PFT,

before any coach is going to have a successful 2022-23 season in Los Angeles. And you also know going out there that if you coach that team,

Skip Bayless is going to be talking about you every day. Every day.
And he's going to come up with hilarious nicknames for you. Does he like LeBron? Yeah, he's a big fan.
Huge fan. He loves LeBron, actually.
Without LeBron James, Skip Bayless doesn't have a job. That's true.
That's true. He depends on him.
It's like farmers depending on the rain. Hillary Clinton for Sean Hannity or something.
Yeah, right. Exactly.

You need him to survive.

Can you just real quick rank?

Give me your top three vibes teams right now. Oh, I think we did it.

Oh, Golden State, number one.

Because they have the party.

The party's back.

And like we said earlier, they have the confidence and swagger

that only comes with being a champion.

Then I'm going Miami. I think they're an ultimate chip on the shoulder team.
They have a very strong brand. And then Boston is third because they still have a dangerous situation in front of them this weekend in Brooklyn.
And that could turn if Brooklyn wins both those games, their vibes are going to change real fast. And Boston, you know, they're, they're accustomed to some pretty crazy vibes there there so those are my top three um and then Chris Paul last Phoenix with the Devin Booker situation Chris Paul as an individual Chris Paul's individual bad vibes yeah he just gives them everywhere yeah hands him out who you got one-on-one Chris Paul or Bob Cousy oh my god JJ I God.
JJ. I love JJ.
My coworker, JJ Reddick, definitely got one of the lines of the year out on Mike Russo on our airwaves yesterday when the plumbers and firemen. Yeah, JJ.
He can't trouble with his left hand. JJ was like, he went podcast.
It was an ambitious crossover, but he thought he was on a podcast, was on TV. and that's why everyone was like, he went like podcast.
It was an ambitious crossover, but he's like thought he was on a podcast,

was on TV.

And that's why everyone's like, how could you say this?

Like, no, that's actually very funny and a good point.

And it's like, that's what you talk about on a podcast.

It was brilliant.

It just goes to show that JJ is quickly becoming one of our best NBA voices

on ESPN.

And, you know, I don't think Mad Dog Russo knew what to do when he hit him

with the, he didn't know how to dribble.

Yeah.

It's a great point.

Thank you. NBA voices on ESPN.
And, you know, I don't think Mad Dog Russo knew what to do when he hit him with the – he didn't know how to dribble his left hand. Yeah, it's a great point.
And Bob Cousy, you have to imagine, God rest his soul. Still left.
Yeah, he's like 93. Is probably like, please stop bringing me up in comparison to these players.
Like the only time my name gets brought up, it's because somebody is about to dunk on me and be like, no, Bob Cousy could not be an equipment manager in today's NBA. Yeah.
It's like, who's a better quarterback, George Blanda or Patrick Mahomes? Patrick Mahomes checks down a lot. Yeah.
All respect to these pioneers. And I mean a lot of respect because all of us are standing on their shoulders in weird ways.
But yeah, when you try to figure out who would win win one-on-one or if you drop Bob Cousy into the 2022 NBA playoffs, it's pretty painful to think what that would look like. Yes, yes.
Well, Kirk, thank you as always. Everyone go buy the best Father's Day gift you can buy.
It is really, really cool. The Naismith map.
What's the website again? TheGoldenHexagon.com. Yeah, or you can find the link on his Twitter and follow him because he's a great follow

because he puts out great NBA stuff

that's very easy to understand.

Nice graphs and cool colors.

Yeah, if you like everything. If you are

intimidated by numbers, Kirk has figured out the magic

which is you can just take numbers

and then turn them into pictures for dummies

like us. Yeah, so Kirk

thank you. We'll have you back on for the finals and we'll get you some row back hey thank you guys have a good weekend kirk goldsbury is brought to you by taylormade are you ready for the ultimate giveaway this is what i love about taylormade they just stay giving away stuff to our listeners it's a great thing that they're doing they love the awls i hope you guys love tayMade too.
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Make this golf season better. Fill your bag with the best.
Of course, that's tailor-made. Now here is Zach Steffen, goalkeeper for the United States Men's National Team and Manchester City.
And now for something completely different. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest.
He is the goalie for the U.S. Men's National Team, also Manchester City, and he also has a great foundation called Voice Now.
It is Zach Steffen. Zach, thank you for joining us.
We've got to with with qualifying for the world cup so there are some people in america who are saying it would be hilarious if you guys didn't qualify again um what do we say to those people congrats by the way i should have started with a congrats thank you uh what do you say to those people um just let them talk and yeah ignore them just suck it you can you just say just dx them yeah idiots yeah not us we weren't the ones saying that yeah i was actually rooting really hard for you guys in the qualification i love international soccer i don't really follow club soccer that much but when it comes to any of the major international competitions that, it gets me going. I feel like it's one time when we can all just pull together and be unabashedly American about things.
I'm really looking forward to the World Cup. I was watching the draw to see what pool we were going to be in, and one of my favorite parts about the World Cup is when they unveil the new ball and i remember back in 2010 when it was the jablani ball down in south africa and every goalie fucking hated that thing because it was like a butterfly when do you get the chance to try out the new ball to see how it's going to fly um i don't i'm not sure we have camp in june we've camp have camp in maybe September or October this year.
So they might give us the ball then. I don't know.
That's a really good question. They might not break it out until like a week or two before the World Cup.
But I actually have a funny story about that Jubilani ball, Javilani ball. The first time I ever tried training with it was in the summer with the Philly Union and the first volley I took probably went up and it moved so much went right through my hands hit me on the forehead and went back to my coach and coach called it we're like okay that's what we're dealing with yeah that ball was insane yeah this is different um so yeah the world cup you know coming up in in cutter what is it like for a goalie in terms of the heat situation?

Because I know they'll talk about it, you know, how hot it is

and the players maybe needing water breaks.

Goalies obviously don't move around as much,

but does it suck just standing there being like, man, this is hot

and you've got to wear the long shirt?

Can you maybe go without the long shirt?

Can you do that? Is that legal?

Sometimes I go out without the long shirt when it's really hot. I sweat really so um yeah i get cold very easily and i sweat really easily um but i would rather play in the heat than the cold any day yeah yeah so what i when we have athletes on i like to ask like what is the part of your job that idiots sitting on their couch myself included think it's like an like an easy part, like, oh, I would have saved that? Or what part of goaltending is the nuance that we don't understand that it's hard to understand unless you're actually doing it? It's tough, man, because field players, they can go out there and make all these mistakes and give the ball away and miss everything.
As goalkeepers, if you make one mistake, it's usually going to end up as a goal. So I would say us goalkeepers, we have to stay pretty much perfect back there if we want to win the game.
Obviously, there's some shots you can't stop, and obviously mistakes happen. But, yeah, I'd say the hardest part is just, like, being mentally strong and, yeah, not thinking about making a mistake or being negative because when that happens, you're bound to make a mistake.
What about dealing with the gnats? I feel like gnats in the summertime when it's really humid outside, it would be tough for a goalie because everyone else is moving around and you're just getting swarmed by, by all these bugs like your Joba Chamberlain out there. Yeah, no, they ever tell you about like, they go into the highest point.
So sometimes I'll put my hand up. Yeah.
Nats are annoying. But like I said, I'm way I'm, I hate the cold.
I'd way rather play insect infested warmth than than be out there not moving in the cold. Who would you say is the enforcer on this team? Because I've noticed in qualification, Pulisic taking a couple cheap shots.
They like to go after him. They like to knock him off his game, get him angry.
He's a small guy that likes to get into fights, but I don't know if I'd trust him in a fight i feel like he needs like a dude that's ready to step in at all time and take care of the heavy business for him yeah i mean i'd like to be that that person uh i'd also say weston mckinney i'm just so far away i'd say weston mckinney likes to get in get get get into it with uh with the other guys um and he's a he's a ride or die he'll he'll always be um he's always got your back. Playing in the EPL, what's the craziest away stadium or experience you've had? Or maybe if it's, you know, you've played at other places in Europe, maybe it's some other stadium.
Because I love the crowds, especially overseas. Someday I hope that we can get that type of crowds at MLS games.
But what's the one where you went to and you're like, holy shit, this is insane? That would have to be Liverpool at Anfield. Yeah, their fans are insane in the way they sing.
You'll never walk alone right before the game starts. I mean, it's like deafening and it's crazy.
Everybody in the stadium is singing it. And it's like all you can hear.
And when they stop singing, it's just like you can hear a pin drop in the stadium. It's insane.
What about West Ham when they blow the bubbles, when there's just bubbles everywhere? Is that intimidating at all? West Ham was actually really good. We played them Wednesday night in the Carabao Cup, maybe like 8 o'clock.
And their stadium was full. In London on a Wednesday, it was crazy.
And yeah, they played the bubbles at the end when they beat us in the PKs. But no, that was a beautiful night.
I was really impressed with how they filled it out and they were loud and really passionate. So if we don't play soccer, but say we went and did penalty kicks on you, how many would you save out of 10? I'm talking about at least 8.
Eight? I don't think so. Penalty kicks are hard.
Yeah, because that's penalty kicks. Does it bother you that penalty kicks are probably the one thing in soccer where everyone's like, dude, that'd be so easy.
Like, I could easily do this. It's not as easy as it looks, obviously.
But, yeah, I mean, as goalkeepers with all the new rules and everything, we don't like the kids. Yeah, I mean, it sucks when they were doing the VAR thing and monitoring your heels to make sure that your heels were on the line.
At that point, it's impossible to dive to a corner in the time that it takes the ball to even get to the net. So they're like handcuffing you.
Are we just like, we're an anti-var podcast in general we don't like robots so is there any circumstance where a goalie is in favor of var uh whatever maybe if there's an all sides a goal call back that they scored um yeah that's it var yeah i mean it's kind of getting into our like it's it's the now in the game, which is kind of nice because in the beginning, the first couple years, it was like, oh, we hate this. This is just stopping the game.
It's ruining the flow of play. But they're getting better.
They're getting quicker at it. But, yeah, it kind of ruins the flow of the game sometimes.
Now, I know this is usually like in a bad situation because it's when your team is down. But have you had the situation where you've run down the field for like a last second corner kick? How is that? It's to me, when I see a goalie added to the like offensive side, it's kind of like a reliever running in from outfield.
Is it, do you have that same type of rush? And have you ever had a moment in any part of your career where it actually was successful i've never seen it be successful i've seen it be successful once or twice um where the goal goalies actually scored uh but no i have never been successful i've only gone up a handful of times and yeah it's kind of like you're like let out of your cage and you're kind of ready to let loose and try and score but i feel like the ball never comes to where i am where I'm going. So I've never had a chance to score.
I think the goalies should be allowed to use their hands in the opposing penalty box as long as they punch it, as long as you're striking the ball, not like catching it and throwing it. Yeah, I think that would add a nice little wrinkle to it.
Yeah, that's good because we're not great at heading. So that would be way better.
So if you guys, let's just say Miracle Run. America goes and wins

the World Cup. What's more

important to you in your trophy

case? The World Cup or the Big Ten

title? That's a tough one, man. Yeah.

Very tough. No, I mean, of course, the World

Cup. I mean, that would trump everything.

But you won the Big Ten title. That's

I mean, that flag flies forever.

2014, right? The tournament.

Yeah, the tournament in the league, I guess.

Yeah, double.

So if we do win the World Cup,

we're already calling it the golden generation

because we're dumb soccer fans.

We don't really know that much about the game,

but we hear people refer to other countries

as having a golden generation.

So we're just taking that and we're declaring it ours.

If we do win this World Cup,

how long are you going to stay drunk for? How long is that party going to be? Oh, man, that would last weeks. I'd say years.
I'd say years. Oh, in America, I mean, yeah, that would be insane.
I can't even imagine. Yeah.
So looking ahead to your group, when do you start watching tape on England? We won't start that until – I mean i mean the coaches are probably already starting to be honest um but as players we won't start that until we get into camp before the world cup what what does tape look like for a goalie like are you you know are you going down to the detail of every single player's tendencies and what you know obviously what foot they like where they usually score of that covered? I mean, yeah, we'll look at like how they attack, how they, like their set pieces, their penalties. We'll look at their, yeah, their free kicks.
Who likes to kick it? We look at, yeah, just how they press, like their forwards kind of press our goal kicks and stuff. And other than that, it's really just team meetings, and it's not really too much video as you imagine, to be honest.
Would you consider England to be a rival of ours? I know that like Mexico and the United States, we've had some awesome rivalry games going back to like, I mean, I remember watching 2002 the knockout round there's been a lot of bad blood there is there any bad blood between us and uh any of the countries that are in our group um well besides iran would be yeah yeah um not really honestly um really it's just mexico who's our biggest rival in it Yeah, we don't like them. But countries over here, like in Europe, we don't play too many European countries.
So, like, when we get the chance to play them, it's not like a rivalry. It's more like, okay, let's compare ourselves to the competition over here and see how close we are.
So in the qualification process, do players on the United States team, do they learn how to speak Spanish so that they can communicate with the other players on the other team and, like, talk shit to them? Because against England, that's not going to be a problem. There's no language barrier there.
But do you, like, do you learn how to say, like, you know, all the, like, chupame pinga, all that stuff, so that when you're ready to play against Mexico, you've got some insults loaded up? I don't, but I know a lot of guys on the team, they speak Spanish just because of their background or just where they have been in the world. So they've got to go.
I've always thought that being a goalie playing a game in Mexico would be kind of fun because the altitude is so high that on goal kicks you just get to kick the shit out of it and see how far it goes how far can you kick a goal kick down there uh down there it was it was far man um way past that field just because of the altitude i loved it in the ball we played with with the adidas ball it was like it had a lot of pop when you hit it um so yeah i mean it was fine it was fine it was fun can you Can you explain to myself and listeners who maybe don't watch all soccer, the difference that you noticed going from the MLS to the EPL? I mean, Manchester City, one of the best teams in the world. I watch the Premier League.
I, though, don't know, like, the distinct difference, like how I could explain it to someone. So when you came over, over like and you see the the level of skill and it's no knock on the MLS but what is the the specific thing that's like oh these guys are faster or stronger what is the thing that you can point to like yeah that that's totally different uh I mean I would I would say it goes back to coaching like when you're a kid and the academy system growing up over here in Europe.
They just have such good coaching and academies that that the kids are like. It's crazy.
They'll be like 14, 13, 14. And they'll be playing for free, kind of doing like living my life, kind of, but also doing schoolwork.
So they'll be training almost every day. There'll be missing out on school.

There'll be traveling for games.

There'll be staying in hotels.

And so their academy system over here and the club system over here is just

really set up and really like the foundation is really good.

And I would say in America, like when I was a kid,

they were just like, I'll go out and play, go have fun.

Right.

Parents, I'll get it. Yeah.
Get my hands for for an hour and a half um so over here there's just more purpose uh into like training and and um and playing the the game they they know they play the game over here but like differently yeah they know it better um and they just understand it more than than i was taught growing up but i think our i think america is getting better with the coaching and the academy system now but when i was growing up to what i see over here it's night and day i've also heard it described as like it's as simple as the first touch the first touch in europe is it's just different than the first touch in mls like when you actually receive a pass it's the control of the ball is is immediate instead of like a little bit of a gather in in American soccer yeah yeah I think yeah the technical ask the abilities of these players over here it's insane oh I mean some of the guys on my team are just they do shit like every day in every day in training. And, like, the first year, half year, my mind was blown, like, in training almost every day.
I was like, wow, how did he do that? And so, yeah, I would just say the technical ability and the tactics and just the knowledge and the understanding of the game is superior over here. What about from a goalkeeping perspective? Because we've had a lot of players from the U.S.
that's been our most successful position in terms of guys that have gone overseas and excelled. A lot of the old U.S.
national team goalies have had really good careers in England. Is there anything that you had to change since you went over there to adapt to that game, like anything about your game that you had to improve improve on yeah i mean i think i think we're all always evolving and trying to get better and become better players um so i'm always evolving um so yeah i mean they've changed my game a lot just just uh technique based um on because with goalkeeping there's so many different aspects and one-by-ones and and headers and angled shots playing out so yeah they've changed my my technique in some situations for the better and it's helped me a lot well oh go ahead what's your favorite time wasting tactic my favorite one is when a goalie like catches a pass that's just dribbling into them and they catch two hands, and then they fall on their stomach and their chest, and they just stay down there for like 15 seconds catching their breath before they get up.
I would do that, but it's just because I'm out of shape. You guys do it under control because you're trying to tick time off the clock.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would probably be my favorite one.
I hate when I have to do it because it's just like games and shit. But it just looks stupid.
Is there like an internal clock that's like, okay, you need to get up now? Or do you know exactly how many seconds you can be down there? Well, technically, when we catch the ball, we only have six seconds until we have to release it and get it out of our hands. But no ref really counts six seconds.

You get more like maybe 10 to 15 seconds.

But yeah, I mean, you're always kind of wary of the referee.

And I feel like I always get kind of picked on,

or I have gotten picked on in the past with getting yellow cards for time

wasting and stuff when I'm really not time wasting.

I'm just like really laid back and nonchalant and the ref thinks something. You're just too chill.
Yeah. You get a yellow card for being chill.
Yeah. Yeah.
Dumb question. Does it ever hurt to get hit by the ball? Cause some of those shots are just insane.
Sometimes it does. Yeah.
Sometimes it definitely does. Yeah.
Getting hit in a lower region. It's something that happens more than you think.
And that's not fun. Yeah.
Especially the guys who just have a rocket, and it's coming from outside the box, and it feels like it's just going in different directions. I don't know how you guys do it sometimes when I see these shots in slow motion.
Those shots are easier. When it's outside the the 18 or whatever, you have more time to like prep yourself.
It's the shots that are like when it's one V one and it's close distance and they hit you in the stomach or they hit you in the face or they hit you in the nuts. I mean, that's, that's not fun.
That's interesting because I've always, uh, similar to like the annoying person watching a hockey game being like, shoot the puck. I've always thought like, why don't they just shoot more? It feels like they should shoot more in soccer, but like you're saying, when they're shooting from outside the box, like it's a lot easier for you than anything inside.
Okay, so I'm wrong. I'm very, very wrong.
So who's your GOAT, Messi or Ronaldo? Oof. I mean, just the way Messi plays and played at Barcelona for me was he's the GOAT but Ronaldo for like all the work he's put in and from where he's come on his abs on his diet on tapping it in waxing his eyebrows hitting a bunch of penalty kicks he was fun to watch at Madrid I mean I, I love when Messi and Ronaldo, we had the El Clasicos with Real Madrid and Barcelona back in the day growing up.
Those were the best. Yeah.
So much. Can I give you a little bit of scouting on England? Harry Kane, if he has the ball outside the six-yard line, he's not going to score.
Yeah, not a threat. Tap-in merchant.
We call him the tap-in merchant. Inside the six, he can tap it in, or he's a header merchant as well.
Outside the six, not a danger. Yeah.
I'll keep taking the money. You're good with that.
All right. So, Zach, I had one last question.
This has been a lot of fun. It's a rowback question.
Go to R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com. Use code TAKE for 20% off your first purchase.
I mentioned at the start you have a foundation can we talk about that for a second so you when did you start it and and and what do you guys do uh so i started after the uh the killing of george floyd um and it was all just about to all just about um staying up for what's right.

And at the time we thought enough is enough,

just like so many people as well.

And so I connected with like about 100,

150 athletes that I've kind of come into contact with just through my career

and traveling and whatnot and teams.

And so we talked and we just want to kind of help the future generation come into contact with just through my career and traveling and whatnot and teams.

And so we talked and we just want to kind of help the future generations who are underprivileged in America. We want to help those kids and those families and just give them resources that that I had growing up that was able to get me to Manchester and to these heights.
so we's all about just coming together and raising money. And we partner with the Boys and Girls Club of America to just force those funds to their kids for whatever they need, backpacks, Wi-Fi, food, whether if it's to keep the club open for an extra hour or two after school so the kids stay off the streets.
But it's all about just giving back to the underprivileged kids, the next generation, and making sure that they have everything that they need to be successful. I love it.
Yeah, go check it out. Go support it.
My last, last question, just testing your soccer IQ, what is the most dangerous lead in soccer? 2-0. 2-0.
Absolutely. I learned that when I was like 10 because I got beat that way.
And ever since that day, it's just been ingrained in my mind. It's my favorite when you're up like 1-0 and you're like, you score that second goal, you're like, oh, man, I'd rather not be up 2-0.
Well, you kind of would, but yeah, it is dangerous. It's funny.
You ever yell at your guys for scoring? It's like, hey, we had them right where we were. If you're up 1-0, 1-0, excuse me, against England, and then you score a second goal, I want to see you screaming at them back there.
I will. I'll make sure that they're on their toes.
Also, I'd like to bet on corner kicks over corner kicks in games, so if every now and then you just want to hit it out, that would be nice. I keep that on my mind.
Yeah, I got you. Goals don't do that enough.
Like, we don't get enough cheapies because you guys are too skilled. It's more of a critique on how good you are.
Yeah, well, we get yelled at if we make a mistake. Not by me.
Not by me. I wouldn't yell at you.
Yeah. All right.
Well, Zach, thank you so much.

We appreciate it, man.

And best of luck for the rest of the season.

And we're looking forward to the World Cup.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate you guys.

Okay. Thanks to Kirk Goldsberry and Zach Steffen.

Great show today, boys.

Let's wrap up with some Fyre Fest.

Billy is in the middle of competing on the Lowering the Bar Championship.

So tune in for that. That is why he's not here right now he may pop in at any moment uh maybe not but a drinking competition i don't know he thinks it is we were taking we were asked to take some uh promo pictures of our coors light t-shirts and the girl taking the photos was like oh will you grab a coors light and he's like oh i'm gonna start drinking I have to do the lowering the bar anyway.
And I didn't know. I couldn't tell if that was like a...
Well, you would think that given Billy's history this week, he'd have some PTSD from lowering the bar for himself. That's true.
Get it? The shirt's behind you, Big Cat. They're great.
Oh, yes. They are nice.
Chords like shirts. Yeah, so Fyre Fest, Billy.

Tune into lowering the bar finals, though.

Billy's in it.

Our guy Vibs does a great job with it.

I don't know when that's coming out.

We'll tell everyone to watch it when it does come out. I'm just going to guess what Billy's Fyre Fest would be this week.

Is that the internet saw Billy's brain in action as somebody who is...

I think he would have got the bar up.

Irrational.

Big Cat, you saw the clip when it buckled. No, he definitely was going down.
PFT saved him. It was funny because I came in and I was...
Hank and I were in Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday. And PFT was like, you should have seen Billy just make excuses.
I was like, so just Billy. Yeah.
But it was more... Just Billy.
It was a little bit more than excuses too like he was he was mad at me for saving his life and it was like you remember in forrest gump when lieutenant dan gets pissed off at forrest for dragging him out of the jungle he's like i should have died in there billy was like i should have died trying to get that max up you stole that honor from me well also the just he didn't realize that you like picked the bar up for him that was crazy too and he was like, did you touch it? Yeah. Yes, very much.
All-time crazy. All-time crazy, Billy.
But that is very much Billy, to have a video come out that shows the truth and him being like, well, that's not exactly how it happened. And he was just going around to people, like, making the excuses.
And they're like, what are you even talking about? He's like, I would have had to eat lunch. He was proactively informing people before they even heard the news that it was about to be fake.
Great strategy. It was a very, like, funnily split cast online of people being like, no, he actually could have gotten it up.
Yeah. Which is a good debate.
But then, you know what? He did get it up. So he got 275 on the show.
All's well that ends well. Hank ends well uh hank your fire fest uh yeah so i'm holding one in my hand the car stick 2.0 3.0 actually whoa let me see it is it different whoa whoa whoa as you can tell it's very different it's a sleek new design we've uh we've changed the wood but the problem is it's expensive wood it's wood from a foreign land, and there's only so many trees.
China? Is this from China? We can only make a limited amount. So it's like people have been clamoring every time I go out in the streets, every time I open my DMs, it's like, when are we getting a car stick? When are we getting a car stick? There's a wait list of people that have been waiting for this to get re-released, and my Fyre Fest, unfortunately, is that there's only a very limited amount.
So are on sale today but depending on when you listen they might be sold out i tried to get more made uh it just was like it would have taken years years longer to get anything more yeah that was we actually used the last trees in the amazon to get these so yeah don't let them die in vain yeah i mean the earth's dying because of these cars diamond trees. Yes, go save them.
Yeah, the very good boys in the Amazon are all felled. Yes.
Okay, so car sticks, go buy them. Yeah, if you can.
And I'm sorry. If you can afford it.
No, you can afford it. They're reasonably priced, especially for all the multi-uses you can get out of it.
Yeah. I'd say they're probably underpriced.
That's true. That was going to be my question, Hank.
Is that only for use in digging things out between seats? Well, it's basically a Swiss Army knife. Yeah.
You could hit someone. You could get something out.
You could throw it. You could scrape ice off a windshield with it.
Yeah. You could lose it.
I don't think you could lose that. No, you could lose it.
If you work at a grocery store and you have one bathroom and you attach a key to it so that people don't lose the oh that's good yeah that's good you can let the boys know that you're down for a little hockey what does have a little keyhole in there like a key ring yeah yeah it's a key chain yeah maybe like drop something down a sewer you could maybe attach something and lower it if you've ever gotten some tape on it if you ever got a key to actually the perfect key chain for it. Yeah, that's right.
When we finally go get the key to Toledo, we'll put it on a car stick. All right, Pifty, your FireFest.
My FireFest of the week is I got two. My first is that kind of similar to what Hank said, I feel bad because I'm kind of bullying the Pirates this year.
And if you've taken the Pirates booty bet right now, it's 5-1 on the season because the Pirates really stink on the road. They're playing at Chicago tonight, so we'll see what happens.
I think the Cubs pitcher has an 18 ERA, so I don't know what's going to happen with that. Oh, I think it's Mark Leiter Jr.
Okay, there you go. Son of Al Leiter.
So we'll see. We'll really test the bet out tonight.
I'm feeling a little bit guilty, but everybody from Pittsburgh is like, no, don't feel bad. Yeah, we want to bet on it.
Continue to bet. But I'm certain that 5-1 is not going to hold up.
And it might end up positive like it was last year, up 24 units. But I feel like there are going to be some lean times ahead.
So I'm thinking about switching it over at some point to just betting the under on every baltimore orioles game which is now 11 0 and 1 damn to start the year damn i just need a cool name wall cool name for it yeah the balt the baltamunder doesn't work build that wall build that wall yeah oh balta less balta less instead of Baltimore. Yeah.
Baltifewer. I don't know.
I'm still workshopping it.

And. Build that wall.
Oh, yeah. Ooh, Balta-less.
Balta-less. Instead of Baltimore.
Yeah. Balta-fewer.
I don't know. I'm still workshopping it.
And my other fire fest is that the NFL is back. The NFL draft is a week from yesterday.
Yep. And I'm woefully behind on my draft prep.
Yep. Because I've been just consumed with college basketball and NBA basketball.
I need to get back and really dig in in fortunately we have daniel jeremiah and we're gonna have top mcshay on as well i'm okay you know what though pft i'm okay with this i think we as sports fans in a sports podcast we need to normalize the fact that there's a lot of sports on and the experts in each field trying to shame the

true sports guys like ourselves,

I'm sick of it.

I put my hand up.

I had the Zion Williamson

situation backwards. The Pelicans

are actually keeping him out because they don't want

him to get injured before they possibly

trade him. And one guy was like,

this is what happens when you just jump into the NBA.

It's like, dude, I like all sports. I was watching fucking college hoops in march what you want me to do you're a casual yeah like yeah but guess what i'm a casual it's okay to it's okay for us to hop from sport to sport guess what we're gonna be talking about in a week hockey i'm gonna bring a stanley cup to the to canada i've already said i'd do that but i i'm done with the people shaming like the the draft nerds who are shaming our lack of draft knowledge they didn't watch a second of march madness yep you know what i mean it's impossible to be a well-rounded human being and be an expert in every sport i think we're pretty well-rounded in sports on this show we had a fucking tennis player on do you know how much i hate tennis we had a Yeah.
Same. So yes, extremely well-rounded.
And we have a website that's debuting for one of our guys next week. I haven't done any.
All I did was text and say, make this website. So I think we're still waiting on the final rendition of the website to come out.
Let's wait until next week. It's got a couple features.
I think one of the features is still in beta testing right now all right well it's gonna be it's gonna be a great site yeah it was a big time like i had an idea in for like 20 minutes and then texted someone that we should do the idea and then never followed up again so that's good news that it's happening um all right my fire fest is actually it's not me well it is me but it's a friend of mine uh a good friend i want you guys to rule on this a good friend of mine um first time dog owner got a dog got a puppy and then i see three days later he's on a trip out of town when he should be bonding with his puppy and teaching his puppy you know training it to pee outside and all these things and i kind of want to tell this fucking guy who's a friend of mine i want to tell him he's a fucking asshole and he should give the puppy back because he clearly doesn't want the puppy if he's taking these trips so the puppy was he he went out he adopted the puppy because he wanted to save a puppy he was gifted to the puppy oh so he didn't want to save the dog's life correct he was he was perfectly fine letting the dog die right and he doesn't really work anymore he still has his office but he doesn't work anymore yeah so i just like dude what are you doing you gotta be there for that puppy well he sounds like an absentee father to a certain extent it does so you have to wonder like is this puppy going to grow up to make the right choices with the people it hangs out with and its behavior so what should i do i want I want the AWLs to maybe chime in. That's a real dickhead move.
You get a puppy. You get a new dog.
You got to be with that dog for at least a month before that puppy's going to be scared. The puppy is probably going to either one thing turn on your friend when your friend comes back.
Yeah, he's kind of an asshole. God forbid, actually attack your friend.
God forbid god forbid latch on to his throat god for and pull out his trachea and then that would be i would be devastating and then urinate into the hole where his windpipe used to be yep god help us all god forbid um but yeah i think that your friend sounds like a real prick he's a real prick you guys have anything to weigh in on that any thoughts you guys have various points in your life. Not you, Jake, because you're hyperallergenic to everything.
I agree with you. You do? My family has one.
All right. Okay.
Thank you, Hank. Would you ever abandon your dog? No, not the right thing to do.
It's three days after? Four days after? No. Fun new segment we have.
Would you leave a puppy alone in a house for five days on its own? Yeah, right after you got it. So that fest i'm dealing with it i don't know what to say because i i want to step in and tell this person he's an asshole but i also want to be respectful and not you know get involved in something like this yeah he doesn't deserve dogs no no definitely doesn't uh finish this off jake yeah so i'm on this podcast and i got dragged into a bet where if a certain team loses 4-0 or 4-1 in their series i have to do dip ah sounds like a good podcast what flavor do you want see like the flavors really matter it's all garbage anyways i was actually say you should do like a peach or something that would probably be like if you do if you do wintergreen or straight would make you puke almost instantly which i guess would count pft says under a minute for me yeah i think so now is he allowed is jake allowed to put nothing but pouches in his mouth just entire i'd allow that actually i'd allow that better yeah it'd be less messy yeah it's cleaner yeah all right i'm That's a lot of pouches.
No, the entire thing. Yeah.
Should we let them do Black Buffalo? Because it is nicotine. It's no tobacco.
I'd also allow that. In that case, it's not garbage because they're a friend of the show, right? And it's not tobacco.
So I want to backtrack on my comments. God damn it, Jay.
One minute ago. Well, no, it's not tobacco.
It's not tobacco dip. So it doesn't have the same.
It doesn't have the sign that says. Yeah, correct.
Yeah. Uh-huh..
Big C on there. Yeah.
No, just take. You'll take the entire.
You'll do the wampus cat, but it's tea leaves. It's not.
It has nicotine, though. So we'll make your head spin.
Yeah. So maybe we'll allow that.
God. Yeah.
How about this? As if the Celtics sweep them, you got to do the regular stuff. If it's five, you do black Buffalo.
That's fair. That sounds fair to me.
That's fair. Nets are going to win one game for Hank's bet.
Hank said it's crazy for the Nets to get swept. Yeah, Nets will win.
Net culture. Yeah.
It's a net positive. Yeah.
All right. We'll see.
Okay. That is our show.
Daniel Jeremiah on Monday and Tom McShay on Wednesday. We haven't booked it yet, but we're going to book it.
So we're going to get draft week going hot and heavy next week. Everyone have a good weekend.
Safe weekend. Numbers.
Love you guys. Five.
Six. I would pay anything for 69 to come up.
25. Hank's, just a reminder.
It's actually on the top right now. Oh, perfect.
22 gotten it What number was it Wednesday? 54 I believe Hank what'd you guess? 5 Oh that was 5 you see 5 28 Daryl Green Have we almost gotten everything? No That's the third time by the way 6 20 22 26 27 29 51 78 88 it's a lot

of 20s okay not 28 i'm gonna start doing that patrick kane all right see everyone monday love

you guys We'll be coming for your love. Take on me.
Take me on. I'll be gone.
And I'll try to change. Needless to say.
I'm all dissented But I'm being stolen away Slowly learning that life is okay Stay up to me It's no better to be safe than sorry Stay up to me It's no better to be safe than sorry Stay up to me It's no better to be safe than sorry Stay up to me Take on me. Take me on.
I'll be gone Take me on, I'll be gone

F.G. Thank you.