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

Speaker 1 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. What's up, guys?

Speaker 1 It's Big Cat here, making my Irish entrance with proper number 12 Irish whiskey. How do you make an Irish entrance, you ask?

Speaker 1 It starts with a shot of proper number 12 Irish whiskey because real friends don't let friends Irish exit a party without a story to tell.

Speaker 1 Original proper number 12 is rich in a smooth blend of golden grain and single malt. Age four years in bourbon barrels.
Mix it up with some ginger ale for a classic and refreshing proper ginger.

Speaker 1 In the mood for something smooth but a little sweeter, try proper Irish Apple, a delicious blend of proper's award-winning Irish whiskey with crisp, fresh notes of apple.

Speaker 1 So get out there and make your Irish entrance. Anything else just wouldn't be proper.

Speaker 3 On today's part of my take, we got a twofer for the people. We We have our good friend Kirk Goldsbury on to talk NBA playoffs and then the goalie for U.S.

Speaker 3 men's national team and Manchester City, Zach Stefan, American hero, on to talk a little soccer. Yeah, we did tennis.
Now we're doing soccer. We're doing it all.

Speaker 3 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 Firefest of the week.

Speaker 3 Oh, also, Jay Wright retired. Classy, classy move by him.
And we are brought to you by our friends at Roman. Look, we all know that change doesn't happen without action.

Speaker 3 Whether you're looking for gains at the gym or a better experience in the bedroom, there's never any shame in showing up for yourself and your health.

Speaker 3 The folks at Roman and Online Men's Health Company are changing the game with Roman Swipes, the secret to longer-lasting sex. Roman swipes are a clinically proven way to last longer in bed.

Speaker 3 They're effective, easy to use, and fast-acting, but don't require a prescription.

Speaker 3 Roman can ship swipes to you in discrete unmarked packaging, and each swipes packet is small enough to hide in your wallet for whenever you need it. They're super easy to use.

Speaker 3 Just take the swipes out of the packet, swipe it on, let it dry, and you're good to go. That is it.
So go to getroman.com slash take right now.

Speaker 3 Getroman.com slash take to get ten dollars off when you choose a monthly plan. That's getroman.com slash take, getroman.com slash take today, and you get ten dollars off.

Speaker 1 Make sure you're doing the good stuff in the bedroom.

Speaker 3 Getroman.com slash take.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't name all of your songs. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down to Elantric Avenue.

Speaker 1 And then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to Elantric Avenue.

Speaker 2 It's part of my take.

Speaker 4 There's an automatic sport.

Speaker 5 Welcome to part of my take, presented by Roman.

Speaker 3 Go to getroman.com/slash take to get $10 off when you choose a monthly plan. Today is Friday, April 22nd, and the Minnesota Timberwolves are dead.

Speaker 5 I fucking hate that team. We got swindled.
We got bamboozled and sold a bill of goods. We're idiots, actually.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 The biceps were popping. And we got Minnesota.

Speaker 3 Like we, we believed a little bit in this team.

Speaker 3 And now I understand just like the tiniest bit just a tiniest bit i had i had a glimpse into the life of minnesotans and i don't like it at all that was 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 it's the analytics do not lie the well i don't know what that was my computer just made a noise uh by the way we were recording the first 10 minutes in our apartments then we're back in the studio.

Speaker 3 The analytics do not lie

Speaker 3 when there's a protest of Glenn Taylor, the Minnesota Timberwolves are 2-0, and when not, they're 0-2. That game was so, so stupid.
The Timberwolves blew two separate 25-point leads. Is that right?

Speaker 3 25, they were up like 47 to 21.

Speaker 5 I know it was two 20-point leads. I don't know if they both got up to 25, but it was bad.

Speaker 3 They were the Timberwolves went on a 21-0 run, or sorry, the Grizzlies. The Grizzlies went on a 42-12 run in a 13-minute span.

Speaker 3 It was, we've talked about this before when we did the Mount Rushmore sounds. It was one of like the craziest, stunned, silent, random screams sound arena has ever had.

Speaker 3 Minnesota, this is why we stood up for you when you celebrated the play-in game. because that was an absolute disaster.

Speaker 5 It was so bad.

Speaker 3 I agree with you, by the the way.

Speaker 5 I tweeted it out during the game, but they needed like an extra timeout from the fans.

Speaker 5 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, it was so out of hand.

Speaker 5 And the weird thing about the Timberwolves is they, they go up big, and then they simultaneously stop playing offense and defense. You can get away with one of the two.

Speaker 5 Like 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.

Speaker 5 They did the thing where their their controller was unplugged for about seven minutes on offense and defense.

Speaker 2 And it was so, so bad to watch.

Speaker 5 Patrick Beverly, I think Patrick Beverly needs to get more pissed off.

Speaker 6 I think he's too happy.

Speaker 3 I need him to like, people have been respecting him too much as much is really what he needs to do.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 And the last couple of weeks, it's been like Patrick Beverly, we underestimated him. Good for proving the Clippers wrong.

Speaker 5 I need people to start writing the articles being like the Clippers were right to move on from Patrick Beverly.

Speaker 3 So he comes out next game and actually, you know, plays a little, with a little bit more heart.

Speaker 5 And then, you know, you're right. He shot the ball in the fourth quarter.
And that's, that's not his game.

Speaker 3 His game is not to shoot. Yeah.
So the, the, the Grizzlies won 37 to 12 in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 3 And as much as I want to be like, Patrick Beverly, you shot too much because you scored 14 points on 13 shots.

Speaker 3 I don't think that you can say that because Carl Anthony Towns, your max player, was three for four.

Speaker 3 He shot four times.

Speaker 5 They're so fucking weird.

Speaker 3 I'm done with Anthony Towns. I'm 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.

Speaker 3 I still will ride with Timberwolves fans, not Vikings fans. It's a very big difference there.
This is where I'm going to compartmentalize.

Speaker 3 Like, I, you know, be like, I ride with Browns fans, but I hate little LeBron Cavs. I will, I will back Timberwolves fans, but Carl Anthony Towns,

Speaker 3 he's a bum. He's a bum.
I don't know what to say. Like, he has to, he has to basically, he now has a legacy series at his hands.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I get it. Sometimes guys have bad playoff games.

Speaker 3 You are supposed to be the Timberwolves' best player. Their franchise piece.

Speaker 3 Their guy that you build around and you just no showed.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 His winning DNA continues to be Michael Jordan-like.

Speaker 3 I think Hank is up like a billion dollars.

Speaker 3 Hank is the biggest winner in the history of games. I'm on quite a run.
I'm on quite a run.

Speaker 3 It's a strategy, 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.

Speaker 3 It's a simple system. Worked for the Celtics last night.

Speaker 3 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 games to start.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And we should say, let's not just shit on the Timberwolves, even though they deserve to be shit on for this because that was a baffling, baffling game. The Grizzlies are awesome.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Desmond Bain, it felt like he was just like, he hit every shot down the stretch.

Speaker 3 They deserve a ton of credit for winning that game because

Speaker 3 that's hard to do to be down once, come all, you see it all all the time when a team comes all the way back and like they run out of energy or you know like they chip away chip away chip away then they run out of energy they 37 to 12 in the fourth quarter is insane that's an insane score yeah yeah it's nuts it's it's so weird it's infuriating and i've just been a minnesota timber wills fan for a week i can't imagine how the people of minnesota have to feel and yeah i'm with you like i i feel sympathy for them i feel empathy for the good people of minnesota but i'm i'm done i got to cut cut bait i root for enough shitty teams already i can't i can't afford to attach myself to another stinker yeah no this is this this way so if they win if they win if they win game four you're you're no no don't trick it no no i'm not i'm not falling for pft

Speaker 3 we got married in vegas and we got an annuled yeah that's what just happened we just we got back we screwed it up and we're like wait what what did we just do no no no i'm just gonna root for the warriors in my future and just not even worry about the rest of the west exactly root for the warriors i'm a fan of a winning franchise finally.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 3 Nation.

Speaker 5 Don't try to convince me otherwise. You're a bad friend right now, Hank.
You're being a bad friend.

Speaker 3 I'm not being a bad friend. We just talked about my gambling.

Speaker 3 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 still with the Timberwolves.
I'm riding.

Speaker 3 We just got to win game four, even series, best of three, all the momentum.

Speaker 3 And I mean, I don't feel great about it, but it's

Speaker 3 winning the next game, PFD, and it's tied. That's the thing.

Speaker 3 No Timberwolves fan should be upset that we're hopping off because they know. I'm not hopping off.
No, but they should know, like, we shouldn't have done that. And maybe even you'll win now.

Speaker 5 We got excited. Listen, the play-in game was incredible.

Speaker 3 I don't regret falling in love.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 I know that 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 other.

Speaker 5 And 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

Speaker 3 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, because what will happen is we'll get our testosterone back up in two days.

Speaker 3 We'll be horny again. We're not, we can't do it.
We got to walk away. JJO.
Yeah, JJO.

Speaker 5 You touched on John Moran a little bit. Back to basketball.

Speaker 5 John Morant loves falling down. And the announcers were talking about a little bit of how he talked to Alan Iverson.

Speaker 5 Alan Iverson was like, the court is the only thing that doesn't give when you run into it.

Speaker 5 And he's like coaching Ja to 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.

Speaker 5 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,

Speaker 5 you just jump around and you just land on your side 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.

Speaker 5 And he's, he's a lot of fun to watch.

Speaker 3 Also shout out to John Morant.

Speaker 3 I know that I personally do this whenever I have a gambling pick that goes like that, a public gambling pick that goes well.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that's got to be the best feeling ever.

Speaker 5 Really, Marty Mush caused the win from tweeting at him last year saying that he sucked yeah that he was

Speaker 3 two years ago when he went rookie of the year um do i i don't even want to talk about the jazz i i actually just tweeted like jazz fans this is a safe space uh

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 like just based on how many how many reply tweets i get uh saying the bears suck and i only got like two so that means they're really sick of them the nice thing for jazz fans

Speaker 3 yeah look over

Speaker 3 the nice thing for jazz fans is according to their religion they can always root for multiple other teams and that's totally copacetic um all right uh we don't know what happens in the warriors game here's stella cam uh we're gonna 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.

Speaker 3 Or us. Hey, great night for Hank.
Hank always comes out on top. Congratulations.
No matter what, Hank wins. What an ace.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I still, I stand with you, Hank. Thank you.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's Hank's underselling it, if anything.

Speaker 2 Man, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 7 When you're hungry out there, you start acting like a rookie quarterback in his first game, making bad decisions, messing up the basics, being all out of sorts. That's where Snickers comes in, man.

Speaker 7 That thing is packed. Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.
It's like the MVP of candy bars.

Speaker 7 And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger. Remember this.
Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

Speaker 7 Snickers satisfies, man. That's a winning play.

Speaker 1 Womp bet.

Speaker 1 Looks like the Celtics might be doing the womping.

Speaker 2 Well, there's no womp that's going to happen for the Nets. The womp was taken off the table, unfortunately, last night.

Speaker 2 And I am playing the, 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.

Speaker 2 Now I'm talking myself into loving the Celtics because

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 But they're a very good team.

Speaker 9 And Peyton Pritchard's right up your alley.

Speaker 1 Great guy. guy's weird must be fast fast pp celtics culture yeah i'm all about it right now they i mean the the nets are

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 we 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 goldsbury in a second but the celtics are just locking him down like i 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.

Speaker 2 And the Nets do have moments where they look like they are capable of holding.

Speaker 1 They're up like, what, 15?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they whomped them for a little bit last night, but unfortunately. 17.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a whomping has to go for four quarters for it to count in the scorebook.

Speaker 1 So how are you feeling, Hank?

Speaker 1 You got to be on cloud nine right now.

Speaker 9 I would say cloud nine, but I'm feeling good. I'm feeling confident.
Again, winning that first game, that was kind of the confidence they needed.

Speaker 9 I have a pretty large bet on the Celtics to win the series 4-1, which feels pretty good.

Speaker 1 Now you're you're going to be rooting for the Nets?

Speaker 9 No, I'm not, but like, I agree that KD, there's two games

Speaker 9 in Brooklyn. I'm going to both.
Shout out to Game Time, greatest ticketing app in the world.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 It has to happen. That's the other thing I'm telling myself.

Speaker 9 It would be crazy. It's still going to be whomping, though.

Speaker 2 That's the other thing I'm telling myself, which is that if you told me that Kevin Durant would go, what, 0 for 10 in the second half? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the Nets would only lose by 7, I'd say, like, great job by the Nets keeping it that close. Katie had like maybe the worst playoff half that he's ever had.
Probably.

Speaker 2 And it can't get much worse from there, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Because the defense was that good on him. Yeah.
And he was just exhausted. Even on offense, he was exhausted.

Speaker 1 I like what Hank just did there. For people who don't realize, he just said, a whopping's going to happen, but it'd be crazy if it was a sweep.

Speaker 1 That has nothing to do with the fact that he needs it to go exactly five games. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, there's no chance there's a sweep.

Speaker 2 You're threading the needle big time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Big time.

Speaker 2 I'm mostly concerned. I'm not that worried about losing the womp bet besides the fact like it's going to ruin all the credibility that I've built up over the years of being an NBA analyst.

Speaker 2 But I'm more concerned with what it's going to do to our darling Jake.

Speaker 2 Him trying to do an entire tin of dip for the first time is going to be, like, Jake might actually die. He might become the first person to overdose from skull.

Speaker 8 Scared.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know what he said to to me earlier, he was like, it says right on the label, this product can give you cancer.

Speaker 1 Why does anybody do it? Why would people do that? It's really 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.

Speaker 2 Nasal spray.

Speaker 8 Yeah, but it doesn't say this can give you cancer.

Speaker 1 I mean, on the cake. Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think it actually does. I think it says this product contains aspartame, which causes cancer in lab rats.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you use your phone 5G.

Speaker 2 Cancer. You live near windmills? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Cancer.

Speaker 1 Anything for the fence. AWLs.
They matter. There we go.
They matter.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 we wouldn't be sitting here on what would be Wednesday 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.

Speaker 1 They do look like the better team, overall team, because because they actually can get defensive stops when they need to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, Marcus Smart, when he put on that robe and walked into the arena,

Speaker 2 at that moment, I realized I was wrong about the Celtics.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was pretty cool. Awesome.
The other big story: the Bulls might be back. Yeah, sure.
Well, no, I'm not going to talk you out of believing it. Here's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 1 Here's all I'm going to say. I was down on the Bulls, obviously, going in this series.
They played incredible on Wednesday night. DeMar DeRosen was insane.

Speaker 1 I think it was like the fourth player in Bulls' history to have a 38, or sorry, a 40-plus playoff game. It was like him, Ben Gordon, and then Michael Jordan has 38 of them.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I think the Bucs are still the better team, but the margin for error is a lot slimmer for them now because you're going to United Center on Friday night. That's going to be a crazy crowd.

Speaker 1 First time, first home playoff game in five years,

Speaker 1 and they don't have one of their best players.

Speaker 1 They can't screw around. And I don't think DeMar DeRose has scored 40 every single game, but we have the Giannis stopper and Alex Caruso.

Speaker 2 Caruso is money. Caruso is money last night, too.

Speaker 1 You knew the best.

Speaker 2 You knew that he was going to show up on 420. Dude, he's the best.
The last guy to, probably in the history of the United States, to be arrested for pot.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes, he actually was. That was it.
They ended the laws right there. In college, it wasn't even.

Speaker 1 I don't even think it was like he had weeds.

Speaker 2 Well, he was in the perfect flower, as they said. He was in the worst possible place.
Like College Station, Texas.

Speaker 2 They're the holdout. They'll be enforcing marijuana laws until the year 2030.

Speaker 1 He's the Giannis stopper. I'm confident in saying it.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 but when Giannis needs to, I feel like he's the most when this guy needs to guy. Yeah, no, he can take over a game.

Speaker 1 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 make it a three-game series. Make it a three-game series.

Speaker 1 Win one of these next two. Make it a three-game series.

Speaker 2 Anything can happen. Just steal one at home.

Speaker 1 Steal one at home. No, but I mean, it was fun watching that game because that was the Bulls that I watched in November, December, and January showed up for that game.

Speaker 1 And it was like, oh, yeah, this team is awesome and a lot of fun. And where the hell have they been in the last three months?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so what you're doing is those Bulls

Speaker 2 could beat these Bucs.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But all I want to do is believe for a second. And Friday night, I'm like already excited for it.

Speaker 1 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 very pumped for it.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to talk you out because there's nothing like having a glimmer of hope.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 In front of Aaron Rodgers.

Speaker 2 In front of Aaron Rodgers. Yep.
Big Cat. Did the, you can, you're well within your rights during basketball season to tell Aaron Rodgers, I own you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I counted that as a playoff win for the Bears.
You own

Speaker 2 him as a basketball fan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was tough, though. The Bulls were like, or no, maybe, I don't think it was the Bulls' official account.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 we got to to crawl out of ownership

Speaker 1 before

Speaker 1 we can start saying that type of stuff.

Speaker 2 Those are my favorite accounts, too. The ones that are from local sports channels that use the official team logo.

Speaker 1 And they're trying to get avatar.

Speaker 2 And every time I see it, I'm like, damn,

Speaker 2 the real avatar, the real account is feeling spicy tonight. It's like, no, it's Comcast Bulls.

Speaker 1 Yes. But listen, Chris Middleton's injury is significant, and he is.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to...

Speaker 1 I don't care if we beat the Bucs without Chris Middleton. I'm not going to apologize for injuries.
Lonzo Ball's hurt. No, of course not.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Why would you?

Speaker 1 But that has, if the Bulls had just won 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 it.

Speaker 1 You saved my foot.

Speaker 2 I saved your foot. I saved TJ Watts' life when Big Cat tried to poison him with almonds.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 Do you want me to take your tin during the Wampus bet? Do you want me to do two tens and save you? Or do you want to do it yourself?

Speaker 8 Like Big Cat said. Good answer.
Butts in the seats. Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
I want to take a look at

Speaker 8 this specific thing. Obviously, you guys are the.

Speaker 1 I will save your life.

Speaker 1 We'll do it on our YouTube channel. We'll get some subscribers.
We'll get the whole thing going.

Speaker 1 Maybe we'll play a game of Mario Party while we do Wampus Cats. That's what we'll do.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Remember, there's a guaranteed because Billy does it if Corrector Seven.

Speaker 1 No, if Billy does it, we're not even going to tape it.

Speaker 1 We're going to make him do it. Then we're going to be like, that was awesome.
Billy just wants to do it. Yeah.
Yeah. He's going to do it no matter what.
It's a sequel for the team.

Speaker 1 He really wants to do it.

Speaker 1 And then the other game, I mean, the Sixers, Hank, that's the other part. The Sixers, your nemesis, are looking pretty spicy.

Speaker 9 If the Celtics play their best games and the Sixers play their best game, the Celtics win.

Speaker 9 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

Speaker 1 then we probably

Speaker 1 have to play the defending champion. Whoa.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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, because I still think they're not.

Speaker 1 You don't even think about them. No.

Speaker 1 Ever.

Speaker 9 No, I mean, like, having a star player foul out when you're going overtime, that's not a great way.

Speaker 1 Well, that was actually by design because James Harden didn't want to have anything to do with that last shot.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 9 It's the first round. We wouldn't play them until the Eastern Conference Finals.
I do love. If they make it that far, I'd be surprised.

Speaker 1 I do love the Sixers are winning these games, and James Harden is just ass.

Speaker 1 He hasn't been total ass, but it is funny. Like, he's not even.

Speaker 2 I wouldn't say ass.

Speaker 1 No, he hasn't been total ass. I shouldn't say that.

Speaker 2 He's like, yeah, he's.

Speaker 9 He was a non-factor in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's too early to say they're ass.

Speaker 2 He's had like some average. He's Gucci right now.
Not like Gucci as in like.

Speaker 1 He's taint. No, I just want.

Speaker 1 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 james harden is not yeah exactly he had he had 19 and 10 last night so he's not ass that's my favorite thing that they do on like first take is they're like Chris Paul is supposed to be a superstar.

Speaker 2 We were told Chris Paul is the best point guard of all time. And that's like like a debate that you've created in your own head.
Right.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 He's not peak James Harden. Well, guess what? He's also like five years, you know, older than Pete James Harden.
So, but yeah, he was actually pretty good last night. So I started that.

Speaker 2 Peak James Harden might suck worse in the playoffs than wash James Harden. Yeah, true.
He was just, he was washed early.

Speaker 1 And then the other big news we had: rock the basketball world. Jay Wright retired.
Class act.

Speaker 1 Exits 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.

Speaker 1 Top 20 coach all time, Jake. I don't know.
I mean, he's had four Final Fours, two titles. He owned an entire, that was his decade, this last decade.

Speaker 1 Villanova became a true blue blood under Jay Wright.

Speaker 1 So I just love the class.

Speaker 8 Not even how he went out.

Speaker 1 The whole thing never did did anything wrong. Everything you hear about him, the media, like he always gave the media time.
He never belittled anyone. It was incredible.

Speaker 1 Why are you rolling your eyes, Hank?

Speaker 1 I'm talking about Jay Wright. Can we talk about Jay Wright for a second?

Speaker 2 I think he aged gracefully. Yeah.
I think that he always had his student athletes. I can't remember any time they got in big trouble off the court or anything like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 No infractions, nothing.

Speaker 2 No, he went out

Speaker 2 losing with Grace in the national semifinal game. I thought that was

Speaker 1 funny is that we watched his last game. We got to be even knowing and we didn't even know.

Speaker 2 We didn't know it at all. Yeah.
Now, it would be very funny if Jay Wright were to then coach for the Lakers. Or the Knicks, which some people are speculating.

Speaker 2 In fact, we speculated in 2017 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,

Speaker 1 Tibbs.

Speaker 2 to the Lakers.

Speaker 1 Do you think Tibbs?

Speaker 2 If you brought Tibbs in like halfway through this, what's the run time on Tibbs before players get sick of him?

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 1 well, this time with the Knicks, it's lessening as we go along.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 So I think, yeah, bring him in at like the all-star break next year to coach the Lakers. And Tibbs would be the perfect guy for that job.

Speaker 1 Get Joe Keem on the team. Have him be like, hey, look, Tibbs can do this.
But yeah, Jay Wright, all class. All class.
The guy is

Speaker 1 you have to actually ask, like,

Speaker 1 was part of it the fact that his Taylor unfortunately passed away last year and he stopped wearing suits?

Speaker 2 Good point.

Speaker 1 He lost his Robin, right?

Speaker 8 I mean, COVID kind of went away from the suits, too, but I guess that could play a factor, too.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now,

Speaker 1 would you say, I mean, have you ever heard a bad word about Jay Wright?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 2 He did a great job recruiting maybe the best player in the history of the Herndon Rest in Virginia area in Scotty Reynolds.

Speaker 1 Never forget the Elite Eight.

Speaker 2 Never forget Alan Ray when his eye popped out?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 How do you not remember that?

Speaker 1 I don't remember that.

Speaker 2 You remember the complete opposite things that we remember?

Speaker 1 It was Kevin Ware before Kevin Ware. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 Dude, how do you not remember that? His eye literally popped out.

Speaker 2 You remember all the eyeball, like, all the stuff that

Speaker 2 makes sense.

Speaker 1 His eyeball is important to the game of his eye, of his stockings in a haunted house. Look at where his eyeball is, Jake.
Look at that.

Speaker 1 It was a while ago, so

Speaker 1 you can't really see.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, his eye came out. His eye, yeah.

Speaker 1 His eye.

Speaker 1 Whoa. His eye traveled across the lane.
And they're like, oh, they scooped it up and threw it back in there.

Speaker 2 His eye got 360.

Speaker 8 2006 Biggies Tournament.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was bad.

Speaker 8 That's like right when I started enjoying the sport, like when the Gators went back to back. It's like my first memory of watching.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so 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?

Speaker 9 Probably the Allen Ray one would be the most significant.

Speaker 1 Yeah, didn't just went out.

Speaker 9 What did you, you like, I one of my early Barcelon memories is you mushing. I feel like you mushed Villanova, like did the V's up thing, and then everyone hated you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in 2015, I called them frauds, and I was like, they're not going to make it out of the first, first round.

Speaker 8 That was the crying piccolo girl.

Speaker 1 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 in 2016, I picked them to win it all.

Speaker 1 So we made up, and it became family. I think that family came together.

Speaker 2 I think it's a good time for Coach Kay, or excuse me, for Jay Wright. I don't know why it's even brought up.

Speaker 1 We didn't even bring him up.

Speaker 2 Different letter of the alphabet entirely.

Speaker 1 Brink thinks we did because he just kept rolling his eyes. But we were.

Speaker 9 I'm surprised you didn't mention him being at the Silk Lakes.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're talking about Jay Wright. For Jay Wright, for Coach Jay.
Well, no, we're not going to be able to do it. Coach J.
Coach Jay.

Speaker 2 Coach Jay. Coach Jay, 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 year.
If you want to transfer, you can transfer.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I thought it was nice they did that. I would like to see a coach just Irish goodbye his team.
Yeah. Just not show up for the first game.

Speaker 1 Bobby Petrino, kind of. That's true.
I don't think he told his team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 there's a few people out there like, well, he should have stuck around for a transition year

Speaker 1 because it is tough. Like, I don't know.
I'm going to throw out a random program. UNC, Roy Williams, left, and Hubert Davis, they didn't even make the tournament, right?

Speaker 2 They weren't playing that well, but then Hubert Davis actually coached the boys up because he had that experience.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It seems like the transition is going to be fine.

Speaker 1 Poor Fordham, by the way, poor Fordham.

Speaker 8 They went 500 this year. Good season for Fordham.
Yeah. And they just lost him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, Coach Jay, what can you say about the guy?

Speaker 1 Class act through and through.

Speaker 1 Everyone in the media loves him. Everyone who is.

Speaker 1 College basketball lost a giant yesterday.

Speaker 2 They really did.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Hank, anything?

Speaker 1 Nothing?

Speaker 1 No. You're so mad that we didn't bring up anyone else.

Speaker 2 Well, Coach Jay also did a phenomenal job with USA basketball.

Speaker 1 He did. No, we call him Chet.
We've always called him Choach Jack. Yeah, you know that

Speaker 2 Jake? Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, Coach Jay. Coach Jay also made a...

Speaker 9 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 Jay Wright is not clean.

Speaker 2 Huh. Oh, it's a message board.
So you're just

Speaker 1 trolling now. Got it.

Speaker 9 In 2009, he received multiple endorsements from convicted felon and former head of AAU outfit DC Assault.

Speaker 1 Why are you trying to bring down Coach Jay? No, just something to think about. He gets one-day retirement.

Speaker 9 In 2012, Villanova goes 13 and 19.

Speaker 9 Okay. Have you guys factored that in?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, we did because he coached the whole season. In fact, those losses are on his record.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he coached that whole season, right?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 9 I'm just reading this message board.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Okay.

Speaker 1 Anything else?

Speaker 9 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

Speaker 1 okay case closed this sounds sounds like this person's done extensive research shout out coach jay what a fucking legend i mean the the the sport is lost a true giant jay always comes with 4k it's true that's true we're not even bringing it up why would you bring that letter up we're not letters irrelevant making some people just relevant 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

Speaker 1 crazy that uh last last thing, crazy that we now only have two coaches in college basketball that have multiple titles. Yes.
Wild.

Speaker 8 Rick Petino and Bill Self.

Speaker 1 Rick Petino and Bill Self. Excuse me.

Speaker 8 Well, Rick Petino, Asterix.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I hope Boheim 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 season.

Speaker 2 Well, you can't fire him. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Well, this is their first Tom winning season. No, I've been there.
They've been trending that way, have they not?

Speaker 8 The tournament runs save them.

Speaker 1 All he needs is one more tournament running. 2013 is 2025 and now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if he gets to the elite next year, it's like, okay, that's another 10 years that he can stick around.

Speaker 2 He is a legend. He is basically a warlord in Syracuse, New York.

Speaker 1 He runs that town.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He knows the zone. Waiting for it.
He knows waiting for it. He knows I was going to say he's just going to roll up himself.

Speaker 8 I'm waiting for it.

Speaker 1 There it is. I don't know what you're talking about, Hank.
There it is. Besmirch the character

Speaker 8 before the car jokes come in. Yep.

Speaker 9 I wasn't going to say it until you prompted it.

Speaker 1 I just knew it was coming.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 9 I wasn't going to, though.

Speaker 1 Hey, the Bayheims are AWLs. Yeah.
Just keep that in mind. I love the Bayheims.
Yeah. Jimmy and Buddy.
Jimmy and Buddy. They got another year eligibility? I I don't believe so.
Damn.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's go to our interviews. We got great interviews.
We got Kirk Goldsbury talking to some NBA playoffs, and then we have Manchester City goalie and U.S. men's national team goalie, Zach Stefan.

Speaker 9 Big week of sports on this show. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Huge week. All over the world.

Speaker 2 It's sports week here on Part of Market.

Speaker 1 We're a sports podcast, baby. Yeah.
We drove 1,700 miles of old Highway 61, the whole country, top to bottom, just to prove one thing. comfort food can make anywhere home.

Speaker 1 Crave New World makes the classics you grew up with, cleaned up for right now. High protein, no fake stuff, no shortcuts.

Speaker 1 Bison meatloaf, chicken enchiladas, turkey lasagna, the kind of meals that taste like Saturday night, even on a Tuesday. Crave New World.
Finded in Kroger Isles this October.

Speaker 1 The road trip might be over, but dinner's just getting good.

Speaker 1 All right, we now welcome on our good friend, recurring guest, and the man who single-handedly ended the Nets dynasty last year.

Speaker 1 It is Kirk Goldsbury. 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.

Speaker 1 Go buy that at

Speaker 1 what's your website, Pornhub?

Speaker 6 Thegoldenhexagon.com, big cat. Goldenhead.
You can find it on the top of my Twitter page.

Speaker 2 Okay, perfect.

Speaker 1 So, Kirk is here, talk some NBA.

Speaker 1 Hate to start start with injuries, but I think we have to because there's two big ones. Devin Booker with the Suns, strained calf, Chris Middleton with the Bucks.

Speaker 1 I don't know what, was there any update on it? He has a strained MCL.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we're waiting for the update, and don't forget Luka Doncic still not playing as well.

Speaker 1 So, for those guys,

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 The good news is they have Monty Williams and one of the best defenses in the league.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And as for Chris Middleton, he won them big playoff games in their championship run last year.

Speaker 6 They don't get there without Chris.

Speaker 6 Same thing, I would say. I think they have enough to get by Chicago,

Speaker 6 but that's not guaranteed, especially the way Chicago played last night. It's those future rounds.
The East Coast, the Eastern Conference is stacked too, big cat.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now, for the Booker injury, this seems like almost a perfect storm for the Chris Paul debate that rages on, where people that

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 this was a guy that could take them to the next level. He's a great player.

Speaker 2 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 not a clutch performer debate that can then use that as further ammunition and say, look, Chris Paul couldn't get on his own.

Speaker 2 He's supposed to be great. He should have won this series all by himself.
Which side would you say would have more ammunition?

Speaker 6 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 trash right in today's discourse pft uh but i am i'm not quite rascal levels of chris paul support no one else yeah not even his parents aren't even chris paul isn't yeah

Speaker 1 Chris Paul's like, I have some weaknesses as a human being. Like, I could probably, you know, be around my family and more and like all these little things.

Speaker 1 And Rascillo's like, nope, perfect, perfect, perfect.

Speaker 6 Except for those hamstrings. And now it's Devin Booker's hamstrings that threaten Chris Paul's postseason run here.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It always comes down to the old NBA cliche. The best ability is availability.
If Devin Booker, again, their number one option, how many teams can survive this, guys?

Speaker 6 How many teams could lose their number one option and still get through a playoff series in this league? Not many.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But Phoenix wants to win their first career, the franchise's first title this year.

Speaker 6 And I think they can if Devin Booker can get back from this Hamstring Andrews.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 talking about, you know, 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

Speaker 1 you are a nerd. You break down all the stats.
You have all the beautiful charts. How much does DeMar DeRosen break the nerd community's brain?

Speaker 1 Because he is truly like, he's like a 90s player where it's like ISO,

Speaker 1 long two-footers.

Speaker 2 The lost star of the mid-range jumper.

Speaker 1 Insane efficiency. Last night, 41 points.
How much does that break your brain?

Speaker 6 It doesn't, Big Cat, and I'll explain why.

Speaker 6 Analytics are agnostic. We We don't care about shot selection.
We care about efficiency.

Speaker 6 And for the last few years, DeMar DeRosan has been one of the most efficient offensive players in the league, particularly as an isolation scorer.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He's that good at it. He doesn't break my brain.

Speaker 6 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 de rosin 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

Speaker 6 the defensive leader of that team it started to look like those early season bowls in game two big cat uh i'm not mad at you for believing because They looked great.

Speaker 6 They were getting all the 50-50 balls. Caruso was making big plays, but DeMar scoring over 40.
Oh, man, that was great.

Speaker 6 So I'm not mad at you for believing, but geez, they were not playing well at the end of the regular season.

Speaker 2 No, they weren't.

Speaker 1 And people have given me shit. And it's like, I watched them.
They were not, they weren't a good team. Like, what do you want me to say?

Speaker 1 Caruso, by the way, he's the Giannis stopper, if you want to just refer to him correctly, even though he didn't act. Well, he DD did.
He stayed in front of him enough.

Speaker 1 The thing that does break my brain about DeRosan is how good he is as a mid-range jumper, jump shooter.

Speaker 6 And then when he shoots a three, it's like, how can't you just hit this like six feet farther out it's crazy it's crazy uh kevin garnett i would say the same thing about for some guys it's psychological for other guys it's mechanical uh demar is obviously an incredible jump shooter but you're exactly right for whatever reason he can nail 20 footers all day but 24 footers he he can't make them and toronto spent a lot of time in the last year or so there

Speaker 6 trying to get him to expand his range. It just never happened.

Speaker 6 And to his credit, in the face of a bunch of people telling him he 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Can we be the first to say that Kevin Durant is officially washed up now?

Speaker 6 Kevin Durant, I don't know if he's washed or he just can't win without Joe Harris, guys.

Speaker 6 It's one of those two. I actually did some exclusive analytics for you guys.
We'll call them WAMPalytics. Okay.
I know you guys have been talking a lot about the WAMP.

Speaker 1 WAMP talk, yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So 21% end in sweeps, 29% end in five, 31%, the most common, six, and only 19% ended in seven.

Speaker 6 But if you consider a wamp four or five games, it's a coin toss whether a first-round series will end up in a four or five-game series.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And he played one of the worst halves of his playoff career in game two as the Celtics came back.

Speaker 6 uh the other night and stole that one so he is not washed but he hasn't played up to his standards here

Speaker 1 I have a coaching tip.

Speaker 1 And you could tell me if this is the dumbest thing ever, but it's a true meatball. It's the perfect for this podcast.
It's meatball combined with our allegiances.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like he, 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.

Speaker 1 Like Blake Griffin needs to come in and do the same to to Jason Tatum.

Speaker 6 Yeah, for whatever reason, they've gone heavily with Claxton and moved away from both LaMarcus Aldridge and Blake Griffin here in the series so far.

Speaker 6 And you're exactly right, Kevin's post-game comments after game two.

Speaker 6 He was describing that was quicksand out there. He was getting beat on every beat up on every cut he was trying to make.
And yeah, welcome to the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And that is what they've done so far. They've made Kevin Durant look bad.

Speaker 6 They've pretty much suffocated Kyrie in game two at least. And

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 The Celtics are just a brutal defensive team, even without Robert Williams, one of their best defenders.

Speaker 2 They're very fun to watch. I wish that I could be rooting for for them.

Speaker 2 I fully admit, like, I picked the wrong side, not just in terms of, you know, the whomp 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I expect that to fully turn around. What impact, if any, do you think that Ben Simmons could make on this series?

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, I'll have a piece on that exact thing coming up on ESPN this weekend.

Speaker 6 It remains to be seen. Obviously, there are big question marks, but the big thing is he provides depth.
He provides defensive strength.

Speaker 6 Remember, 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So I think if it's true that the Nets weakness is 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And all of a sudden, all the pressure is immediately back on Boston.

Speaker 6 And if Ben Simmons is part of that lineup going back to Boston for a game five,

Speaker 6 that is going to be one of the most intense games I've ever seen in the first round.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is funny, though, because going into this game, the Nets are coming back home, and you think, okay, what are the two X factors that can help them?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so it's like you're 0 for 2 on those.

Speaker 6 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 TV where you can count on the home fans to go crazy.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 I don't think we've seen 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.

Speaker 6 And they're going to come out and make some noise there. I think that's going to be interesting.

Speaker 1 Do you have a MVP vote?

Speaker 6 No, I don't. In fact, I'm glad I don't because then you get into all this

Speaker 6 talk about bonuses and players and guys' money, and I don't have it. That's it.
I think anybody who's picking between the three main candidates has a good choice this year, Big Tim.

Speaker 1 So have you.

Speaker 1 What would your pick have been if you voted? Because

Speaker 1 we've talked about it on the show, but it's very, it's annoying that the MVP

Speaker 1 discourse continues into the playoffs when it's like, that's not what the award is. It's a regular season award.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 that's not what the award is based on.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm not going to cop out. I'll answer your question, but my vote would be for the playoffs to be part of the consideration.

Speaker 1 Don't give me this.

Speaker 6 It's a regular season award crap. Yeah.
Well, then, what else is a regular season thing? We're going to kill guys who don't show up in the playoffs. We already do.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But if they're gone from the playoffs in four games and Joelle Embiid is in the finals, I think a lot of people wish they could change their vote.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's, yeah, I mean, the hindsight thing, I get what you're saying.

Speaker 1 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 in

Speaker 1 the playoff MVP. But obviously the playoff MVP would just be whoever's in the finals.
But I just, it's a regular season award.

Speaker 6 I agree it should be count the playoffs, but it doesn't so jokic as bad as it's been for the nuggets uh that shouldn't count against what the season he had no those are the rules as they say and and and and by those rules yeah jokic is is definitely as a representative of the nerd community clearly the nerdiest choice out there yeah and and you know it's too straight for him He's an incredible player.

Speaker 6 He's one of the funnest guys to watch, too. You don't have to be a nerd to appreciate it.
He's so skilled.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, 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.

Speaker 6 Nobody has a strong finals play. Nobody has a strong

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now I agree.

Speaker 2 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 in the first round is so small.

Speaker 2 As a nerd, what is your favorite stat?

Speaker 6 Oh, my gosh. Well,

Speaker 6 in this era of basketball, I think you have to look at jump shooting efficiency.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I think that really helps us understand the efficiency and inefficiency of today's superstars in an important way and sort of bakes in the shot selection stuff we were talking about earlier. So

Speaker 6 I'd say jump shooting efficiency, PFT.

Speaker 2 Okay, so along that same line, who is the like the superstar? or the biggest remaining star in the playoffs that has

Speaker 2 the worst efficiency on their jump shooter. 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.

Speaker 1 Can I guess?

Speaker 6 Yes, please help me out.

Speaker 2 I've got one too.

Speaker 1 I mean, he doesn't suck, but his efficiency, I feel like, is a little out of whack. Donovan Mitchell.

Speaker 6 That's a very strong choice.

Speaker 6 That's a very strong choice. PFT, you said you had a guess.

Speaker 2 I was going to say Trey Young.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 Utah is teetering, not just this year,

Speaker 6 but as a team building experiment.

Speaker 6 they feel like if they don't get out of round one especially against a lucalis uh mav squad it it certainly feels like this donovan mitchell rudy gobert experiment is ending too so i like that answer um 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 uh as a jump shooter i think he has he's a hell of a player

Speaker 1 it's not a knock on him but i i do think game two he was like 30 points on 30 shots is like well that's right i mean that's that's just you can't you can't live with that in the playoffs.

Speaker 6 No, that's old school in a bad way. You know, that's like end of the career Kobe stuff where we got 30, but man, it took 30 to get them.

Speaker 1 Right. So, all right.
I can't believe it took us this long to ask this question. Are the Warriors back?

Speaker 6 Sure looks like it, doesn't it, Phyllis? I'll give you two reasons why. I mean, Stefan was not there at the end of the regular season.
They've played very few minutes together.

Speaker 6 This was supposed to be the spring where Clay 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.

Speaker 6 Everybody's been banged up. Now they're mixing in Jordan Poole, but the early returns in round one, it screams yes.

Speaker 6 This is looking like not only a very, very dangerous offensive team, but once again, with Draymond there, a very good defensive team. And that was their formula to get to five straight finals.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Is this really a surprise? yeah uh are they really back did they really go anywhere other than to the orthopedic office

Speaker 6 this is a great set of basketball players uh and with stefan coming off the bench early in the series jordan poole becoming such a another great scorer andrew wiggins is now a fourth or a fifth option uh and clay back in there

Speaker 6 God, it seems like they're back, guys, and that's bad news.

Speaker 6 And the last point I'd say, in the context of a weekend Western conference where you have Luca, big question question mark, Devin Booker, big question mark.

Speaker 6 I also think the Warriors are rising by default there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you used a word right there that I'm shocked to hear come from an analytics guy because it's like a term that I would fully embrace, which is vibes.

Speaker 2 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, Heat have strong vibes.

Speaker 1 Gotta mention the Heat.

Speaker 2 Gotta 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?

Speaker 6 And would you agree that that the vibes of the warriors are actually at championship level well again john madden said winning is the best deodorant and i think you know good vibes come from enthusiasm on the court and both the teams you mentioned uh in addition to miami boston miami and uh the golden state warriors have had great two-game runs yeah uh you know there were a lot of question marks in boston could they get over those two games uh they had that huge win in game one uh 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Here's the number, three championships. That's how you quantify vibes.

Speaker 6 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 now.

Speaker 2 Chris Paul, bad vibes.

Speaker 2 That's the stat that I'm looking for. That's why you're a heavy hitter.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good point. We're going to put that on a quote card and tweet it out, blast it out at Rossillo.

Speaker 6 Chris Paul fact sheet. Send it to Ryan Rossillo.

Speaker 1 Great player, no rings, bad vibes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You mentioned something with the Warriors. And I'm curious from an analytical perspective, how do you quantify Draymond's impact

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's everything that he's doing, switching, getting his hands in the lane,

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And how does that work? Just as a stupid brain question.

Speaker 6 Well, 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You can't do that if you have Vucevich or somebody like this who can't go out and keep a great player in front of him.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And that's been his calling card. In addition,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He knows where the rotations are. And he helps mentor guys in practice.

Speaker 6 If you watch Draymond into 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.

Speaker 6 So there are some quantities, but ultimately it comes down to his IQ and his ability to do almost everything on the floor as a defensive player.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Who would have been your defensive player of the year? Or who is

Speaker 1 based on your metrics alone? So don't even, no opinion. I'm not making you give an opinion so people don't get mad at Kirk.
I'm just asking for your

Speaker 1 numbers, truly numbers.

Speaker 6 I'd say Bam Adabio was the most versatile and most influential defender. There's a reason the Heisman goes to quarterbacks every year.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 With a few exceptions. But if you look at the last 20 Heismans, that's what we're talking about here.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But Robert Williams, Jason Tatum, these are guys who are also truly elite. Players like Bam Atabio, Draymond, and Rudy Gobert, the numbers suggest their defensive efficiency in a can.

Speaker 6 If you have a defense with those guys anchoring it, you start off on third base.

Speaker 6 And you can't say that about a perimeter player. And that's what I think the nerds are saying out there on Twitter.

Speaker 6 No disrespect to Marcus. He's phenomenal, as we've seen in the last few games.

Speaker 6 But I think that's the main point, that centers are like quarterbacks and quarterbacks always win MVPs in highest.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That's a great answer.
It's a fair point. This is the segment I was alluding to earlier.

Speaker 2 It's called Remember to Talk About the Heat, because I feel like at this point, the Heat have become playoffs. Yeah, they made it.
I think they're like probably a sixth seed or something.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I feel like that is the type of statement. Like, if Jimmy Butler gets his dog, his inner dog going, that's another advanced stat for you,

Speaker 2 he's able to like completely emasculate another player and get so far in their head that they lose their confidence entirely.

Speaker 2 I feel like the Heat are going to have a cakewalk this round, but do you think that when we put them in the conversation with like the Celtics and the Bucs, you think that they would have a chance against those teams?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Nobody wants to see these guys.

Speaker 6 They won these two years ago. They are healthy.
They're firing on. They have Kyle Lowry now.

Speaker 6 They have one of the best coaches in the league, and they have, of course, the vibe, the culture that's gotten famous.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 He's proved it in flashes, but I don't think he's ready for this smoke in Miami.

Speaker 6 I don't think he can handle it. And if 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.

Speaker 6 Jimmy Butler had 45 points and zero turnovers, took the ball out of Trey'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.

Speaker 6 This team is mean.

Speaker 6 The kind of mind tricks that Trey Young was able to play against Cleveland and New York and some and Ben Simmons and earlier playoffs last year.

Speaker 3 That's not going to work here.

Speaker 6 That stuff's not going to work against this vibe.

Speaker 6 This is the toughest team in the NBA, in my opinion.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 you know, they have offense. Kyle Lowry, Duncan Robinson, Jimmy Butler, Bay Amatabio, they can score.
Tyler Hero's having a great year as well.

Speaker 6 So this team is built for a deep run, and nobody wants to see that in the bracket, a seven-gamer against this team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the East looks, I mean, incredibly loaded. The Sixers, which we haven't even mentioned, except a quick note about Embiid's buzzer beater.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 can, like the Tyrese Maxi, we know Embiid is in beat.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You could probably say it's Giannis, whatever.

Speaker 1 But Tyrese Maxi, like, is this going to just keep going on for the playoffs? Because if it is, then the Sixers can absolutely win the title.

Speaker 6 One of the cool things about the playoffs, Big Cat, is guys like Tyrese Maxi show up, and we're talking about him. And he's been awesome so far this series.

Speaker 6 Obviously, Joel has been even better with that shot to win game three.

Speaker 6 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 MB'd.

Speaker 6 If they can count on him for 20 points, 25 points a game, that's going to be huge for them.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And I was one of the people who picked Toronto, hand up, as you guys like to say.

Speaker 6 They were a hot team coming in. 12 of the last 15, the regular season, they won.
They were great defense, okay on offense. The loss of Scotty Barnes, Gary Trent's inability to go and be himself, and,

Speaker 6 you know, they just haven't been right. And if they had won game three, maybe they have a chance.

Speaker 6 But that shot that Joelle and Bede made, the signature shot of the playoffs so far, aside from maybe Tatums,

Speaker 6 is the difference of a 2-1 or a 3-0. And now he's teasing Drake, as we saw about taking sweep in the six, which will be a pretty interesting situation.

Speaker 1 And what is that? Game four. Yeah, game four.

Speaker 2 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, because I kept expecting expecting them to get healthy.

Speaker 1 You were high on the Nuggets.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was very high on the Nuggets, and they're just, turns out they're mids.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 6 Well, it could be either one.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And who's going to stop these guys? We saw how good Jamal Murray was. Seems like a thousand years ago in the bubble.

Speaker 6 And he's an all-timer in terms of a 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.

Speaker 6 He can shoot it. He's big.
He can score.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Look at the Timberwolves, the Phoenix Suns,

Speaker 6 whatever happens to the Lakers, if the Clippers come back whole, nobody's walking through the West for years.

Speaker 6 So you need to be healthy. And that's something that these three dudes haven't been able to say in years.
So

Speaker 6 that would be the haters' take on the nuggets.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Paul's here, kids are back in school, vacations are over, and cozy season is officially on. You know what that means? Bombus season is on.

Speaker 10 Bombus makes the most comfortable socks ever, and they even make slippers, tees, underwear, all crafted from premium materials. Perfect for this time of year and cozying up for football watching.

Speaker 10 Their slippers are also Sherpa lined, which feels like you're walking on the clouds. Bombus really has it all.

Speaker 10 And if you head over to bombus.com/slash audio, you can use the code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com/slash audio.

Speaker 1 Code audio at checkout. The T-Wolves, let's talk about the T-Wolves Grizzly real quick because we never mentioned their series.

Speaker 1 We have... We've been, we're not raised by wolves, we're adopted by wolves.

Speaker 1 We adopted them. Yeah, we adopted them.
We've been rooting for them it's like a rescue situation yeah uh it's 1-1

Speaker 1 you're gonna i'm gonna put you in a spot because you might look dumb we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna air this tomorrow give us your give us your game three uh prediction and take and guess what you might be wrong but guess what you know you were very very wrong about the nets last year and we don't bring that up every time we see you

Speaker 6 um to be fair injuries cost me my my nets take last year i will go out on a limb and say minnesota holds court in game three.

Speaker 6 This team has a big chip on its shoulder. They've had a big personality transplant.
I love Ann Edwards.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That's the theme of our talk today.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 They haven't seen the top of the mountain in a very long time. The NBA hipsters always latch on to one series that the casuals don't like.

Speaker 6 And it's the NBA TV series where you're subjected to a bunch of ointment commercials.

Speaker 1 But hey, that's a sad.

Speaker 1 It's so perfect. You absolutely, you're 100% right.

Speaker 1 Everyone likes to have that one series series where they're like, oh, yeah, Nets and Celtics, but have you been watching Grizz and Wolves?

Speaker 6 That's what we're talking about here. It's a reason it's the last segment.
I love both of these teams. One of them's going to lose.
Both of them are going to be a problem for a long time.

Speaker 6 It is like Josh Allen and Pat Mahomes. These guys are both going to be a factor in the West for years.

Speaker 1 I love the cross-sport analogy. It always helps our stupid brains.

Speaker 2 It does, yeah. Anytime you can tie that in, like

Speaker 2 it's not even cross-sport, just like relate to football.

Speaker 1 It's just always great to be like, this one sports thing is like this other sports thing.

Speaker 1 Yep, got it now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so you take somebody in like 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?

Speaker 2 Team not in the playoffs, but people talk about a lot. The Lakers, they're looking for a head coach.

Speaker 2 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 uh

Speaker 6 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 uh in the last nine years they've missed it seven times this is a franchise that is sort of reeling uh based on its own illustrious past.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's a weird blend of this is the most prestigious franchise in the sport.

Speaker 6 And man, in the context of the West, like this is pretty brutal, especially when you consider, is LeBron James going to be there in two years?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Quinn Snyder, Doc Rivers, Nick Nurse, these are the names that we mentioned.

Speaker 6 Jawan Howard. And yes, there's a couple recently retired college coaches.

Speaker 1 Coach Kay.

Speaker 2 Coach K, he flirted with him. You remember that? Like 10 years ago, 15 years ago?

Speaker 6 You might have to get out the fact sheet and add a few more bullet points, folks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, Coach K.

Speaker 1 You think he killed that puppy, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you did he ever give you those vibes we've been talking about vibes

Speaker 2 he never gave me the puppy killing vibes now i haven't spent enough time with him to really get to know the the real coach k so maybe that's layers deep no he won't let you in he's got that hard exterior but to set he's got like a very close circle and

Speaker 1 it kills puppies he's basically like bad news kennels

Speaker 6 but i'll say this guys anybody who gets the phone call is gonna gonna be serious but ultimately it's it's questionable.

Speaker 6 For a coach like Nick Nurse or Quinn Snyder, it's a pretty stable situation or choices of if they want to move, a very tenuous, stressful situation with Russell Westbrook, Rob Palenka, Magic Johnson doing stuff.

Speaker 6 That is not that attractive right now. So they're going to get somebody.
I'm not sure who that is,

Speaker 6 but they need somebody to build the defense back up.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And whatever coach comes in there is going to have their hands full if they don't. You know, they lost Caruso.

Speaker 2 Look at what we see from Caruso this week.

Speaker 6 That guy is like Pat Bev. And they just dumped these guys and brought in Westbrook.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And he's going to come up with hilarious nicknames for you does he like pick does he like lebron yeah he's big fan huge fan he loves lebron actually like without lebron james skip bayless doesn't have a job that's true so that's true he depends on him it's like yeah it's like farmers to hilly on the rain hillary clinton for sean hannaday or something yeah right you just need you need him to survive uh can you just real quick rank give me your top top three vibes teams right now oh in order

Speaker 6 in order 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.

Speaker 6 Then I'm going Miami. I think they're an ultimate chip on the shoulder team.
They have a very strong brand.

Speaker 6 And then Boston is third because they still have a dangerous situation in front of them this weekend in Brooklyn, and that could turn.

Speaker 6 If Brooklyn wins both of those games, their vibes are going to change real fast. And Boston, you know, they're accustomed to some pretty crazy vibes there.
So those are my top top three.

Speaker 2 And then Chris Paul last

Speaker 6 Phoenix with the Devin Booker System.

Speaker 2 Just Chris Paul as an individual.

Speaker 6 Oh, Chris Paul's individual vibes.

Speaker 2 Bad vibes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he just gives them everywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who you got one-on-one? Chris Paul or Bob Kuzzy?

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 JJ, I love JJ.

Speaker 6 My co-worker, JJ Reddick, definitely got one of the lines of the year out on Mike Russo

Speaker 6 on our airways yesterday when the plumbers and

Speaker 6 what was it, plumbers and firemen?

Speaker 1 Yeah, JJ. He can't dribble with his left hand.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 JJ 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?

Speaker 1 Like, no, that's actually very funny and a good point. And it's like, that's what you talk about on a podcast.

Speaker 6 It was brilliant. It just goes to show that JJ is quickly becoming one of our best NBA voices on ESPN.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I don't think Mad Dog Russo knew what to do when he hit him with the, he did know how to dribble his left.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a great point. And Bob Kuzi, you have to imagine, God rest his soul,

Speaker 2 yeah, he's like 93.

Speaker 2 Is probably like, please stop bringing me up in comparison to these players.

Speaker 2 Like, the only time my name gets brought up, it's because somebody is about to dunk on me and be like, no, Bob Kuzi could not be an equipment manager in today's NBA. Yeah, it's like,

Speaker 6 who's a better quarterback, George Blanda or Patrick Mahomes?

Speaker 2 Patrick Mahomes checks down a lot.

Speaker 6 All respect to these pioneers. And I mean a lot of respect because all of us are standing on their shoulders in weird ways.

Speaker 6 But yeah, when you try to figure out who would win one-on-one or if you drop Bob Koosi into the 2022 NBA playoffs,

Speaker 6 it's pretty painful to think what that would look like.

Speaker 1 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 Naismuth map. What's the website again?

Speaker 6 Thegoldenhexagon.com.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or you can find the link on his Twitter 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.

Speaker 1 And everything.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Kirk, thank you.
We'll have you back on for the finals and we'll get you some roback.

Speaker 6 Hey, thank you guys. Have a good weekend.

Speaker 1 So y'all know that we're big fans of Cracker Barrel. And this holiday season, I will be sat at their table with a big plate of country-fried turkey.

Speaker 11 And Brandon, I'll be right there with you, and I'll check it off my Christmas list in the country store while I'm at it. It'll make a nice holiday tradition.

Speaker 8 Oh, that's so cute of you.

Speaker 11 Enjoy all the more holiday traditions only at Cracker Barrel.

Speaker 1 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 Stefan.

Speaker 1 Zach, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 uh we got to start 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 the congrats

Speaker 4 thank you uh what do you say to those people um

Speaker 2 just let them talk uh yeah ignore them just suck it you can you can just say just dx them yeah idiots

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 2 not us we weren't the ones saying that.

Speaker 2 I was actually rooting really hard for you guys in the qualification. I love international soccer.

Speaker 2 I don't really follow club soccer that much, but when it comes to any of the major international competitions, that's like it gets me going.

Speaker 2 I feel like it's one time when we can all just like pull together and be unabashedly American about things.

Speaker 2 So 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.

Speaker 2 And I remember back in 2010 when it was the Gjiblani ball down in South Africa, and every goalie fucking hated that thing because it was like a butterfly.

Speaker 2 When do you get the chance to try out the new ball to see how it's going to fly?

Speaker 4 I'm not sure because we've camp in June. We've 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.

Speaker 4 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, Jabalani ball.

Speaker 4 The first time I ever tried training with it is in the summer with the Philly Union and the first volley I took

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 We're like, okay,

Speaker 1 we're dealing with

Speaker 4 that ball was insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is different.

Speaker 1 So yeah, the World Cup, you know, coming up in Qatar. What is it like like for a goalie in terms of the heat situation?

Speaker 1 Because I know they'll talk about it, you know, how hot it is and the players maybe needing water breaks.

Speaker 1 Goalies obviously don't move around as much, but does it suck just standing there being like, man, this is hot. You got to wear the long shirt.
Can you maybe go maybe go without the long shirt?

Speaker 1 Can you do that? Is that legal?

Speaker 4 Sometimes I go out without the long shirt when it's really hot. I sweat really easily.
So,

Speaker 4 yeah, I get cold very easily and I sweat really easily.

Speaker 4 But I'd way rather play in the heat than the cold any day.

Speaker 1 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 easy part?

Speaker 1 Like, oh, I would have saved that. Or what part of

Speaker 1 goaltending is the nuance that, that, that we don't understand, that it's hard to like to understand unless you're actually doing it?

Speaker 4 Um, I, uh, it's tough, man, because to like field players, they can go out there and make all these mistakes and give the ball away and miss everything

Speaker 4 as goalkeepers if you make one mistake it's usually going to end up as a goal um so i would say us goalkeepers we have to stay pretty much perfect back there um

Speaker 4 if we want if we want to win the game or um obviously there's some there's some shots you can't stop and obviously mistakes happen but um yeah i'll say the hardest part is just like

Speaker 4 being mentally strong and

Speaker 4 when yeah, not being not thinking about making a mistake or being negative because when that happens, you're balanced making a mistake.

Speaker 2 What about dealing with the gnats?

Speaker 2 I feel like gnats in the summertime when it's really humid outside would be tough for a goalie because everyone else is moving around and you're just getting swarmed by all these bugs like your Joba Chamberlain out there.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no,

Speaker 4 they tell you about like they go to the highest point, so sometimes I'll put my hand up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, gnats are annoying.

Speaker 4 But like I said,

Speaker 4 I hate the cold. I'd way rather play in insect-infested warmth than be out there not moving in the cold.

Speaker 2 Who would you say is the enforcer on this team? Because I've noticed in qualification, Pulisic's taking a couple cheap shots. They like to go after him.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I feel like he needs like a dude that's ready to step in at all times and take care of the heavy business for him.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I'd like to be that person. I'd also say Western McKinney, I'm just so far away.
I'd say Wester McKinney likes to

Speaker 4 get into it with the other guys.

Speaker 4 And he's a ride-o-die. He'll always be,

Speaker 4 he's always got your back.

Speaker 1 Playing in the EPL,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 4 That would have to be Liverpool at Anfield.

Speaker 4 Yeah, their fans are insane. And the way they sing

Speaker 4 You'll Never Walk Alone right before the game starts is, I mean, it's like deafening and

Speaker 4 it's crazy. The whole, everybody in the stadium singing it

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 2 What about West Ham when they blow the bubbles, when there's just bubbles everywhere? Is that intimidating at all?

Speaker 4 West Ham was actually really good. We played them Wednesday night in a Caribbean Cup, maybe like eight o'clock, and their stadium was full in London on a Wednesday, which was crazy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they played the bubbles at the end when they beat us in PKs.

Speaker 4 But no, that was a beautiful night. And they were,

Speaker 4 I was really impressed with how they filled it out. And they were loud.

Speaker 1 really passionate.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 4 I thought about at least eight.

Speaker 1 Eight?

Speaker 1 I mean, that's some.

Speaker 4 Penalty kicks are hard.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because that's penalty kicks. Does it bother you that like 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.

Speaker 4 It's not

Speaker 4 as easy as it looks, obviously.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I mean, as goalkeepers... With all the new rules and everything, we don't like because.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it sucks

Speaker 2 when they were doing the VAR thing and monitoring your heels to make sure that your heels were on the line.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 We don't like robots. So is there any circumstance where a goalie is in favor of VAR?

Speaker 4 Whenever,

Speaker 4 maybe if there's an all sides and a goal called back, that they scored.

Speaker 4 That's it. VAR, yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's kind of getting into our, like, it's, it's the norm now in the game, which is kind of nice because in the beginning, the first couple years, it was like, oh, we hate this.

Speaker 4 This is just stopping the game. It's ruining the flow of play.

Speaker 4 But they're getting better. They're getting quicker at it.

Speaker 4 But yeah, it kind of ruins the flow of the game sometimes.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 4 I've seen it be successful once or twice where the goal goalie has actually scored. But no, I have never been successful.
I've only gone up a handful of times.

Speaker 4 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 or where I'm going.

Speaker 4 So I've never had a chance to score.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that would add a nice little wrinkle to it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's good because we're not great at heading. So that would be way better.

Speaker 1 So if you guys, let's just say Miracle Run. America goes and wins the World Cup.

Speaker 1 What's more important to you in your trophy case, the World Cup or the Big Ten title?

Speaker 4 That's a tough one, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, very tough.

Speaker 4 Now, I mean, of course, the World Cup. I mean, that would trump everything.

Speaker 1 But you won the Big Ten title. That's, I mean, that flag flies forever.
2014, right?

Speaker 4 It's a tournament, yeah. The tournament in the league, I guess.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Double. So

Speaker 2 if we do win the World Cup, we're already calling it the golden generation because we're dumb soccer fans.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 If we do win this World Cup, how long are you going to stay drunk for?

Speaker 1 How long is that party going to be?

Speaker 4 Oh, man, that would last

Speaker 4 weeks.

Speaker 2 I'd say years.

Speaker 1 I'd say years. Years.
Oh, in America.

Speaker 4 I mean, yeah, that would be, I mean, insane.

Speaker 4 I can't even imagine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So looking ahead to your group,

Speaker 2 when do you start watching tape on England?

Speaker 4 We won't start that until, I mean, the coaches have probably already started, to be honest.

Speaker 4 But as players, we won't start that until we get into camp before the World Cup.

Speaker 1 What does tape look like for a goalie?

Speaker 1 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? Is it is all of that covered?

Speaker 4 Uh, I mean, yeah, we'll look at like how they attack, how they

Speaker 4 uh, like their set pieces, their penalties. Um, we'll look at their yeah, their free kicks, who likes to kick it.
Um,

Speaker 4 we look at um, yeah, just how they're they they press, like their uh

Speaker 4 their forwards kind of press our goal kicks and stuff. And

Speaker 4 other than that, it's really just team meetings and it's not really too much video as you imagine, to be honest. Huh.

Speaker 2 Would you, would you consider England to be a rival of ours?

Speaker 2 Or 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 in the knockout round.

Speaker 2 There's been a lot of bad blood there. Is there any bad blood between us and any of the countries that are in our group?

Speaker 4 Well, besides Iran with the

Speaker 4 not really, honestly.

Speaker 4 Really, it's just Mexico who's our biggest rival.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 we don't like them.

Speaker 4 But countries over here, like in Europe, we don't play too many European countries. So when we get the chance to play them,

Speaker 4 it's not like a rivalry. It's more like a, okay, let's compare ourselves to the competition over here.
Let's see how close we are.

Speaker 2 So in the qualification process,

Speaker 2 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 talk shit to them?

Speaker 2 Because against England, that's not going to be a problem. There's no language barrier there.

Speaker 2 But do you like, do you learn how to say, like, you know, all the chupa me penga, all that stuff, so that when you're ready to play against Mexico, you've got some insults loaded up?

Speaker 4 I don't, um, 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.

Speaker 4 So they've got to go.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 How far can you kick a goal kick down there?

Speaker 4 Down there, it was far, man.

Speaker 4 Way past that field just because of the altitude. I loved it.
And the ball we played with with the Adidas ball, it was like, it had a lot of pop when you hit it.

Speaker 4 So yeah, I mean, it was flying. It was fine.
It was fun.

Speaker 1 Can you explain to

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I watched the Premier League. I, though, don't know like the distinct difference, like how I could explain it to someone.

Speaker 1 So, when you came over, like, and you see the level of skill, and it's no knock on the MLS, but what is the specific thing that's like, oh, these guys are faster or stronger?

Speaker 1 What is the thing that you can point to? Like, yeah, that's totally different.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 4 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

Speaker 4 the kids are like,

Speaker 4 it's crazy. They'll be like 14, 13, 14, and they'll be

Speaker 4 playing for free. kind of doing like living my life kind of but also doing schoolwork um so they'll be training almost almost every day.
They'll be

Speaker 4 missing out in school. They'll be traveling for games.
They'll be staying in hotels.

Speaker 4 And so, the 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,

Speaker 4 like when I was a kid, they were just like, Oh, go out and play, go have fun.

Speaker 4 Parents, I'll get it, yeah, get off my hands for an hour and a half.

Speaker 4 So, over here, there's just more purpose

Speaker 4 into like training and

Speaker 4 playing the game.

Speaker 4 They play the game over here better differently.

Speaker 4 They know it better and they just understand it more than I was taught growing up. But

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 I've also heard it described as like it's as simple as the first touch.

Speaker 1 The first touch in Europe is it's just different than the first touch in the mls like when you actually receive a pass it's the control of the ball is is immediate intent instead of like a little bit of a gather in in american soccer yeah yeah i think yeah the technical as abilities of these players over here are insane um i mean some of the guys on my team are just they do shit like every day in training and like the first year

Speaker 4 half year out my mind was blown like in training almost every day. I was like, wow, how did he do that?

Speaker 4 And so, yeah, yeah, I would just say the technical ability and

Speaker 4 tactics and just the knowledge and the understanding of the game is superior over here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What about from a goalkeeping perspective? Because we've had a lot of players from the U.S. that's like been

Speaker 2 our most successful position in terms of guys that have gone overseas and excelled.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Like anything about your game that you had to improve on?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 4 I think we're all always evolving and trying to get better and become better players.

Speaker 4 So I'm always evolving.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I mean, they've changed my game a lot, just technique-based on, because with goalkeeping, there's so many different aspects and 1v1s and crossing and headers and angled shots playing out.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they've changed my

Speaker 4 technique in some situations

Speaker 4 for the better, and it's helped me a lot.

Speaker 2 What's your favorite time-wasting tactic?

Speaker 2 My favorite one is when a goalie like catches a pass that's just dribbling into him, and they catch it with 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would probably be my favorite one.
I hate when I have to do it because it's just like, but it's like games and shit.

Speaker 4 But it looks, it just looks stupid.

Speaker 2 Is there like an internal clock that's like, okay, you need to get up now? Or like, do you know exactly how many seconds you can be down?

Speaker 4 Well, technically, when we catch the ball, we only have six seconds until we have to like release it and get it out of our hands.

Speaker 4 But no ref really counts six seconds. You get more like maybe 10 to 15 seconds.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I mean, you're always kind of wary of the referee.

Speaker 4 And I feel like I always 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.

Speaker 4 I'm just like really laid back and nonchalant in the ref thing.

Speaker 2 So you're just too chill. Yeah.
You get a yellow card for being chill.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dumb question. Does it ever hurt to get hit by the ball? Because some of those shots are just insane.

Speaker 4 Sometimes it does, yeah.

Speaker 4 Sometimes it definitely does.

Speaker 4 Yeah, getting hit in a lower region is something that happens more than you think. And that's, yeah, that's not fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like these, especially the guys who just have a rocket and it's coming from, you know, outside the box, and it feels like it's just, you know, going in different directions.

Speaker 1 I don't, I don't know how you guys do it sometimes when I see these shots in slow motion.

Speaker 4 Those shots are easier. Like, when it's outside the 18 or whatever, you have more time to like...
prep yourself.

Speaker 4 It's the shots that are like when it's 1v1 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.

Speaker 1 That's interesting because I've always, 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?

Speaker 1 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. Yep, yep.
Okay, so I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 I'm very, very wrong.

Speaker 2 So who's your goat, Messi or Ronaldo?

Speaker 4 I mean, just the way Messi plays and played at Barcelona for me was he's the GOAT.

Speaker 4 But Ronaldo, for like all the work he's put in and from where he's come.

Speaker 1 Nope.

Speaker 2 On his abs, on his diet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, on tapping it in, on two feet out, waxing his eyebrows, hitting a bunch of penalty kicks.

Speaker 4 He was, yeah, he was fun to watch at Madrid. I mean, I love when Messi and Ronaldo, and we had the classicos with Real Madrid and Barcelona back in the day growing up.
Those were the best.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So much.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not a threat.

Speaker 1 Tap in merchant. We call him the tap

Speaker 2 inside the six. He can tap it in, or he's a header merchant as well.

Speaker 1 Outside the six, not a danger. Yeah.
I'll keep paying him up. You're good with that.
All right. So, Zach, I had one last question.
This has been a lot of fun. It's the rowback question.

Speaker 1 Go to r-h-o-b-a-c-k.com. Use code TAKE for 20% off your first purchase.

Speaker 1 I mentioned at the start, you have a foundation. Can we talk about that for a second? So when did you start it and what do you guys do?

Speaker 4 So I started after the

Speaker 4 killing of George Floyd.

Speaker 4 It was all just about

Speaker 4 all just about

Speaker 4 standing up for what's right.

Speaker 4 And at the time, we thought enough is enough, just like so many people

Speaker 4 as well. And

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 4 I connected with like about 100, 150 athletes that I've kind of come

Speaker 4 into contact with just through my career and traveling and whatnot and teams.

Speaker 4 And so we talked and

Speaker 4 we just want to kind of help the future generations who are underprivileged in America. We wanted to help those kids and those families and just give them resources that

Speaker 4 that I had growing up that was able to get me to Manchester and to these heights. So we just, it's all about just coming together and raising money.
And

Speaker 4 we partner with the Boys and Girls Club of America to disperse those funds to their kids and for whatever they need, backpacks, Wi-Fi, food,

Speaker 4 whether if it's to keep the club open for an extra hour or two after school so the kids stay off the off the streets.

Speaker 4 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 to be successful i love it okay yeah go check it out go support it uh my last last question just testing your soccer iq what is the most dangerous lead in soccer 2-0 2-0 absolutely so what do you have i learned that when i was like 10 because i we got beat that way and i ever since that that day i it's just been ingrained in my mind it's my favorite when you're up like one nothing and you're like you score that second goal you're like oh man i'd rather not be up two nothing well you kind of would but it is dangerous.

Speaker 1 It's funny.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you ever like yell at your guys for scoring? It's like, hey, we had them right where we want.

Speaker 2 If you're up one, nothing, one nil, excuse me, against England, and then you score a second goal, I want to see you like screaming at them back there.

Speaker 4 I will. I'll make sure that they're on their toes.

Speaker 1 Also, I 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.

Speaker 4 I'll keep that in mind. Yeah, I guess we always don't do that enough.

Speaker 1 Like, we don't get enough cheapies because you guys are too skilled. It's more of a critique on how good you are

Speaker 4 yeah well we get yelled at at food if we make make a mistake or not by me not by me

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 um all right well zach thank you so much we appreciate it man and uh best of luck rest of the season and we're looking forward to the world cup thanks man appreciate you guys

Speaker 12 that that's the sound of extremely processed dog food which is the norm at most pet food companies but at the farmer's dog we do things differently We gently cook our food without ultra-processing.

Speaker 12 It's developed by our team of board-certified nutritionists, made to human-grade safety standards, and portioned for your dog, then delivered right to your door. How does that sound to you?

Speaker 12 Get 50% off your first box, available only at thefarmersdog.com.

Speaker 1 Okay, thanks to Kirk Goldsbury and Zach Stefan.

Speaker 1 Great show today, boys. Let's wrap up with some Firefest.
Billy is in the middle of competing on the Lowering the the Bar Championship. So tune in for that.
That is why he's not here right now.

Speaker 1 He may pop in at any moment.

Speaker 1 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 Is it a drinking competition? I don't know. He thinks it is.

Speaker 9 We were asked to take some promo pictures of our Coors Light t-shirts. And the girl taking the photos was like, oh, will you grab a Coors Light?

Speaker 9 And he's like, oh, I'm going to start drinking because I have to do the Lowering the Bar anyway. And I didn't know.
I couldn't tell if that was like a...

Speaker 2 Well, you would think that given Billy's history this week, he'd have some PTSD from lowering lowering the bar for himself.

Speaker 1 That's true. Get it? The shirts.

Speaker 9 Behind you, Big Cat. They're great.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Firefest. Billy, tune into the lowering the bar finals, though.
Billy's in it. Our guy, Vibbs, does a great job with it.
I don't know when that's coming out.

Speaker 1 We'll tell everyone to watch it when it does come out.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to guess what Billy's Firefest would be this week, is that the internet saw Billy's brain in action as somebody who is

Speaker 2 irrational.

Speaker 2 Big Cat, you saw the clip when he buckled.

Speaker 1 No, he definitely was going down.

Speaker 1 PFD saved him. It was funny because I came in and

Speaker 1 Hank and I were in Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday, and PFD was like, you should have seen Billy just, you know, make excuses. I was like, so just Billy.

Speaker 1 But it was mad. So just Billy.

Speaker 2 It was a little bit more than excuses, too. Like, he was mad at me for saving his life.

Speaker 2 And it was like, you remember in Forrest Scump when Lieutenant Dan gets pissed off at Forrest for dragging him out of the jungle?

Speaker 1 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 when he was like did you touch it yeah yes very much 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.

Speaker 1 And he was just going around to people, like, making the excuses.

Speaker 9 And they're like, what are you even talking about? Yeah.

Speaker 1 dude, sir, I was ready to eat. I was trying to eat lunch, yeah.

Speaker 2 He was proactively informing people before they even heard the news that it was about to be fake.

Speaker 9 There was

Speaker 9 it was a very like funnily split cast online of people being like, no, he actually could have gotten it up.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Which is good, good debate.

Speaker 1 But then, you know what?

Speaker 2 He did get it up. So he got 275 on the show.
All as well did as well.

Speaker 1 Hank, you're Firefest.

Speaker 9 Yes, so I'm holding one in my hand, the Carstick 2.0, 3.0, actually.

Speaker 1 Whoa, let me see it. Is it different? Have you made it? Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 9 As you can tell, it's very different. It's a sleek new design.

Speaker 9 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?

Speaker 1 Is this from China?

Speaker 9 We could 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?

Speaker 9 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 Firefest, unfortunately, is that there's only a very limited amount.

Speaker 9 So they are on sale today, but depending on when you listen, they might be sold out. I tried to get more made.
It just was like, it would have taken years, years longer to get anything more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was, we actually used the last trees in the Amazon to get these. So

Speaker 1 don't let them die in vain. Yeah, I mean, the earth's dying because of these car sticks.

Speaker 9 There's blood diamond trees.

Speaker 2 Yes, go save them. Yeah.
The very good boys in the Amazon are all felled. Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. So car sticks, go buy them.

Speaker 9 Yeah, if you can. And I'm sorry.
If you can afford it.

Speaker 1 No, you can afford it.

Speaker 9 They're reasonably priced, especially for all the multi-uses you can get out of it. Yeah.
I would say they're probably underpriced.

Speaker 2 That's true. That was going to be my question, Hank.

Speaker 2 Is that only for use in digging things out between seats?

Speaker 9 Well, it's basically a Swiss army knife. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You could hit someone, or you could get something out.

Speaker 2 You could throw it. You could scrape ice off a windshield with it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You could lose it.

Speaker 1 I don't think you could lose that. No, you could lose it.

Speaker 9 If you were like work at like a grocery store and you need to like, you have one bathroom and you attach a key key to it so that people don't lose the key.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's good. You could let the boys know that you're down for a little hockey.

Speaker 2 Well, it does have a little keyhole in there, like for a keyring.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's a keychain type of thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe if you like drop something down a sewer, you could maybe attach something and lower it

Speaker 2 with some tape on it. If you've ever gotten a key to a city, that's actually the perfect keychain for you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. When we finally go get the key to Toledo, we'll put it on a car stick.

Speaker 1 All right, Pifty, your Fire Fest.

Speaker 2 My My Fire Fest 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think the Cubs pitcher has an 18 ERA, so I don't know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 Oh, I think it's Mark Leiter Jr. Okay, there you go.
Son of Al Leiter.

Speaker 2 So we'll see. We'll really test the bet out tonight.

Speaker 2 I'm feeling a little bit guilty, but everybody from Pittsburgh is like, no, don't feel bad. These are

Speaker 2 continue to bet, but I'm certain that 5-1 is not going to hold up. And this, you know, like it might end up positive like it was last year, up 24 units.

Speaker 2 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 11-0-1

Speaker 2 to start the year. Damn.
I just need a cool name.

Speaker 2 Cool name for it, Jay.

Speaker 2 The Baltimunder doesn't work.

Speaker 1 Build that wall. Build that wall.

Speaker 1 Ooh, Balta-Less.

Speaker 1 Balta-Less.

Speaker 2 Instead of Baltimore.

Speaker 2 Baltafewer. I don't know.
I'm still workshopping it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Because I've been just consumed with college basketball and NBA basketball. I need to get back and really dig in.
Fortunately, we have Daniel Jeremiah.

Speaker 1 And we're going to have Todd McShea on as well. I'm okay.
You know what, though, PFD? I'm okay with this. I think

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like people, like, because I put my hand up, I had the Zion Williamson uh situation backwards the the pelicans are actually keeping him out because they don't want him to get injured before they possibly trade him and like one guy was like this is what happens when you just jump into the nba it's like dude I like all sports.

Speaker 1 I was watching fucking College Hoops in March. What do you want me to do? You're a casual.
Yeah, like I did. But guess what? I'm a casual.

Speaker 1 It's okay for us to hop from sport to sport. Guess what we're going to be talking about in a week? Hockey.
I'm going to bring a Stanley Cup to Canada. I've already said I'd do that.

Speaker 1 But I'm done with the people shaming. Like 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?

Speaker 2 It's impossible to be a well-rounded human being and be an expert in every sport.

Speaker 1 I think we're pretty well-rounded in sports on this show. We had a fucking tennis player on.

Speaker 2 Do you know how much I hate tennis? We had a soccer player on today. Yeah.
Same. So, yes, extremely well-rounded.
And we have a website that's debuting for one of our guys

Speaker 2 next week.

Speaker 1 I haven't done any, all I did was text and say, make this website.

Speaker 2 So I think we're still waiting on the final

Speaker 2 rendition of the website to come out.

Speaker 1 Let's wait till next week.

Speaker 2 It's got a couple features. Yeah, let's watch it.
One of the features is still in beta testing right now. All right, we'll wait till next week.

Speaker 2 It's going to be a great site.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was a big time. Like I had an idea for like

Speaker 1 20 minutes and then texted someone that we should do the idea and then never followed up again.

Speaker 1 So that's good news that it's happening.

Speaker 1 All right, my Fire Fest is actually, it's not me. Well, it is me, but it's a friend of mine.

Speaker 1 I want you guys to rule on this. A good friend of mine,

Speaker 1 first-time dog owner, got a dog, got a puppy.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I kind of want to tell this fucking guy, who is 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.

Speaker 2 So the puppy was, he went out, he adopted the puppy because he wanted to save a puppy's life.

Speaker 1 He was gifted to the puppy.

Speaker 2 Oh, so he didn't want to save the dog's life.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 2 He was perfectly fine letting the dog die.

Speaker 1 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've got to be there for that puppy.

Speaker 2 Well, he sounds like an absentee father to a certain extent.

Speaker 1 It does.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 1 So what should I do? I want the AWLs to maybe chime in. Like that's a real dickhead move.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 The puppy is probably going to either one thing turn on your friend when your friend comes back and goes.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, he's kind of an asshole.

Speaker 2 God forbid,

Speaker 2 actually attack your friend. God forbid.
God forbid. latch onto his throat

Speaker 2 and pull out his trachea.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that would be devastating.

Speaker 2 And then urinate into the hole where his windpipe used to be. Yep.

Speaker 1 God help him. God forbid.
God forbid.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I think that your friend sounds like a real prick. He's a real prick.

Speaker 1 You guys have anything to weigh in on that? Any thoughts? You guys have had dogs at various points in your life. Not you, Jake, because you're hyper-allergenic to everybody.
I agree with you. You do?

Speaker 1 My family has one. All right.

Speaker 2 Okay. Thank you, Hank.
Would you ever abandon your dog?

Speaker 1 No, not the right thing to abandon. Three days after? Four days after?

Speaker 1 Fun new segment you have.

Speaker 2 Would you leave your dog, would you leave a puppy alone in a house for five days on its own?

Speaker 1 Yeah, right after you got it. So that's my Firefest.
I'm dealing with it. I don't know what to say because

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he doesn't deserve dogs.

Speaker 1 No, no, definitely doesn't.

Speaker 2 Finish this off, Jake.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 1 Ah,

Speaker 1 sounds like a good podcast.

Speaker 2 What flavor do you want

Speaker 1 see like the flavors really matter it's all targets anyway i would actually say you should do like a peach or something that would probably be like if you do if you do winter green or

Speaker 1 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 entirely yeah 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 gonna

Speaker 1 excited I also said you're getting in, though.

Speaker 9 That's a lot of power.

Speaker 1 On the entire thing. Should we let him do Black Buffalo? Because it is nicotine.
It's no tobacco. I'd also allow that.

Speaker 8 Not Casey's not garbage because they're a friend of the show.

Speaker 1 And it's not tobacco.

Speaker 8 So I want to backtrack on my comments. Yeah, that's one minute ago.

Speaker 1 Well, no, it's not tobacco. It's not tobacco dip.
So

Speaker 1 it doesn't have the same.

Speaker 8 It doesn't have the sign that says...

Speaker 1 Yeah, correct. Yeah.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 The 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.

Speaker 1 And it has nicotine, though, so it it will make your head spin. Yeah.
So maybe we'll allow that. Oh, God.
Yeah. How about this?

Speaker 1 If the Celtics sweep them, you've got to do the regular stuff.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Hank said it's crazy for the Nets to get switched.

Speaker 2 Net culture.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's a net positive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. We'll see.
Okay.

Speaker 1 That is our show. Daniel Jeremiah on Monday and Tom McShea on Wednesday.
We haven't booked it it yet, but we're going to book it.

Speaker 1 So we're going to get draft week going hot and heavy next week.

Speaker 2 Everyone have a good weekend, safe weekend. Numbers.
Love you guys.

Speaker 9 Five.

Speaker 1 Six.

Speaker 1 I would pay anything for 69 to come up. 25.

Speaker 1 Hanks, just a reminder. It's actually on the top right now.
Oh, perfect. 22.
Hank's never gotten it.

Speaker 9 What number was it Wednesday?

Speaker 8 54, I believe.

Speaker 2 Hank, what'd you guess?

Speaker 9 Five. Okay.

Speaker 2 I'm just just going. Oh, that was five.
You see five?

Speaker 1 28.

Speaker 1 Daryl Green. Have we almost gotten everything?

Speaker 8 No, we have. That's the third time, by the way.
6, 20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 51, 78, 88. So a lot of 20s.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Not 28.

Speaker 1 I'm going to start doing that. Patrick Kane.
All right. See you everyone Monday.

Speaker 2 Love you guys.

Speaker 2 DA got that go.

Speaker 2 Joking away

Speaker 2 Though I don't know what to say I'd say anyway

Speaker 2 Today's another day to party Shy it away

Speaker 2 No I'll be coming for your love away

Speaker 2 Shy it away

Speaker 2 No, I'll be coming for your love away

Speaker 2 Take

Speaker 2 me

Speaker 2 I'll be

Speaker 2 gone

Speaker 2 Needless to say

Speaker 2 I've all the settings about me stumbling away

Speaker 1 Slowly learning that life is okay

Speaker 1 Stay up to me

Speaker 1 It's no better to be safe than sorry Stay up to me

Speaker 1 It's no better to be saved than sorry Stay up to me

Speaker 1 It's for better to be safe than sorry

Speaker 1 Stay up to me

Speaker 1 It's for better to be safe than sorry Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 up

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 I'll take

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 to the bathroom

Speaker 1 Take a table, take it