NBA Preview - WC With Rachel Nichols, EC With Richard Jefferson and Army HC Jeff Monken

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Speaker 1 See Mintmobile.com. On today's part in my take, we're sending everyone off for the rest of the week.
There's no show on Friday that is Christmas, but we have an extra long show today.

Speaker 1 We have Jeff Monkin, Army head football coach of Army, trying to get him a bowl game, which they got. But we talked to him about

Speaker 1 basically being the toughest guy alive. We have Rachel Nichols on to preview the Western Conference in the NBA, and Richard Jefferson on to preview the Eastern Conference of the NBA.

Speaker 1 So the NBA is officially back, and we have a full preview for everyone. And then we have a quick Monday night football recap.
Hot seat cool thrown, guys on chicks, send you off for

Speaker 1 the last couple weeks of 2020. Before we do all that, part of my take is brought to you by...

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Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

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Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

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Speaker 1 Today is Wednesday, December 23rd, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are

Speaker 1 dead.

Speaker 2 Worst 11-0 team of all time.

Speaker 1 Dead-ish. Dead-ish.

Speaker 2 Ben Rothesberger is not healthy

Speaker 1 anymore.

Speaker 1 This is tricky because now we're biased.

Speaker 7 We do like,

Speaker 1 you know, the Steelers in Pittsburgh, the city of Pittsburgh. Ben Rothesberger, so it's hard, but in fair, in fairness to every other team that we bash, the Pittsburgh Steelers are frauds.

Speaker 1 Straight up frauds. 11-0 to 11-3, losing as 14-point favorites to the Bengals.
They are broken. They are hurt.
They are damaged.

Speaker 1 And I don't know, like, has there ever been a team that's gone 11-0 and finished 11-5 and still gone to the playoffs?

Speaker 2 It would be very funny if they ended up with five straight losses and then limped into the playoffs. They're in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Yes, that's the craziest part.

Speaker 2 So they're going to get into the playoffs. There's a chance.

Speaker 2 And like we talked about, the Browns' chances, even though, listen, it's still extremely likely that the Browns get in, but if the Dominoes fall the wrong way, they might not.

Speaker 2 But there's still a very good chance that depending on how that week six or week 17 game goes, the Browns and the Steelers, they could play each other back-to-back weeks.

Speaker 1 Not only that, PFT, but the Browns.

Speaker 1 And I think that there's, I think most Browns fans know this, but there are still a certain amount of Browns fans out there that haven't fully realized it because they think, and understandably so, they think, well, we beat the Titans and we beat the Colts, so we have the tiebreaker.

Speaker 1 If there's a four or five way tie at 11-5,

Speaker 1 the head-to-heads don't matter. That's the problem, and the Browns get basically booted from the playoffs.

Speaker 1 So week 17, there could be, there's a potential for week 17, and this would be like hell freezing over. The Cleveland Browns could be playing for the AFC North title.

Speaker 1 And if they lose, they could potentially be kicked out of the playoffs. Yeah.
How crazy is that?

Speaker 2 There's a lot of weird stuff that could happen.

Speaker 1 It's so fucking fucking interesting.

Speaker 2 It could work out where if they lose that game, then that means that they have to go to Pittsburgh the next week.

Speaker 2 It could work out that if they win the game, Pittsburgh has to go to Cleveland the next week. It's going to be weird.
It's going to be a very strange ending of the season for sure.

Speaker 1 Either way, I think the big takeaway from Monday Night Football was I don't remember Big Ben ever playing that bad. And like,

Speaker 1 it's bad. Oh, it is very, very bad.

Speaker 2 So the first thing I noticed, besides him just like doing a two-year-old protest and saying, I never never want to play under center so I'm going to fumble the first snap that I get there

Speaker 2 was when he was when they were setting him up for handoffs

Speaker 2 he they were calling handoff plays where he would not have to take more than one step in fact like most of the handoffs Big Ben was doing was just like turning his fat belly to the side and putting the ball out just rotating there was one in the first half in particular where he had to take like maybe maybe a step and a half to his right and he took like half the step and then stretched his arm way out and

Speaker 2 we joke about, like, is Big Ben hurt? Because Big Ben's always hurt in some way. Actually, no, this week he wasn't hurt.

Speaker 2 He was coming back from the world's shortest retirement of all time because he made Adam Schefter announce on like Saturday or Sunday that Big Ben will return for next year. Right.

Speaker 2 We're like, thanks, Adam. Yeah.
No one was. Okay.
Thank you, Ben, for letting us know. But

Speaker 2 I don't know if he's actually like injured or hurt or if he's just lazy. I think he's just old.
He just might be old.

Speaker 1 I think we're seeing this and

Speaker 1 it's happening.

Speaker 1 This is the end of time.

Speaker 1 Of all the things that have happened in the last couple of years, you know who actually is coming out the biggest winner?

Speaker 2 Phillip Rivers.

Speaker 1 Eli Manning. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Because Eli Manning retired first. He was the first to leave the party.
Now, he was obviously when he got bad at the end, it was bad.

Speaker 1 But our lasting memories are now going to be

Speaker 1 bad Big Ben, bad Phil Rivers if he plays for another year or two. Tom Brady's going to play for 10 more years, so he'll be bad at the end.

Speaker 1 Drew Brees, like all these guys getting old and trying to hold on as long as they can.

Speaker 1 Eli's just sitting eating whatever like sloppy Joe's that aren't sloppy Joe's that I guess New Jersey has its own sloppy Joes even though everyone else eats a different kind of sloppy Joes and loving life and he's gonna end up being like oh remember Eli?

Speaker 1 He was awesome. He never got bad.
Yeah. He's like, it is a great lesson.
Like leave the party, be the first to leave instead of the last.

Speaker 2 Right. He's like if when Tiger Woods retires from golf, he's not going to go play on the seniors tour.
Right. Right.
But there should be a seniors tour for quarterbacks.

Speaker 1 Yes. Shouldn't there?

Speaker 2 How awesome would that be so we could still have these guys like swinging around until they die? It's over.

Speaker 1 It's so I don't know where Steelers fans. I think most Steelers fans, and I'm going to give them credit because I think they are some of the best fans in football.
I think most of them realize it.

Speaker 1 Like from judging from social media, they all know what's going on here. No one is making the illusions that the Steelers, and a lot of it is because of injuries.

Speaker 1 They've really been ravaged by injury on the defensive side of the ball. And a lot of it is because they cannot run the ball whatsoever.

Speaker 1 And their offense is essentially Big Ben trying to throw short passes and sailing all of them over everyone's heads and throwing bad picks. And Ben...

Speaker 1 Even the picks are one thing. He was getting guys killed.
They were hospital passes last night, left and right. Ebron got killed.

Speaker 1 Like the Juju Smith Schuster, who was doing a TikTok before the game, he got killed. So I don't know.

Speaker 1 This Steelers team, team, it feels like they're going to limp in and probably sputter out in the first or second round.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't see them unless... I mean, obviously, like, Mike Tomlin's never out of it because

Speaker 2 he's been there a few times and he knows exactly which buttons to press on Big Ben.

Speaker 2 Who, by the way, speaking of buttons to press, Big Ben has sucked at quarterbacks since he unblocked everybody on Twitter. True.
I think maybe he's reading like

Speaker 2 all the negative stuff

Speaker 2 might be the toxicity of the internet

Speaker 2 might be affecting Ben,

Speaker 2 who, as we know, is dealing with porn recovery. Yep.
So maybe he should go back to blocking most of the internet.

Speaker 1 What did Mike Tomlins say? We got to run into the kitchen or something?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we got to start running into the kitchen instead of running out of it. Okay.
So

Speaker 2 your guess is good. That's where the heat is.
That's where the flames are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 That's where you eat.

Speaker 1 Is there a fire in the kitchen?

Speaker 2 Big Ben's just going to interpret that as like, I need to eat more.

Speaker 1 More PFG.

Speaker 2 I need to be heavier.

Speaker 1 Also, credit to the Bengals. That was a nice win.
They played, like, there is something about playing your rival at the end of the season in a lost season and winning a game like that.

Speaker 1 Like, if you're a Bengals fan, you could kind of put your hat on and be like, yeah, we fucking, we fucked up their, their, uh, maybe the AFC North for them.

Speaker 2 Well, it is something to build on because you do have, like, a franchise that you're trying to build. You're no longer in tank mode.
You've got, like, the initial pieces.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, winning a game like this is pretty important. We did get an overload of throwout the record books.
The record books were thrown out by Lewis. Totally thrown out.

Speaker 2 Within 30 seconds of Kermit the Frog dropping the mic. Like, this was.

Speaker 1 I thought it was so high when I was like, wait, did I smoke today? Because what is going on? I was not ready for that. I didn't know that that was happening.

Speaker 1 The Muppets were just fucking talking to me. I tuned in early.

Speaker 2 It worked on me because I tuned in like 10 minutes early to see the Muppets.

Speaker 1 Oh, see, I just had the game.

Speaker 1 I like to, my Monday nights, I like to sit down on the couch at like around 7.45 and have the pregame on because I don't really watch pregames otherwise and really kind of feel in the moment.

Speaker 1 And then they're like, all right, in Cincinnati. And then all of a sudden it's Kermit.
And I'm like, wait, what? What did, what? What's going on? Yeah. Did I change the channel?

Speaker 2 What happened here? Oh, that's what I was looking forward to. I was hoping they'd have Beaker giving an injury rundown, wearing the lab coat, and not being able to understand anything.
But yeah,

Speaker 2 Mike Tomlin actually made more sense with his run into the kitchen than the Swedish chef would have. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Brian Finley looks exactly like meep from the last one.

Speaker 1 Yes. He also was smiling weights.
He might have been concussed.

Speaker 2 He might have been.

Speaker 1 Or he get hit hard a couple times.

Speaker 2 But that's a game where

Speaker 2 he's going to tell his kids about this. Oh, he gets a contract from this.

Speaker 1 He gets a backup contract from this like he will he he will be able to stay in the league for a few more years because of this it was also good seeing a few bengals fans they're always dressed up yeah i missed that one bengals fan though that that dresses half as a bengal half as a miami dolphin for a very specific rivalry uh-huh the guy with the beard yep that guy and then the stormtrooper bengals guys yeah the bengalorian and the storm they also have stormtroopers like the official stormtroopers so it was uh yeah interesting money night football game um all right so here's the deal for this week we have no show Friday because it is Christmas Day.

Speaker 1 We're going to do a mega NBA preview in a minute. So we're going to talk to Rachel Nichols and Richard Jefferson in a minute.
We have, we are back on Monday for week 16.

Speaker 1 We're not going to miss a week of football. And then the following Wednesday, so whatever day that is, the 30th will be our best of.
So that's the schedule. No Sundays are going to be missed.

Speaker 1 No Mondays are going to be missed. But we will not have a show on Friday.
So quickly, let's do a quick, like very abbreviated version of a Sunday preview.

Speaker 1 So we have a Friday game, Thanksgiving, or sorry, Christmas Day games, which is great. NFL should absolutely try to steal Christmas Day from the NBA.

Speaker 2 From Jesus. Yeah.
The NBA stole it from Jesus. The NBA has it.
The NFL has got it. You steal it and then give it back to Jesus.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Viking Saints,

Speaker 1 that game, I mean,

Speaker 1 in week 16, we have a lot of playoff implication games, but not a lot of head-to-head playoff implication games. Because the Vikings Vikings are essentially out of it.

Speaker 1 I guess it's really just the Saints trying to look good.

Speaker 2 I mean, you can't bet against the Saints on Christmas. No.

Speaker 1 And then Saturday games, the Dolphins Raiders game on Saturday night will be very important for the AFC playoff picture and whether the Dolphins, like essentially all the Browns' doomsday scenarios.

Speaker 2 They end if the Vikings.

Speaker 2 The Raiders beat the Dolphins.

Speaker 1 The Dolphins winning out is the most unlikely of the doomsday scenarios. So if the Dolphins win this game, Browns fans get ready for.

Speaker 1 It's just,

Speaker 1 I don't want to keep bringing it up. But I do think there's a lot of Browns.
I think there's a decent amount of Browns fans that still don't realize it.

Speaker 1 Like, they still have not fully comprehended because they think, rightfully so, we'd be 11-5. We'd beaten the Titans and the Colts.
How could we not beat in the playoffs? It's so criminally unfair.

Speaker 2 It's very stupid. But again, it's like a 5% chance that the doomsday scenario actually happens.
So it's probably not going to go down.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 What other big games are you looking forward to on Sunday? The Colts, Steelers,

Speaker 1 are the Steelers just going to die? Can the Steelers opt out from the playoffs?

Speaker 8 You know what?

Speaker 2 So they look so very bad in primetime. I'm going to bet on the Steelers.
I'm going to bet on the Steelers. I can already feel it right now because you said these are the two old dogs of the NFL.

Speaker 2 I know I do.

Speaker 1 Phillip Rivers.

Speaker 2 Like, if you think that you're going to bet against Ben Rothensberger because he doesn't look healthy, what does Phillip Rivers look like? It's true.

Speaker 1 How old does he look?

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 I'm going to bet on the Steelers on Sunday.

Speaker 2 That's how bad they looked.

Speaker 1 The game, I think, the line, the Steelers look so bad. It was Steelers minus 2.5 yesterday before the game, and now it's Colts minus 1.5.
So that's how bad they've looked.

Speaker 1 Other games that are of note, I mean,

Speaker 1 we're obviously looking for our teams. Bears have to win.
They will win. They better win.
If they don't win, I'm going to cry.

Speaker 1 And then Washington football team, which we'll get to Dwayne Haskins in a minute.

Speaker 2 Football team wins and they're in.

Speaker 5 Officially?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they win and they're in.

Speaker 1 Is that true? I believe so. I thought that there was still a way for the Eagles.
I guess not. Maybe not.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think so with the Eagles after that loss. The Eagles.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, because the Eagles. Wait, what about the Cowboys? Can the Cowboys get in with 7-9?

Speaker 2 Let's see. No, because I think the football team beat the Cowboys.
So let's see. We win and we're in.
If I just keep saying it enough.

Speaker 1 Wait, but if the Giants, no, if the Giants win out, I think

Speaker 1 they can finish 7-9 and they have the tiebreaker.

Speaker 2 So that's not. I'm advancing to week 17 right now.

Speaker 5 You know who's definitely not in? Who?

Speaker 1 Billy. The Patriots.
Oh, the damn burned you, Hank. He got you again.
He's really proud of that one. Oh, yeah, that's not.

Speaker 2 Okay, so by win and we're in, I had baked into that assumption that

Speaker 2 the Ravens would beat the Giants. Right.
Which I think is a fair assumption. Well, no.
Hank's probably going to bet. NFC East Giants.

Speaker 1 The NFC East is too crazy

Speaker 1 for it not to come down to week 17. So yeah,

Speaker 2 if the football team wins and the Giants lose, then the football team's in. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then the two big games in the afternoon night, Rams, Seahawks, Titans, Packers.

Speaker 1 Rams, Seahawks, like, I don't know. The Rams have to look at least.

Speaker 1 The Rams are kind of,

Speaker 1 they're not like the Steelers in that they haven't lost three in a row and they haven't looked as bad as the Steelers. But when you lose to the Jets,

Speaker 1 kind of all, everything's out the window. Like, you, you immediately might be in fraud territory.

Speaker 2 That's bullet point number one on your resume, regardless of like what your best win was.

Speaker 1 You don't get to go to the college football playoff when you lose to the Jets.

Speaker 2 You lose to the Jets.

Speaker 2 That would be like if Ohio State lost to Rutgers and they won the rest of their games. It's like, sorry.

Speaker 1 That's really mean to Rutgers, by the way.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, the people know him. I think

Speaker 1 he's better than the Jets.

Speaker 2 I was saying that Rutgers could beat the Jets.

Speaker 1 Brand-wise, I would take Rutgers over the Jets.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. You got Greg Sciano.
You got everything. Chiano's a better coach than Dan Gates.

Speaker 1 Dunzio Keith.

Speaker 2 Dunzio has a legacy there.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so if I look at this game, the Rams and the Seahawks,

Speaker 2 the Rams may have actually done themselves a favor by losing to the Jets.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. A little wake-up call? Little wake-up call.

Speaker 1 Little salts.

Speaker 2 Way better that it happened to the Jets than it happened in the division. Yeah.
That's number one. Yep.

Speaker 2 Number two is there's a possibility that that would make the Rams play against the NFC East winner in the playoffs. They've beaten every team in the NFC East.

Speaker 2 They're 4-0 against the NFC East this year.

Speaker 1 Fun fact, they're 1-3 against the AFC East, which is kind of weird.

Speaker 2 That is weird. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They've lost to the Dolphins, the Bills, and the Jets.

Speaker 2 That's a great time. They beat the Patriots.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 They beat the Patriots?

Speaker 2 And lost to everyone else in the division?

Speaker 1 Lost to the Jets. Yikes.
And then Titans-Packers, which is going to be...

Speaker 1 This game to me is everything, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 It is everything.

Speaker 1 Because if the Titans can't run the ball down the Packers' throat and score at will, I'm going to start having very bad feelings about

Speaker 1 the Packers being frauds. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I think either, you know what, whichever team loses this,

Speaker 2 I'm going to call it officially a fraud.

Speaker 1 Yes, this is the fraud alert. Fraud Bowl.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Fraud Bowl because the Titans have

Speaker 2 flirted with fraudulence.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, their third down,

Speaker 1 their third-down defense is quite fraudulent. Yes.
Well, actually, it isn't. It's just bad.

Speaker 2 Well, unless they got the boy out there doing boy things. That's right.

Speaker 1 Boy of the week.

Speaker 2 Boy of the week.

Speaker 2 Yeah, loser of this game is a fraud.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Billy, will you have your parlays up?

Speaker 5 I will have them up in time for Sunday.

Speaker 1 There'll be a can't-lose parlay. Are you

Speaker 5 it'll be on boostbigcat.net.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 5 Well, I have another.

Speaker 5 There's a little URL situation going on. What's going on?

Speaker 5 PardonmyTake.net has been replaced for, reused for a different reason. For what?

Speaker 5 If you have any grievances with Jose Conseiko, please file them at pardonmytake.net where where you can put your name and grievance.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're doing my idea of a class action fight?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 A joint idea, I will.

Speaker 1 Okay. I will be your channel.
I think I said it on the case. Wait, I need to know.
If you haven't personally been

Speaker 2 hard in Big Cat, steal it from me.

Speaker 1 No, I said

Speaker 1 it on

Speaker 1 the street. On the rundown,

Speaker 1 you said it's like a class action lawsuit.

Speaker 5 I said, if you've personally been victimized by Jose Conseco, I said it first. That it was the, I thought of it in my brain.

Speaker 5 That's why I said, if you've been personally victimized by Jose Conseco, please, you know, I will.

Speaker 2 Okay, so, Billy, you said if you've been personally victimized, then Big Cat was like, that sounds like a law firm class action.

Speaker 1 I'll give that a collaborative effort. Yeah, for sure.
All right.

Speaker 1 So, so, go to pardonmytake.net.

Speaker 5 Yes, and file your grievances with Jose Kenseko, and I will be your champion. Collectively.

Speaker 1 There we go. I love it, Billy.
All right. Let's do Hot Sea Cool Throne, then let's get to

Speaker 1 Jeff Monkin, Rachel Nichols, and Richard Jefferson.

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Speaker 1 Okay. Hot sequel thrown, Hank.

Speaker 10 My hot seat is James Harden.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 He's fat.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 10 He's fighting with his teammates.

Speaker 1 He's larger.

Speaker 10 There's been a bunch of reports about him arguing with his teammates to the point where he got in a fight with a rookie, like whipped a basketball out of him.

Speaker 1 It's called a pass.

Speaker 2 So, okay,

Speaker 2 he threw a ball at his teammate. It's called passing ball.
Either you call James Harden a ball hog when he's not throwing the ball at his teammate, or when he is, then you just say it's assault.

Speaker 1 That's a good point. It's a good point, DFT.

Speaker 10 I just, you know, it is, this will, people will be listening to this over the course of the next two weeks. I feel like he's going to be on a different team by then.

Speaker 2 I want to get your guys' official predictions. Why would they trade him like in the first two weeks of the season?

Speaker 10 Because he wants us to fight everyone.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but what you want him? Just like tell him to stay home for a little bit and then wait for another team to develop a need?

Speaker 1 Sixers.

Speaker 10 I think it's like this is. they're they're on the same page that this is ending shortly.

Speaker 2 Right. Okay, so

Speaker 2 I was going to say Sixers too, because I think we saw the same DM earlier this week.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't know. I just

Speaker 1 feel like Daryl Maury's been saying, like, hey, you want Ben Simmons? Just do it straight up.

Speaker 2 All right. I'm going to go with

Speaker 2 the Sixers. The Celtics.

Speaker 1 Oh. People are saying that.

Speaker 1 Really? Are people saying that? You would wide? I don't know. I'd fuck them.

Speaker 2 I literally made that up off the top of my mouth. I'm not saying it.

Speaker 8 There are people who who are saying it.

Speaker 10 I think the Wizards.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Wizards? Reunite him with his old teammate.

Speaker 10 But you have to sell that because I'll be depressed.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That would be tough.
That would suck.

Speaker 2 James Harden would absolutely hate DC.

Speaker 1 What's your cool thing? Plus, my cool throne? Yeah.

Speaker 10 My cool throne's John Mulaney.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Turns out, you know, I was already kind of a goofy, goofy goofball. Turns out he's a fun party guy.

Speaker 1 Well, he's in rehab.

Speaker 1 He used to be a fun party guy. He used to be.
Well, yeah.

Speaker 10 Again, it's kind of like the the Snoop Dogg.

Speaker 1 Like, you went up a notch in my book.

Speaker 10 That puts you at notch one. That was, like, when I saw the news, I was like, oh, I didn't know John Malaney got down like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker 1 I was shocked by the news as well. Hopefully, he gets better.
Hopefully, he gets better. Yep.
Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 5 Isn't he like super old for how he looks?

Speaker 1 No, I think he's in his 30s. No, I think he's 30.
Yes, but Billy's right. Billy's right.

Speaker 10 He's got the vibs, the vibs.

Speaker 1 Oh, he looks like 40, but he looks like he's like 25.

Speaker 2 He's got the opposite of butthole eyes.

Speaker 2 He's got

Speaker 2 clitoris eyes

Speaker 10 but i feel like you know his obviously you know rehab you hope he gets better but i feel like his streak his street cred went through the roof yeah yeah i guess so you know let's hope he doesn't have to use it after

Speaker 10 what for what his street cred yeah because cashing his street cred because he went to rehab well no you keep the street cred street cred isn't like a drug thing the street cred is just like yo i just like if you beat up billy if you beat up hose and take a street cred will go through the roof right you will have so much more street cred than you currently have.

Speaker 2 Right. And you'll be able to buy so many cool drugs.

Speaker 1 Like winning fights, drugs, like

Speaker 1 getting arrested for foot for partying.

Speaker 10 Like that's how you get your street cred.

Speaker 2 You get a street cred up.

Speaker 1 Beast of the super person

Speaker 2 twice.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 Type person. No, you are now.
Yep. You're a street cred guy.
Everyone just compliment Billy on his street cred.

Speaker 2 Hard. He's hard.
Billy's a big time hard.

Speaker 1 That's the hards. Last year.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Little preview there for the interview coming up.
All right. PFT, what's your hot seat, cool thron?

Speaker 2 My hot hot seat, my first hot seat is the news, just the news in general,

Speaker 2 because the boys of Hard Factor are striking out on their own. So go subscribe to Hard Factor.
They worked with us here for the last two and a half years.

Speaker 2 Did the last six months also doing the lead-in on Sirius to the dozen? And they're four of the funniest people I know. And they are going to be doing.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if it's Patreon or if they're getting a new deal with a different company, but the bottom line is if you just subscribe to them right now, you're still going to be able to listen to them in the future.

Speaker 2 They're keeping all the

Speaker 2 RSS feed or whatever.

Speaker 1 I think so. I don't know how that shit works.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but just subscribe to them right now. They're very funny, like 15 to 45-minute news doses every morning.
Better than the New York Times. I know that's saying a lot.

Speaker 2 I know you guys think they're hard factor

Speaker 2 at the New York Times. But the Hard Factor Boys, check them out.
My other hot seat is Dwayne Haskins. I guess.
I guess we're shaming Dwayne Haskins for being horny.

Speaker 1 He had an idiot. He ate street cred.

Speaker 2 He attended a strip club. He no longer has diarrhea.

Speaker 2 So he's relatively healthy now. Went to a fine establishment on Sunday night after the game.
Probably just get food.

Speaker 2 Probably to pick up food like Lou Williams.

Speaker 2 And he was not wearing a mask or whatever. And his coach is undergoing chemotherapy.
So he's like, hey, I'd appreciate it if you didn't get me sick and actually become a coach killer, Dwayne.

Speaker 2 So this is the second time this year, Dwayne Haskins has violated protocol because he's horny. So I don't know if he's going to be a football, was it a football team? Football team member.

Speaker 10 Exactly. You need a fucking mask on.

Speaker 2 It's not going to be a football team.

Speaker 1 Ryan Leaf saying

Speaker 1 it's like

Speaker 1 looking in the mirror when talking about Dwayne Haskins is not good.

Speaker 10 Ryan Leaf said that.

Speaker 2 He's looked in a lot of mirrors.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think, well,

Speaker 2 listen, here's where I questioned his decision making. And a lot of people could misinterpret this.
I said going to a strip club on Sunday is just, in general, not a smart idea.

Speaker 2 Sunday's not a good strip club day.

Speaker 1 That's a fact.

Speaker 1 Big cat?

Speaker 2 No. If you go Sunday, you got to go Sunday morning for the breakfast.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's going on in a pandemic year, but there is, if you're in an NFL city, Sunday night is actually pretty fucking sweet because everyone knows the NFL team goes out and essentially you have like the city to yourself.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm just saying, smart quarterback, quarterback in my book would either go Monday for $5 buckets or you go on Thursday for the lunch, steak, and shrimp combo, maybe Sunday for breakfast.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so listen, we're saying, I guess we're just horny shaming Dwayne Haskins. He's the horniest.

Speaker 1 Oh, and I'll go like putting his coach at no, it's just horny.

Speaker 2 It's just sex shaming, big cat.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He's putting it.
You know what?

Speaker 2 You know what he's doing?

Speaker 1 No one's ever needed to go to a strip club that badly.

Speaker 2 Dwayne Haskins does. Nope.
All the time. And so I recreated his night.
I did a little forensic investigation. He had strippers over to his house during the game.

Speaker 2 They were wearing his jersey during the daytime.

Speaker 2 So he comes home and he's like, I've got strippers at my house. I know where we should go.
We should go to the strip club with the strip.

Speaker 1 I have to bring them home. Why? To the strip club where they live.

Speaker 2 He was dropping them off

Speaker 1 at work. He's like, well, we've got to bring them back to where they came.
He was drunk.

Speaker 2 He was dropping them off at work.

Speaker 2 He decided that he would go in and make sure that they got in safely, is what I'm saying. Makes sense.

Speaker 2 But, I mean, we don't think about we don't think about the pandemic affecting dancers exotic dancers because it does like what what dwayne haskins is doing is is no different by means of drawing attention than what dave portnoy is doing with restaurants dwayne haskins is just drawing attention to the plight of the unemployed exotic dancer right now all right i can get down with that um yeah he's he's helping he's helping these young ladies out he's probably going to be cut this week yeah he should be and he probably should be yeah and then we're going to have montez come in

Speaker 2 who has not played. Well, no,

Speaker 2 Taylor Heineke.

Speaker 2 We got two Montez's. Two Montez's.
Wait, is that your hot seat or cool throne? That was my hot seat.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 2 my cool throne is

Speaker 1 Big Cat.

Speaker 2 Big Cat's on my cool throne because somebody sent me a picture of the front row of Iona, the Iona Gales.

Speaker 2 college basketball team. Yeah.
And they're doing the cardboard cutouts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not in there.

Speaker 2 And you're not in there.

Speaker 2 So cool throne throwing you.

Speaker 2 They're not thinking about it.

Speaker 1 He probably hopes I'm dead.

Speaker 2 Because I saw it and I was like, I'm in the splash zone in front of Rick Petino every game. Don't do this.

Speaker 2 And he's probably just staring at me because you've told him that I'm the one that's continuing to make the.

Speaker 1 I haven't said anything. I have not said anything.
You keep making it because you want me to keep getting harassed by a stalker.

Speaker 1 I just remember next time you're stalked and I'm like, hey, stop making jokes about the person who keeps stalking me. I'll remember how many times you just ran through that stop sign.

Speaker 1 You're like, I'd rather you just die.

Speaker 2 You've never asked me to die.

Speaker 1 I have definitely asked you. I said, please don't

Speaker 2 stop anymore. I will stop right now.

Speaker 1 I don't want to die from a fucking Rick Petino stalker.

Speaker 2 However, if you were to be killed by Rick Petino, it would be the best story of all time.

Speaker 2 Whatever. It would be very, very funny.
Hank knows. I don't want you to be killed,

Speaker 2 but it'd be very funny. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, you'll get me killed probably by making the jokes.

Speaker 1 You'll continue to be crazy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't wait for that.

Speaker 1 But the problem is, if it was Rick Petino, I'd be cool with that, but it's not going to be.

Speaker 1 It's going to be some fucking loser who's obsessed with Rick Petino, which might be the lamest thing in the world.

Speaker 2 Let's set the record straight right now. Big Cat has been anti

Speaker 2 talking shit about Patino. I actually want Petino to be successful at Iona.

Speaker 1 Sure. I would love that.
How great would that be?

Speaker 2 Yeah. But Big Cat has not been making jokes about Rick Petino

Speaker 1 bothering me anymore. Stop texting me, dude.

Speaker 1 He's probably going to text me right after he listens to this. All right, my hot seat is the Pro Bowl.
I don't even, who cares?

Speaker 1 why I people are getting mad about the Pro Bowl. Who cares? Did you see people get mad about the Pro Bowl? Yeah, a few people.

Speaker 1 No, yeah, it's not being played. So, who cares? What?

Speaker 2 What did it tweet? No, it's not.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's not even being played. No, right.
That's why I was like, who cares? And people were tweeting and be like, bro, how did you not, how are you not mad about Roquan Smith? I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Why am I. What? I should be mad about that.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Here's the only thing I cared about:

Speaker 2 Yannick and Gakway did not make the Pro Bowl, so the Jaguars don't get an extra pick. That sucks.

Speaker 1 That does suck. Yes, that does suck.
And then the cool throne is

Speaker 1 Dana White, because he released the coolest video ever, basically dunking on all of the fucking haters who said that he couldn't make Fight Island or have the UFC go through the pandemic.

Speaker 1 That was pretty damn cool.

Speaker 2 I love that Dana White is just keeping people employed, making highlight reels of himself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's awesome. It was a sick video.
I got so pumped up. Like,

Speaker 2 if you can ever make a highlight video where there's just a significant amount of people doubting you and then you you prove them wrong that's a cool thing to do the most shocking part was that a certain media member from northwestern university was not included in that we're not even going to say his name because i think that i think dana knew that that certain person would be looking like in a fine-tuned home through that video just like getting ready to bust a huge load hearing dana say his name yes and the fact that he was left off entirely was a massive disappointment to him yes yes um all right billy what do you got for hot seat cool today?

Speaker 5 My hot seat is my Excel spreadsheet parlay system. It lost this week.

Speaker 5 I would like to apologize to everybody who's running with the spreadsheets, but you didn't lose all your money, and that's all I promised.

Speaker 5 Gonna be better next week. My cool throne is CJ Beathard, who's supposed to get the start this weekend.
And I have a certain affinity for swaggy quarterbacks.

Speaker 7 I think CJ Bethard.

Speaker 1 I think he's pretty swaggy. He looks like a pirate.

Speaker 1 He went to Iowa.

Speaker 5 That's the no swag.

Speaker 1 No, no swag's real swag. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 No, Billy, you can't have it both ways because you say that you have an affinity for swaggy quarterbacks like Swag Kelly, who would never be

Speaker 1 swagger.

Speaker 1 I think he's cool as fuck. No, I think he looks cool as fuck.

Speaker 2 He drives like a mid-sized truck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's

Speaker 1 your account. You said that Tracy McSolier,

Speaker 1 the other quarterback, like when he walks into a frat, all the girls turn and look at him.

Speaker 10 That does not happen to C.J.

Speaker 5 No, but I just think C.J.

Speaker 1 Bethard's cool.

Speaker 2 no but I think he's cool because the last couple times he's gone into games I remember we did that one Thursday night recap swag through a touchdown not swagger to whatsoever Billy your cool throne should be Nick Mullins if CJ's starting because we established on Sunday's show that it's always the backup quarterback who gives the Niners a spark correct right but I think CJ Beathard's actually gonna play really well because he's scored like

Speaker 2 twice because he was from the came in from the bench.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
That's what they did. That's the whole stat that I said.

Speaker 5 I know, but he's he might he's right.

Speaker 1 So then it's going to not work. It flips.
Nick Mullins. Mullins is now the guy.

Speaker 2 He's now the swag guy.

Speaker 1 Whoever comes in is the good guy. I know, but I know.

Speaker 5 I saw he was getting the start.

Speaker 5 I've been pro C.J. Bethard for a long time.
And it may not be.

Speaker 1 But since when? What is you? You can pull it from earlier in the season. I've been like, we've had a lot of conversations about C.J.
Beathard. Earlier, three months, long ass time.

Speaker 2 No, just look in the description as a part of my take out of

Speaker 1 extended C.J.

Speaker 2 Beathard conversations we've had.

Speaker 1 Is C.J. Beathard on TikTok or something? What happened?

Speaker 7 I've talked about C.J.

Speaker 5 Beathard before on the show.

Speaker 1 Really? Yes. I don't know about that.
I like him.

Speaker 2 I think he's going to be.

Speaker 2 I think he's a perfectly

Speaker 1 honest.

Speaker 10 Jimmy G walks in a room, heads are turning. Yep.

Speaker 2 Nick Mullens. He's not going to fuck you.

Speaker 1 Nick Mullens walks in a room. No, heads are like, damn, that's a big head.
CJ Beathard walks in a room, nothing. Iowa.
Yeah. He's kind of got a wild card look, though.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm trying to say. Slipknot starts playing when he won't.
I don't know who we're talking about.

Speaker 5 I'm thinking about the exact same same guy.

Speaker 2 Hank also bleep out when he said,

Speaker 2 mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 And then when I just said it right there.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. All right, let's get to our interviews, actually.
We got Jeff Monken, Army football head coach, and guess what? He's brought to you by the...

Speaker 12 The Pro Football Football Show is presented by the Chevy Silverado. Built for the hustle, ready for the game.
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Speaker 12 Whether you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff, the Silverado is one ride that's always game ready. Just like football, it's about grit, grind, and getting it done.

Speaker 12 Head to chevy.com to learn more and build your own chevy silverado all right here he is head coach of army football jeff monkin

Speaker 1 okay we now welcome on a very special guest an ultimate football guy it is coach jeff monkin from army they have a bowl game so coach we actually reached out to you yesterday before you got a bowl game because we were a gung-ho let's get army a bowl game you got a bowl game we still wanted to talk to you because you're an electric football guy.

Speaker 1 How are we, let's start with the bowl game. How are we feeling about the bowl game? How'd that all come together in the last 24 hours?

Speaker 13 We're thrilled about the bowl game and the opportunity to play West Virginia in the Liberty Bowl.

Speaker 13 And I really think it was just a lot of people like you guys

Speaker 13 really supporting us and saying Army deserves a bowl game. And I think the first opportunity that kind of flew open was the one in the Liberty Bowl, and they jumped on it, thankfully.

Speaker 13 And we're just thrilled yeah

Speaker 13 yeah we're thrilled too that's going to be a perfect matchup for you guys I think what was the communication process like between you and your team yesterday as you found out that there would be an opportunity to play in a bull game how did you let everybody know we didn't we didn't officially have word until last night about oh I guess it was about 730 and uh we were gathered together we were we were having a dinner and and uh just getting the guys fed and

Speaker 13 and

Speaker 13 you know I didn't want to tell him anything and give them any false hope. So it was really hard to kind of hold on to it.

Speaker 13 But we knew all afternoon and kind of leading up to that point that there were things working. And they were reading the internet and seeing things that were happening, I'm sure, having conversations.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 when we announced it to them, they went bananas. They were just really excited for the opportunity to play.
And that was it. They just wanted to have a chance to play again one more time.

Speaker 1 And for people who don't understand,

Speaker 1 for Army this year and for you, Coach, specifically, this is the winningest senior class that has ever gone through at Army, at West Point. So you guys have had 35 wins.

Speaker 1 To be able to play together one last time is very, very important. And on top of that, and this is crazy, I was actually talking to our co-worker, Connor, who went to West Point.

Speaker 1 He said that the team has been there and has not been able to see their family since May 31st. Is that right?

Speaker 13 So we had guys arriving on May 31st, some on June 1st. We had a report date back on June 1st.
And

Speaker 13 our travel squad, which is 72 guys, we've taken on three road trips this year to Cincinnati, to Tulane, and to UTSA.

Speaker 13 And not everybody's parents, a few of the parents were able to make it. Obviously, those are cross-country trips for some of our parents.
So a handful of our guys got to see.

Speaker 13 their folks, but a lot of those travel squad guys didn't. And then all of the guys that aren't on the travel squad who were left at West Point,

Speaker 13 they haven't seen their families since June the 1st. And that's a long time for a college kid.
And we know people at that age really rely on their parents and their families.

Speaker 13 And so to go this long is really a testament to their mental toughness and their character.

Speaker 1 By far the most mentally tough team in America, maybe the most mentally tough coach. You actually said,

Speaker 1 I'm curious this, the famous pregame speech against Michigan, which you guys took Michigan to overtime, unbelievable game last year.

Speaker 1 You said we're about to introduce the state of Michigan to the last of the hards. When you said that, did you get chills on your, like, you know, on your arms and down your spine?

Speaker 1 Because I think everyone who watched that got chills and were like, wow, that's the last of the hards might be the coolest phrase I've ever heard a coach, you know, utter before a game.

Speaker 13 So the last of the hard is

Speaker 13 a saying that has its roots to Georgia Southern. And

Speaker 13 the teams under Erk Russell, those were some hard teams. Those were some great teams.
And Georgia Southern, as you guys know, has a tremendous football history.

Speaker 13 And I was fortunate enough to be an assistant there under Paul Johnson for five years and then the head coach for four years. And

Speaker 13 that

Speaker 13 term, the last of the hard, was, I believe, the 1989 or 1990 team. And they just,

Speaker 13 they kind of took on that moniker. They were a bunch of tough guys.
And

Speaker 13 I've kind of admired that saying, and I never used it with any other team until 2018 here. And

Speaker 13 that team really, I think,

Speaker 13 to me epitomized

Speaker 13 that saying.

Speaker 13 And these guys,

Speaker 13 and I think our young men at West Point and... and their classmates who have taken this pledge to serve their nation.

Speaker 13 And frankly, the over 1 million men and women who serve in the United States Army that we represent, when we go and play in this bowl game and we play every week, they are the last of the hard.

Speaker 13 They're the people who are willing to do the hard jobs that other people don't want to do to stand in the gap between freedom and those that want to take it from us.

Speaker 13 And that takes a hard person that's determined and has a spirit about them that's different. And I really felt like our 2018 team had earned that.
And

Speaker 13 so that's kind of where it came from. And I believe this team this year has really earned that as well.

Speaker 2 That's

Speaker 2 quite insane.

Speaker 2 But couldn't you make the argument that the 2020 team, since they're now the last of the hards, that the 2018 team, they weren't the last, they were two years before the last of the hards?

Speaker 13 Well,

Speaker 13 I think just in general, there's...

Speaker 13 there's a last few people in every generation that uh that are like that you know they they call those that win in World War II the greatest generation,

Speaker 13 and perhaps they were. I had three members of my family, my grandfather and two great uncles that served in that war, and that's a great source of pride for me and my family.

Speaker 13 But

Speaker 13 each new generation of soldiers and each new generation of

Speaker 13 I think Army football players has the opportunity to bear that moniker as well. And that doesn't mean

Speaker 13 those that went before before us weren't.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 13 there's a dying breed of those people.

Speaker 13 And I'm glad we still got them because it allows us to lay our head on the bed at night and rest well and know that we're going to wake up being able to enjoy the way of life that

Speaker 13 we have today.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 because of the nature of our job, we're podcasters. We live on Twitter.
I think we're technically the first of the softs. Like, I think we're the first of the softs.

Speaker 2 I think we're the hardest of the softs.

Speaker 1 No, I think we're just the first. We're the first generation of the softest people in the world.

Speaker 1 Is that okay to say? Like,

Speaker 1 you exist

Speaker 1 and help us.

Speaker 13 Take on whatever title you want.

Speaker 1 I just imagine, like, someone being like, you're the last of the hard to meet. I'd be like, eh, I don't know, man.
I'd rather just kind of sit on the couch here.

Speaker 2 I mean, I really enjoy watching the Last of the Hard play football.

Speaker 2 You guys have a really fun style of football to watch. I don't think that I'd want to defend it either if I were another coach out there.

Speaker 2 So you were saying earlier how, you know, it might be a little bit of, you know, these guys don't really want to take the time to prepare for the triple option.

Speaker 2 How much of that do you think actually goes into the scheduling process where other coaches, it's just

Speaker 2 too different from everything else that they see all year that it becomes more,

Speaker 8 the lift isn't really worth it to prepare for the triple option?

Speaker 13 I know that's a fact,

Speaker 13 just in the challenges in scheduling games as it is as an independent. And

Speaker 13 it's a pain to prepare for. It's a pain in the butt for us to prepare for.

Speaker 13 Even though we do it and we face it in preseason practice and springball, that's not what we do throughout the year. We're playing all these other teams.

Speaker 13 It's typically not triple option teams or under-center double wing teams like we see. against the other academies.

Speaker 13 And when we get to play in those other academies, it's a pain to get prepared for them.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 13 I can absolutely understand that other coaches don't want to do it.

Speaker 13 They don't want to change their entire philosophy on defense or

Speaker 13 it literally for some guys in a defensive scheme, it's almost like playing a different position or playing a different sport. They do things in their position.

Speaker 13 against everybody else and then when they play us they got to do something entirely different than what they've been taught and and what they've been coached to do.

Speaker 13 And they can't just line up and run a base call and it fits against us. It's one of the reasons we run it.
And it's probably a lot of the reason that people

Speaker 13 aren't real fond of scheduling us or playing us or having it pop up in a bowl game like this with very short time period to prepare.

Speaker 1 Have you thought about just one time coming out and just being like, all right, now we're doing the air raid? And AA prepared all week for the triple option. Now you're just throwing

Speaker 1 every down?

Speaker 13 Oh, yeah, it's fun to think about, but

Speaker 13 I wouldn't do that.

Speaker 1 I mean, it'd be fun. It would be fun.
It might not work, but if you spend all week

Speaker 1 preparing and then it's air raid right in your face, do it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it'd be fun for the other team. They transition right back to what they've been doing all year and cloud runs.

Speaker 2 In the Army-Navy game, when you call a pass play, do you close your eyes or do you actually do you or can you bear to watch it?

Speaker 13 Crossing my fingers, crossing my fingers and hoping, no.

Speaker 13 I'm very confident when we call a pass play.

Speaker 13 The thing about the offense that makes it unique is

Speaker 13 we almost always know what the coverage is going to be or one of a couple of coverages. It's because people have to defend the run on every play.

Speaker 13 They've got to have a way to support the run from the secondary and include secondary players with guys on a perimeter. So

Speaker 13 we don't always know and we can't always dictate it, but we have a pretty good idea. And so when we call a pass play, we've got a fairly good idea that it's going to be open.

Speaker 13 In the Army-Navy game, we called that one switch route down there

Speaker 13 on the goal line. We tried to throw it to the tight end on the seam, and the

Speaker 13 wheel route was wide open.

Speaker 13 If he just turned and tossed it out there, the wheel route, we score a touchdown. But, you know, that's, or I guess that was the,

Speaker 13 they're all running together. That was the Air Force game this past weekend.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 13 it's something that over the years we've used as a way to balance out the run game and to keep people from just completely forget the pass. We're going to just play the run.

Speaker 13 We've got to have something to answer that. And that's all it is.
It's just an answer to.

Speaker 13 to Kamra, what we're doing in the run game.

Speaker 1 Do you get extra excited when you take up, like my favorite is when Army goes on like an 11-minute drive? Do you notice when you get to like nine and 10 minutes and you're like, this is awesome?

Speaker 1 What are they going to do? They can't stop us. We're going to drive.
We might hold the ball for the rest of the game.

Speaker 1 Do you get a little extra excited when it gets to like 10, 11 minutes and you're like, yep, we still got the ball. We're still driving.
Love it.

Speaker 13 I love it when it's 10 or 11 minutes and it's first down. You know, you're going to be able to run a couple more minutes off the clock.

Speaker 13 That frustrates the other team.

Speaker 13 If we can limit the possessions of the other team, they've got fewer opportunities to score and and it's just it's been the tool that we've used to keep us in games and two years ago we three years ago now i guess uh 2018 we went down and played at oklahoma and they had the the heisman trophy winner as the quarterback i mean he's a great player and and we held the ball for i think over 45 minutes in the game And that's what we had to do to win.

Speaker 13 Had we given them their normal number of possessions, it wouldn't have been 21-21 at the end of regulation.

Speaker 13 it's it's just a tool that we use, and uh, and it's when we're able to control the ball, it's it's pretty effective.

Speaker 13 The longest drive that that I've ever been a part of was over 20 minutes on the clock.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Where was that? Was that Georgia Southern or was that Army?

Speaker 13 No, that was at the school down south when Coach Johnson was the head coach.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 13 24 minutes and some change, 26 plays, and we kicked the field goal.

Speaker 2 That's incredible. So

Speaker 2 would you rather run? Let's say you get the ball at the 20-yard line.

Speaker 2 Would you rather run for eight yards on first down

Speaker 2 or run for 11 yards, move the chains?

Speaker 13 I would just as soon score on the first play.

Speaker 13 Makes it all a lot easier, but always getting first downs. That's always what we're looking for is to try to turn the first down.

Speaker 2 Okay, you mentioned the school down south. How long did it take for them to fully trust you as an Army guy and be like, okay, he's not just an undercover mole from his time at Navy?

Speaker 13 No, I've always learned you better be loyal to the paycheck. And I think they knew that too.
So

Speaker 10 I was,

Speaker 13 when I'm signing the back of the check and they're signing the front of the check, my loyalty is going to be to those signing the front. So I was really thrilled for this opportunity here.

Speaker 13 My experience with Coach Johnson at the other academy was extremely valuable in preparing me for this job. And I'm glad I had to work, had a chance to work for Paul Johnson.

Speaker 13 Just a tremendous coach and so much success and a lot of the blueprint that we've used and my philosophy comes from him. So

Speaker 13 this has just been an unbelievable experience to be here and to

Speaker 13 take over this historic program and to be able to experience success with our players. So we're just working to continue that.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm mad that Paul Johnson moved on from Georgia Tech. He's going to take me probably about five more years before I fully understand that Georgia Tech's not running the triple option.

Speaker 1 It's tough to comprehend that. I had one last question, coach.

Speaker 1 So, the other famous speech that you had, it was after, I think, the Temple game.

Speaker 13 I got famous speeches. I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll put this clip in there just so people, if people don't know what we're talking about, but I think it was after the Temple game in 2017, the I'm going to fight till I can't fight no more.

Speaker 1 I'm going to fight! I'm going to fight! I can't fight no more!

Speaker 1 I can't fight no more!

Speaker 1 I'm gonna lie down!

Speaker 1 I'm gonna get up!

Speaker 1 I'm gonna fight!

Speaker 1 I can't fight no more!

Speaker 1 I can't fight no more!

Speaker 1 I can't fight no more! I'm gonna lie down!

Speaker 1 When you did that, was that the most electric locker room of all time? Because that, if you watch that video and you don't get, like, the hair doesn't stand up on your arms, you don't have a soul.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 13 it's always fun to go into a locker room after a team has won the game and there is a level of excitement.

Speaker 13 I don't know if there was a locker room more electric than the one on Saturday night when we brought that Commander in Chiefs trophy back in there. Our guys were going bananas.
It was awesome.

Speaker 13 But Derek Moore, who was the director of player development for us at Georgia Tech, who's just an unbelievable guy, great motivator.

Speaker 13 That was something that he used to do with the teams at Georgia Tech. And I mean, I loved it.
He was just awesome. He's a dynamic speaker and just an engaging personality.

Speaker 13 And I don't do

Speaker 13 that chant justice, but

Speaker 13 he did that. And I loved it.
And

Speaker 13 our guys really have latched onto it. But that's

Speaker 13 part of the culture of West Point football. So Greg Gatson, who played here, was a team captain alongside Chuck Schretzman in 1988.
They won the Commander-in-Chiefs trophy, played for Jim Young.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 they had a sign, a plaque that they made. It was a homemade sign

Speaker 13 that was attached to the wall on the way going out to the field from the locker room. And it was much of that same chance.
So

Speaker 13 that's a poem,

Speaker 13 an old poem that was written, an English poem, or English or Scottish poem. And

Speaker 13 it basically says that,

Speaker 13 you know, fight on, my merry men all, for I am merely wounded. I am not slain.

Speaker 13 I will lay me down for the bleed a while and rise and fight with you again.

Speaker 13 So

Speaker 13 we kind of took that and changed it a little bit, but

Speaker 13 that is also on a piece of plywood with some sticker letters that Greg Gatson brought to our team.

Speaker 13 Oh, two or three years into my tenure here and presented to the team. We immediately put it up on the wall.
And so it's on the wall going out to the field from our locker room.

Speaker 13 So, that's that's not something that I started, that's something that's been here in our program for decades. And, and uh, we were just we were really happy to kind of uh rekindle that fire.

Speaker 1 I love it, yeah. It's it's it really is.
I watch it every now and then just to get pumped up. So, it's uh, it's something special for sure.

Speaker 2 So, so, Coach, before we let you go, we got some good news for you. Maybe the second bit of good news that you've received in the last 24 hours.

Speaker 2 Um, every year here at Pardon My Take, we give out the Lowman Trophy, and the Lowman Trophy is awarded annually to the nation's top college fullback. So we respect fullbacks.

Speaker 2 I know you respect fullbacks up there in your offense as well.

Speaker 2 The nominees are just in right now. So I wanted to let you know that you do have a finalist on your team, a low man finalist.

Speaker 2 Jacoby Buchanan has been officially confirmed as a finalist for the lowman trophy. If you want to pass that along to him, feel free to.
But we're going to be giving out the award in a couple weeks.

Speaker 2 And who knows? Who knows?

Speaker 13 Maybe he'll put something on film film during the uh during the bowl game and uh nudge him across the finish line there well the guys on cbs saturday i guess we're calling him the wrecking ball so he uh he's kind of like that he's a he's a big load and and uh he he really did a great job of of carrying the weight of the team for us this this past weekend we had some guys hurt and some guys out and and uh that last drive he was banged up and had to come out two different times limping off and he just he just slugged it out and and uh and and was a warrior i was so proud of him so hey i know he'll appreciate the nomination yeah i'm just confused why they would call him the wrecking ball when the buchanan ball is right there that to me that makes way more sense that is too you could change that to see c-a-n-n-o-n buchanan ball that would be uh that would be very fitting wouldn't it yes yes well coach thank you so much best of luck in the liberty bowl we'll be watching we'll also be watching because hopefully army can take home the low man trophy um and thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 1 We really appreciate it.

Speaker 13 Appreciate it, guys. Beat Navy.

Speaker 1 There we go. I love it.
Beat Navy. Thanks, coach.

Speaker 2 That interview with Jeff Monk was brought to you by our great friends.

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Speaker 2 And now, here's Rachel Nichols. ES

Speaker 1 PN.

Speaker 2 And now for something completely different.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on our very good friend. You can see her every single day on the jump.
NBA is back. That means Rachel Nichols is back.

Speaker 1 Back, baby. Very much back.
A little too early. I'm not ready for it, but that's okay.

Speaker 1 Let's...

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 16 It's late December. You always get the NBA in late December.

Speaker 1 i know it just feels like the season just ended because it kind of did um but we're gonna do western conference with rachel and then we're gonna have richard jefferson do eastern conference so let's start with the top of the western conference uh can lebron win his first championship with the lakers yeah i think we really need to dig into that one because it's unclear right is he ever gonna get it done in la yeah so you agree last year didn't count

Speaker 16 no what do you mean having been in the bubble i'm repping for the bubble's gonna rep for the bubble too by the way the bubble is for real None of this other, like, come on. It was fake.

Speaker 16 The bubble is for real.

Speaker 2 Do you miss any parts about the bubble?

Speaker 16 No, I like eating my food on real plates. So I'm good.

Speaker 16 We couldn't get even real silverware there for part of the time because, you know, can transmit disease. So we have to be very careful.

Speaker 16 I would say I found out today that more people have bet on the Lakers to win the title this coming year than have bet on any other team combined.

Speaker 1 Well, okay, so

Speaker 1 they are the odds on favorite. It makes sense.
Now, a real question

Speaker 1 is, did LeBron, was he the reason why they're playing less games this year so that he can just have built-in load management?

Speaker 1 It feels like we're just catering the NBA to LeBron James in the twilight of his career.

Speaker 16 You heard him.

Speaker 16 If we were catering to LeBron James, we would not be starting this week. He was definitely pushing for a late January start.
Maybe even like May. I don't know.

Speaker 16 But yeah, they basically showed him and the rest of the Players Association that if they started on Martin Luther King Day instead, that the league would lose an additional half a billion dollars in revenue.

Speaker 16 And that money eventually comes out of players' pockets too. So yeah, that's why we're starting this week.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 What about, here's a hypothetical.

Speaker 2 What do you think about the Seattle Supersonics coming back? Because

Speaker 16 I'm so relieved that's how you ended that sentence because knowing you, that sentence could have ended anyway.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're right it could it could have gotten very very scary but i heard adam silver yesterday talking about expansion of the nba it feels like and i know a lot of people up in seattle that would like very much to have the sonics come back our friend spencer hawes has like worked on that project as well in the past but like Is it a possibility for our friends in the Pacific Northwest that they could be getting the Sonics back within a couple years?

Speaker 16 Well, I'd like to say that this decision or these comments by Adam Silver are driven by the heartwarming realization that Seattle just definitely deserves a team and the league has done them wrong all these years.

Speaker 16 The truth is, they need money. And if they expand again, it's about a billion dollars a franchise.
So it would definitely be a way.

Speaker 16 Right now, they're talking about, oh, should we put more jersey patches on, stuff like that, to make up the extra revenue they're not getting from ticket sales?

Speaker 16 The Seattle Soon Personics coming back, that would be a hell of a jersey patch. You would definitely rake in the cash.
So that's why they're talking about it now. He says it's not on the front burner.

Speaker 16 I don't know what burner it's on, like the sixth burner, the middle burner. But I know a lot of people in Seattle woke up happy today.

Speaker 1 Yes, that would be amazing. So, um,

Speaker 16 where would you guys want to see the second team? Because they come in twos. So, would you want Vancouver? Would you want Vegas?

Speaker 1 What are we talking about?

Speaker 2 Pittsburgh. Vancouver,

Speaker 1 Pittsburgh would not care at all.

Speaker 2 It would not give a shit.

Speaker 1 Vancouver would be cool just so we could do big country Bryant Reeves.

Speaker 2 The Jersey's nice up there.

Speaker 1 San Diego. San Diego.

Speaker 2 I think New York deserves another team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 16 I think so, too.

Speaker 1 I think that's a good call.

Speaker 2 Best basketball city in the world. All right.

Speaker 1 So they're so L.A. does have two teams.
Let's talk about the Clippers real quick. It seems like, so the Clippers were a disaster in the bubble.

Speaker 1 They all hated each other, what it seemed like.

Speaker 1 They did go well. Yeah, they spent the entire season being like, hey, we'll just flip the switch, and then it didn't happen.
So the plan that, as far as I understand, is

Speaker 1 pay playoff P a bunch of money, and they're probably going to just trade him next year. And then bring in Sergei Baka and hope that his cooking show and general

Speaker 1 niceness will make everyone get along better and play better. Is that right?

Speaker 16 Have you seen that cooking show?

Speaker 1 It's awesome. No, I'm being serious.
Like, I actually think they brought in Sergeibaca, and they're like, Serge can figure out a way to get everyone to get along, and hopefully, that makes us better.

Speaker 16 I think the episode he had Kawhi on, he asked him to eat cow penis, right? Or was that a different episode?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 you are correct. You are correct.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so that's an important part of the Clippers this year. No, look, it's what are they made of, right? They got embarrassed in the bubble.

Speaker 16 Do you come back sort of pissed off, as Patrick Beverly says, and hungry? Or do you come back and you show you can't really hack it, right?

Speaker 16 I don't know. What do you guys think they're going to be?

Speaker 1 I think they're going to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think they won't just. Hold back, guys.

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 2 I kind of feel. like I have to be a little bit harder on them this year because I did start to buy into them last year.
I was like, no, that perimeter defense is going to show up.

Speaker 2 Those guys can really put the clamps on you. And then they made me look foolish, Rachel.
That's what I have the problem with.

Speaker 2 I don't know shit about the NBA or basketball. I watch it and I enjoy it, but I'm not an analyst.

Speaker 2 So when I get something in my head that I'm then proved wrong about, I'm going to hold that against that team for forever.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So like the Clippers, like between getting rid of Blake Griffin and then making one of my takes wrong last year,

Speaker 8 I just can't look at him the same way.

Speaker 1 But PFT, you forget, Paul George is back with his trainer to return to his MVP caliber, which again, just to remind everyone, he has never won an MVP.

Speaker 16 First of all, I'm impressed that PFTUs put the clamps on. That was really

Speaker 16 verbiage right there.

Speaker 2 Do you have anything, any other new, cool saying that I can overuse?

Speaker 16 Everybody in the NBA, I was about to say one. Everybody in the NBA, when they come back from an off-season, they say, oh, I put on 10 pounds of muscle.

Speaker 16 So to your point about Paul George or anyone else, you guys can say that you are entering this new NBA season with 10 pounds of muscle. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what I put up. That's

Speaker 16 what those 10 pounds are.

Speaker 1 I think. I think the Clippers.

Speaker 16 I'm just from looking at you guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think the Clippers are probably not... Like, it's what PFT said is kind of correct.
Like, you think there'll be a stretch in the season where you'll think they're a really, really good team.

Speaker 1 And then when it comes to crunch time, you have to expect Paul George to make big plays. And, yeah, I just, unfortunately, I think the Lakers are by far the best team in the West.
It's not close.

Speaker 16 We have other teams there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, let's talk about them.

Speaker 1 So the darlings of the bubble, there were three darlings of the bubble in the West.

Speaker 1 Well, actually, no, there were four, but the Mavs with Luca,

Speaker 1 the Nuggets with their incredible run, and the Suns who didn't make the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Any of those three teams, can any of those three teams actually make a real contention with the Lakers for the top of the West?

Speaker 16 Well, don't forget about the Trailblazers.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I darling.

Speaker 1 They're bubble darlings. They're bubble darlings, but they also, like, we kind of know what they are, and they're awesome to watch and really, really fun and to root for.

Speaker 1 But until they can play like even a lick of defense, you can't really take them seriously, right?

Speaker 16 Well,

Speaker 16 I think they had a very good offseason. Robert Covington should help their defense.
I don't know if that makes them a contender in the West.

Speaker 16 The West is so kind of stacked and crowded there after the Lakers.

Speaker 16 But I am curious to see what happens with that team. The Suns with Chris Paul should be really good.

Speaker 16 I'm not expecting them to contend for a title, but I think they would solidly get in the playoffs there.

Speaker 16 You know, we have no idea what the Rockets are going to be. Like, are they going to play with John Wall and James Harden? I don't know.

Speaker 16 Speaking of, I don't know, are we in the point of the episode where after the Dwayne Haskins strip club? Because this will now be the third time. Yeah.

Speaker 16 If I'm about to bring up James Harden strip clubs, although we didn't really bring up the Lou Williams strip club from the bubble.

Speaker 1 No, we just.

Speaker 16 It seems to be the all-strip club, Brock.

Speaker 2 We discussed Lou Williams a little bit earlier today on part of my take. But yeah, James Harden is, I don't think he liked the strip clubs in D.C.

Speaker 2 I don't feel like that's like his, that doesn't seem like his thing. He did put on a solid 10 pounds this offseason, maybe a little bit more.

Speaker 16 10 pounds or something.

Speaker 1 Is he in his legs?

Speaker 2 Is he like actually purposefully eating his way out of town? Because if he is, respect.

Speaker 16 I don't know. I do know that one of the ESPN reporters asked him when he gave his press conference.

Speaker 16 He said,

Speaker 16 why did you go to Atlanta and Las Vegas? What message were you trying to send? And James said, I'm training. And the reporter said to McMahon, he said what were you training for

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 6 forth with you

Speaker 16 yeah something i don't i don't i don't know so they're they're a question in the west too right what are they going to be what are they going to do i think what's cool about the west especially this year is the play-in tournament right you have the last two spots in the playoffs will be determined by this play-in tournament so you're going to have this big cloud of teams going for the top seeds and i think the nuggets will definitely to answer your other question will be in there but then you also will have this huge cloud of teams at like seven eight nine that will be competing for the play-in spot.

Speaker 16 It'll be pretty good.

Speaker 1 How long do you think James Harden will be in the West?

Speaker 16 I mean, look, they have to wait for a team to be desperate. And how long is that going to take, right?

Speaker 16 So, the reason I say that is to get a Paul George type package, to get an Anthony Davis-type package in trade, which is what you want if you're the Rockets, right?

Speaker 16 You got a player who, no matter what you think of James Harden, if you like watching him play basketball or not, he has been top five in MVP voting six of the last seven years.

Speaker 16 He holds a ton of scoring records. He is a walking playoff berth.
So he is a guy who you want to get huge value for if you are trading him away.

Speaker 16 And the problem is the Cliffers were desperate when they made that deal for Paul George. The Lakers were desperate when they made that deal for Anthony Davis.

Speaker 16 There is no desperation from anyone else in the league right now who's like, oh my God, what we really need is James Harden.

Speaker 16 And I'm just going to hold my nose with how much I got to give up and make the deal. So I don't know when someone's going to get desperate.
It could definitely happen before the trade deadline.

Speaker 16 There's like a team that's expected to do well that sucks, or there's a team where some guy gets injured. Someone could definitely get desperate, but until someone gets desperate, I don't know.

Speaker 16 Are you guys desperate? Like, until someone gets desperate, I don't see James Harden moving because the Rackets know once they give him up, there's nothing left.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What about the other side of the weight gain, weight loss coin? Zion. I've heard that Zion is like actually slimmed down quite a bit.

Speaker 16 I don't know if that's like he's in the best shape of his life stuff, which everybody says every training camp, or if Zion is actually like looking looking lighter on his feet we heard going into the bubble that zion was in great shape and then he didn't play like it so i don't know what we're getting this year obviously like if he can keep himself sort of on the leaner side of what his range is they've taken the minutes restriction off of him i mean those guys could be dangerous i don't really know what we're gonna get from that team though

Speaker 1 You know, it's a fun fact. Zion is the longest tenured pelican right now.

Speaker 14 He is.

Speaker 1 That's a fun fact.

Speaker 1 You got to say that every now and then.

Speaker 1 Just be like, hey, people forget that Zion actually has been the longest tenured pelican because their team is all new guys or guys that came after he was drafted.

Speaker 16 It's just funny because, I mean, the longest tenured pelican is not a phrase that reeks with majesty or has drips with history.

Speaker 2 Oh, it doesn't? I think it absolutely does.

Speaker 1 It absolutely does. Like, if I'm thinking,

Speaker 2 if I'm like hearing the words tenured pelican, I'm just thinking of like the pelican with the biggest beak in the world.

Speaker 1 Like, that's a pretty cool thing.

Speaker 16 The great pelicans of Days Past.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 16 The rainy footage in the 60s of the Pelicans taking on the Celtics and the Lakers.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 You got it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Remember the Warriors?

Speaker 1 I've heard them. Yeah.
So Clay, obviously, that sucks. But the Warriors will have Steph back.

Speaker 8 I feel like...

Speaker 1 We just forgot that the Warriors exist. Are they going...
Like, what is the feeling about the Warriors prospect this year?

Speaker 1 Obviously, it sucks that Clay's hurt, but they have James Wiseman, Draymond, and Steph. Are they going to be in the mix or no?

Speaker 16 I don't know, man. I've been burned.
I thought they were going to be good last year, right? I was like, it's okay. I mean, you know, Clay will come back like middle of the season.

Speaker 16 And those guys showed when they played without KD in the playoffs the year before for that stretch. They're still a great team.
You know, they swept the Blazers without Kevin, all that stuff.

Speaker 16 And then, of course, they absolutely, completely fell apart. And part of that was Steph's injury.
But even before that, it wasn't pretty. So I'm, I'm,

Speaker 16 it's, it's tender for me still. I feel like you with the, with the Clippers.
Like, I just, I don't know if I can put all my eggs in that basket again, but I want to. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just don't know. Yeah, I want to, I want the Warriors to be back in the mix.
It's fun. I want them to be good, right? Yeah, I think we, I think we got so exhausted from them

Speaker 1 for their run. By the end, we're like, oh, we're so sick of the Warriors.
They're so good.

Speaker 1 But it was weird last year not having Steph in big playoff games games and big moments and like watching that team and having fun, like seeing what they were doing. So, I'm ready for them to be back.

Speaker 1 I'm ready for the Warriors to be back in the mix. Well, it's kind of nice.

Speaker 16 I want it to happen.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was kind of nice last year being able to fall asleep at halftime of a Warriors game that started at like 10:30 at night and not have to worry about waking up in the morning and finding out that they scored, they outscored him by like 40.

Speaker 1 Stephen scored 80. Yeah, in the third quarter.

Speaker 2 So, that was that was nice for my personal peace of mind.

Speaker 16 Now, we just had the NBA's annual general manager survey, and Steph Curry was named the best point guard in the league again, but 90% of GMs called him the best point guard last season, only 30 this season.

Speaker 16 Okay. And our guys, you talked to Richard when you talked to him.
Richard was like, well, if Steph's the best point guard, what's LeBron James if he's the best player and he's listed a point guard?

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Is he actually listed at point guard?

Speaker 16 He was last season. I mean, I don't think of him as a point guard still, and the GMs put him as the best power forward.
So, you know, yeah, that's just a LeBron thing.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 He should probably, he's probably going to list himself as a sinner so that just everyone is reminded that he also plays the five fathers.

Speaker 1 He's going to list himself just as father. That was a nice way.
Did you see LeBron kind of get in his way?

Speaker 1 You know, like everyone was talking about Charlie Woods, and LeBron then did an Instagram post. It was like, look,

Speaker 1 the biggest honor is like teaching them. And it was Charlie Woods.
And then I think,

Speaker 1 was it Serena's daughter as well? He just inserted himself into that. We get it, LeBron.

Speaker 1 You're dad. Yeah, he is.

Speaker 16 Aren't you going to be like that, though?

Speaker 1 No, absolutely not. My son is probably going to be remarkably average in every single way.

Speaker 16 Right, but then that's exactly what I'm talking about. He could really follow in your footsteps.

Speaker 1 He's being remarkably average. That's kind of our lineup around this.

Speaker 2 The most personal

Speaker 16 Instagram posts from you. Look, he almost took his first step.

Speaker 1 I like that. Yes, I like it.
He is walking. He's fully walking.

Speaker 2 We've had this theory on the show for a while.

Speaker 2 Do you think that if LeBron James could, like, if there was a medical way for him to get pregnant or to get pregnant with his own baby and then carry it to terms, that he would do it?

Speaker 16 I'm sure he would. I don't know any man who would be willing to do that.

Speaker 2 Schwarzenegger did it.

Speaker 1 If no one returned to being pregnant, the species would be done. Yes, I.

Speaker 1 It's true.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying he would give birth. I'm saying he would just like to carry it and then have a C-section.

Speaker 1 That's not easy to do. You know he would.
You know he would, right there. Oh, my God.
You're protecting him.

Speaker 2 One thing I am concerned about with LeBron is the short offseason. So

Speaker 2 he's spent his...

Speaker 16 Not as much wine drinking you can get in.

Speaker 2 But he's really been

Speaker 2 fitting a lot into a short amount of time because he's just been doing nothing but watching sports, drinking wine, and then live tweeting sports as he watches them.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't think he's ever sat down and watched a full NBA season or a full NFL season or like the MLB playoffs in his life, but he's like obsessed with watching sports now. Do you think that

Speaker 2 his sedentary lifestyle is going to impact his first couple weeks on the court?

Speaker 16 I mean, come on. He was also Instagramming reshoots of

Speaker 16 the movie, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, Space James. Space Jam 2.
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 He was laser focused.

Speaker 8 Yes, very focused.

Speaker 1 Baby Braun. Exactly.
Baby Braun Alert.

Speaker 1 It really was the first time he's ever watched sports. It was crazy.
He just was tweeting about everything.

Speaker 16 Too much sports. Everyone's stuck in their homes, man.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That is true.

Speaker 2 How many assistant producer credits is LeBron James able to get on Space Jam to circumvent the salary cap for new free agents that come in?

Speaker 16 That would be a good one, actually. I mean, they did take some guys at the minimum.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. You can see a future here.
That's interesting.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Isn't Mark Gasol? Mark Gasol's on the Lakers now.

Speaker 7 They're swap him out.

Speaker 1 That sucks because I love the Gasols, so that's going to suck to watch him on the Lakers.

Speaker 16 Wait, as opposed to Powell?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like

Speaker 1 it. I've always liked Mark more than Powell.
I like Powell as well just because I like his game, but Mark is the chubby brother.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, like, who doesn't like that?

Speaker 16 Modestly average.

Speaker 1 Right, right. It's like, oh, okay.
Well, it's just Powell, but just chubbier.

Speaker 1 What give us your.

Speaker 16 Mark drafted as a Laker, as you know. Who is?

Speaker 16 Mark drafted as a Lakers, as you know.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then the league basically conspired to help Kobe get a ring.

Speaker 1 Now we're going deep.

Speaker 1 What give us your

Speaker 1 team that is going to shock people? It can't be the T-Wolves because I'm sick of everyone being like, Look how much, look how they got Kat and they got, you know,

Speaker 1 Anthony Edwards now, and they have all these guys, and it's going to be great. No, and D'Angelo Russell, the T-Wolves are the T-Wolves.
They'll always be the T-Wolves.

Speaker 16 Well, I don't have a shocker. I think the Suns are going to take a big leap, but that's not a surprise to anyone.

Speaker 16 And I'm probably not allowed to dip into the Eastern Conference because that's Richard's territory. But I would say I'm very curious to see what the Wizards do, right?

Speaker 16 You've got Bradley Beal, Russell Westbrook. Literally anything could happen with that team.
They could start winning games and go on a run. They could start losing games by 50.

Speaker 16 I have no idea what's going to happen with that team. So that's the one I'm just sort of is my biggest mystery.

Speaker 2 They're currently dealing with a pink eye outbreak.

Speaker 2 So as soon as we get done with that, I think this is like Rui Hachamara's second year in a row starting the season on the IR with a with a case of conjunctivitis.

Speaker 2 So not a great start, but yeah, anything can happen with that team.

Speaker 16 It doesn't say allow for your COVID protocols if there's pink eye spreading through any team, right?

Speaker 2 No, No, Dwayne Haskins is probably going to show up with some pink eye based on one of the pictures I saw of him.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 That's a good point.

Speaker 16 Did I say that? I know you guys have already talked about it, but I have to ask, why was everybody so upset? Like the part that cracked me up was that it was like, and he was there without a mask.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Like, that's not, you're really not focusing on the main problem, are you?

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Well, honestly, I think the reason why people are upset about that, at least here's why I'm actually upset because you can fake and be pretend and get mad at a player going to a strip club, but guess what?

Speaker 2 Players are going to go to strip clubs. That's going to happen all the time.

Speaker 2 The fact that Ron Rivera is getting over cancer treatments.

Speaker 2 And the fact that Dwayne Haskins has been busted once before this year, breaking the COVID protocols, and he got fined and basically benched for doing it. And then he went out and did it again.

Speaker 2 That's to me, it's like, okay, I think I'm done with this guy. I get what he's not going to be able to do is maturation process.
So

Speaker 2 I've made a clean break in my heart with Dwayne. Sorry, Dwayne.

Speaker 16 We have some judgment issues. That's all I'm saying.
The mask is just a little tiny, tiny, tiny card.

Speaker 1 Yeah, agreed. I had one last question for you, Rachel.
I saw Rudy Gobert got a max deal. Everyone clowned on it on Twitter.
I actually don't hate it as much as everyone else.

Speaker 1 What is like the people you talked to? What have they said about Rudy Gobert getting paid like $205 million?

Speaker 16 Dude, first of all, it wasn't a Super Max, so they didn't pay him as much as they could have.

Speaker 16 so they did i don't know if that you save money when you're paying over 200 million dollars but they there was bargaining there um but the bottom line is the jazz can't lose rudy gobert the two-time defensive player of the year he's a cornerstone with zonovan mitchell they have a new owner guy just bought the team if they lose him if he became a free agent next season next offseason who's replacing him yeah Utah does not attract free agents, and that's not my personal big on Utah.

Speaker 16 It's just a fact from what we have seen over the last 20 years. So so it's like buying a house, right? There only needs to be one buyer for you to sell your house.

Speaker 16 They only needed the Utah Jazz to think he was valuable. And obviously he's valuable to them.
So he gets the money. Good on him as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
No, I agree. I know everyone was shitting on it, but it's like, he is a very, very good.
Wow, that was a crazy flag toss by the, we're watching bowl games right now. It's bull season.

Speaker 1 This is what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 NBA's back a little too early. That was, you know, I know

Speaker 16 everything is happening all at once.

Speaker 1 All at once.

Speaker 1 Everything is happening all at once all the time which is amazing because we spent four months earlier this year with nothing happening right right all of the time all right so give us your winner out of the west if it's not the lakers because you can't i don't predict come on how many kids

Speaker 1 predict predict no no no

Speaker 16 do not take my joy my joy is not knowing what's going to happen the best part of sports is not knowing how the movie ends everything i watch every fucking thing i know how it's going to end i love superhero movies yes i know how they're all going to end by the time i sit down i don't know how this is gonna end cannot make me i love the f-bombs when rachel drops an f-bomb on part of my cake that's like

Speaker 1 you reach the god moment she did that as a bargaining for not predicting yeah exactly like i'm not gonna

Speaker 2 fucking predict yeah yes well okay can make me at the very least we're gonna have richard on and he's gonna talk about the easy he'll predict anything he'll he'll he'll throw give us a predict give us something that he's been saying a lot that we can like say before he says it yeah and we'll sound really smart he'll be like hey that's my line it's impossible to embarrass Richard Jefferson because of all of the effort he makes.

Speaker 1 The tattoo because of the tattoo he has. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, we know. That tattoo is the worst tattoo of all time.

Speaker 16 There you go. He's very proud of

Speaker 16 the fact that he's calling two games on Christmas Day. So you definitely want to ask him about that.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 16 What? Because he'll tell you all about it. What? A lot at length.

Speaker 1 What two games?

Speaker 16 He will be calling both the early game and the late game from his house.

Speaker 16 They are having two of the five Christmas Day games as like remote games. Wow.
And yeah, the last one I know is Denver Clippers, Nuggets Clippers.

Speaker 16 I don't remember which is the first one, but it's on the ESPN ABC Christmas plate. But Richard is going to be the analyst for both of those games, and he's very excited.

Speaker 16 And we'll talk to you the entire segment about it.

Speaker 2 How many options did we have to burn through on the production side before we landed on like, we'll have Richard Jefferson in his house call the game?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you should ask him about that. I will.
We're going to preemptively tell him that that's not that impressive.

Speaker 2 Because honestly, I think that that's the way to go.

Speaker 1 Like, he's probably not going to watch the middle games. He's probably going to spend time with his family, whereas the real ones will be watching every game.
So that's harder.

Speaker 16 His line on the jump today, when we brought up, again, he's very proud we brought up what he's doing. He said that they had to find the person at ESPN who liked their family the least.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 And that they settled on him, and therefore he's calling two games on Christmas Day.

Speaker 1 I got to agree with him. We're going to steal that line from him right off the top.
That's perfect. Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, thank thank you, Rachel.
Happy the NBA is back. Thank you for joining us.
And who'd you say was going to win the West?

Speaker 16 Good luck getting to that average middle, friend.

Speaker 2 Okay. Who's going to finish exactly averagely?

Speaker 16 Exactly averagely.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a good one, right?

Speaker 16 Who's going to try to emulate them?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
My entire life.

Speaker 1 I like that. That's where you want to be in life.
Never too good, never too bad.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, thank you, Rachel.
Bye, guys. Thanks, Rachel.

Speaker 8 See ya.

Speaker 2 That interview with Rachel Nichols, ES,

Speaker 2 PN, was brought to you by. Man, I'll tell you what.

Speaker 11 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 11 That thing is packed. Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.
It's like the MVP of candy bars.

Speaker 11 And when you bite into it, boom, it sorts you out, gets your head back in the game of life, satisfying your hunger.

Speaker 11 remember this snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else snickers satisfies man that's a winning play and now here's richard jefferson

Speaker 1 okay we now welcome on friend of the program recurring guest it is richard jefferson he hosts a uh sports satire digital show can found on youtube it's called the sports gap he also has a podcast road tripping with uh channing fry and allie Clifton.

Speaker 1 So check that out as well. And we heard, is this true? You're calling two games on Christmas Day? How much do you, does your family hate you, man?

Speaker 14 Well, you know, the good news is, is that I get to actually be home for Christmas Day. So

Speaker 14 if the trade-off is not me traveling to Canada and leaving Christmas Eve, but I got to be home, but downstairs in the basement for a few hours, you know, they still hate me, but it's just like I care less because I'm here.

Speaker 14 It's like, you can hate me, but I'm still here.

Speaker 2 How many people passed on the opportunity to do these games before they landed at Richard Jefferson from his basement? We'll call this one.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 14 I think a lot of people, you know,

Speaker 14 it's a long list, but it moves fast. So I would say that, you know, Mark didn't want to do it.
Doris, then you got

Speaker 14 Jeff. So it was really, it was more of just like, hey, this guy, he wants to do that.
But I'm excited, honestly. I kid you not.
Christmas Day is the biggest game and the biggest day.

Speaker 14 So for them, they'd be like, hey, Richard, you're going to be doing it twice. So for people that don't like hearing my voice for, you know, six hours on Christmas Day, they just have to suck it up.

Speaker 1 So I always have had a theory that Christmas Day bet the under because teams, guys are out of rhythm. They're with their family.
They're eating a big meal.

Speaker 1 They're spending time with their kids Christmas morning. Except for when the season starts on Christmas Day, which had happened a few, probably like, what, 10 years ago when there was the lockout.

Speaker 1 And then this year,

Speaker 1 you'd have to imagine guys aren't going to have like, it's not going to be this break Christmas Day because they got to get excited for the start of the season. So it won't be as slow and,

Speaker 1 you know, like drawn out.

Speaker 14 By the way, this is a very long theory.

Speaker 1 But it's right. It's always right.

Speaker 1 When you played on Christmas Day, did you not see that?

Speaker 14 uh to be true yeah but it's different now like again like the first time i played on christmas day there was like two games now there's like an all-day slate. So guys are kind of in it.

Speaker 14 Plus, there's a level of knowing that everybody's going to watch. Like these games, it's really, it's opening day, it's Christmas Day, and it's postseason.

Speaker 14 So like there's a that you know that there's a lot of attention on Christmas Day.

Speaker 14 So even if guys are a little bit like full, if guys are a little bit, you know, you know, happy from Christmas or family in town, they still know that there's a lot at risk, right?

Speaker 14 Like you don't want to get dunked on on Christmas Day because that's all that's going to be seen. You don't want to have a buzzer beater or have a bad game.

Speaker 14 So, guys, I think are more in a mode of understanding that there's a little bit more at stake.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. So, let's talk Eastern Conference.

Speaker 1 Okay. You know Kyrie Irving.
You were a teammate of Kyrie Irving. How crazy is Kyrie Irving?

Speaker 14 I don't think Kyrie's crazy by any means.

Speaker 14 I think he's, you know, eccentric, but, you know, I think Kyrie's a person that he really wants to be viewed more than just as a basketball player, as as a human being as a father you know as an artist like he's been using that term quite a bit um

Speaker 14 but you know look we we'd be lying if we would say that kyrie is the most eccentric person to ever come across in the nba we'd be lying if we say he's the most eccentric superstar right i don't even know if he's the most eccentric superstar like in the game today uh kyrie is just an individual that just Kyrie is Kyrie.

Speaker 14 That that's who he is. And I think as much as like things that he does, whether it's the sage and, and like, you know, but then Kyrie will get on and just like, hey, this is what I believe in.

Speaker 14 This is it. If you guys want to make a big deal about it, that's on you, but this is just a part of who I am.
So I just take him for that.

Speaker 1 You answered the question, by the way, when you said Kyrie is Kyrie. Anytime you say Kyrie, you know, Kyrie being Kyrie or this person being like that, Manny being Manny, that answers it right there.

Speaker 1 So thank you.

Speaker 1 I agree. You're welcome.
I agree. Just Kyrie being Kyrie.
Let him be himself.

Speaker 2 So which head coach of the Brooklyn Nets do you think is most likely to win coach of the year this year?

Speaker 14 God, I love your questions. I missed you guys.
Can I tell you how much I missed you?

Speaker 1 We miss you too, man.

Speaker 14 We miss you too.

Speaker 14 Which head coach?

Speaker 2 They're going to be doing that weird thing where Steve Nash might be the head coach some days, and then Kyrie said, I might take on coaching responsibilities on another.

Speaker 1 Kevin Durant

Speaker 1 might do something.

Speaker 14 Again, this is a political answer that I know you guys don't always like to hear and stuff. But look, I was once told that great players show coaches how to coach, right?

Speaker 14 So, when you say it, when you say that standpoint, it's more of like,

Speaker 14 look, Kyrie is going to see things, Kevin Durant's going to see things, LeBron James, Dirk Dwight, these guys are going to see things that coaches don't necessarily always pick up on.

Speaker 14 So, I think that's what he was trying to say. It's like, hey, look, we know how to play basketball.
A coach's job is never to teach guys how to play basketball, especially superstars.

Speaker 14 There's nothing Steve is going to teach KD or Kyrie, like per se.

Speaker 14 But his job is to teach them how to play within the group of players that have been assembled. So I think that's where you got Dan Tony.
You got Jock Vaughn, who was there.

Speaker 14 You know, you know, Steve already had a relationship with Kevin Durant via their time at the Warriors. So I think it's always a collective unit.

Speaker 14 If you think that, oh, you could have said the same thing for Lakers. It was like, whether it's Jason Kidd or Frank Vogel or Lionel Hollins, and you're like, well, which one's the head coach?

Speaker 14 And this? And then you got LeBron James, who was also like a coach on the floor. But you can bring a collective unit together together and they can do well.

Speaker 2 Do you expect the Nets to perform like kind of up to those expectations that we have, given the amount of talent that they've assembled on the court and on the bench?

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah, I think

Speaker 14 their expectations should be, you know, a high-level playoff team to put like a championship on them when you have their two best players coming off injury.

Speaker 14 You have a first-time head coach and a brand new coach like in their system with this group.

Speaker 14 I think the expectations, I think, look, if they get to the conference finals and lose to Milwaukee or lose to a hot Boston, I think that's a great season.

Speaker 14 I don't think it's championship or bust, even if they have championship or goals. I think the Clippers taught us that last year.
You can have two superstars.

Speaker 14 You can have a loaded bench with the sixth man of the year. You can have a veteran coach

Speaker 14 in Doc Rivers and not have everything pan out the way you want. But

Speaker 14 when you have a new group together, it's not one year championship or bust. And so I'm kind of taking the Nets that way.

Speaker 1 Okay. so

Speaker 1 another team in the East that we're not forgotten about because I think the Nets do take a lot of the headlines right now with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving coming back, but the Bucks and Giannis signing the mega deal and Giannis staying and all Bucs fans being relieved.

Speaker 1 But do you think there's added pressure now that like, okay,

Speaker 1 you got to do it now. You got to get to the finals.

Speaker 1 You have to like get to that next level when you get to the playoffs instead of being a 50-win team in the regular season, winning MVPs, and then bouncing in the first or you know, the second or third round.

Speaker 14 Yeah, there's expect, but look, man, like, that's the crazy thing about like this league and professional sports is like Giannis didn't work every single day to push himself to be the MVP twice.

Speaker 14 Like he's in such a league category. So like to say that there's pressure on them to get to the finals, damn well there should be.
Right. Like you didn't work this hard just to be a 50-win team.

Speaker 14 You worked this hard, but that's where the tears come in. That's when the tears come in and a loss.

Speaker 14 That's where the tears come in and wins where it's like when you see grown men crying it's like dude like you lost sleep over this like you were working four or five hours a day during the summer just to maintain like your fitness so when you put it all on the line and it doesn't work out that sucks when you put it all on the line and it works out it's the greatest feeling that you'll ever experience so i think for the bucks i think they have years right now you want to keep progressing you want to keep continuing to see yannis grow they got to put better players around him and that's not a knock on on on drew That's not a knock on

Speaker 14 Lopez. It's not a lock on any of the guys that have been there.
But ultimately, it's not getting it done, right?

Speaker 14 It's a great regular season team, and their job now is to transfer that into a great postseason team.

Speaker 1 What is it about Giannis, though? Because

Speaker 1 this, maybe you can explain it to us.

Speaker 1 The difference in playoff basketball versus regular season basketball, because you've seen it with James Harden as well, where these prolific scorers, these guys that are dominant in the regular season, you get to the playoffs and everything changes and their style of play and being able to get easy baskets just goes away.

Speaker 1 Why is that? And how can Giannis like fix that?

Speaker 14 Well, I think it's some, some of it has to do with the way that they play in the regular season. It's the way that they play,

Speaker 14 you know,

Speaker 14 the style of basketball they play. Now, understand this.
A lot of people say that like, oh, basketball slows down come the postseason.

Speaker 14 Well, that's not true because you just have better, you have teams that take better shots. You have teams that play better defense and you have teams that

Speaker 14 don't turn the the ball over. When you don't turn the ball over, that leaves the transition buckets.
Good teams don't turn the ball over. That's why they're a good team.

Speaker 14 So the game slows down because the play improves. And so I think for guys like Giannis, you have to work game one on things that will help you guys win come game.

Speaker 14 you know, you know, 83, which is ideally the postseason.

Speaker 14 And so it's like, if you're just like, oh, we're going to play this and we're going to dominate and we're going to win every single regular season game, but you're not working on anything that will help you prepare for a longer term series then that's a failure and i think a lot of people put that on coach bud that's why he was on a little bit of a hot seat i think for them it's more about just like hey okay giannis this second half you're not going to be the point guard well what if we lose coach doesn't matter our job is to prepare our team or we're just not going to play you in the fourth quarter so that these guys can get minutes playing this style or so we can work on we're just going to have you in the post or we're going to space you out so guys are able to like handle handle all the different styles that can be thrown at you come postseason but that might cost you regular season games right but it will prepare you for the postseason what about the uh what about the heat they seem to be another team that i don't know if we've forgotten about the heat because they were you know obviously we talked about them a lot at the end of the bubble um but they were a team that seemed to perform better in the conditions of the bubble where everybody else kind of like no one no other team embraced the bubble like the heat did i'll put it that way like jimmy butler being like no disrespect to families, but I'm glad that I'm here without my family so that I can win.

Speaker 2 Are they going to be able to use any of that momentum that they got from last year? Do you think that that's going to carry over into this year? Or do you think that they might take a step back?

Speaker 14 Yeah, because that confidence, once you get that confidence, like for guys like Tyler Hero, Duncan Robinson, you know, bam out of bio, that young core that they have when you add Jimmy and Gorin, it's like.

Speaker 14 Once you've seen it, it's like, yo, there is no big game, right? There's not a big game on a Thursday in OKC. Why?

Speaker 14 why because you played in the nba finals so that confidence is now instilled in them they know what it takes they've played that many games um i think that group though they they played well because there was no crowd and you saw it it was more of young players really excel whether it's jamal murray donovan mitchell uh what we saw from tyler and duncan robinson um even guys like tj warren and and you saw devin booker these guys played really well in the bubble and you know other the superstars obviously played well but the noticeable jump and like high level play was from the younger players when you don't have travel when you don't have to deal with crowds when you don't feel that pressure of like oh we're down you know 2-1 going back you know we got to play another road game that's a lot of pressure And so when you take away that out and it's just basketball, but that's where experience for older players typically come into play.

Speaker 14 But that wasn't applied because it was one, one big neutral site with no fans.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 And I actually think this might be a little bit of a hot take, but I think it's right that James Harden no longer being in the conversation for Miami, I think that might be a good thing for the Heat.

Speaker 2 I don't see how he would have fit in with their team and how they were playing, at least last year, when they showed that they can compete out of the East. And now we're talking about...

Speaker 14 Well, I think, look, I think that's tough.

Speaker 14 I think we discredit James Harden.

Speaker 14 partly because of some of his own doing, but he's one of the great basketball players of this generation, one of the great scorers of all time, MVP, top five in MVP voting the last six years.

Speaker 14 So it's like to say that that man couldn't adjust his game, right? Like he played with Russell. He played with all with KD when he was coming off the bench.
He played with superstars.

Speaker 14 He played with Chris Paul.

Speaker 14 Now there's been some things that have happened, but ultimately, what you've seen with Anthony Davis, what you've seen with guys like LeBron James, D-Wade, Chris Bosch, when you see Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, when you see these superstars team up at a latter part of their career, it's because they're really just focused in on winning and not not like numbers, not stats, not all of that stuff.

Speaker 14 So if James says he wants to go to Miami, no, Pat Riley runs a type ship, Vulture runs a type ship, Jimmy Butler, the way they compete there. So I think he could fit in.

Speaker 14 I think it's just a matter of whether or not that would be the long-term place that you would want to give up your assets that can carry your franchise for the next 10 years.

Speaker 14 Do you want to give up Tyler and Bam out of bio, which would be your focal points for the next 10 years

Speaker 14 for James Harden, who would be your focal point ideally probably for the next spot?

Speaker 2 So out of the teams in the East, there have been a couple others that have been rumored to be looking at James Harden, at least.

Speaker 2 I think the one everyone's talking about at least recently is the Celtics, right? So the Celtics and the 76ers.

Speaker 2 If there's a team from the East, where would you power rank them in terms of winning the James Harden sweepstakes?

Speaker 14 Ooh, the team I want to see him there with is Milwaukee.

Speaker 1 I think he is the player

Speaker 14 needs. I do.
I stand by that. They might not want to shift.
They might not want this. But at the end of the day, I got in a little bit of a heat because I said that Giannis might be a pippin.

Speaker 14 So everybody blew up.

Speaker 14 And I was like, no, the context is Giannis might be when it comes down to the last two, three minutes of the game, he can't be your best player because of the style of game that he has.

Speaker 14 He's not a great free throw shooter, not a great jump shooter. Everybody packs in the paint.
And the guys that he kicks it to, they can knock down shots. They can do this.
That's why they're good.

Speaker 14 But they're not that

Speaker 14 they're not that fearful of them beating you.

Speaker 14 And so if you put James Harden on that team in late game, right, where it's like you need a bucket, you need free throws, you need someone that can create for himself and others, and he spaces the floor, I think James Harden, or let's say, even guys like Dame Lillard, would be a perfect fit for Giannis.

Speaker 14 No different than Anthony Davis is a perfect fit for Braun.

Speaker 14 You know, I think some of these pairings that you see, I think, you know, Perzingis is a great fit with Luca. So I think if you, all of these teams, unfortunately, have young superstars.

Speaker 14 Do you want to give up a Jalen Brown? Do you want to give up a Marcus Smart?

Speaker 14 Do you want to give up a Ben Simmons to get James Harden, who is in the latter third of his career with guys that are in the first third of their career? That's kind of scary.

Speaker 14 Like it's a hard one, especially the way James has handled this situation in Houston, knowing that he only has two years left on his contract. So you're giving up a lot with a lot at risk.

Speaker 14 So that's where it becomes a little dangerous.

Speaker 1 Counterpoint, there's only only one ball.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I don't worry about the one ball situation.

Speaker 2 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 There's only one ball.

Speaker 14 There is only one ball, but I just don't think that James Harden is like that guy that I know he's accomplished this, but when he's talking about he wants to team up in Brooklyn, he knows that there's only one ball.

Speaker 14 So when he says that statement, he's basically saying, I'm willing to give up being a 35-point a game scorer and losing in the second round or possibly trying to squeak out a conference finals.

Speaker 14 I'd rather score 22 and go and win a championship.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't doubt that he's willing to say that. Like, it's easy.
That's the easy part: is saying it. I can say that.
Like, yeah, you know what?

Speaker 2 I won't say, tell you what, don't even worry about the Supermax deal for me. I'll survive on 150 million.

Speaker 1 But, like,

Speaker 14 you know what? He's selfless when he says that. He's really just, he's like, hey, look, I don't need 280.
You give me 225 and like, we'll call it square.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but when it comes down to it, I mean, even you have to admit that, like, when you, when you think about the lineup of the Nets and then adding James Harden, so you got KD, Kyrie, DeAndre, who's the lost triplet that we don't talk about that much, and then James Harden, like your mind, the first thing you think of is there's only one ball.

Speaker 14 Yeah, you think of that, but I also am excited to see what these superstars are willing to sacrifice. There was only one ball for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen and Rondo, right?

Speaker 14 There was only, you know, there was only there's only one ball for a lot of the, for D-Wade, LeBron, and Chris Bosch.

Speaker 14 And Chris Bosch ended up having to sacrifice the most, you know, who he's he's going to be a first, second ballot Hall of Famer, should have been a first ballot Hall of Famer, in my opinion.

Speaker 14 I think it was just part of that class that he was a part of with, you know, Kobe, Tim Duncan, KG, and all them. But there is all, there's always only one ball.

Speaker 14 And I think we've seen this over the course of history. So look, I want to see these guys sacrifice.
I think one thing that James knows that if he shows up on that team.

Speaker 14 Sorry, it's Kevin Durant's team. It is.
Until Kevin Durant proves that he can't carry that load, the idea, and you're going to go into the seed.

Speaker 14 It doesn't mean that he couldn't all of a sudden become the primary scorer because Kevin Durant might miss time or they want to be very cautious with him.

Speaker 14 So James can go out and play, you know, 95% of the game. So inadvertently, the team starts to kind of be structured around that scoring space.
But ultimately, like, that's Kevin Durant.

Speaker 14 Like Kevin Durant is the guy that was like battling to be the best player on the planet with LeBron James. And so it's going to be his team.

Speaker 14 So if he's saying he's willing to go there, he's also, he turned down a $100 million extension.

Speaker 14 He was was going to get 50 million a year at the last part of this, this contract if he would have signed the extension. So for a guy to turn down 50 million a year for two years,

Speaker 14 you're saying something to me. You're saying that you're willing to sacrifice.
I know that just says something, but like, no, I'm going to wait on this 100 million. That's, that's tough.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of money. What give us a team in the East that you're excited to watch that people aren't really talking about as much?

Speaker 14 Ooh, I'll say the Wizards. I say the Wizards.
I'm excited to watch,

Speaker 14 you know, Russell Westbrook. Like, this man carries a load.
Like, when we talk about,

Speaker 14 you know, carrying the weight, like he did in OKC, he, you know, John Walls had a ton of injuries. Bradley Beal hasn't been the most healthy guy.
And I know that

Speaker 14 Russell has, but if you look at how much he's played, the way he's played, like, this is a man that plays a ton of games and plays a ton of minutes.

Speaker 14 So if he can stay healthy, I think the Wizards can crack the postseason, which, you know, is right where they need to be.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 2 That's very optimistic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can you say something nice about my bulls?

Speaker 1 But your bulls? Oh, well,

Speaker 14 you got a good coach. You got a good coach.

Speaker 1 That's always encouraging. That was

Speaker 1 way too long. Yeah.

Speaker 2 The guy that's going to teach them how to be better is good.

Speaker 14 First of all, you got a new GM that is very good. Arturis, he was in Denver.
He was in Denver, and you saw the player development there with Jokic, Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Malik Beasley.

Speaker 14 You've seen, you know, they had bringing in Porter Jr. drafting Bowl Bowl.

Speaker 14 So if where he's leaving Denver and you've seen what they've done and what they've been able to accomplish, and you see the young talent there in

Speaker 14 Chicago with Lori Marketen, shout out, Bear Down, Go Wildcats.

Speaker 14 Then you have so many other

Speaker 1 Zach Levine. You see that young talent that you're going to be talking about.
You got Wendell Carter, Patrick Williams.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm in the middle of the day. They're not going to be good.

Speaker 14 Let me say this.

Speaker 1 They won't be good, but I don't think they're going to be in the tobacle.

Speaker 1 I don't think they're going to be.

Speaker 14 I don't think, let's put it this way.

Speaker 1 I don't think they'll have a top five draft pick, which means they're trending in the right direction. Yeah, no, that's not true.
What you just said. That's not true.

Speaker 14 You think they'll still have a top five pick? No, no.

Speaker 1 I'm saying not having.

Speaker 1 If you say the Bulls will not have a top five draft pick, and that means they're trending in the right direction, I say that's not true because they'll probably have the seventh pick and be stuck exactly where they are.

Speaker 14 Hey, hey, hey, hey. I said top five, but if they end up, let's say, let's say they win 35 games this year.

Speaker 14 What if they improve? I think they have a proven coach. They have a proven coach.
This guy is proven. He did it in OKC.
He did it with different lineups, different superstars.

Speaker 14 He obviously won in college. He knows how to handle talented players.
He knows how to develop talent. So when I look at this, I truly believe that like that they have a good coach.

Speaker 14 They get a new GM that comes from a good place. So you should be optimistic.
But on on opening night, everyone should be optimistic. So I'm going to be optimistic.

Speaker 14 I'm not going to be a downer on anybody.

Speaker 1 Okay. I like that.

Speaker 2 In the top five spots in the East, I think most people probably have like some combination of the Nets, Bucks, Raptors, Celtics, and Heat. Would that be fair to say?

Speaker 2 If you were to pick another team that might, there's always like one team, I feel like, that finds himself in the conversation for like the fourth or the third seed towards the end of every season.

Speaker 2 Who would your surprise team be in the East?

Speaker 14 I don't have a surprise surprise team, tell you the truth.

Speaker 14 Because look, we talked about, we talked about Atlanta. I'd say Atlanta.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Atlanta.

Speaker 14 You look at what they added. You look at what they added.

Speaker 14 You look at the talent that they have. If they're young talent, like John Collins, Trey Young, if they make that jump, they added Rondo.

Speaker 14 So like now you have that veteran guy that can help keep people in check, that can kind of direct guys when it gets a little out of sort.

Speaker 14 Because look, I love Trey's numbers and his stats, but he's a very offensive guy. So you need someone to help him on the the defensive end.
I like that they brought in Bogdanovich from Sacramento.

Speaker 14 So you add another scorer, another shooter to that team. So

Speaker 14 I like the Atlanta team.

Speaker 14 They're the team that if they play well, and they're one of those teams, too, that like they might not get off to a great start, but in the middle of the season around, they all start breaking.

Speaker 14 They'll finish strong. And then all of a sudden they start moving up the ranks.
So I like Atlanta.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I think Atlanta is definitely one of those teams that everyone's excited to watch, like on league pass.

Speaker 14 so who's your pick out of the east are you going with the nets that's a tough one um okay so i always preface this whenever i pick champion or whenever i pick like who i have coming out if they are healthy if they are healthy i believe it's the nets and it's the bucks are the top two teams and

Speaker 14 if they are healthy i think the nets will if craziness happens with COVID,

Speaker 14 I think Bucks are Celtics.

Speaker 14 And this is before no James Harden trade. We can't like, oh, I picked this team and then James Harden goes there and throws a wrench in it.
That's not it.

Speaker 1 Hmm. Okay.

Speaker 2 But you said earlier that it's not fair to put any expectations on the Nets out of the East. Right.
But you just now. You're giving it.
That's your Stone Cold Ledlock. Nets have

Speaker 1 a championship.

Speaker 1 Anything less.

Speaker 2 What I heard from RJ was that anything less than a championship.

Speaker 1 No one pays attention to anything I'm saying.

Speaker 14 What I'm trying to express is that just because I believe they could doesn't mean like if you don't meet expectations, kind of like a la the Clippers, where you're like blasting them and like, you guys, what is you guys doing?

Speaker 14 Like this was a debacle. No, I'm not going to put those type of expectations like championship or bust.

Speaker 14 If the Nets can get there with have brand new head coach and three other head coaches on their staff and two superstars, especially with the trade rumors of all the other guys, when you look at you know, when you look at Spencer Dinwiddie, Karis Laverte, all of those guys that are on that squad, then I think you you started to put like pressure on them.

Speaker 14 But I'm not going to say if they don't win the championship, this year was a failure. Those are the type of expectations that you put on Lakers, Bucs, Clippers,

Speaker 14 and I would say the Nets are on the outside just because this is their first year together.

Speaker 1 Did you just accuse us of putting those expectations on the team? 100%.

Speaker 14 You guys are putting negative expectations.

Speaker 1 Wait, but that's no. When you put together superstars on a team, you're supposed to win.
Like the Nets, the Nets, to say the Nets aren't trying to to win the championship this year would be insane.

Speaker 1 They are.

Speaker 14 Well, yeah, they are trying to win the championship this year.

Speaker 14 But what I'm trying to express to you is the way the Clippers and the Nets, if we look at last year's Clippers and this year's Nets, right? So last year's Clippers,

Speaker 14 championship head coach, all this other stuff. They had the sixth man of the year.
They had the deepest team. They had two superstars.
They had the reigning finals MVP.

Speaker 14 Paul George was a top five MVP finalist the year before. So you look at all this talent and then the way they fail with the Nets, two guys coming off injury.
This is their first year,

Speaker 14 especially Kevin Durant coming off a major injury. And this is your first year with a brand new head coach.
My thing is this.

Speaker 14 If they lose in the conference finals, I'm not going to blast them the way I did the Clippers.

Speaker 14 And I mean this in a respectful sense because the Clippers up 3-1, let themselves and, you know, got the coach fired. They didn't play well.
Paul George didn't play well.

Speaker 14 So like, you're going to get a lot of heat. I think they're two different type of expectations.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
So let me ask you this. This is my last question.
And it's the final question is brought to you by Cross Country Mortgage America's crazy good mortgage company.

Speaker 1 Go to ccmlends.com slash take to learn more about your future home buying experience, your refinancing needs, equal housing opportunity. You've been on a ton of basketball teams in your career.

Speaker 1 How much does it actually matter for guys to get along and be at least maybe not friends, but enjoy being around each other?

Speaker 1 Because that does feel like what part of the Clippers, you know, falling apart last year, it felt like they never were like a team. So how much does that actually matter?

Speaker 1 Or is that just, from a media perspective, a hot take thing that we like to try to say?

Speaker 14 Oh, okay. Let's take the Clippers out.
Let's look at, let's look at, you know, we all watched the last dance, right? You all watched, we all watched the Bulls in this like six-run era.

Speaker 14 And even the first three-peat versus the second three-peat, and they were mad at Horace Grants and Scotty Pittman.

Speaker 14 You cannot have growth without expansion, without, you can't have growth and you can't have high level players without some sort of friction because friction can motivate.

Speaker 14 And even, you know, Steve, Phil Jackson would like, Phil Jackson would like kind of push that and

Speaker 14 like kind of make sure that guys were always, you know, pushing each other. You saw Michael Jordan talk about fighting Steve Kerr.
Like these are guys that ultimately respect each other.

Speaker 14 So I think if the last dance taught us anything is that there is no championship team that are just holding hands and skipping their way to the finals.

Speaker 14 There's going to be moments where you don't want to talk to each other, where you can't stand each other, where you have, you know, beefs here and there.

Speaker 14 So I think you need to have a level of respect for each other more than you have to get along with each other.

Speaker 14 I think it was like when you heard the Clippers talking about, well, I didn't like, you know, the guys, anonymous sources didn't like the treatment of Paul, George, and Kawhi.

Speaker 14 Well, that's stupid because Kawhi, LeBron and Kyrie, they got special treatment when I was on the team, right? Michael Jordan and Scottie Pittman got special treatment.

Speaker 14 Dennis Rodman was given a week off or given days off before the finals or before the play postseason to go like travel around and do whatever he want in Vegas.

Speaker 14 And so it was like Phil Jackson was like, I know that this man needs a rest day. He needs a mental health day.
He needs to go do what he does.

Speaker 14 So like, if you know that there's going to be special treatment for superstars, when I heard that out of the Clippers camp, whether it was anonymous sources real or not, that's silly.

Speaker 14 right everyone's going to be treated differently so i think that you have to respect each other you don't have to get along I think that's been proven time in and time out.

Speaker 14 You don't even need to get along with your coach. You just need to have a respect to get the job done.

Speaker 1 So what you just basically said is Kawhi is a bad leader because the

Speaker 1 Michael Jordan was the leader. And I agree with you.
You don't have to get along, but the respect and the friction is important.

Speaker 1 Kawhi just kind of let Paul George like walk around and say he's playoff P. So yeah, Richard Jefferson just called Kawhi a bad leader.

Speaker 14 Well, this is the thing. You're not going to get a sound bite from Kawhi Jay if you you ask him about that.
So my thing is like, no, I did not say that.

Speaker 14 And one thing that you need to understand and one thing that I've learned as I've gotten older and as I went my way through like sports, just because you are the best player doesn't mean you are a leader.

Speaker 14 And that doesn't mean a knock. There are great leaders that aren't great players.
There are great players that aren't great leaders. It's really about what your team needs.

Speaker 14 You don't need Kawhi to be this vocal person if that's not in his nature. Tim Duncan was never that.
Jason Kidd was never that.

Speaker 14 You just need players that are willing to lead by example on the court, whether it's effort, practice habits, how they like work with their teammates, how they respect the coaches.

Speaker 14 That's what you need from a leader. So I don't think, I don't need Kawhi to be a great leader.
He didn't say he wasn't a leader in Toronto. He wasn't a leader in San Antonio.
And I mean that as like.

Speaker 14 it was Kyle Lowry was the face of the leadership group. It was Tim Duncan and Tony and Mono were the face of the leadership group and Coach Popovich.

Speaker 14 So I don't need Kawhi to be this, like, hey, we're getting everybody together and we're doing a team dinner at my house and make sure. No, that's just not who he is.

Speaker 14 He's kind of a quiet, introverted person. That's fine.
But you have to put people around him that will play the leadership role.

Speaker 1 Okay, I like that answer. I agree with that.

Speaker 2 Robots follow commands well. They follow instructions.

Speaker 2 They don't have artificial intelligence to the point where they can go ahead and lead.

Speaker 1 Would you, though, agree, though, everything you said, I agree with what you just laid out there.

Speaker 1 But would you agree that having your best player also be your leader probably makes it a little easier?

Speaker 14 A thousand percent, but now you're just being greedy, right?

Speaker 1 You're just being greedy.

Speaker 14 It's like, well, I need you to be, you know,

Speaker 14 again, like a LeBron James, a Michael Jordan, a Kevin Durant. Like all of these guys, you look at them and you're like, yo, they're amazing players.
But all of us as people that love sports can.

Speaker 14 point out flaws. We can point out, you know, Kevin Durant having a, having a burner account.
We can point out Kyrie spraying sage around the arena. We can point out Braun being too emotional at times.

Speaker 14 We can point out

Speaker 14 Chris Paul having an injury history in the postseason. It's like, yo, you can point out flaws with all of these great players.

Speaker 14 And that's why it's so fun to kind of watch the NBA season kind of go about and see like which one of these players are going to be able to like put their flaws or put their things aside and really excel and be the best version of themselves.

Speaker 2 I actually like the two things that you mentioned first, though. I like the fact that KD's got burners.
That is actually endearing to me.

Speaker 14 And he says he still has them, which I respect it.

Speaker 14 He says like he still has it. Because look, sometimes he wants to interact and talk trash because people do get reckless online.
People do get reckless.

Speaker 14 Some dude was talking trash to me the other day and was like, why is Jefferson there? He's a bum.

Speaker 14 And I was like, dude, I was going to say something smart, but it was like, why is it like I've made nine figures playing basketball? Why is it that you want to call me a bum?

Speaker 14 I'm okay with that, but it's like, if we were sitting together at a barbecue, if I show up at, you know, because I'm dating your sister, you're not going to call me a bum.

Speaker 14 Like if we're sitting here, but you want to get all excited on Twitter and you want to talk all this trash and have everybody laugh.

Speaker 14 And so I'm okay if you want to have a burner account and just kind of shoot back at some people because you know what? People shoot recklessly all the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you got to let it off steam somehow. I think it's probably a good, like all things considered, it's probably good for his mental health to be able to log off.

Speaker 14 Like if that's what, if that's what, if tearing down other people and if that makes you feel better about yourself then like cool man like that's more about you than it is about me so like i said everybody's got something about them that they have to kind of either overcome or suppress in order to maximize themselves as an individual so whatever that is

Speaker 14 You know, it's fun to kind of watch it go on in the sports.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I also like Kyrie Burning the Sage to cleanse the arena.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like Kyrie. I hope he does that all year long.

Speaker 2 It's so it's good to have like these types of

Speaker 2 personalities in the NBA that you can like get behind or you can root against.

Speaker 2 If you hate Kyrie and you hate the Nets and you're a Celtics fan, you're going to be talking about that every year and you're going to hate that. But that's what makes sports enjoyable.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it does. And this is the thing with no fans currently in NBA arenas, I think it's going to be.

Speaker 14 You're going to see players, I don't want to say get away with is not the right way, but it's just like when you're having to do things and you're being heckled every place you go, it definitely does add a different element.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, Richard, thank you.

Speaker 1 Good luck on Christmas Day. Two games.
Thank you. We want to preemptively say we're not that impressed.
I know everyone will be talking about it and being like, oh, my God, RJ, he did two games.

Speaker 1 I'm probably going to watch five games. So that's the real athlete here.

Speaker 14 That is, that is really impressive. I'm actually, this is, I'm sitting in the seat that I will be,

Speaker 14 that I will be calling the games in.

Speaker 1 So are you going to take a piss? Are you going to take a piss while you're calling the game? That'd be cool.

Speaker 14 No, no, no, no. I'm not going to go like, you know, put my piece in a bottle and wear a diaper.
Ward up like this is dumb and dumber. Like we get bathroom breaks.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay. What about, what's your meal plan situation? Are you going to eat a heavy meal? Because you have to be able to get it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, stay cool.

Speaker 14 Like that's, that's going to be the tricky one. But luckily, because it's the 7.30 tip off, I'm out West.
Like for my partner, Ryan Rucco, it's going to be a 10. 10.30 tip off.

Speaker 14 So he's got to, you know, the key thing is, is like, you got to get that early game in. You got to eat, then you got to take a nap and then a light dinner.

Speaker 14 Then after the the game's over eat enough to put yourself out hey get out of here

Speaker 14 hi buddy

Speaker 1 hi buddy what's up to no outside yeah what's up what's up rjk see this could happen this could happen on christmas day you have to what if this happens on christmas day you can't say that

Speaker 14 that's true but see the real reason why is because his christmas presents are down here

Speaker 1 all right well thanks so much we really appreciate it rj good luck on christmas day always good to catch up with you man yep oh man you guys are still the best doing it, man.

Speaker 14 Always, always good to be on here.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks so much, man.

Speaker 2 Nets are bust.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 All the pressure.

Speaker 14 We didn't talk about the Knicks. I can't believe that.

Speaker 1 Oh, who cares about the Knicks? Okay, there. We talked about the Knicks.
The Mecca cops.

Speaker 2 The Mecca's here. Obi-Topping.

Speaker 1 Ain't no stopping. Obi Topping.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 Ain't no stopping. All right.

Speaker 1 Good to see you, man.

Speaker 1 Okay, we're going to wrap up with Guys on Chicks, but remember, we don't have a show on Friday, Christmas Day. We're back on Monday.

Speaker 1 Full week 16 recap, regular show, best of Wednesday, and coming up the week after, we got a trophy, right?

Speaker 2 The most exciting trophy, the most important trophy in all of sports, the low-man trophy. It's for the nation's best college fullback.
You heard us mention it to Army's coach earlier today.

Speaker 2 And we're only releasing that one because we are collecting all the nominees. Right now, he's received enough votes.

Speaker 2 So Jacoby Buchanan is a low-man trophy finalist, but we've assembled the council of fullbacks, which includes John Kuhn, Lorenzo Neal, Vante Leach, Alec Ingold, Cullen Gillaspi, Anthony Sherman, Jacob Hester.

Speaker 2 The list goes on. The list goes on.
Tom Fernelli. Tom Fernelli slash Hank.
So we actually got Hank's vote yesterday. Okay.

Speaker 2 And actually, Hank, you were the first person to nominate Jacoby Buchanan.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 2 So congratulations. Hank said 474 yards,

Speaker 2 six touchdowns, but mostly because he's listed at six foot and 260. So well said, Hank.

Speaker 7 Nice.

Speaker 2 Nice. So yeah, we will be getting to the low man award next week.
So be on the lookout for that. Going to be some great guests coming out of that, some solid videos.

Speaker 2 And it's all presented by Chevy Silverado.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 2 So we're like, we should do the low man house at some point.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 As bleep out.

Speaker 2 And when I called it that.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 2 They've got the Heisman trophy. We've got the Low Man Trophy with a grittier company, Chevy.
Chevrolet Silverado.

Speaker 1 Hop in one. Yes.
All right, let's wrap up with

Speaker 2 some guys on checks.

Speaker 1 Reminder, again, I feel like we got to remind everybody. It's actually like reminding Browns fans that there's a potential you could not go to the playoffs at 11 and 5.

Speaker 1 We won't have a show on Friday, but we will be back on Monday with a brand new show. It will be me and PFT and Bubba in studio, raw dogging it.

Speaker 2 Hank, are you going on vacation?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 you're just not working.

Speaker 10 No, I'll be editing the show.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. Remotely.

Speaker 1 We're going to pay. Do you want me to come back? No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I want you to

Speaker 1 come back.

Speaker 10 I don't want to come back just to record the show that I would be editing.

Speaker 1 But how do I hang out?

Speaker 2 Hanging out with us, watch some games, get some chicken wings, some Chinese food.

Speaker 1 We're a little worried, though, because I think it's going to just be me and PFT in the office, and we do not know how to work the TVs. So I'm very worried about that.

Speaker 2 Wait, I'm worried about everything now.

Speaker 1 I told you, and you're like, we'll figure it out. I was like, no, dude, I don't think so.

Speaker 2 There's the TVs, and then there's

Speaker 2 this whole thing, our desk.

Speaker 1 How do we plug?

Speaker 1 No, no, Liam's gonna be here. Oh, okay.
And he doesn't, he's not gonna come in till later, so we're gonna be here at like 12:30 and be like, well, how do I turn on the TVs to watch the Bears game?

Speaker 2 I think we'll probably just end up turning on every computer in the office and illegal streaming all of them at once.

Speaker 1 All right, that's a future me problem. That's never gonna come.
Week 16 is never gonna be here. All right, guys on chicks and sending everyone off to a hopefully Merry Christmas.

Speaker 10 Hi, Hank, PFT, and Buffcat. My boyfriend and I recently moved in together, and he works from home virtually.

Speaker 10 If his day ends in a meeting, he almost always masturbates right after the meeting, and I have no idea why. Is this normal?

Speaker 10 Is he blowing off steam or is it because he finds some of his co-workers hot?

Speaker 2 Does he work at the New Yorker? Would be my first question.

Speaker 1 That's just a reflex. Did he work at the New Yorker? Yeah, I think that's just a reflex more than anything.
It's like, okay, well, I need some, like, it's like almost stretching after

Speaker 1 working out.

Speaker 2 Well, dirty little secret about guys is the very same screen that we look at when we're working, it reminds us a lot of the same screen that we look at when we're jacking off.

Speaker 2 So it's like Pavlov's dog almost. It's like, wait, I'm on the internet? You know what else is on the internet? Yep.
You jizz. Yep.

Speaker 1 I'm here, and there's a lot of chicks here, too. Okay.

Speaker 10 For Christmas, I wanted to get my boyfriend a cameo from the two of you guys. I've been sliding into DMs, but haven't been noticed.
I'll cash up $100 if you could give him a shout-out.

Speaker 1 Shout-out. Shout-out.
Shout-out, that guy. Shout out you.

Speaker 2 What's beautiful about this is that any girl that's listening right now could be like, this is from me.

Speaker 2 And I paid $100 for this. So

Speaker 2 Merry Christmas. Say thanks to your girlfriend for paying $100 to the ASPCA.

Speaker 1 So Cameo,

Speaker 1 I've always said that that will be, if you see me on cameo, things have gone terribly wrong.

Speaker 1 But seeing that Kevin Malone from the office made $1 million, that made me be like, hmm, maybe I should be on cameo. That's a lot of cash hola.

Speaker 2 Sounds like a lot of work, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it also sounds like a lot of cash hola. That's a

Speaker 1 million dollars? Billy's getting his eye. Billy, Billy's like,

Speaker 1 all right, guys, I'll run your cameos for you, and I'll just ask you for anywhere between 50 and 60 videos every day, and I'll just keep the money. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 I had cameo for a second, and it sucks because people complain about the videos a lot.

Speaker 1 You think OnlyFans. And you sucked at them.

Speaker 5 No, you just do what they say, and they're like, I didn't like the effort put into this and this.

Speaker 1 And it's just like, what? That's, that's, I'm not surprised that happened to you. No, it's a thing.
You went to max effort?

Speaker 5 I did max effort.

Speaker 1 I mean, there was a lot of max efforts. Give us your max effort.
Okay. Like, all right.

Speaker 1 Rebecca, Rebecca and Sarah, and we want a birthday shout-out from Billy Football and also like a cool pardon my take joke.

Speaker 5 What's up, Rebecca and Sarah?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 2 I actually go by Becky.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And I'm Sarah Bear.

Speaker 5 What's up, Becky and Sarah Bear?

Speaker 1 What's up?

Speaker 5 How you guys doing? Hope you guys have a happy day.

Speaker 1 No, dude, that's a good idea. Why do you keep calling us guys? Also, that was a douchebag way to do it.
Like, I would complain about it. I'm going to file a complaint.

Speaker 1 I would like to file a complaint right now on cameo.

Speaker 1 The cameo that myself, Sarah Bear, and Beck Beck's Becksy?

Speaker 2 Becky with the good hair.

Speaker 1 Becky with the good hair. We asked Billy Football, and he basically made fun of us and called us guys.

Speaker 2 I think you'd need to be very exclusive with the clientele that you chose. So

Speaker 2 it would be like if you are a lacrosse player at Villanova or St. John's and you're looking to roast your buddy, then you will do that cameo.
So, okay, how about now? How about I'm Chad? I'm Tyler.

Speaker 2 And this is Tyler, and it's Tyler's bachelor party. He's got a small dick, and we're going to make fun of him before

Speaker 2 the strippers come over.

Speaker 5 No, no, no, my favorite ones to do were to hype up high school teams for games.

Speaker 1 Okay, do that.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 5 Clark's down south. Heard you got a huge rivalry game this weekend.
I'm just here to pump you up. Guess what? I'm working for part of my take, but I'd much rather be about to play

Speaker 1 to get an undefeated season than...

Speaker 5 No, no, it's actually like it's super. I like read this whole story about this team that was like, wait, but dude, you don't want to work here?

Speaker 1 Dude, I'd rather. I'd rather be in high school than I'm going to be able to do that.
I'd rather be in high school

Speaker 1 to go to the snow for a championship because that's like those guys are about to reduce walls. They're going to take big cat.

Speaker 6 No, seriously, like they're about to beat the rival.

Speaker 1 What's his name from Can't Hardly Wait? Jerry O'Connell, right? Tiffler. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Jerry O'Connell. Those are Jerry O'Connell? From Can't Hardly Wait, right? That was so hard.
Jerry Smith? I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 Seth Green. It was so hype.

Speaker 1 No, it was.

Speaker 2 I'd much rather. Billy's the guy in varsity blues that goes to the high school party and gets hit in the nuts with the baseball.
That's the guy.

Speaker 1 He's just the guy. Yeah, Can't Hardly Wait.
Trip McNeely.

Speaker 2 Jerry O'Connell.

Speaker 5 No, no, but just for that week when they're about to play that big game and then like two hours if they win after that game, it's like the greatest. They're Trip McNeely, yeah.

Speaker 5 But like, it's the greatest high ever.

Speaker 1 Like, there's nothing else like it, it's hype.

Speaker 10 Uh, speaking of Kevin Malone, yeah, sub boys, especially Dad Cat, you know, that scene in the office where Kevin goes up to Pam pretending to cry because when a new mom hears a baby cry, her you know what's up, her you know whats fill up with you-know-what,

Speaker 10 and then her shirt gets, you know,

Speaker 10 yeah. When does that stop happening? Asking for several stained shirts.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 uh, milk discharge? I don't know.

Speaker 10 I think it's because your boobs get bigger.

Speaker 1 That's why I did that. Yeah.
Well, you have to, like.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You have to.
I mean, like,

Speaker 1 it has to go somewhere. So when does that stop happening? I don't know.
Ask your doctor, not me.

Speaker 1 Billy, when does that stop happening?

Speaker 5 I was just watching that quarterback punt the ball.

Speaker 1 All right, but seriously, when does it answer this question for this lady? I wasn't listening. He did not.
When did the quarterback punt the ball?

Speaker 1 After you give birth, how long do you have milk coming out of your tits?

Speaker 5 Until the baby stops sucking.

Speaker 1 So?

Speaker 5 You can lactate for multiple years.

Speaker 1 Wasn't that in grown-ups? Yeah. There you go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think there was a mom that was breastfeeding on the cover of Time magazine to her nine-year-old son at one point.

Speaker 1 Game of Thrones. You can keep it off.

Speaker 7 I think it's really good for keeping weight off and stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all right. So there you go.
There's your answer. So keep doing it.
You're good.

Speaker 2 That was a sick quarterback.

Speaker 1 Start doctor.

Speaker 10 Ask Billy, would you rather pay for sex or be paid to have sex?

Speaker 1 He's done both.

Speaker 1 What? No, No, I

Speaker 5 just don't waste your money on any sex.

Speaker 1 Wait, what? But you can.

Speaker 2 It's not wasted money.

Speaker 8 Would you rather be a JSON?

Speaker 5 I don't think sex should be involved in capitalism.

Speaker 1 Boom. All right.

Speaker 2 Billy Libball.

Speaker 2 Billy's going to put a rose avatar in his bio.

Speaker 1 No, you do think it should be.

Speaker 1 Not the act. No, you think it should be legalized.
Prostitution.

Speaker 1 Or you don't?

Speaker 2 He thinks it should be legalized, but you shouldn't pay for it, which would not make it sexual at all.

Speaker 5 I think that the government should provide sex to all dudes.

Speaker 1 All dudes should get

Speaker 1 their dicks.

Speaker 1 It's called stimulus bills.

Speaker 2 How come I can't get any grindage?

Speaker 1 Billy literally will run for president being like, yo, do you want your dick sucked? Vote for me.

Speaker 10 The other asked Billy was, you spot a boat full of people, but there isn't a single person on board. How is this possible?

Speaker 5 It's the flying Dutchman.

Speaker 1 Duh.

Speaker 5 Ghost ship.

Speaker 1 No one else.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's correct.

Speaker 5 Or also, I saw this one thing that there was like this explosion on a, actually, like there was like a rum distillery or something.

Speaker 5 It was some sort of alcohol-related shipment, and there was an explosion, and all the alcohol burned up, but it didn't burn the ship, but just eviscerated everyone on board.

Speaker 7 I actually saw that, too.

Speaker 1 Oh. Eviscerated?

Speaker 10 No, it's if all the people on the boat are married.

Speaker 10 So you spotted it.

Speaker 1 Oh, there isn't a single person on it.

Speaker 2 That'd be the lamest cruise to go on. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Wait, wait, Google the boat that exploded and there was no one on it?

Speaker 1 No. Okay.

Speaker 1 Someone knows what I'm talking about out there.

Speaker 2 That's a Jameson Irish whiskey commercial.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, Kraken.

Speaker 2 No, no, because the Jameson guy is like way out of a barrel onto the porch.

Speaker 10 Where the fuck is Jilly?

Speaker 1 Billy ate her.

Speaker 2 Jilly is living her best life.

Speaker 5 No, Billy actually did.

Speaker 1 He pushed her down a flight of stairs.

Speaker 5 There wasn't room enough on this couch.

Speaker 1 We didn't go, Billy.

Speaker 1 We need to get in on the joke. No, she's around.
We'll have her come back.

Speaker 1 She's old. We're in a pandemic.
Yeah, we can't have her. She's not that bad.
I'd rather not have her

Speaker 1 risk coming into the office. Once we all have the vaccine, Jilly Football will come visit us.

Speaker 2 She's got a very sweet-looking grandchild. Also,

Speaker 1 also awesome on Twitter as always.

Speaker 10 All right, last one. High thick cat, PFT, and secretly hung Hank.

Speaker 1 Whoa!

Speaker 1 You wrote this yourself.

Speaker 10 My boyfriend claims that he's seen at least 10,000 vaginas in his life. He's currently 27.
He claims that through porn thumbnails alone, he's seen thousands.

Speaker 10 His other friend swears he's seen millions. Is this even possible?

Speaker 1 Millions, no.

Speaker 2 I don't think there are a million vaginas out there.

Speaker 1 Thousands?

Speaker 2 They're so rare.

Speaker 1 Thousands.

Speaker 2 Thousands for sure. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, especially with the news. Thousands, but I don't know what 10,000.
But the new thumbnail where they actually will play the video, the shortened version, when you hover over it.

Speaker 1 I feel like that will change the calculation pretty quickly, right?

Speaker 2 Now, is it different vaginas? Because if you're super into

Speaker 2 one particular vagina, right, online, hypothetically, you have a porn wife. If you've got, yeah, like your main, your main squeeze,

Speaker 2 Billy. Teon Trump.

Speaker 1 Billy?

Speaker 2 How many, Billy? What's your number?

Speaker 7 I think porn's really bad for society.

Speaker 1 Yeah? Go off.

Speaker 7 Why? I think that a lot of stuff gets.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I mean,

Speaker 1 you get unrealistic expectations for sexual bad things come out of porn. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I say that too, because then girls won't see that every guy's got a bigger dick than me. Like, that's just an unrealistic expectation.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with 100 again.

Speaker 5 A lot of bad isms come out of porn.

Speaker 2 Not orgasms.

Speaker 8 100. I'm going to go 8.
40.

Speaker 5 31.

Speaker 1 Wiam has. Oh, you're trying.
I'm trying again.

Speaker 5 But I'm trying not to get it.

Speaker 1 31. I don't even remember what I said.
You said 31. 8, 8, 8.

Speaker 1 What is that? What is that? 91. Ah, shit.

Speaker 1 Stay one.

Speaker 1 91. All right.
We'll see everyone on Monday.

Speaker 2 Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.
Happy everything. Love you guys.

Speaker 5 Reindeers are also known as.

Speaker 1 He's making it up, folks. He's making it up.
We can see in his face, he's making it up now.

Speaker 2 Reindeers are also known as.

Speaker 5 I forgot it.

Speaker 1 He's making it up.

Speaker 5 No, I forgot it. It's in Finland.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Snow elk.

Speaker 5 Northern elk or something.

Speaker 1 Billy.

Speaker 5 I forgot the other name for reindeers.

Speaker 2 Also, I'm told that your last animal fact was in. Okay, like can I correct you? Cows can go down stairs.

Speaker 5 They cannot go down steep, long flights of stairs.

Speaker 5 They can go down three steps, but they can't go down long

Speaker 7 flights of stairs.

Speaker 7 away.

Speaker 7 I don't know what I'm to say and change anyway.

Speaker 7 Today's a matter of days. I'm finally shying away.

Speaker 1 Oh, I've been coming for your love, okay.

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me.

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 on.

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 Root

Speaker 1 Needless to say

Speaker 1 I'm all to set it

Speaker 1 for me stirring away

Speaker 1 Further than

Speaker 1 life is okay

Speaker 1 Say after me

Speaker 1 it's the better to be safe, but sorry.

Speaker 1 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 wonderful

Speaker 1 things that you say. say

Speaker 1 is it a lot more

Speaker 1 just to flame our love breathe away

Speaker 1 You're all the things I've got to remember

Speaker 1 Shine away

Speaker 1 all the coming for you anyway

Speaker 1 Shine away

Speaker 1 all the coming for you anyway

Speaker 1 Take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 in earthly

Speaker 1 I'll be

Speaker 1 gone

Speaker 1 in a

Speaker 1 day

Speaker 1 of free.