Rick Reilly + Kevin Durant's Injury And NBA Finals

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On today's Pardon My Take, we have Rick Riley. Yep, Rick Riley came into the studio.
We talked about everything. We talked about his new book.
We talked about his career, how we looked up to him when we were kids, his sellout moment, which actually I kind of want to be Rick Riley because he made a lot of sense and a lot more, especially the Kate Upton third boob. We have Game 5 of the NBA Finals, one of the most dramatic games in NBA Finals history.
We have Hot Seat, Cool Throne, Guys on Chicks, and PMT Sports Biz Minute is back.

We're going to get right back to the show.

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Today is Wednesday, June 12th. PFT, I think we have to apologize to Kevin Durant.
I'm sorry, Kevin. I'm sorry, Kevin.
Kevin, you are not a triple B. Well, in our defense, we have actually been Team Kevin Durant for months now, but Game 5 of the NBA Finals was one for the ages.
It had all the drama, had all the intensity, and Kevin Durant was at the center of all of it. He comes back, he gets injured.
He, he well I should say he comes back and he balls out 11 points in 12 minutes he gets injured and I mean he basically everyone he's gotten the most shit probably for any big time athlete some of it deserved because he obviously is always online and clapping back at people but I feel like this one game kind of changes a lot of the perception. He put his heart on the line.
He probably knew he could get injured again. Went out there for the Warriors and played great and then gets injured.
And it's his Achilles, so it might be all the way into next year. And now you have to be like Kevin Durant.
He's the fucking man. Kevin Durant is literally a warrior.
a warrior yeah no he went out there i was i was surprised that he did it to be honest with you because i know everybody was saying you had uh people on twitter armchair doctors you had medical experts on tv everyone on twitter has an md yeah you had medical experts on tv you had uh just everybody like the even the team the team doctor said there's no risk of re-injury it might well there's a risk of making that injury hurt again but you're not going to make it any worse by playing which anytime a doctor tells you that that's always bullshit right because any the human body is a very interesting thing you know like it's so random yeah it's so random you have like a left ACL injury then you heal that you come back you're way more likely to tear your right ACL because the body overcompensates in different ways. Now, Kevin Durant, he has such tiny calf muscles.
He has many are saying Patrick Mahomes style calf muscles. Very small calves.
But anytime you have a calf injury, there are other parts of your body that are going to overcompensate for it. In this case, it was the Achilles.
So that sucks that and you're right there's going to be huge ramifications some teams are i think it was skip bayless actually that was saying our team's really going to want to pay for kevin durant free let me let me stop you right now skip yeah they're going to the best are the knicks fans who are like you know who the real loser tonight is us yeah because we don't shut up knicks fans you're still going to pay for kevin durant he's still going to be awesome when he comes back. I just think, here's what I think.
We need to rebrand the Achilles injury. We named it after a dude that lost a war like 5,000 years ago, and we're still calling it the Achilles.
It should be the Kobe heel. Ooh, okay.
Yeah. Is there any other famous Achilles guys? I kind of like the Achilles.
You get an injury named after you that's pretty badass. The guy from Saw.
Oh, yeah, that's true. He got his Achilles sliced open.
Kevin Durant, though, you can't sit there as a sports fan and be like, this guy doesn't care the utmost. Because I know there's the blame game now, and everyone's like, well, was it the doctors? Was it Bob Myers? We'll get to his press conference.
It was so weird. Was it Kevin Durant forced his way back? Whatever it may be, Kevin Durant basically was like, I'm playing, and I like these minutes the load management crowd has shown up and been like, well, he shouldn't have played 12 minutes.
He shouldn't have played 10 out of the first 12 minutes. So if he played nine, he wouldn't have gotten hurt? No.
When Kevin Durant is on the floor, you saw it like he started bringing the ball up. He was the point guard like he was going to go 100 percent.
He was on fire. He went, I think, three for three from three, 11 points in 12 minutes.
And what happens is something that might be unlucky, something that might have been because of the other injury. I don't know.
I'm not going to blame anyone. It sucks.
Yeah, it sucks to see a guy like that get injured. But all credit to Kevin Durant for even going out there because I feel like you saw all those reports being like, well, is he playing? Is he not playing? And as soon as that happens, the pressure probably feels monumental on the athlete.
Like, everyone's dogging me. Everyone doesn't think I can come back.
And he came back and the worst possible scenario happened. And saying that he should change his game to fit the injury that he's coming off crazy it's it is bullshit it's like you don't tell a guy to completely change what they're doing become like clay thompson if you're kevin durant only catch and shoot don't try to create anything off the off the dribble like you don't tell a lion okay only chase down a wildebeest if it's making a laugh if it's cutting line you got a knee sprain yeah make sure you go off to the warthogs, not the gazelles.
Exactly. Lion's going to get hungry, and it's not going to concern itself with the opinion of Bayless's out there.
You can't tell. Here's an example.
If you told Vontaze Perfect, hey, Vontaze, stop aiming for people's heads, then Vontaze is just going to get himself hurt in that circumstance. Right.
So that's the Kevin Durant stuff. It sucks uh i it'll be interesting to see if he now stays with the warriors so let's actually before we get to the toronto fans bob myers and his press conference boy was that awkward a lot of tears holy shit a lot of crying i i might be an asshole for saying this but when he got up to the mic and struggled and held back tears and was like moving the mic around and then just dropped the it's an achilles i laughed out loud because that the like what he was showing was not like it didn't mirror what we're talking about we're talking about an injury i thought he was gonna say like we just got the nuclear bomb sent to you know like to la and we have like 10 minutes before everyone dies he was so emotional and this is also the bob myers remember he made that joke after the warriors won the championship at the rally when he was like uh steph curry can get anything he wants because he's been here longer kevin durant hasn't been here that long so come on dude like you you care because kevin durant's probably not gonna be a warrior anymore actually i'm to say it was more because he fucked up somehow.
Yeah. Those are the tears.
And if he cries. Those are the tears of a guilty man who's like, I need to be super emotional because I know that my medical staff fucked up by allowing him to go out there.
And now everyone will be like, oh, poor Bob Myers. He really cares.
And I'm not saying he doesn't care because he probably cares a lot about his players. He hangs out a lot with his players.

But it was a little extra.

It was very extra on Bob Myers' part. And so, yeah, the tears were a little bit funny.
So now I think we have to get in to the entire city of Canada for how they reacted to that injury. And now I'm going to defend Canada a little bit.
I think you're going to have a similar take. but when he went down with that injury

I think a lot of the initial reaction

was we're going to have a similar take uh but when when he went down with that injury i think a lot of the initial reaction was we're going to win the nba finals the very first reaction um i'm not saying it was the right reaction to have in that moment but i i don't think that the majority of fans that were cheering when he went down were cheering because they were happy that he had an achilles injury well they were kind of happy that he got an injury because it means he was out and the so there's two different sides here it happens everyone runs to Twitter and is like hey fuck Canada best part fuck Toronto and I was like you know what that's a scumbag move by Toronto but if you are a fan of any team, any sport, and you think your fan base doesn't have bad moments, you're crazy.

Because literally, step one of being a fan, it's fanatic.

Like, you aren't a fan of a team or a sport or care so much.

You don't go to a bar and watch your football team every fucking Sunday if you aren't a little bit crazy.

If you don't, like, sports fans by definition are not well-adjusted human beings.

Thank you. go to a bar and watch your football team every fucking sunday if you aren't a little bit crazy if you don't like sports fans by definition are not well-adjusted human beings yes like that's just what we are and i'm talking about myself here too right so i i don't think that there was anything malicious by it at first maybe some of the fans that were clapping went like a way i'll say it way over the line it was the waves yeah.
Those guys went way over the line, and then they immediately realized their Canadian-ness, and they're like, hey, hey, let's call them down. Led by a lot of the Raptors players.
Yeah, with credit to them. With credit to them, they're like, hey, we're not clapping for this.
And then who do you think was more extra, the GM of the Warriors or Drake? Drake was pretty extra. Because Drake looked like.
But he does have his number tattooed on his arm. He does.
He loves Kevin Durant. Yeah.
So they're very good friends. I'm just happy that Toronto can stop the act.
Like we can stop the act with Raptors fans that you guys are different than everyone else. You're not.
You're the same. And that's fine.
Because like let's just be honest here. You want to win at all costs.
You want to see your team win a championship at all costs. And that's totally okay.
You shouldn't see your injuries. But in that moment, you blacked out.
You have never won anything. And you see the best player in the world go down.
You're like, oh, shit. This is actually going to happen.
And so I like in one part, I'm like, you guys are scumbags. But the other, I'm like, kind of understand what's going on.
I just I'm waiting the lebron james instagram post of a young lebron james asking why does this happen have to happen to my future best friend kevin durant right like that i need kevin or i need lebron to weigh in on it secondly i want to say that uh at least it happened in canada because he's got free health care up there that's true that's all that was a spin zone we're throwing out you saw that happened to kawaii it fixed It fixed Kawhi's severe boo-boo on his thigh this season. So it's good that it happened there and it's also kind of one of those sliding doors moments.
You look back, we were one fluky Kawhi Leonard shot bounce away from having a classy city like Philadelphia that would have treated that injury with the respect that it deserved. You're saying they would have beaten Milwaukee? saying that Philadelphia here.
If you're a Philadelphia fan, this was like a, this is a Christmas present for you last night. Oh yeah.
Be like, we're not the, we're not the only scumbag fans out there. Every fan base.
If you think that your fan base is better than anyone, then you are just wrong. If we were wrong, there, there have to be like one or two fan bases that you would be.
Like the Portland Timbers are probably fucking better. They probably wouldn't cheer.
No, the Portland Timbers are the ones that get into like the dart throwing European riots against the Sounders. I don't even know.
They somehow play like seven times a year. Yeah.
Like, think about it. You think of like the nicest, the places in the world, in the country where everyone's like, oh, these people are really nice.
The Utah Jazz. Everyone knows the Utah Jazz fans are the worst.
Like, every fan base has moments like this, where I just don't like how Twitter and people are like, look at every fan base, like, wow, these guys are scumbags. My team would never.
No, your team probably wouldn't have. You know what? The best way that you can figure out which fan base would be less likely to do this is the fan bases that we call bad sports towns right that are that don't show up miami heat probably would be less likely people would have already left they would have been like shit kevin durant's on fire i'm out yeah i'm going to live wait it's still on the fontainebleau it's still 81 degrees outside tonight i'm going to nick cannon's wild and out ball on the strip fuck this uh so yeah i i don't blame canada you are one of us toronto fans you can no longer hold any i don't even think a lot of toronto fans like there's just such a stupid weird disconnect between twitter and real life because i really think that like most toronto fans probably never thought they were morally superior it's just a few dorks here and there on twitter who think that they're better than everyone and then they they end up being like the mouthpiece for a fan base so i don't blame i don't begrudge it was a bad moment but i'll begrudge toronto you guys are human hockey fans would

never cheer for an injury yeah right right that's i mean that's like i said the i said to you earlier

we should have learned this when it was like oh canada you're just like us well we should have

learned it when vancouver burnt their entire city to the ground when they lost to stanley that was

amazing that was such an amazing celebration like people's chattering storefront windows listen we're

All right. Well, we should have learned it when Vancouver burnt their entire city to the ground when they lost to Stanley Cup.
That was amazing. That was such an amazing celebration.

People were shattering storefront windows.

Listen, we're all idiots when it comes to sports.

That's why we love it so much.

And we also got the nice thing with the Kevin Durant injury and everyone, you know, the Toronto fans cheering for the injury.

We had another.

This has been the biggest week in as a blank fan because there were a lot of Kevin Durant's tweet. There were people were tagging him.
People were tagging his mom being like as a Raptors fan. I'm just rooting for Kevin Durant.
That's very nice of you. Listen, as a rugby fan, I just want to say that you hate seeing this type of injury happen in a non-contact sport.
As a guy, as a fan of having intact Achilles and is always scared as a man over the age of 30, knowing that playing basketball could have been you, I could tear my Achilles at any moment. I just want Kevin Durant to get healthy.
As much as it was a as a blank fan night. I think it was a bigger stay classy night.
Yeah. Stay classy.
You might remember from that famous movie Wedding Crashers from 2006. It was all over Twitter.
Shout out. It was all you couldn't you couldn't go three seconds between refreshing without a stay classy reference from like being directed to the entire city of toronto fans are never classy no like we have classy moments but think about this like if you're like man i can't believe tron did this Think about a group of like four dudes, 25 years old.

They went, they were drinking Molson for four hours before the game. They've never seen a championship in their lifetime.
They get to the arena. They're jacked up.
Kevin Durant shows up and starts torching them. The baddest guy in the planet shows up and says, I'm just going to hit every three.
Boom. He goes down in that one second.
You're probably probably going to be an asshole. And then you correct it.
And then you feel bad about it. Do you think back in Roman times at the Coliseum, if a gladiator sprained his ankle, they would get pissed off at the tiger that was coming up to eat him and be like, hey, quit showboating.
Stay classy. Yeah, listen.
We should talk about the game itself for a second too. Yes.
Nick Nurse with one of the worst timeouts of all time. I liked it.
He said he was actually trying to get them some rest. And also there's the theory that, you know, the rule that you can't take more than two timeouts into under three minutes.
Can't take it with you. So he, Kawhi Leonard goes supernova, 10 points in like 90 seconds.
I swear to God, Nick Nurse called that timeout to soak it in like that was a soak it in that was a Saturday afternoon in March Lawrence Kansas call timeout let the seniors get in there moment it's like what what are you doing dude you have all the momentum in the world and then it goes clay Steph clay threes the Warriors championship resolve is just Kawhi have his moment. You know what that was? Every time I'm watching a basketball game on TV, if there's a moment where the fans are just going fucking nuts, I expect to hear that whistle for a timeout.
You hear it coming before it ever – you're like, this is too loud. There's going to be a timeout soon.
Nick Nurse just heard all that cheering and was like, we got timeout time. Yeah, timeout time.
This is when the timeout happens. It shouldn't be a TV timeout? Yeah, so we're going to call the timeout.
And Steve Kerr should have called the timeout when Steph Curry got trapped and Draymond got the over and back. The coaches kind of beefed up the whole way down the stretch, but that one timeout, and I actually don't blame them for the last possession because I think as much as you don't want Kyle Lowry shooting, the Warriors just played great defense.
They played great defense. They doubled Kawhi.
Draymond is insane. And shout-out also Boogie because Boogie is basically the fat guy who's just trying to get as many rebounds as possible and so out of breath.
Every time they run a pick-and-roll at him, it's like the saddest thing ever now if you were to take

a contrarian point of view

against that final possession you would say something

like on that final play as soon as

he saw the double team coming from Iggy to his

right number two should have just power

dribbled hard left on clay

bounced him off and gone

up for the potential game winner so he should have

bounced clay off him which is a play

that many basketball players run

I love the final

I mean there are bad final possessions

I'm going to go ahead and get some more questions. up for the potential game winner so he should have bounced clay off him yeah which is a play that many basketball players run i i love the fine i mean there are bad final possessions whenever a team does the final possession and a guy just holds the ball at the top of the key for like the entire shot clock and then like with two seconds left tries to drive but in terms of like what you should do in a final possession when you get doubled as hard as he did there's's many times in NBA history and basketball history where making the right pass proved to be the good play.
It just so happened that Kyle Lowry was the open guy. Kyle Lowry took the shot.
Maybe you just don't have Kyle Lowry on the floor. Kyle Lowry, I think he hit like a popcorn vendor with that shot.
It was so far behind the basket. It was a very tough final possession, but I think now we've got to look forward.
I think the Warriors win game six. See, I think the Raptors are going to win it.
I think Kawhi loves the road games. I think all this drama, as great as game five was, I just have a feeling the Raptors are going to come out and just fucking kill the Warriors on Thursday night.
I don't know why. I just, it feels like there was so much emotional energy put into that game by the Warriors, and Kevon Looney is probably out too now.
So it's like they have no one. They basically just need Steph and Klay to not miss.
Kawhi just is probably sick of playing. He just wants to go home.
He's like, I don't, listen, let's just end the season. Yeah.
Like, I don't want to have an extended. He might not even show up for the parade.

Yeah.

I won that bet, Hank, over six games.

I'm happy to.

I mean, I think we're all happy because we got sports still going.

But so you think it's going seven?

Yeah, but that's just because I'm doing the thing where I'm holding on with both hands to the hockey and to the NBA off the edge of the cliff.

Right.

One more Sunday night.

I think it's going seven, too.

You do?

Okay.

So one more game in Oracle. Hopefully the fans don't leave early.
I got $1,000 on the Warriors. I need this.
Yeah. I need this.
All right. So before we get to our Hot Seat Cool Throne, Rick Riley's coming up.
We had him in studio about three weeks ago. If you want to watch, you can go to BarstoolGold.com slash PMT.
Very fun interview coming up. Hank, do you want to start hot seat?

Cool throne.

The soon to be 26 year old Hank.

Yes.

My hot seat is Thailand.

Yes.

Yeah.

Tough, tough showing for the women's of Thailand.

I mean, they basically was like Alabama verse.

I don't even know who it was.

They got blown out.

Yeah.

13, nothing like Abilene Christian.

It was it was bad. And but on the other hand,'re not really a country until Hank mispronounces your name.
Yeah. Who are you in this world until you get to that point? So, yeah, it was a shit pumping.
I'm going to say it right now. The U.S.
Women's National Team, the W stands for wagon in U.S. W.N.T.
And we have Rose Lavelle coming up on Friday. That's right.
Who scored the second goal and probably like the seventh and tenth. I don't even know how many goals.
It got out of hand real quick.

She might have scored a bunch of goals. Alex Morgan had five.

Rose had two.

I predicted before the game. I said Rose was going to get

two. Alex was going to get three.

Alex ended up almost having... While taking

the under six. While taking the under six.

That was a tightrope.

I was really... End the first half over.

I was threading a needle. And I got most of my predictions correct.
But Alex Morgan almost had a tightrope. I was really in the first half over.
I was threading a needle.

And I got most of my predictions correct.

But Alex Morgan almost had a double hat trick, which is fucking crazy.

Just kneecap Thailand.

Yeah, and I was talking soccer.

I was talking soccer.

My other hot seat is Canadian intelligence.

So back to the game.

Barstool Sports on Twitter posted a meme where it was from England World Cup like a few years ago when a bar was going absolutely crazy when they scored a goal. It might have been last summer, two summers ago, whatever.
And Barstool put the video of Kevin Durant's Achilles popping, and so it looked like the bar was reacting to that. It was erupting.
It said Toronto fans reacting to Kevin Durant getting injured, and there was a ton of Canadian people being like, this is fucked up, like how could you guys, this is fake. Like not understanding that it was clearly fake and going out of their way to show how fake it was.
Not getting that it was a joke. These are on brand for Canadians.
And these are also my favorite moments because whether like, you know, obviously we have a lot of people who hate us online. But when you can't get a simple, simple joke and then you like knee jerk be like, well, it's a joke barcel's trash it's like what what you just you miss the joke and now you're going to this but the people there was one guy who basically spent he must have spent like 20 minutes going through the picture and photoshop and and putting in like notes like there's ashtrays there's england flags it's light out yeah there's a there's a's a David Beckham poster on the wall.
It's like, bro, you could have figured this out in a second. Full snopes on us.
This was like loose change for Canadians, like debunking this video. It's loose loonies.
Yeah, and then they're like, hey, man, it's a joke. They're like, well, that joke isn't funny.
Actually, it was really funny. Yeah, it was pretty funny.
hilarious. Is that it, Hank? Uh,

and then my cool throne is Bill Belichick's likability.

He canceled the last two days of OTAs and took the boys out paintballing.

Oh,

wow.

Great.

That's so funny.

Is he getting soft?

So instead of having them at practice,

he just took them out to shoot each other with guns.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which,

what offensive lineman had to catch a punt to get that possible?

Probably,

I don't know.

Who knows?

Maybe David Andrews.

Yeah. That's probably because Joe Cardone, he got like promoted to lieutenant at a practice.
That was their version this year of like an office. Joe, if you can, if you can achieve a higher rank in the military while you're at OTAs, then we'll take it off for the last two days.
I fucking love football. I love football coaches.
Just being like this non-mandatory thing that you guys all have to show up to. I'm going to give you a day off.
Yeah, but you, I mean, it's only the same where the players, it's like, oh, yeah, brings it back to like being in elementary school. And it's like, oh, yeah, we're going out for an extra like 30 minutes.
No, this isn't like a Belichick. This is every coach does this.
And it's fucking it just it just amuses me every single. By the way, if Joe Cardone did not dominate at paintball, then I don't know what's going on with their military these years.

That's probably got to be the best practice that he could ever have.

Imagine if someone got injured, though, playing paintball.

I always wonder.

I never would.

I'd be like, hey, guys, you have the day off,

and we're all going to just go to a movie.

Well, Belichick shot Kyle Van Nooy, recurring guest, in the face

with a paintball gun.

Damn.

Damn.

Can't really complain about that if you're Kyle,

because you're like, yeah, coach, it's an honor. Good shot, coach.
Probably deserved it. Yeah.
Is that it, Hank? That's it. Good job.
Good job, Hank. That was awesome.
Yeah. Happy birthday.
Prelated. Yeah.
Thank you. There you go.
When's your birthday again, Hank? Thursday. Thursday.
Thursday. Okay.
Hopefully you'll have another parade, you son of a bitch. My hot seat is Alabama.
The state of Alabama. Whole damn state? Whole damn state, roll damn tide, because Dabo Swinney said that when he's going on recruiting visits through Alabama, he's got to duck cover, go in underground tunnels so that he doesn't get caught down there, doesn't get spied by Nick Saban.
He said that he is Osama bin Dabo when he's traveling throughout Alabama. So that's a pretty solid quote from Dabo Swinney.
That's almost as good as Zero Dark Thirty 23. 23, yeah.
Osama bin Dabo is now officially what we're going to call Dabo Swinney. I hope during training camp this summer, instead of having the linemen do the barrel roll drills and Oklahoma drills, they just put them in hoods and have them doing the monkey bar thing and crawling underneath nets like it's an Afghanistan training complex.
Yeah, that was pretty funny. My other hot seat is me putting myself on the hot seat and you because we kind of we had.
I don't want to say we went after Madison Bumgarner because we said that. No, I was on his side.
We said that the world needsarner that he is being well I guess it's just me then um but good friend of the program who's probably never listened Aubrey Huff got back on his bullshit on Twitter and he said if all you Twitter muscle folks thinks Madison Bumgarner is a fake tough guy I would bet my ridiculous retirement plan you wouldn't say that to his face when standing toe-to-toe with him. Oh, damn.
401k Aubrey Huff. Nice job, dude.
You got a Roth IRA there? I was going to say, this is Aubrey Huff we're talking about. So it's most likely just like some mayonnaise jars filled with printouts of pictures of like the logo of Bitcoin.
And like a shed in Texas. Yeah, and it's buried in his backyard.
So, he did say it was a ridiculous retirement plan, so Aubrey, I will take that. I will get my ass kicked by Madison Bubgarner for your retirement plan, Aubrey.
Yes, I want to see that retirement plan. My cool throne is Alexi Lawless looking like a smug prick on national television.
Oh, nice. So, it's Alexi Lawless season, and that means that he gets to stare into the camera after every single game looking smugly like he kidnapped your dog and he's the only one that knows the answer to a riddle to retrieve it from you and also randomly getting super super mad for like a minute and a half about something totally inconsequential to try to go viral yeah that will happen will happen at least once.
Yeah, so he's back in a bit.

He's got the most smug face, I think,

on national sports media these days.

For a guy who never won a ring.

He didn't do shit.

All he had was he had stupid hair and bad goatee.

But those jerseys were fire.

I'm actually kind of describing myself here.

Yeah, those jerseys were fire, though.

Yeah, the old school U.S. ones.

Yeah, the 94.

Both of them, the one with the stripes

and the one that looked like it was denim with the stars.

Yeah.

Those were very, though. Yeah, those jerseys, the old school U.S.
ones. Yeah, the 94.
Both of them, the one with the stripes and the one that looked like it was denim with the stars. Yeah.
Those were very, very fire. All right.
My hot seat is actually me and Hank. Oh.
Hank and I. Hank and I? Cool throwing me and Bubba.
Hank and I. Hot seat for me because it turns out this whole like having a kid thing, it's coming up.
it's coming up there's gonna be an episode sometime in the next two weeks where i'm just not here we already have it taped but yeah it's like one of those future things where you're like this will last forever nope turns out it really is pretty close to nine months guys yeah it's on brand for you yeah it's very on brand we like future me nine months will never come well guess what we're getting we're staring nine months into the fucking in the face right now. Having sex is the ultimate example of future me will handle.
Yeah. So I'm not nervous.
I'm excited. But it's also like I'm going to get this nut.
It'll probably be fine. I'll figure out a way to deal with it later.
And then the other hot seat for Hank. Hank, like we said, prelated.
Happy birthday. Twenty 26 years old.
You are getting right into the prime of that quarter life crisis, my friend. So we're here to talk to you about it.
Well, I mean, honestly, and this will make a lot more sense when the episode that drops when the baby comes comes out. But I was listening to that.
I wasn't involved. And that was like a very eye opening experience because you guys were talking about like what it's like growing up and certain points in your life life yeah which i'm still at and i was like oh shit like this is gonna get bad for me yeah so it was that we taped it with uh rusillo titus me and pft and we taped basically a life podcast so that was that's our evergreen break in case a baby which should come up soon so that will there will be a day in the next couple weeks where it will just be life.
It's a great episode. Awesome episode.
Awesome episode. And you guys were talking about growing up and being around my age, and I was like, you obviously weren't talking to me, but I was listening like, oh, shit.
Yeah, this is me. Our job's before Barstool, and what was our life like? So quarter-life crisis, Hank.
Do you guys think that a lot of midlife and quarter-life crises have been averted in the area of New England because their sports teams are doing so well all the time? Yes. Because that makes the rest of your life seem so much better, right? I mean, you literally are about to turn 26, but before you turn 26, you're going to go to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final.
Yes. Also, I work with you guys, so it's like I'm really actually not too much of a crisis.
Yeah. I'm doing all right, but.
Yeah. And is only 24 23 23 23 they're all the same when you're that age we're gonna get you graduated all the numbers are the same you graduated bubba i swear to god all right my cool throne is the u.s open course yes did you guys see the rough at pebble beach it is rough the fescue is that it's fucking rough dude i'm excited for it the u.s open this is our this is our weekend this is when you for the course when the usga really kicks it in high gear yeah they they can make a golf course turn into syria real fast i'm rooting for the course and brooks kepka yep that's it absolutely i want brooks to win i want brooks to go minus 15 and everyone else to be like plus three.
Maybe Tiger in the mix. Tiger, maybe.
Tiger, you can go minus two. Tiger and Brooks in the final pair.
Brooks is the new. If Brooks wins this one, he's the new Tiger.
I'm going to say it. He's a Blake and a Tiger and a Brooks.
He's everything. He's our everything.
Did you see him get with Joe Buck? They hashed that out. They did, yeah said uh hey here with an old friend like to make our amends and then brooks came up to the camera and goes hey what's up jim you really sold that video that's good that's good nice try jim good good uh good good try to be viral there it will work it was yeah it did work joe's a friend and brooks is everything.
Our Blake and our tiger. Our Blake and our tiger.
Narcissistically, do you guys think that they use you guys to kind of break the ice and start that conversation? Probably, yeah, definitely. Absolutely.
Brooks was probably like, hey, suck my dick, Joe. And then Joe was like, hey, suck my dick.
And then Brooks was like, we actually don't say that anymore. And that's how they buried the hatchet.
Yeah, did you see that fat picture of Big Cat? And Joe was like, I was going to say the same thing, dude, he's a fucking fat ass. And then they just kind of went off into the sunset.
Uh, all right, let's get to our interview with Rick Riley. We're going to get right back to the show.
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All right, back to part of my take.

We're going to get right back to the show.

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USAA. All right, back to part of my take.
Okay, here he is, Rick Riley. Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest.
It is Rick Riley. You know him.
He has a new book out. It's called Commander in Sheet, How Golf Explains Trump.
Perfect book for Father's Day. We're going to run this right before Father's Day.
You'd think i would bring a book because it'd be a smart thing to do that's okay we're not readers so we read your wikipedia entry before this interview started so that's about as deep as we're going to get yes so let's talk about the book first we want to get into everything else but let's talk about the book you wrote the book why because uh i was retired i don't know if you know that i quit sports writing. I was writing movies two hours a day and otherwise just living in Italy half the year and screwing around and playing piano.
And I kept seeing on my phone all these things from Trump about I'm a club champion. You've got to vote for me.
18 club champions. And that's against the best players.
That's with no strokes. I'm like, you liar already told me how you did it right when i when i caddied for him or played with him for who's your caddy my book and what he does he plays the first round at any course he opens by himself with melani in the card or whoever and he calls that the club championship but isn't that genius it's diabolically genius i mean that is really a.
This is what I always struggle with, because not even to get into politics here, if I had the money to have my own golf club, you bet your ass I'd have the fucking record. That's part of being rich.
You get to make the rules. So then I started looking into, he's not really telling people this.
So then I started checking around. And I heard a story that one time he walked into his club in Florida, near Mar-a-Lago, and saw that some guy had won while he was somewhere else.
And he said, oh, Joe Schmo, I beat him all the time. Make me the champion.
And they're like, what? Yeah, I beat him all the time, so make me the champion. They pulled him off.
And then there was one he won when he was in Philly, and the tournament was in Bedminster. And he called and said, what won the club championship? And the guy in the pro shop goes, 75.
I shot 72 up here, make me the club champ. I love it.
Just on his word, he's giving himself questions. So wait, where's the cheating come in? Well, because he – Like, I'm very confused here.
Everything you've said so far, I'm like, yup, yup. But then a month later then a month later it comes out they see the caddy and he's what's he talking about he shot 84 yeah so big cap brings up a good point which is there's a difference between lying and cheating so i would consider like if your ball's you know in the bunker you take it you throw it onto the fairway yes that's cheating yes but if you say i shot better than this guy on the wall wall, that's just lying.
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, right.
But it gets worse. I mean, he kicked Mike Tirico's ball into a bunker because Tirico wasn't around.
He hit this great shot because he had a bet against Tirico. And he tried to cheat Tiger Woods.
But isn't this a gentleman's game where you have to take the gentleman at his word? Is that what the gentleman's game means? Well, you're – no. Okay.
Gentleman's game is – because golf is the easiest sport to cheat at, right? Right. It's hard to cheat in baseball.
It's hard to cheat at most sports. Well, football maybe.
Golf is the hardest sport to cheat at because the expanse is so huge. So it just became, from the very beginning, a game of honor.
So if you're over there and you're 200 yards away, I trust you're not going to throw it out of the woods. Bad decision.
I absolutely would. And you trust I'm not going to fake a chip shot like he did one time.
A guy caught him. He fakes this chip shot.
He's got the ball in the right hand. Goes running to the pin.
Made it. He's a magician.
But what he doesn't know is there's a guy behind him that he didn't see. So I think the problem that we're having understanding this is PFT and I are hackers.
Like we golf maybe twice a year and I don't care. Like I don't even keep score.
You know what I mean? I'm going out there to have fun. If I hit the ball in the woods, I'm not even going to look for it because I'm like I'd rather hit the next shot off the fairway.
That's fine regular golfers out there the majority of golfers cheating is obviously a big deal but you're not telling people you're a 2.8 handicap no i'm not which is better than jack nicholas right now okay 2.8 is almost pro and so you look at how he does it so you guys don't really know golf but you got to put in your less 20 scores and they average those out and so i'm like a 6.0 and so he would be two point that'd be twice as good as me and yet tiger anika sorenstrom dustin johnson they all say he's about a 10 well that's a seven and that's exponentially it gets harder right that's just a huge lie and then he's betting money like you don't bet money against your buddies right oh i do yeah but yeah yeah i what you're saying. You're betting money, but you're not keeping score.
Right. How? Oh, and golf.
No, you're right. I do not bet money in golf.
You're right. Right.
So he's betting money. He's taking the money.
Then he buys lunch. Right.
Yeah. So, okay.
So you also said that golf is the quintessential sport that tells everything about a man's character or a person's character. Explain that.
It's like a roar sock test for your soul, you know? Everything looks like a vagina. That's not what roar sock means.
Oh, I see. Yeah.
When you take the test. Yes.
Yes. No.
Yeah. I always say it's like bicycle shorts.
It reveals a lot about a man. Everything looks like a vagina.
Yes, exactly. And so he cheats.
He cheats on, he tries to bully his way or bribe his way to better course rankings for his 15, 18 courses now. He cheats on his handicap.
You can see. So I was telling you about the handicap.
Yeah. It's taken him eight years to get those 20 scores.
You have to post every score because otherwise I'm not going to bet you. Right.
And at Wingfoot, where he belongs, they won't bet him anymore. So he doesn't go there anymore.
And he kicks the ball so much at Wingfoot, they call him Pele. They've taken him off the board.
No one will bet against Trump at Wingfoot. You can go right now to gin.com, G-H-I-N.com, and look him up.
And he cheats. He just cherry-picks his best score.
So when you caddied for him, did you go a full 18? I ended up playing against him. Okay.
So what's his game like? Well, first of all, he starts lying about you. This is Rick Riley.
He's publisher of Sports Illustrated. Right.
I'm like, that's pretty good to be around a guy like that. No, I'm just a writer.
Then the next guy, this is Rick Riley. He's the managing editor.
Like, no, why are you lying about me? Right. And, it sounds better.
And then he says, this is Joe. He's voted best hamburger chef in the world.
And Joe's like, what? No, I'm not. And then we played a money bet, score for 10 bucks.
And he took four mulligans. He took a gimme chip in.
You know, I've been on all these political shows. They don't even know what a chip is but he preached i'm in the hole for par and he's off in four he's off the green in four and he says well that makes this good so like he's gonna make the chip in yeah wait so let me get this right you basically wrote an entire book because you're mad you lost a bet is that all that's all it is you could have just we could have just paid you 10 bucks oh the the commander you're just you're just mad because you lost.
No, that was... Sounds like you lost to him.
That was... Yeah, I did lose to him.
Right. That was amusing.
Okay. That was fun.
Because when we knew him in sports, he was just a big blowhard guy like your uncle who says he punched out Sinatra and slept with Marilyn Monroe, and it's all bull. But this guy's now running the country, and he's saying you should vote for him because he's a great golfer, and I know it's all bullshit.
But I'm more concerned about the fact that he only plays for $10. He's a billionaire.
I mean, I've seen his taxes. He's so rich he was able to lose billions of dollars.
Yeah, the billion-dollar loser. And the fact is, him playing for $10 in a full game, that's honestly concerning to me.
I would like the stakes to be higher. It's just about winning.
He's got to win no matter what.

He's got to tell people.

But the truth is, when he plays on TV, when he's ever played on TV, Pebble Beach seven

times, Lake Tahoe Celebrity, Stormy Daniels three times, he's never made the cut.

He's never been in the top half.

He ain't no two-point.

What does he shoot usually?

What would you say Donald Trump would shoot if he was completely honest about every shot right now 85 okay it's still pretty good it's not bad but at the tahoe at tahoe they kept track right right and he wasn't didn't break an egg now he banked stormy daniels and a playmate model in one tournament right so that's maybe he was tired right right how about this there's a there's a story in your book about him beating the club champion when he just kind of pulled up on his golf cart and the club champion was playing with his son. Right.
Not in the back. Not in my book.
That was reported by Golf. OK.
After the book came out. So what happened was he was it's unbelievable.
He was in Singapore with Kim Jong Un of North Korea and they played the club championship at the course next to Mar-a-Lago.

And when he gets back a month later, he sees the guy.

It was the money guy that helped start off Green Book.

His name's Ted Virtue.

He said, Ted, great job, but you didn't really win.

And Ted's like, what do you mean?

You know, I wasn't here.

He's like, ah, that's funny.

No, you've got to play me right now six holes for the title. And Ted's like, ah, can't do it.
I'm playing with my son. He can play.
And the story goes that he hit it in the water. And Trump hit it in the water.
And the two virtues put it on the green. And by the time they got there, one of the balls was suddenly Trump's.
Which happens a lot because his caddies are always way ahead. Right.
Moving balls He's got advanced scouts. Exactly.
And Trump makes the 20-footer and virtue loses. That's a good putt.
And so Trump goes, I'll tell you what. This is golf.com.
So I'll tell you what. We'll make you the co-champion.
But then when you go to his locker and you can see on his locker all the things he's won, which are all mostly phony, it doesn't say co-champion. 2018 club champion that's like the texas a&m just adding national championships to the side of their stadium after like 70 years hey forget about it we did that at colorado yeah congrats on the mushrooms by the way yeah you know my nephew is happens that happens to be his beat he's a journalist in colorado and he said they thought sure they're going to lose and now you can grow mushrooms in colorado i'm a little scared about that to be honest with you why i don't know feel like a lot of people can't handle mushrooms that try mushrooms it definitely is you got to be in the right setting and the other thing is they don't know how much to take right it's like because i'm from colorado so i'm always there and people think oh i'll take two of these brownies and they're they're calling the ambulance right you just take a little some people have no chill but probably the best thing for your book sales would be if he were to find out what you've written about him and if he attacked you publicly right dude I'm begging for a tweet I can't get one tweet no but you can't do that that's playing into his hands have you tweeted I would for him to tweet.
I'll be drinking ported beer the rest of my life. Have you gone on Fox News yet? Can't get on.
Okay, because if you went on Fox News, then I feel like you'd get, you know, if you did like a morning show, you could get that tweet. Somehow, in my case, he learned restraint because I know he knows all about the book because Eric Trump blocked me on Twitter.
And one of my good buddies is one of his good buddies. And he cares about golf.
He's been more loyal to golf than any woman, than any political party, than any stance. He loves golf.
He loves winning. And so for him not to tweet is killing me.
Because as soon as he tweets, he's going to say, Rick Riley, what an asshole. I kicked his ass.
He's the most dishonest reporter. And I'm going to come back with, OK, who read it to you? Yeah.
You know? Yeah. Yeah, you've got that ready.
Well, say something really inflammatory about him right now. We'll tag him in our tweet about it with your quote.
Because maybe he's now muted. And then he'll get back at you.
And then he'll download and listen to our podcast. He's now muted.
It's the number one podcast. There you go.
I challenged him to a $100,000 bet. Okay.
As long as he had a rules guy with each of us. And it wasn't one of of his courses and he didn't have his cheating caddies with him hunter grant goes to charity whatever although they just shut down his charity for corruption but whatever maybe he finds a new a new charity and he hasn't even bid at that okay so i would love to if you're out there all right let's see we'll get the challenge out there a hundred thousand dollars to a fan do you think uh? I don't think he's much of a podcast guy.
Probably not a podcast guy. No, I don't think so.
His caddy, just one last thing. He's so involved in golf, his Twitter feed is run by his ex-caddy, a guy named Dan Scavino.
Yeah. And so Scavino sometimes screws up and tweets the exact same thing on his account that he just put on Trump's.
And so there's this whole Scavino way of writing a tweet with the capitals this for no reason. And that's all Scavino, who loves Donald Trump because he gave him $200 the first time he caddied for him.
And he said, I'm going to follow you around the rest of my life. You said you're the Italian Donald Trump now.
Yes. So one issue that you ran into with your book, there were a lot of people that were reluctant to go on the record totally with you.
They would share the stories. They would kind of give you their experiences with Trump, but they wouldn't put their names on it.
Everybody had a story, left, right, Republican, Democrat. They all had a story about playing with Trump, and it was always crazy.
And I'm like, this is so great. Thank you so much.
And they'd be like, oh, you can't oh you can't use it that's what do you mean you just gave me this great story it's gonna lead off chapter seven no no i don't want to be audited he'll hate me and so there was a ton of great stories i didn't get to use i was because my question was going to be if it's somebody have you talked to any professional golfers current professional golfers and they wouldn't give you their names for this book uh Well, I said, hey, Phil, I went to Phil Mickelson one day. I'm like, Trump says you're his very good friend, very good friend.
And he went like this. He just stared at me for 10 seconds.
He didn't even blink. I'm like, so I need a comment.
Trump said, are you his good friend? 10 more seconds. And then he walked away smiling.
And I think that's because his wife really hates Trump.

Oh, okay.

Also, he's had some tax issues in the past too. Yes, true.

Yes.

Probably wouldn't want to dig too deeply into those.

Well, Brad Faxon told me a great story

about how Trump tried to cheat Tiger.

Tiger's on the left.

They've got a money bet going.

Trump's on the right.

He and Faxon are playing against Trump and Dustin Johnson.

Pretty good players.

Trump chunks it into the water, and he says to F and throw me another they didn't see fax was like what throw me another so fax threw him another he chunks that into the water takes up his super mario 50 mile an hour golf cart to the water drops hits on quickly tiger hits it to kick in for birdie. And they get there and fax and go, so what are you putting for, Mr.
Trump?

President Trump.

And Trump goes, four.

Boom.

He's actually putting for seven.

Well, but four.

He said four.

Four.

But he missed it.

Yeah.

But that's, I mean, you're trying to cheat Tiger Woods.

I know.

I know.

Well, if anyone knows about cheating.

Yeah.

What do you think?

What do you think?

Yeah. If Trump and Kim Jong-un, if they got together, they did like a best ball.
What do they shoot? Well, I think you're thinking of his dad, Kim Jong-il, who shot 38 ones in a single round with five holes in one. But you know the true story about how that happened? He shot 37.
Have you ever seen a guy keep scoring and he only keeps by over par, under par? No. So let's say he makes a five on a par four.
He writes a one. Got it.
Or he makes a triple on a par four. He writes a three.
So Kim Jong-il was terrible. And he's writing all the numbers down.
But the minister information thinks that's what he made on the hole. And so that's how he thought he made five holes in one and shot 38.
Okay. And then of course, Kim Jong-il is like, well, I am the great ruler.
You're the best golfer of all time. I didn't say it.
He said it. So everyone go by the book.
We want to talk about some other stuff to your career as a sports writer. So you were very influential.
I think in everyone, our age, we're both 34 years old. The life of Riley was something that we read.
I remember reading it as a kid every single time that Sports Illustrated showed up at my doorstep. Thank you.
Remember those days? Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. Your transformation from that guy to today where you're retired at...
I feel like sports writers don't usually retire. Yeah.
What has it been like when you go from Sports Illustrated to ESPN to retiring at kind of a young age? So I always wanted to retire. Like I always wanted to retire early because, you know, I've never thought of myself as a sports writer.
I just love writing about people, and that's the job I got in sports. I won this high school sports writing contest and got a job out of it.

How old were you when you won that?

18.

Like 35?

Okay.

That'd be nice.

It's a nice little back door there.

This guy's good.

So I won that contest,

and I got a job at the town paper, Boulder, Colorado,

writing sports.

But I like sports.

Loved it.

But I really wanted to see the world.

I wanted to travel.

I wanted to play piano. I wanted to write movies.
And so I always, my goal was to retire at 40. I couldn't do it.
50, couldn't do it. And then finally at 57, I could do it.
And people are like, oh, what? What happened? How come you don't like sports anymore? I'm like, I love it. I just want to see the rest of the world because sports is fantastic, but it is still just a corner of the world.
You're right. So do you you ever regret i mean i think the the interesting part about your career is you were the guy who everyone read and then you know correct me if i'm wrong there was a time when you went to espn where maybe you were doing stuff that people mocked a little more including us or after that you know it felt like uh and i always wonder about you know we're 34 right now like i said At what point do you get to a point where it's like you go from this influential sports writer to maybe someone that people are like, oh, he's a has-been? Well, first of all, they tripled my money.
That works. So what am I going to do? That works.
I want to retire. They're like, you sold out.
Yeah. Wouldn't you for tripling your money? Yeah.
Yes. So I took the and i and i want like i'm a very curious guy i wanted to try tv see if i could do tv uh tv was sort of i liked it it didn't like me that much i really loved doing those monday night countdown features yeah it was really hard i had a show called um homecoming and i interviewed it was like you bring people back to their hometowns and that was really hard.
I had a show called Homecoming, and I interviewed. It was like you bring people back to their hometowns, and that was really fun, but they killed it after two years.
I anchored SportsCenter like 15 times. That was a thrill.
I never would have gotten to do that. I wrote for ESPN.com, and for a while it was me and Bill.
And the world changed. It wasn't like you said that sports illustrated used to come in your

mailbox right and that was it all you had was your town paper maybe usa today and sports illustrated

i mean when i was there people hardly even knew what espn was yeah no it was it was very influential

and it was that savor factor man and you had the world at your doorstep kind of right that 800 words

and it wasn't like you could write 5 000 words it was 800 those and i would bust my ass to make

So, let's go. at your doorstep kind of right that 800 words and it wasn't like you could write 5 000 words it was 800 those and i would bust my ass to make those the best words i could come up with and then it changed right everything changed and everyone had a podcast and everyone had a blog and you can rip everybody and there's twitter and all this stuff and suddenly it's kind of like everybody became a sports writer yeah and it wasn't that special.
And there's still great sports writing out there, but there's so much of everything. So I guess if you're asking, was it a mistake to go to ESPN? No, I don't think it was at all.
Did you hear the noise though? Did you hear the people who were kind of, you know, mocking you or be like, Rick Riley's over the hill or. Kids, my kids told me some, some of that was, and I'm like.
And again, we were. We definitely.
That's fine. Yeah.
And the more I thought. A lot.
A lot. That's fine.
And do you poke fun at Simmons and everybody? Oh, yeah. Everyone.
Absolutely. We poke fun at ourselves.
Mostly just ourselves. Yeah.
Mostly just ourselves. Look at us.
That's the self-deprecation. 20 years ago.
Yeah. Would a fat asshole and a skinny asshole.
Whoa. Looks like.
Damn. Post Malone had sex with David Spade be able to do something like this? Probably not.
Explain this to me. Bill and I are friends.
Why do people think we hate each other? Was it just that beginning that was going to rock? Well, I think you got the big money. He got huge money.
I know, but it felt like at the time that he wasn't getting the big money. And you got the big money.
And I think this is something, you know, really your career is fascinating to me because, like I said, you were influential beyond measure to young kids. But so is Simmons like Simmons? Yeah, same exact way.
There's got to be – so how old do you think Simmons is now? He's 50, I think. He's 50, right.
So to everybody who's now 20, 25, he's got to be there. I think there's still people who love it.
He's got to be their hero, right? Yeah. Because he was first on Twitter.
He was first with a great podcast. He was first with Grantland.
But it slowly fades away. Yeah, I think people our age, Simmons was one of the first blogs that we read.
He was a transition guy from the Sports Illustrated, the ESPN that would come every week, every month. He was a transition that I think took a lot of people into reading sports blogs and things of that.
He was the transition from me into Ford and Russian, where it was print. Right.
And 800 are well chosen. You bust your ass on those words to this whole new world where you could write stream of consciousness.
Because we've had discussions about it. Right.
And I'm like, you're so good, but you need like a carload of editors. Right.
He's like, that fans want yeah like okay i guess i gotta learn how to do that but i never could learn how to just blow it out 10 000 words on kevin garnett but he could right and i think that's the difference too is that you came from a more traditional background yes simmons didn't we definitely didn't yeah and so we're at the point now where i think people appreciate the relatability and the self-deprecation where uh older school journalist guys they don't do the self-deprecation because they see journalism as this high and mighty thing and of course i'm not knocking journalism we poke fun but it's like there's obviously a very big need for it but sports journalism for the most part people just forget that people want to watch sports to escape something. And they don't take it so seriously.
We mock people who, like, the sports writers who complain about cheering in the press box or the Diet Coke machines broken. Shit like that.
You know what I mean? Those guys, like, come on, man. You're covering sports for a living.
It's awesome. What I couldn't get used to, and still i still don't get it is how covering sports writers or sports casters is a thing like we came up to do games athletes stories incredible as soon as you guys got on tv which i understand that like as soon as tony kornheiser michael wilbon who i love and i love pti as soon as they get on tv they go, they go from less of writing about the story to the story.
Yeah, I think at some point ESPN became, watching ESPN journalists and watching their analysts became almost like sports. The line blurred.
So like with Around the Horn, they turned talking about sports into a sport where it's scored, you make points. And so it's like there's a winner and there's a loser and at that point a lot of people that were watching espn were like you know what somebody should cover the journalists like the journalists are covering the sport well two stories about exactly what you've just brought up and how dumb i am you remember ralph wiley he was this incredibly smart guy out of oakland and he's black and he was a friend of mine and i was white and he called me up one day goes, we got to do a show on ESPN and it's going to be called Riley versus Wiley and you'll be white.
I'll be black and you'll be old school and I'll be, and we'll argue about sports every day for a half hour. And I'm like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
And then two years later came out part of the interruption. So then the guy named Mark Shapiro callsiro calls me and goes hey i'm starting a thing where we're gonna do arguing but it's like a sport and you keep score and you guys will yell at each other and be every day i'm like that's i'm not working every day that's the dumbest that'll last six weeks and that was around the horn around the horn yeah which i'm glad i didn't do because i don't like to work that hard but both those ideas work worked for the exact reason you said.
Right. Which is that it's more than just writing now.
It's personalities and argument and every day. And like, I guess that just wasn't my era.
Yeah. I want to jump back to something you mentioned earlier, which is the 800 word column that was at the end of every Sports Illustrated.
The Life of Riley. Did you know that the exact amount of time that it took to read that column was the exact amount of time it took me to take a shit? Yes.
Was that on purpose? I had so many people come up and they'd be like, Oh my God, I read you every Friday morning when I'm taking my morning dump and they'll have their hand out. Yeah.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't think I'm shaking your hand. I'm probably taking 400.
I'm not going to shake. Like we have done that together.
I've spent more than the time, with you than Pam Anderson. Yeah, it's been a long.
That's a classic Riley joke right there. That is.
If you would like that, feel free to use that one, Rick. Save that one.
That is so good. No, don't shake those people's hands.
But going back to that. Just a little tweak.
That's good, yeah. Pam Anderson, too.
Going back to your question, did I notice the noise? Right. Had no idea what on out there and then people said well you got to look at your mentions on twitter oh that's a bad day and i was like oh crap what is this and so that kind of bothered me i think i was doing it for like two weeks and then i did this thing with mark cuban i go what about your do you go to your mentions he goes let me ask you this do you leave your front door open so people can come in and hit you with a baseball bat? I'm like, no.
Well, why would you go to your mentions? Okay. That's that.
So I don't go to my mentions. Yeah, that makes sense.
But that also is probably where there's a little disconnect by like guys like us. And maybe someone like you is like, we are very actively engaged with our audience because they, people feel like they're our friends.
You know what I mean? But do you do when they're ripping you? Like you, it happens. It's tough because you pay more attention to the two people out of a hundred that say something bad than the 98 out of a hundred that say something good.
Right. So it's tough, but I think in the longterm, it's good to have a connection with the people that you're writing for.
I can see that for you guys. Cause you go back and arguing and you got all this time to fill, but how does it help me write great sentences true probably i came up with dan jenkins who said write true sentences and dan and frank defort would say write about people not sports and jim murray would say there's no he would say to me there's no city ordinance you got they got to read you make it fun make it make them cry laugh all that noise doesn't really help me write great sentences.
I agree with that. I think that's very true because you can get – that is a big time suck right there.
You can get lost in an argument online that you could maybe be doing something more productive than arguing online. Yeah, like I hope you get nose cancer.
I don't really need to read that. Yeah, exactly.
No, it's true. All right.
Yeah. So before you did The Life of Riley, though, you wrote a lot of features for Sports Illustrated.
Loved it. You were very, very good at that.
And it about killed me. Every one of those features takes a year off your life because you don't talk to your wife anymore.
You're staying up every night thinking about it because they wanted the – if you had to hire an ex-Vietnam pilot to get you through a snowstorm to get the right quote for this feature you did it and that was when sports illustrated had

unlimited budget yeah and so we went all over the world on these features and it would take you two months and it was so hard but it was really really fun and and what's the word it was it was it felt good to get it right yeah and um but so but nobody remembers the features which one do you remember Which one's the one that you're like, that was the one?

Marge shot.

Spent a week with her.

Oh, man. but nobody remembers the features which one do you remember which one's the one that you're like that was the one Marge Schott spent a week with her shows me the Nazi armband I find out she's hiding cars on her 100 acre estate in Cincinnati so that she gets a bonus from Chevrolet and I found that out because a guy comes up to me and goes I keep getting all this email about a geo I I bought, a guy who used to work for the Reds.
Since Marge Schott was this old crazy German owner of the Cincinnati Reds who had Shotzi, who would take a pee on Barry Larkin's shortstop spot and he would be so pissed. And she'd bring this dog through the buffet line in the press room and all this stuff.
Anyway, found out he was, it turns out she was hiding it. So she got suspended from baseball off that story and suspended from Chevrolet, her Chevrolet dealership for two years.
And she was just crazy. And she'd say crazy stuff like we'd get, I'd get up in the morning, go to her house.
What are we doing today, Mrs. Schott? Oh, we're going to a pro tobacco rally, honey.
And so we'd get in the car and it's 8 a.m. and she's drinking vodka as she's driving.
And she's got got a cigarette going i think shotzi's got one going and she can't see out the thing and i'm like holy shit and we're gonna die here and it was insane at some point when you're writing that are you like this lady is just burying herself like did almost literally yeah because she said every night she prays to her dead husband her her dead father, and all these people that ran her life.

She really had no business running a baseball team.

She just inherited it.

And I go, oh, maybe we could shoot you praying for the cover or inside.

And she goes, absolutely.

And she comes out in a lime green teddy.

And people say, are you afraid of death?

No, I've seen Marge shot in a lime green teddy.

Oh, my God.

Where she tries to seduce you?

No. Jesus.
And didn't that – And lime green tan. Oh, my God.
Where she tries to seduce you? No, she was just horrible.

And didn't that –

And she appeared on the cover smoking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember that.

But there were so many great ones like that.

Yeah.

So when you're doing these features, that sounds like, like you said, fulfilling.

When you do Life of Riley, it says you've got the 800 words.

You know it's coming out weekly.

You have a strict deadline.

Then when you go to ESPN, you're doing TV. You're doing a column for I think the magazine and the website.
At what point in your life was writing the most fun for you? Oh, definitely the column. Because every week you had to entertain the country, or make them cry or make them laugh or make them mad.
And people were, it was crazy how much feedback I'd get instantly as opposed to features took two months. And people would come up like, that column you wrote was the first time I've been able to talk to my dad in 10 years.
Or we took that column and buried it with my grandmother. Or I laughed so hard I veered off the road.
Or thank you and they'd have tears in their eyes. Whatever it was was because i loved writing about the little guy yeah doing great things i also loved doing about the big star like bonds doing horrible things and so that was really fulfilling and but exhausting because you couldn't take a week off and people like that doesn't be that doesn't look very hard 800 words in a week i'm like you didn't see the 20 ideas i killed right you didn't see the 10 000 words i wrote to get to the 800 good ones you know right interesting so i wanted to go back real quick to twitter uh the tweet and you're probably thinking what tweet is he about to bring up because you've had some bad tweets sir you have had some bad tweets but this is the tweet we actually have made into a running segment on our show i'll read it it to you.
Adding Kevin Durant to a Warriors team that already had Curry plus Thompson is like giving Kate Upton a third breast. Yes.
Nothing appealing about it. So we actually have started.
We do this. The Rick Riley third.
We rank jokes out of three boobs. Okay, tell it.
So, like, you know, if you say a joke, we'll be like, ah, that was like a 2.25 boob.

Now that's funny. I like that.

What was behind that? And you also have

like a... I didn't think it would work.

Put three boobs on

Kate Upton would be fucking awesome too. That's very

appealing to me. What are you talking about? It's also

called the Richter scale. Yeah.

Okay, but where would the boob go? The third one?

Right in the middle. Have you seen Total Recall? Yes.

There you go. Boom.
Yeah. See, that

repelled me. You like that.
I mean, I did not

like it. What was your thought process Thank you.
Okay, but where would the boob go? The third one? Right in the middle. Have you seen Total Recall? Yes.
There you go. Boom.

Yeah.

See, that repelled me.

You like that.

I mean, I did not like it.

What was your thought process during that tweet? Because I thought they were making a mistake.

But the third boob?

Yeah.

Like, what is that?

You know what?

I was doing mushrooms.

Okay, so I was wrong.

But let's see what they do tonight, right?

Okay.

So when does this air?

This is going to air right before Father's Day. I'm sorry.
No, let's see what they do tonight. Right? Okay.
So when does this air? This is going to air like right before Father's Day. I'm sorry.
No, let's see what they do tonight. I apologize.
Everyone will know what happened in game one of the Blazers Warriors game. I didn't think it would work because I didn't think both Clay and Curry could subjugate their games enough to make it work.
But to their credit, they did. But when Kevin Durant went down in game six against Houston, they were back to...
Two boobs. Two boobs, exactly.
But hold on. I mean, would you admit that three boobs work now? It works.
Three boobs, pretty fucking awesome. It absolutely works.
And the middle boob, the one you added, two finals MVPs. Let me ask you the reverse of that.
Yeah. How would three testicles look? Also awesome, I'd say.
Pretty good. Big ass balls.
What's the problem with three balls? You know the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging? It says that things look better in odd numbers than they do in even numbers. So three flowers looks way better than four flowers in a vase.
I would assume that three testicles in a scrotum is much more appealing than two. So then Lance Armstrong's single.
Great. Great ball sack.
Awesome ball sack. Awesome balls.
John Kruk. Holy crap.
Kruky. Yeah.
One time we were coming to tour to France and Robin Williams was a big, this is back when I, like an idiot believed Lance Armstrong was clean. And so it was Robin Williams gets on the bus and he's like, Oh, Lance Armstrong.
It's not fair. Only one testicle.
You're aerodynamic. Because the French hated Lance.
Because he used to wear this shirt. Texas is bigger than France.
Yeah. Because he hated the French.
It's a classic. And he purposely, like when he'd have diarrhea, try to get near fans.
And he was a lot of fun, but he was such a dick. And he was such a liar.
But I always remember that. You are aerodynamic.
It's it's not fair yeah and we are saving your piss from 1994 it's like a beautiful bouquet like they're gonna drink because they they saved all his pee thinking that their uh technique in discovering steroids would get better right which it kind of did yeah so so you bring up lance armstrong is an interesting one because i feel like it's similar to tiger where you have a relationship with the person and then you find out that they've kind of been lying to you. And you have like beef with Tiger, right? Were you not – or disappointment with Tiger or what? I just hated the way he behaved.
Right. I mean swearing – he was the number one hero of every kid pretty much in America.
Yeah. Maybe the world.
And dropping Fbombs i'll never forget 97 he's got a 13 shot lead at augusta number 15 on sunday he hits a kind of a chunks it out of the rough and this kid comes up gets under the you know he's outside the ropes comes to tap him on the back touch his hero and he pulls the club back and he's slam it and he almost drains the kid wait so you hated him before all the uh the the uh you know cheating allegations or allegations what happened of course i said stop swearing old man yells a cloud of you i appreciate that but do you think the greatest player in the world should be showing kids you throw your clubs you slam them you say the f problem with swearing because kids are going to hear that anyways. Yeah.
And so, yeah, it might not be the best example, but I would rather have a superstar that gets a little fiery, maybe crosses a line, drops a few F-bombs. Well, you don't have a seven-year-old kid.
Than a guy that just is a robot that goes through the motions. Okay, how about a guy that doesn't tip? How about a guy that would piss me off? Yes, you're right.
How about a guy that tells so many dirty stories on the course that the NBC sound woman went up to Stevie Williams and said, if you guys don't stop these filthy stories, I'm walking off this course and I'm going straight into the press room. Okay, that's bad too.
Fine. How about not paying for dinner? You win this round, Rick Riley.
Not paying for dinner. I had a dozen stories.
Tiger just gets up because he doesn't eat't eat dessert and he gets up and doesn't leave any money yeah he had like a Navy SEAL simulation training program so having said this everybody tells me and I haven't been around him lately that he's much better now right he's changed humbled but by the way you get the presidential medal of freedom and when the president says golf should only be for rich people and you should only play golf if you join a country club has said that three times publicly and tiger woods represents complete opposite the tiger woods foundation bringing people golf to all these people that didn't know about it you're going to take that award and by the way you went on cole barron's said he wasn't even a real president and by the way he tried to cheat And by the way, you're in business with this guy. Right.
How is that an objective recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom? I mean, I get he can't turn it down. But to me, that's just star fucking of the worst kind.
It's a tough one to turn down. If the president's like, I want to give you the highest civilian honor.
I agree. But don't.
But I think Trump's just playing, playing for the base. Who's the hottest athlete in the world? Who's next? Arya Stark gets one? Ooh.
She's probably going to die. Well, no.
Security gets one. Yeah, Max.
Well, who did Sheriff Clark say? The American pharaoh. They should bring American pharaoh onto the...
Justify, yeah. Yeah, justify because the horse is not politicized.
Doesn't have liberal politics. Yeah.
Meanwhile, I'm reaming out Tiger Woods for swearing in here. Right.
No, but you made good points. I understand the sentiment entirely.
I would just have a hard time putting fault on an individual athlete for being given this great honor. I don't want to put it too much on that.
You're right. The fault is all on Trump.
If you want to take it, take it. If you don't, then that's fine, too.
He has to take it. He has to take it.
As Michael Jordan said famously, Republicans buy shoes, too. Which he actually didn't say.
What? Yes. I think they debunked that.
Just turned his world upside down. Something like that, but not exactly that.
Yeah. You bring up an interesting point, though, because one of my favorite things that you wrote, I think you covered the last year of the Bulls dynasty, didn't you? Did you go on the road with them? Yeah.
The 10 10 pages yeah what what was that like because we've talked to uh the key member of that dynasty dennis rodman and asked him what the relationship between you know him pippen phil and jordan was like so he gave us his answer that but i'm curious what you saw when you were on the road with him well stories i heard uh people laying in front of the tires of the bus so they couldn't get out until Jordan came out and signed their thing. A woman rented the room the day before he was going to get there.
She had a friend at the hotel and in the closet. It was freaking madness.
They were the Beatles. It was so much bigger than the Warriors.
People have no idea. Although the Warriors have gotten close.
The 2015 Warriors, I feel... Maybe.
No, no, sorry, 2016 when they went 73 and 9. It felt similar where every night was like a rock concert.
Yeah, except this is Michael Jordan. Yeah, but it's Michael Jordan.
Yeah. Right.
And Rodman was crazy and Scotty and it was freaking amazing and it was one of the great 10 days of my life. That's awesome.
They say that, I mean, I have traveled with the Warriors too and they say it's equal but it's not equal right i've done both right there was something interesting i read the other day about um a piece that was written by david foster wallace about roger federer and uh he was he was covering him during um i think it was a french open or wimbledon something like that and they were able to go back and talk about – they analyzed one of his paragraphs about the series of ground strokes that he had in this match. And they went back, they watched the YouTube clip of it, and it didn't match up at all with what he had described seeing that day.
Do you ever think that there are things like events that you watched back in the pre-internet days, sporting events that you went to, that you wrote down like your emotions at the time and then you sat down to write and what you ended up transcribing from what you felt in that moment what you jotted down might not actually match up with the tape because I feel like that probably happened a lot a lot before the internet a lot a lot you just you can't see through perfectly objective eyes I remember I did a piece on Dave Kindred. I mean, Dave Winfield.
And I realized later I got him wrong. I got him completely wrong.
How many times did that happen? Not much. I mean, you spend two months on a piece.
You really try to get him right. That's interesting.
You're talking to 50, 75. You're doing 75 interviews with different people.
You really feel like you know him. But sometimes you don't.
I mean, I remember spending a week with Shaq. Yeah.
And he had the music up so we just drove around all day. He just drove around.
He's looking for houses. And he had the music so loud that people would look up in horror from their Kentucky Fried Chicken inside a closed restaurant.
Right. And so I never heard.
So the whole piece was never heard a word he said. Right.
But talk to another 100 people about him. So yeah, you try your best.
That's interesting. Here's another one I want to just read to you.
Right now, Peyton Manning is like a small boy with jelly all over him. You don't want his hands on the ball.
That was weird. Did I say that? Yeah.
Peyton Manning with jelly all over him. Well, I'm a Bronco fan.
Yeah, I know, but that's not the question here. All over him? Yes.
The question is not whether you like the Broncos. The question is, what made you think of Peyton Manning as a small boy with jelly all over him? You don't want his hands on the ball because you don't want a small boy with jelly on his hands.
But jelly's sticky. Do you think you nailed it? When you hit that one, were you like, nailed it? I'm sorry.
I thought.

So Bill Simmons always says to me, doesn't matter what you say on Twitter.

It's over in eight seconds.

It's true.

It's a good point.

So don't you guys write bad tweets?

Oh, all the time.

Never. I actually, I know.

I totally agree with you.

I look back at tweets a week ago.

I'm like, oh, what was that?

You shouldn't look at them.

Right.

It is weird to look back at your thoughts that in the moment we're like, got it we all be deleting our tweets uh you've deleted a bunch of tweets yeah because i don't want to look back at them that's fair um i actually did it's a nice little segue here 2015 you stole a tweet from me what you stole a tweet from me in 2015 about your broncos tell it uh i said this is is a really good joke, by the way, so I'm very proud about this one. It was during a Broncos playoff game, January 11th, whenever that was, 2015.
Manning's so good at overthrows, maybe we should send him to pay a visit to ISIS. Really good joke on my part.
About five minutes later, wow, Peyton Manning, another overthrow. Maybe he should go to the Middle East.
No, I think you're mixing this up. I said Tim Tebow has more overthrows than the Arab Spring.
That might have been another one. You might have doubled it.
Was that first? That would have been first. No, but mine would have been first about Manning being good at overthrowing people.
Right, but we know that Rick likes the overthrow Middle East thing. Maybe we're just building on each other.
We're just ripping. Let's build on this vision.
So I used to write jokes for Jay Leno because he stole three straight jokes in a monologue straight out of my column that week. So I called him up and he said, look, people get the same ideas at the same time and things happen and sometimes everybody thinks they are the first guy with a joke but really we all thought of it at the same time because i said university of miami takes their have so many criminals they take their picture from the front and the side the team picture and i'm like really so i tried to write jokes for him for a while but you do kind of discover that some people can come up with the same idea at the same time.
I don't think I followed you at that time, did I? I don't know if you did. It was just like the timing was five minutes off.
And it was just one of those things where in retrospect, it was such a bad joke on both of our parts that neither one of us should be proud for it. So I'm willing to forget about it if you are.
The way you wrote it isn't really funny. Manning's so good at overthrows,

maybe we should send him to pay a visit to ISIS.

That's pretty good.

He just overthrew a guy,

and we were in the process of dealing with Al-Assad

and all that shit over there.

See, because Tim Manning wasn't much of an overthrow.

It was Tebow.

He had the worst frickin' arm.

Bad mechanics, agreed.

Terrible.

I remember one time, I'm friends with Elway,

and I go, I notice you ran the ball quite a lot in Cleveland. He's like, we let Tim throw it eight times.
He said, we think we set football back 40 years. What do you think he's doing as a friend of his and also a Broncos fan? He hasn't done well with the quarterback position suffering yeah he nobody feels the heat oh he doesn't feel that he doesn't care if he gets fired he wants to win right here's what he's like he used to have this pool table we play pool table and no one had ever beat him two games out of three one night Bubby Brister comes over remember Bubby oh yeah beats him two out of three Elway sold, Bubby Brister comes over.
Remember Bubby? Oh, yeah. Beats him.
Two out of three. Elway sold the table the next day.
I love those kinds of stories. That's Elway.
I never had a pool table. Yeah.
I never heard of those stories. What's cool? I feel like when Jordan passes, hopefully it's not for another 100 years, but there will be stories like that.
We already get a bunch of them, but the all-time athletes have stories like that. Don't you remember, right, Thompson's story about Jordan? Which one? He's with Jordan, and Jordan's filming some ad, and he's done a lot of work with this production company, and he says, I want those brownies that some and so and so makes.
I'll do it if you give me a pan of those brownies, and I want them in my room In the trailer And so he gets these fantastic brownies Well he only has time to eat one of the brownies And so he's got to go shoot Spits on the rest of the brownies Because he's so competitive Nobody else can take his god damn brownies Is that really Is that just being an asshole? No I like it It's not like competitive anymore It's just like I'm going to spit on everybody else's brownies. I just want to eat all these brownies.
So you might say, well, Trump's just being competitive. But Jordan didn't cheat to win.
Right. Oh, he didn't cheat to win.
Well, he pushed off. This guy just makes up whole championships he won, makes up scores he won.
And then just because he sees lee trevino at one time at one of

his courses and trevino's coming off the course lee trevino greatest player of all time and

trevino's like what what'd you shoot today lee and lee goes 73 oh and so he starts this is lee

trevino greatest player of all time shot a 69 today trevino's looking at him and then the next

guy this is lee trevino greatest player shot 65 oh man so rick i had to get off the court

I'm sorry. Greatest player of all time.
Shot a 69 today. Trevino's looking at it.
And then the next guy, this is Lee Trevino. Greatest player.
Shot 65. Oh, man.
So, Rick, I had to get off the place before I set the course record. Right.
That's fantastic. So you can buy Commander and Cheat.
Perfect Father's Day gift. I have one last question.
It's a SeatGeek question. Put in promo code TAKE.
You get $10 off your SeatGeek purchase. The million-dollar question, can you plagiarize yourself?

Ha!

Is that possible? Good question.

Because I actually don't.

Can I sue myself?

I don't think you can.

I think, I mean, it's.

Thank you.

I actually, like, obviously you should probably not just rip off your own calls.

But I do think that it's kind of, it's not technically plagiarism.

It's your own thought.

Do you need to set this up a little? Yeah, you set it up. You set it up.
All right. So I was 23 years at Sports Illustrated, and you had to come up with your ideas.
And most of that was writing columns. So I had this whole – it must have had 500 ideas in it of stuff I could do on a rainy day.
It was called the rainy day list. They're like, do this, do this, do this, because you couldn't take a week off.
Because they were were getting a bonus for whoever had the ad across so you'd be like i'm taking i'm going to italy for two weeks well you got to give us two columns evergreen they're called evergreens right so that we could run at any time so i'm like oh crap so you'd try to do two that week or three the week before and you'd have to do an evergreen and sometimes you forget to take it out of the rainy day thing and put it in the already did thing so then i go to espn for eight years and i'm writing two columns a week there and you're doing features and a couple times i did it okay i got i got four hours before the plane leaves let's do this and i forgot that I had done it because I calculated once with books and movies and columns.

I'd published over two million words.

And I just freaking forgot.

And you thought I had, you know, run over Mother Teresa with a monster truck.

That's a good Rick Riley line.

Put that into the next column.

Yeah.

That's a fucking good line.

2.2 books.

It just rolls off, doesn't it?

You're just doing them all the time.

I don't know.

Thank you. It's like you're just fucking spitting it, spitting hot fire.
Which one was yours? Was it a marble down the hood of a Tesla? I think you said that about Brooks Koepka, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. His body is like watching.
He looks like a piano. Oh,, no, I actually have a question.
That's the line about somebody was trying to beat somebody, and they were really big. And I said, the difference between these two guys is the difference between a piano player and a piano mover.
Okay, I'm going to give you. I think a putt was faster than Oprah on a water slide or something.
Oprah on a water slide, yeah. That's fucking gold.

That's 2.75 boobs.

At one point, did you say, like,

this guy's got more talent than an alligator's dentist?

That was a good one.

Well, I stopped doing dental references.

Yeah, don't call that.

Like, I'm like, whoa, people are really paying attention.

Yeah.

What was it about the dental references?

He didn't like it.

But what was it about that? Like, why were you so attracted so attracted to making teeth jokes oh because i was terrified of dentists i hated dentists and this guy calls me up says do you realize you've made something something hundred dental references i had no idea again i didn't know you could cover sports writers right i thought i thought you got into the teams, athletes, owners, but I was wrong. But again, if you reach the point where somebody is counting how many dental references you've made over the course of your career, you're doing okay for yourself.
ESPN backed the Brinks truck up for you. They said, we're going to anoint Rick Riley king of the sports writers.
Oh, you sold out. Yeah.
Who wouldn't have? That's a shitload of money. Triple money? Yes.
I'm not blaming you at all for that. Yes, I sold out.
I couldn't have signed fast enough. It's like the old Metallica line when they're like, you sold out.
And they're like, yeah, we sell out every single city we go to. And it's like, there it is.
By the way, this is one for you guys. Okay.
The guy who signed that deal for me was Skipper. Oh.
Our friend. How do you like it? Our good friend.
Our great friend. What did you think when all that came down? He signed us a deal.
It was very weird because we went to his office and we met him three days before we canceled the show. Talked to him.
Great guy. We'll have your back.
He had that southern twang. Love him.
We're trying to get him on the podcast, actually. Simmons just had him.
I think we we're going to I think we're going to get him And we're going to try to get him To bend the knee The great thing about Skipper is He's so forgiving of himself And you and everyone And Olbermann and Simmons And he just He's flexible He's so smart and kind I really like that guy Yeah I was really sad to see Whatever happened to him Yeah I still don't know what happened. He partied.
Yeah, he partied too hard. And as far as our relationship with him, it was easier to deal with in hindsight because it wasn't about us necessarily.
Things were happening all around that were much bigger than the show that Big Cat and I were putting on. And do you know Bomani? Bomani Jones over there? So he told me something that when we got the news, I was initially crushed a little bit.

But he hit me up and he was like, hey, don't worry about it.

If it happened after five weeks, it's because of you guys.

If it happens after one week, it's not because of you guys.

Oh, that's a good point.

And I was like, that makes sense.

That took the sting out of a little bit.

And you guys lasted longer than George O'Leary at Notre Dame.

True.

That's true.

That's a fact.

And here's one that you can use for free. Wow, that TV, you guys didn't last long, but you lasted longer than Rick Pitino at an Olive Garden.
Boom. Have it.
Take the one for the road, Rick. I didn't say that, did I? No, no.
That's a Rick Riley joke right there. I gave you two today.
It's way too dirty. You lasted longer than that Kardashian Chris Humphreys marriage.
Oh, that's a classic Rick one, too. That's a classic Rick 2004 reference.
See, this is why I want to live in Italy. There's nothing left.
You do. 24 hours later, you got the hottest news.
I do have one last thing for you here. I'm going to give you three descriptions of Brooks Koepka, and you tell me which one you didn't make.
This is great. Okay.

And did someone make the other?

Did you write it?

I'm just going to give you three and you tell me which one was yours and which one did not

belong to you.

Okay.

He looks like the guy who comes to repo your boat.

That was me.

Yep.

Hey, is this the guy who moved my piano?

No.

Last one.

Boy, this guy's got arms like church organ pipes yes they were all yours you can you nail them all i like this little trick um rick riley commander in chief thank you so much this has been fun wasn't so bad right i mean i gotta say you're probably a little nervous coming in here all my kids are like be careful yeah because they get all this and i'm like that's what we love to do though we we we usually uh you know make for we're still gonna make fun of you just so you know i want that on the record but i love the boobs thing now we got now we got a face to it and we've talked to you and it feels like if i make fun of you you get over it go for it please make fun of me make fun of how bad my isis jokes are but how can i know you made fun of me because i don't let people In my front door With a baseball bat Well you can listen to the podcast Subscribe Ah there you go Also don't do that Because then I'll get In my head I'm like Rick's listening I'm not going to be mean So don't do that Also I need to show you Before you go I actually have four boobs I can't believe I forgot Oh yeah I have four nipples So I got the Keep your pants on Rick Jesus Christ dude And then I got The got the third guy right there. So do you think that that's Kevin Durant or is that Clay? That's Clay.
That's Clay. And that's LeBron joining the Warriors right there.
Right there. Boom.
Okay. I've been on book tour six weeks.
I think this is the low point. Yes.
Oh, by far. Nowhere to go but up.
Four nipples. You want to see my belly button? No.
It's dummy thick. Look at how deep it it is.
Oh my God. You probably don't see caves like that in Colorado.
I could knit a quilt out of that lip. I could.
I absolutely could. All right, Rick Riley.
Thank you, Rick. You too.
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That's meundies.com slash take. Okay, let's get to some segments.
First up, we'll do a little more game five, ratings war. So NBA ratings war is my favorite thing that's going on.
I go to sleep after an unbelievable game where it was so dramatic, like the height of sports through and through, thinking, man, I don't know how to feel until I wake up in the morning and know what the ratings were. I need to know how many other people watched the game before I can feel good about whether or not I watched the game and how much that game mattered.
Yes, so I'm going to give you two ratings tweets, and you just tell me what your feel from it, okay?

So let me do it.

I'll give them both to you.

All right.

So NBA Finals Game 5 overnight rating is up 37% from Game 4.

The game is the fifth highest rated NBA Finals Game 5 ever on ABC behind only the three Cavs Warriors games and the Pistons Lakers in 2004.

Alternatively.

Oh, wait, wait.

Can I give my reaction?

No, no, wait. Can I give my reaction to that one? No, no, I'm going to give you the second one first.
I mean, I'm going to give you the second one as well because I want you to get the whole picture. I want to give my reaction to that, and then I'll give mine to you.
Okay, all right. Okay, so just based on that, the NBA is king.
NFL is in big, big trouble. This league, there's nothing like professional basketball.
This is what happens when you let the players have fun out there. Ratings are delivered big time.
This is America's sport. NBA Game 5 ratings down 19% over last Game 5 in NBA Finals two years ago.
Trend lines remain same, even though last night provided lots of drama. NBA's fucked.'re done so the the the live deals that the that espn that abc and that turner has how much in place billions of dollars so those companies in addition to the nba are fucked long term like i would be shocked if if the nba stuck around longer than a couple more seasons okay i have one more this is actually from me.
I didn't tweet it, but I thought it. NBA ratings up infinity percent over the 1967 NBA Finals that was actually tape delayed.
Okay, yeah, so doing very well. Yeah, huge, huge.
America as a country is doing great. Have we figured out if...
These fucking idiots, like, they just get online, and I'm talking about everyone. Like like they just they here's the thing I hate the most when you have an idea you've already decided what you're what your side wants to be and then you just find the the statistic to back it up and then be like well facts and everyone and all these sheep are like wealth it's facts dude it's facts you can spend any rating into a positive including 89 000 people watching you on espn2 at 1 a.m correct you can find really good shit in that it's so stupid and i i mean especially the one guy i'm thinking of who basically spent an entire year bashing the nfl and has now jumped to the rock of the nba will never catch the nfl no shit i just think that it's very classless to be cheering bad ratings.
As the NBA is hurt, possibly injured, limping their way into oblivion, you're going to cheer for that? You're going to cheer that on? It's sad. You don't root for that.
Ratings, people. Seriously, I'm going to turn the game on, but I'm not going to watch it.
And then I'll tell you my thoughts about the game the next day when I see the ratings. We need to get Sports Biz Jake on the ratings game.
Yeah, he needs to get into the ratings. Like finding the most obscure ways to spin it in any direction possible.
Bringing it down like second by second. Yeah.
This second was the highest rated second in NBA Finals history. That's a fact.
You know what else I love? I love the bathroom break graphs where it shows like where the country, like back in the Olympics when it showed that Canada used the bathroom in between in the intermissions between first and second and second and third periods in the gold medal game. And then there's a little porn hub spike too.
Yeah. Porn hub spike after the game.
We got to get on that. Yeah.
All right. Speaking of the PMT Sports Minute, let's actually do the PMT Sports Minute.
So we have this every Wednesday. Our intern, Jake, who if you're not following PMT Sports Biz, people were very mad at him when he was debuted because I don't think they fully got it.
I think people are starting to get what Jake is all about. He's a very good kid, and he just wants to give us a little bit of information.
Listen, nobody out there is covering sports business. No one.
No one is. And Jake is.
So here it is, PMT Sports Minute. Good morning.
This is Jake Marsh with the PMT Sports Biz Minute. Let's take a look at the Stanley Cup by the numbers.
Our very own PFT commenter had the chance to drink out of the Stanley Cup around this time last year. Did you know the cup is made of a silver and nickel alloy? It stands 35 1⁄4 inches high and weighs 34 1⁄2 pounds.

Stack up clones in the cup.

It'll take 2.11 of them to get the identical height of Big Cat,

who's 6'2 1⁄2", and 2.04 for PFT.

Yes, he is 5'11 1⁄2", with shoes on,

so let's just round it up to 6 feet.

Meanwhile, according to the Sports Business Journal, insurance company aflac is working with the sec and its schools to sponsor the pop-up medical tents that are common on the sidelines these tents averaging 5 by 12 7 by 14 have also made their way in the nfl and high school football so now while you the awls are debating whether or not a player in the tent is hurt or-athletes are going to be treated on in the Affleck tent with the possibility of a freaking duck staring right back at them. Only in the SEC.
The French Open behind us. Shocker, Rafael Nadal wins again, and that's all the time we have today.
That's your PMT Sports Biz Minute. Mr.
Cat, Mr. Commenter, back to you.
Great job, Jake. Very cool.
Kept it to exactly one minute. And it was very cool.
And it was very cool and it was very cool very very cool um i full disclosure i didn't even listen to it it was very cool was it yeah what was in it just all sorts of fun facts about things that you don't this is now making it we're going sports minutes yeah because i'm having you recap it i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do it tomorrow just know fun. All right.
Before we get to guys on chicks, a little PR 101 for North Korea. So North Korea also kind of back.
What happened? So Kim Jong-un executed their general who was accused of plotting a coup. That's really nothing new for North Korea.
But the way that he did it was he threw his general into a piranha-filled fish tank. Whoa.
She Hannibal Lecter much yeah yeah that was uh Hannibal 2 which is called Hannibal we'll just say Hannibal Lecter Hannibal 2 no it was the shitty one not Red Dragon and not Silence of the Land and so then uh so in the report that I read the British Intelligence Service they commented on it by saying, this is classic Kim.

So there's Kim being Kim. There you go again, Kim.

Wait, so we now have someone

ruthlessly killing

a general

in a bathtub

full of piranhas? Yeah. It's the same

excuse as Manny being Manny? Yeah, classic

Kim being Kim. That's all that is.

Oh, that's so good. That's tough.

As a sign of good faith, they should have,

Trump should throw Chris Christie into a

Thank you. excuses manny being manny yeah classic kim being kim that's all that is so that's tough as a sign of good faith they should have uh trump should throw chris christie into a tank full of sweat pants or tank full of jelly donuts and see if he can eat his way out your way out yeah or die of a heart attack before you get out which one which one's it gonna be um all right let's wrap it up i think he could eat his way out oh absolutely like he would probably love that.
All right. We'll start with an update from one from last week or two weeks ago.
I forget. Sup BBBs again, especially Big Beard Hank.
We do not say that anymore. Okay.
We already apologized to Kevin Durant. Especially Big Beard Hank.
Wait, so anyone can still be a BBB. Yeah, that's true.
Not Kevin Durant. We stopped calling him that, so I think it would be nice if people stop calling us that.
Big baller brand, yeah. BBBs again, especially Big Beard Hank.
I confronted my boyfriend about liking slutty pictures on Instagram, but he said he only likes them because he used to be friends with them in high school. Should I still be worried? Oh, wait.
So he was, okay. This is the one that was.
You should definitely be worried. I thought he was liking Instagram models.
That's a different game. He's liking people he knows in real life.
You should be very worried. It's very tough.
Well, again, this is probably the scenario where he doesn't know that you can watch him do that. Yeah, but this is a bad situation.
You should be very, very worried. I've never really understood the purpose of the like on Instagram.
Well, you just know just like a e high five it's like every and it's like it's a poke yeah the best part is every single instagram model that i follow if they post a picture uh right underneath it it says liked by glennie balls wait so didn't they say they were going to get rid of that of the like who you can see who liked it no that's twitter twitter's doing weird shit no and snap snapchat got rid of like best friends you could see like who people were Snapchatting, but they get rid of that? You can see who liked it? No, that's Twitter. Twitter's doing weird shit.

And Snapchat got rid of best friends.

You could see who people were Snapchatting,

but they got rid of that.

That's probably smart.

Yeah.

Okay, next one.

Hey, boys with a Z.

My FWB and I were hooking up in the shower, and after we were done with the hookup,

he farted.

Whist?

We were still showering.

It smelled like death.

Afterwards, I asked him what would have happened if it was just a random girl he farted on in the shower after sex and not me wait he said he said he would have held it in and only let it rip because it was me should i be feeling pride or shame or both that's that's such a great spinzo like i only farted on you because i love you that's a weird question to ask though would you fart in any in front of any other girls having sex in the shower uh-huh well they're only friends with benefits so it's like they're not fully in a relationship so you can have a little right one of them obviously you know cares more here's the thing though sounds like it's him if he said it's like i farted with you because you're special farting in the shower it's either you can't smell it whatsoever or it's like the worst smell of all it's a wet wet dog mixed with like a full bone. Rotten eggs.
Yeah. Poop.
Yeah. Because you're trapped in the shower with a curtain like one of those cash grab machines.
Yeah. But the best part about farting in showers sounds like a duck.
Yeah. Wow.
That's my move. I should go, is there a duck in here? Yeah.
You do that too? Yeah. I yell it.
It's classic. Is there a duck in here? What's going on? Sup, Daddy Cat.
My boyfriend always stares at other dudes' butts and comments on them, often commenting about and asking them how much they probably squat. Is this weird? No.
No, it's just guys being dudes. Dude, he just wants to see if his goals, you know, he's probably getting gains, right? He's in the gym.
He's squatting. Maybe a little front squat, too.
He wants to know that he's doing the right stuff to get that nice plump peach.

Yeah, listen, when you have a bodybuilding.com forum login that you use all the time,

looking at another guy's ass on the street pales in comparison to what you see in another man's avatar on those posts.

It's weird if he's not working out, but if a guy is obsessed with working out, the general icebreaker is like, what do you squat? What's your routine? Are you doing Tabatas? What's going on here? Are you doing box jumps? It's not, hey, how's the weather? Or, damn, the Yankees don't have anyone good at the end of their rotation. It's like if you're a chef and you go to a restaurant, you're going to stare at the food because you guys share an interest.
I mean, we've literally every single time we see Russell, that's all he talks about. Hey, PMT boys, especially baby daddy cat.
This question is for Bodhi. I don't know what that means.
Both of us. Bodhi? Slang for both of us.
Yeah. B-O-T.
Bodhi. Bodhi.
Is that true? Yeah, Bodhi. Really? Patrick Swayze and Point Break.
Both of them. Is that actually...
The good and the bad. If you say this is...
So Bodhi... Have you seen Point Break? Of course.
So Patrick Swayze's character is both the good and the bad of humanity. So it's Bodhi.
His name was Bodhi. So that became slang for both.
I honestly can't tell if you're making this up. I made it all up.
That actually is an extremely legitimate answer. That was a good answer, wasn't it? That was great.
I nailed that. Especially from like a movie from the 90s.
Anyway, this question is for Bodie. Why are boys so obsessed with anal but never want to talk about girls' poop? Please answer my question so my boyfriend is proud of me.
You caught us. Because it's so cool when it goes in, but it sucks having anything come out.
That was very... You called us in a hypocritical lie.

We want to give to you.

We don't want to take from you.

That was very perceptive.

All right, last one.

Hello, gentlemen.

I was having sex with a guy recently.

No need to congratulate.

Wrong podcast.

And during the first half of the hookup,

we had the lights on.

But then, out of nowhere,

he reached over and turned them off.

I'm probably overthinking it, but should I be offended by this move? We we've hooked up before so it's not like he didn't know what to expect any good reasoning for this ugh thanks yeah there's something weird about him this he would not do this if it was like if he saw something about you that he didn't like because when guys are having sex you're just like i like this thing that like whatever it is i'm having sex with is good because i'm having sex with it i think having sex with lights on is weird so yeah i'm i don't think this is that weird it's like kissing with your eyes open no having sex with lights on is awesome no it's not get such a good look at everything no that's not what you want like you if you suck at sex like i do you don't want to have lights on. It's just like way more.
There's way more pressure.

The bright lights.

I like the lights on.

That's weird.

That's weird.

I think it's great.

It's so much hotter with the lights on.

Lights off.

Yeah.

You think you're awesome.

You're one of those guys who thinks he's awesome.

No.

I know.

I know I'm not awesome at sex.

Yeah.

You'd have the lights on.

No.

All right.

We'll see everyone Friday.

Love you guys.

Okay. Shine it away.
I'm coming for your lover, Kate.

Shine it away.

I'm coming for your lover, Kate.

Take on me.

Take on me.

Take me.