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On today's part of my take, we have our good friend Ryan Rasillo for our 2019 NBA preview. Why do you say 2019? Oh, because it's February 19th. Our 2024 NBA preview on February 19th, just in the nick of time. We're going to talk a little All-Star Weekend. We're going to talk about our vacations. We're still on vacation until tomorrow. We'll be back in studio together on Tuesday. Who's back in the week? Our first Sunday without football. So great show for everyone. And it's brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. Draftkings will be our one-stop shop for all things betting. This week, new customers who deposit $5 or more can get a no-sweat bet up to $1,000 on any sport. What's a no-sweat bet? It's just like getting an offensive board missing your first shot. You get another chance to with a bonus bet back. You can also follow what all of your favorite Barstool personalities are betting on by joining the Barstool Betting Group in the social section of the DraftKings Sportsbook app. I'll have my plays in there for the rest of the week once I'm back from Mexico. Go check it out right now.

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Okay, let's go. Now in the street there is violence, and I'm allowed to solve work to be done. No place to hang a low washing and then I can't blame all on the sun. Oh, no. We're going to wrap down to electric avenue and then we'll take it higher. Oh, we're going to wrap down It's Part of My Take, presented by Marcel Sports. Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook. Today is Monday, February 19th, and PFT. We're on vacation, but people are mad about the dunk contest for the 17th year in a row.

People are always going to be mad about the dunk contest. I like the floor. I like the light-up floor. They're doing everything they can to make it look as much like a video game as possible. But there's There's really no way to fix the dunk contest. I think they've jumped over the biggest human they can find. I don't know where you go from jumping over Shaq.

It's so funny because every year people get upset about the dunk contest. They got to fix it. Maybe it's just that we've seen every cool dunk, and there's only so many cool dunks that you can do. I mean, credit to Jalen Brown. He did do a very cool dunk where he used his left hand. That was the first time I'd ever seen that where a guy was like, Look, the difficulty is extremely hard. I'm using my left hand for this dunk. But other than that, I don't really know what you can We've seen all the dunks. It is what it is.

The last seven years have just been an arms race of jumping over progressively taller human beings. That's the guy that wins is who jumps over the big... I want to see somebody get absolutely teabagged and knocked over on one of those attempts. I want to see a dunker not be able to make the leap.

Yeah. Maybe it should just be an alley-oop contest, and it's like live-action. It's actually a game. It's just whoever has the best dunk in the game wins a dunk contest.

There's two thoughts that I have. On how to fix it. One, trampolines incorporate slam ball into it a little bit with one guy playing defense also on a trampoline. Two, somebody should actually try to light a ball on fire and then dunk that.

Or light themselves on fire.

Yeah, either way.

It wouldn't be the worst if they just did progressively higher rims. I'd watch that. Who can dunk on a 14-foot rim?

Yeah.

They'd come to the Barstools, HQ, Chicago HQ. All business people make it. He's the only one who's ever made a rim that's over 10 feet.

Or we could just lower the rim to 8 feet, and we could do our own dunk contest. Yeah. We probably still wouldn't be able to dunk.

Yeah, we should do that, though, this week. So we are still on vacation. How's everyone doing on vacation? Hank, let's start with you. How are you doing on vacation?

Yeah, I'm doing great. I miss you guys a lot. It's been a fun week. I, personally, not that you asked, but I think that to win the NBA Dunk Contest, you should play in the NBA. I have to play in the NBA. That should be a pretty simple No rule.

Okay, so you're saying Mac McClung- Other than that, I'm doing great. Mac McClung should be ineligible because he's in the G League?

Yeah. That is- The NBA Dunk Contest, not the G League Dunk Contest.

Okay, so Jalen Brown should have won with just dunking with his left hand.

Well, no, he paid a homage, homage to a bunch of past dunkers. Obviously, like you guys said, it's tough to be original. I thought he did great. Okay. And Mac McClung is not in the NBA.

Okay, so illegal.

Matt McClung should be in the NBA. What are the Magic doing? Just let the kid play.

Should he, though?

Yeah, sure. Why not?

He's played in four career games.

Four career NBA games. If you That's a joke.

It's the NBA Dunk Contest. Just bring people off the street if that's what you're going to do. Okay.

Yeah, that sounds good, too. But also, Matt McClung, if you win the Dunk Contest and you're on a G League team, you should get a two-week contract.

Yeah. Okay. I'm cool with that. I mean, the Spurs, the Wizard should take him. Why not?

Yeah.

Just have him dunk.

I think he might be too good for the Wizards. That's the only problem. We're trying to accomplish something right now. He'd throw off the whole dynamic.

All right. Other things from NBA All-Star Weekend, we had Steph beat Sabrina, who she was phenomenal. People got very mad at Kenny the Jet. That was fun. We got a good old-fashioned wish hunt online, which I-Why? Because he said afterwards-Because maybe I had no idea what he talked about. Steph beats Sabrina 29 to 26, and Kenny afterwards said, This is why she should have shot from the women's line. But it was stupid because 26 would have gotten her into the finals of the men's competition. I think Dame's winning score was 26. But it was good because it was a good old fashioned internet, how could he say that? Let's have a witch hunt for this when it's like, this whole thing is a joke. Who actually is watching this on a Saturday night being like, this has to be taken seriously?

Yeah, I watched the highlights. I I actually think that we were 100% correct about our prediction for this contest, though, which is no matter what happens, people are going to get mad online about something. That was bound to happen. If she won, if she lost, if Reggie Miller told Kenny, What are you going to tell her to go play with dolls instead? That was a wild comment from Reggie, too.

Reggie was trying to pump the brakes, and then he just went off the road. I feel like we don't do those anymore. I feel like the Internet has calmed down to a point where it's like everyone gets upset. It used to be everyone get upset about something and get so pissed off, and it would be ridiculous. Now, I feel like people don't get as mad about everything. It's good to see people take out their pitchforks for Kenny in a made-up contest in a made-up NBA night that no one really cares about anymore anyway.

Yeah, I have a prediction. I think that in the next couple of years, we're going to see this contest get run back a little bit, and it's not going to be Sabrina. What's her last name, Big Cat?

Ionescu.

Ionescu. Yeah, you know that.

Ionescu. Yeah, I say it phonetically.

Yeah. I think in a couple of years, we'll see Kaitlyn Clarke against Steph Curry, and they're going to do logo threes, extra long three-pointers, and that would be cool.

Yeah. I mean, Serena was awesome. The fact that she had 26, she should have been in the real three-point contest because she would have been in the finals with Dame. Also, it's Steph Curry. He's the best shooter of all time. So it's It's not like you lost by three to Steph Curry. Oh, no. That's a pretty good accomplishment.

Yeah, it's a statement loss. The home team won the skills contest again. That is just what happens every time.

Yeah, I don't even know what the skills contest is, really. They just dribble around. Oh, no. I saw they were shooting from half court for a while. Yeah. A lot of confusing things that I don't really follow with the NBA All-Star Weekend, but it seemed like a good time. It seemed like they had fun.

They had a great time. The biggest storyline I thought coming out I think it happened today, LeBron gave a press conference.

Yes.

They asked him his thoughts on his eventual retirement and how that's going to go. They say he's 50/50 about whether or not he wants a retirement tour.

He doesn't like praise, he said. He's uncomfortable with praise. So introvert LeBron James, we need to protect him. He doesn't want everyone saying, Hey, LeBron, you're really good. If you had true serum with LeBron right now and you were like, LeBron, you either win a fifth title or we're going to do your retirement tour for a year. I think he might take the retirement tour.

He might. I do believe in that he's 50/50 on if he wants it. He's 50% that he wants it, and he's 50% that he needs it.

Yeah, exactly. Don't get me wrong, he deserves it. He has carried the NBA for a very long time. It's not a question of whether he deserves it. Sure, he should get his retirement tour. The fact that he's pretending that he will be reluctant in any way on this retirement tour is the most ridiculous comment I've ever heard.

Yeah, I agree. I think there's actually a possibility that LeBron just does an extra year in the NBA where he just plays home games.

Yeah. And just standing ovation. No, but he needs the presence. Every city needs to give him a present.

Every team brings the present It was him.

Yeah, that was like when... Who was it? Was it Mariano Rivera who got a surfboard from the Padres? Like, what the fuck are you going to do with this, dude? They just gave you a surfboard?

The coolest gift he got, I forget what team gave it to him. It was a throne made out of broken baseball bats. That is cool. Because he had such a good cutter. That's a great gift. Yeah.

But yeah, LeBron pretending he doesn't want a retirement tour is very funny. All right, what else is going on in the sports world? I have a confession that I think even though I was disgusted by the flop, in the Ohio State game, I think I'm going to become a Kaitlyn Clarke superfan because she makes people so, so angry, and I love it. Like the Jay Williams saying that she's not the greatest all time because she didn't have a ring, all this stuff. Kaitlyn Clarke gets people very upset, and I'm all for anyone who just agitates the world like she does. She's not doing anything other than being awesome at basketball and breaking records. It's just other people's hot takes then get everyone else upset. So I'm in on Kaitlyn Clarke all the way.

Yeah. And it's funny. Everybody out there has a take on Kaitlyn Clarke. Everybody. And they're all shocking. Jason Whitlock did his live show. I know you're a big fan, Jake. And in his show, he was like, She's the biggest basketball basketball player in the world. Men's, women's, pro, college. She is bigger than the sport right now. It's like, God damn, even Jason Whitlock is bringing fire about women's college basketball right now. It's good for the sport. Jay Williams had a very funny comment when he was talking about her, and he said, I got that Kobe mentality, so I'm not going to say that she's great yet. It made me realize that you can be as big an asshole as you want about anything, as long as you preface it by saying, I'm like Kobe Bryant in this way. I got that Mamba mentality. Then you can just shit on all people's accomplishments, and it's totally fine.

It basically gives you a license to be the guy who's like, Yeah, what's your weakness? Well, I just tell the truth. No, you're an asshole, but you tell the truth. Yeah, I tell hard truths. It's also crazy because she plays at Iowa. If Kaitlyn Clarke could have gone and played at Yukon or South Carolina or Tennessee and won titles, she plays at Iowa. She stayed home and has gotten them to the Championship game, a program that doesn't do that. So I'm all in. It just makes people every day you can just go online and just see a Kaitlyn Clarke debate. I love that for us. I love what she's doing for us.

It's good for sports discourse. I'm just looking at Hank right now in his big, swollen red face.

Did you drink wine today, Hank? Your lips are a little red.

No. I don't know. I'm having a great time.

Yeah.

Okay, what else?

I I hear every other third word.

Is that because of the Internet or because of the cocktails?

It's probably a combo.

I miss football. I'll say that right now. Today was a tough day, and we're just living off football takes. You guys see Florio now thinks that the NFL is an age discrimination problem because of Belichick and Carroll. So I'm in for that. I just miss football. It takes a couple of weeks for me to fully acclimate to life without football.

It was really weird waking up on Sunday morning and having no football at all to look forward to. It was really strange, very disconcerting. My week has been off by a day anyway, going back to the free throw stream where it's on Thursday. I thought it was Friday, Friday, I thought it was Saturday. Then I wake up today, there's no football on. It's like, Well, today can't be Sunday, possibly. There's no chance. But we get the combine back in two weeks, week and a half. There was a lot of There'll be some good takes. I'm very excited about Caleb Williams' smokescreen season. Very excited about all the takes that are going to come out of him. Did you see he wore a dress? All the debate that we're going to have- It wasn't a dress.

It was a New Age suit that men wear.

Yeah, that doesn't have pants. It's got one big pant hole in it.

It was like a poncho. He wore a poncho, not a dress.

But if any other team besides the bears gets him, he wore a dress. Oh, 100%.

It was a dress. And what the hell is he thinking? Without a doubt. We can flip that. No problem. We can flip that. Yeah, it is sad without football. I feel like once we get back in studio on Tuesday, we'll get back to our regular rhythm. But that first week is always... I've caught myself watching highlights of all the miced up from the Super Bowl, any residual takes from the Super Bowl I'm looking at, and it's like, Man, I miss this. I don't know. It's hard. You lose something like this that's so important to your life, and it takes a couple of weeks.

One thing we got to do, though, is we got to watch the Patriots' dynasty documentary. That looks awesome.

Is that out yet? Have you started that?

Is that out yet? I think the first two episodes are out.

Okay. Yeah, it came out yesterday. Yeah.

Have you started it, Hank?

I'm excited to watch. I watched some of it last night. I was pretty wasted, so I can't say I remember much. I will watch everything tomorrow, though. Whatever's out there, I'll watch it all tomorrow night. I'm excited. All right. I'll watch them at 10:00.

Yeah, we'll have to do a review of the documentary. How many parts is it?

Hopefully, Infinity. I think there's two out right now. Imagine it being Infinity parts.

It's still going.

The diocese is doing. Hank would do it. It's just the infinity parts. It's just they cut up every single game from the dynasty into little pieces. Outlive you, Hank.

It's like Judge Judy. It'll be on every night at 5:00 PM for the next 40 years.

Yeah, you You guys don't want to hear it, and it's just patriots, but I'm with my friends from Massachusetts. We were having a spirited top 10 patriots debate for three hours today. There's so many people to pick from. It's impossible.

Where was Jules?

That's the duty, yeah.

Hank's gone. Hank, where was Jules?

Top 5.

Where was Jules? Top 5.

Top 5. I was arguing for Jules, and my friend was like, No. I was like, You're a super-MVP. Three rings. It's like...

Where was Bill Belichick?

Players. We were doing players.

Okay. Where was Aaron Hernández?

There we go.

Aaron Hernández was not in the list. He didn't win a ring. Randy Moss also, it's crazy to say, but I I know that he's a top 10 Patriot of all time.

Didn't win a ring.

Where was Danny Woodhead?

Danny Woodhead also didn't win a ring, unfortunately.

What was the one that you were most upset about?

Not upset. I was arguing on Jules' behalf, and it's like you have to factor in both dynasties, defense, offense. There's a lot of players..

I can't hear anything you guys are saying. Defense, offense.

Jules played, I think, three snaps of defense.

No, no, no, no, no, SDs. There's a lot of people to pick from, obviously. Jules did play defense, though.

All right. Well, I would like you to release your top 10. Maybe you could give it to us on Wednesday if you get a consensus top 10.

Yeah, gladly.

Okay, perfect. All right. Anything else going on in the sports world before we do Who's Back? And then we have a extra long interview with Rasillo, which was awesome, that we taped Super Bowl week. Anything else?

Hideki Matsuyama, one on Max's home course.

Yeah, and Tiger had diarrhea.

Yeah. He also had some back shit going on. Then he said he had influenza.

I think Tiger might be a little bit over the hill.I think it might have happened.You think so? I think it might have happened. I want him to be in these events because it's fun when he's there, but it also is a bummer when he has to withdraw. We had an ambulance gate where I think our own colleague, Dan Rapport, was first on it. There was an ambulance It's parked outside of the Riviera Clubhouse waiting for him. Didn't end up taking him, but everyone was like, Oh, my God, is Tiger going to have to go in an ambulance for diarrhea?

I think it's just Tiger's car that he drives. It's got sirens and loud flashing lights and shit so that people know, get out of the way.

Yeah. There was also... I thought Matsuyama's ball oscillated. I'm not a rule stickler, but I am rooting for Will Zalatoris. That bummed me out because I feel like old PGA, we It would have been all over that. People are just... They all were just showering praise on Matsuyama not saying, Hey, dude, the guy's ball oscillated on the 17.

It oscillated. It definitely oscillated. It oscillated. You can't convince me otherwise. As pretty much professional golfer who got a two on 17 at Sawgrass this week, I can tell you that that's a serious rules violation. If we're going to make Spieth get withdrawn from the tournament over signing an incorrect scorecard, we need to take a look at the oscillation. I would have expected Matsuyama's caddy to be more on top of that. Matsuyama's caddie is the best, by the way. He's awesome. He's the dude that bowed in praise of Augusta when they won. Then after the round today, they were waiting for everybody else to finish up because Matsuyama shot like a 62 in the final round. He was just sitting on a hill vaping, just watching the action.

Chris Crosby's apple sauce.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Yeah, that Jordan Speeze rule, it's the dumbest rule ever because it's not even his... It's his partner filling out the scorecard, and he signs it.

Yeah. That's stupid. You keep track of your partner's score, and then you sign off at the end, and they've got cameras and everything tracking these guys around, all the leaderboards. I guess you can't... Not every tournament has every shot televised like that, so it might be more difficult, which is why they make it.

But there's a guy walking with them. There's a wolves person walking with them.

There should be a guy that keeps score for each pairing.

Yeah. If he gets it wrong, execute it. Yes. That'd be live, but yes.

Or just have them do like, Butts up, just like Stan 50 yards away and you can fire a driver at him.

Hold the hole. Yeah, he has to be a human bullseye at the driving range the next day.

Yeah, I like that rule.

Yeah. Okay, let's do who's back the week, then we'll get to Rosillo. Who's Back to the Week is brought to you by our friends at Game Time. You shouldn't have to worry when you're buying tickets to your next big event. Game Time is a fast and easy way to buy tickets for all sports, music, comedy, and theater events near you. I've used it for everything. I've used it for baseball, basketball, hockey, comedy, live concert, It's the best. Game Time has it all, and you can get last minute deals with the Game Time app. Game Time is the only ticketing app that gives you complete peace of mind with your purchase. See the view from your seat before you buy. That's very important. I've done that every single time. Make sure that you got the right seat. You know exactly where you want to be. I even did it for Disney on Ice. You know exactly what to expect when you arrive with game time all in prices, show your total upfront so you know what you're getting a great deal without hidden fees. Buy tickets in seconds with two tabs. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time.

Download the game time app, create an account, use code PMT for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account, redeem code PMT for $20 off. Download game time today. Last Minute Tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. Part of my take is also sponsored by Better Help. A common misconception about relationships is that they have to be easy to be right, but sometimes the best ones happen when both people put in the work to make them great. Therapy can be a place to work through the challenges you face in all your relationships, whether with friends, work, your significant other, or anyone. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. You take care of your body, you take care of your car, you got to take care of your mentals. It's very, very important. Even if you don't think you have a problem right now, talking to someone will help any problems down the road, make you feel better, make you a better husband, wife, son, friend, everything. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. We're talking about mental health, guys.

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I was back. We had LeBron went over that. We can do Shorts. Shorts are back. Vacation, great time for Shorts. That's true. Ufc, UFC 300 got announced. It's a let down. I'm not a diehard UFC person, so it was like Jamal Hill and someone else. I was expecting fireworks. I think true UFC I'm going to be disappointed.

Jamal Hill is fighting in UFC 300?

Yes.

Jamal Hill. Jamal Hill. Jimal Hill. Jimal Hill.

Mchenry.

Yeah. So everyone- Alex Barrera versus Jamal Hall. People are going to think I'm water for Dana right now because he did let us go to the Tunnel of Chaos. I think that the reason why- No, I'm excited. That's what it's going to be the best fight of all time. Ariel Hauwani was explaining this. Yeah, and Ariel Hauwani was explaining this. Ufc 300, everyone had worked themselves into this Is he? It's going to be the greatest card ever because Conor McGregor is coming back at some point this year. But he was saying that when you have a title fight, everyone shares. If you have multiple title fights on a card, anyone's fighting the title fight shares in the paper view money. If they put Conor McGregor on UFC 300, everyone would get to share, and Conor McGregor is going to sell a million plus paper views. There's no point why wouldn't you take two dips from this and be like, We'll do UFC 300, and then we'll do Conor McGregor. He was stuck where it's like they could put six unbelievable title fights, but then you have to sell a paper view every single month. They do every single month, so he couldn't.

It was very hard for him to do that, but I think people were pretty disappointed.

Yeah, just because 300, you would expect it's a nice round number. I want to see some big names fighting against each other, and you don't get that. That's why people are upset. It's like, if this was 299 at 301, people would be like, Okay, yeah, good card, I guess. But you see 300, and you want, I don't know, you want a bunch of angry Spartans in a ring against 40,000 Persians. That would actually rock.

They should have had Zuck in it. We saw Zuck at 298 looking as awkward as ever. He was part of Volkina Lasky's party. I don't know what he was doing, but Zuck would be... Who wouldn't buy that pay-per-view? Zuck is a beast, though. Have him fight in the undercard.

Zuck would take us down.

I hate to say it, but...

Is he, though? He's an animal now. He did not get choked out. His PR representative was very clear about that.

So, Hank, I think Zuckerberg, if he went against any of us, yes, because he's actually been training at this. If he went against any actual UFC fighter, they would kick his ass in two seconds.

Yeah, obviously.

But- Well, he's not a beast then.

He's a little bit. Yeah, he would get smoked.

Yeah. You would take him?

Give us Zuck.

Smashman of the wall.

I would give him wet willy. I sneak behind him and give him a mega wedgey. Then I'd drag his ass to the bathroom, give him a swirly. Just give him a nerd treatment.

I'd just be like, Hey, Zuck, remember when you thought Threads was going to be cool? Fucking loser, and he'd probably cry into a puddle.

Yeah.

Done. Tapped. Okay, PFT, your Who's Back of the Week.

Good Who's Back, Hank. Good job, Hank. My Who's Back of the Week is-Thanks, guys.jesus, potentially Jesus.Okay. Because there is a stingray in a North Carolina aquarium named Charlotte, and she's pregnant. But the thing is, there's no male stingrays in that tank with her. It's just a bunch of sharks. So either we're going to get a Shark Stingray hybrid baby, which would be fucking awesome. That would rock. That's what I'm rooting for. Get the Mori Povitch to announce who the dad is. Or it was Immaculate Conception, and this stingray just got herself pregnant, which is hot.

Yeah. I want to see the Shark Stingray.

Yeah, the Shark Stingray would rock. If you're not rooting for Shark Stingray, I don't know what to tell you. But yeah, I'm on Charlotte Watch. I've been checking the social accounts for the Hendersonville Aquarium every morning. I need to know. I need to know what this is doing.

What's the due date?

It could be any day now, like sometime in the next week or two.It.

Popped those things out.That's exciting.

She's mad pregnant, too. You can see the bump.

That's awesome. My who's back is Whales. It's a half human. All these whales. Hank, if it's a half human, there's one guy that just quits the day that-He's like, Oh, fuck.

It's just like, Shit.

Is that Stingray got ginger hair? God damn it. I'll stay in the water. My who's back is whales. I've been seeing a bunch of whales jump. Hank should be so jealous. They just jump everywhere in Cabo San Lucas. I was on a boat yesterday, and I think this is also just the captain just knows that, Hey, I'll get a better tip. He told us one of the whales that we saw was no more than six hours old. Again, I did the math in my head. I was like, I feel like that whale has probably been there forever. It's just a small whale. But still, Hank, you're missing out on all the whales. They're fucking awesome.

Yeah, no, I have been jealous. I'm curious because obviously I've only seen them online, and I really want to see them in person like you have. It seems like it's as advertised. It seems like it has as beautiful a sight as you could have.

Although this might have been because I'm very drunk, but we watched... Well, there were so many whales jumping. We watched it for an hour. How big are they? An hour in, I was like, All I think I've seen enough. I've seen enough of the whales. I'm good. Yeah.

So Big Cat Cabo is incredible for that. I don't know if your boat had this, but I went there last year after the Super Bowl, and they put, after we were done watching the whales for a while, they dropped a microphone into the ocean, and you could listen to the whales talking to each other.

That's sick.

You know what they call it? Reality show. They call that a podcast.

Yeah. Also, there was a seal that just jumped on the back of a boat, and people were saying it looked like Max. That was very unfair. And Max is also back because there was an Auburn fan at game day on Saturday that was standing behind the desk that just said, Max had two sodas, and that made me laugh very, very, very, very hard.

So I got on my flight today to come back, and I stopped at a kiosk, and I bought two cherry Cokes just to bring it on the plane. And I sat down, I was sitting next to a random woman, and she looked at me, and she was trying to figure out why I had two sodas. Two sodas. Two 69 sodas. In that moment, I realized, yeah, this is-They're going to help. Abhorrent behavior. This is not how it went. Disgusting behavior.

Max, how'd your-20-ounce sodas, mine were 12. How'd your hungover flight go today, Any ripping of farts? No, I didn't even fall asleep this time because I was in the middle seat.

It was fine.

I can never order soda again at an airport. I got a body armor before I got on. And then I got a seltzer water when I was midway through.

I'm just- To be honest, when you sat down, did you look around to see if people were noticing you and scoping you out? No.

I got lucky on the two flights that it was pretty obvious that I was sitting next to people that did not know the show.

But it does suck going through the airport because Because we see people.

It's just every time it's the only thing that they're thinking of is, is he getting sodas?

Is he having a burrito?

Every person that I see walking through the airport, I'm like, Yeah, I'm not getting sodas today.

It's just like, But they're probably like, he still is. Yeah, if you're a two soda guy, you can't just quit soda.

Yeah. No, I had no soda. I had a body armor and then soda.

I'm just going to be the biggest seltzer water guy on a plane ever now because I can't have that picture on Twitter of just me ordering a soda.

It can't happen.

What'd you have for your pre-flight meal, Max? Bacon, egg, and cheese. English muffin.

Smart. That's farts. That's a fart. What do you want me to eat? What do you want me to eat? Nothing. Air. Salad. The AWL who did that at the Auburn-Kentucky game, shout out to him. It would be a shame if we just had Max had two So does it every single game for the rest of the year.

I still don't believe that was real.

Oh, it's real. It's real. Also, shout out Coach Cal, who ripped an awesome wrestling promo after they beat Auburn. He was like, I'm the worst coach in the country. I like that. I need Cal to get a little swagger back, a little shit to him.

Yeah, because for a long time, Cal just pushed back against the very notion that he could be an underdog. Now, embrace that. Yeah, you are.

Go after it. All right, Jake, finish this off.

My who's back is Coach Dugs. We had an official announcement from EA Sports. I feel like all the other previous announcements were rumors and piecing things together, but the EA Sports College account officially tweeted that we're getting it this summer.

This is like when Dan Snyder sold the team. There's been 20 different announcement dates that have come up being like, The game's coming back.

But none were from the commanders besides the last one.

Yeah, true. This is officially official.

If we're in the trust tree right now, obviously, I'm very excited for the new game. I'm worried that the new game is not going to be as good as the old game. I'm also like, The battles I went through with the chat, I don't know if I'm mentally ready to do that again. I woke up and I saw it, and I was like, Awesome. Then the first thing I thought of was Poopy Stinks. I'm back in a fucking torture chamber where these guys are going to say no sound, sliders, all that stuff, and just wreak havoc on my brain.

Well, the chat has also gotten better in the last few four years. They've learned, they've adapted, and they've grown, and they're more powerful than any of us.

They've had places to get better, whereas I have not. I haven't had a game to play. They have had Jerry After Dark and all this other stuff to hone their craft and get angrier and better at what they do, and that's driving the content creators insane. I'm going to mentally have to just put myself in a place ready to go to war because I will play, and I'll play a season. We'll do a whole thing. But yeah, that was exciting. I thought I would have put it at minus 10,000 that Jake would have said the Water Dogs are back because apparently we won a game today.

Well, I'm saving them for a potential cool thrown if they can win the Championship Series, which is today.

Okay. Championship Series.

Championship.

And if they lose, they get second place. Is it the regular season?

No, it's a standalone tournament.

It's promoting the Sixes format, which is what they're going to use in the Olympics in 2028.

It's like the preseason tournament, but it's regular season.

I don't want to win it. I'll say right now, I don't want to win that. I don't want to win the preseason tournament. I think if we win the preseason tournament, we're screwed for the regular season.

I think if we win that, Max should raise a banner for it, but we shouldn't acknowledge it.

Yeah, we're not getting a ring, which where are our rings? Do we know?

We have them.

I gave them to you guys at the old office.

We don't have them then.

No, they survived the trip.

I do have my son.

You know where they are?

I think I saw them.

I hand-delivered them to both of you. That doesn't sense.

I think I saw them is not a definitive. We have them.

It's also funny because we just got a trophy case, and we didn't one-time think to put our winning Lacrosse Championship rings in there.

The only thing we've actually won.

Oh, yeah, we did win that. Also, we defeated Frank, the tank, who I guess is a fan of not the Water Dogs.

Well, his team is not in this Championship series. They didn't qualify.

Who did we play today? The Whipsnakes?

Archers.

The Archers. Our nemesis, the Archers. All right, well, so if any Water Dogs are listening, don't even try tomorrow. We don't want to win this. If we do win it, Max is going to be the only one who acknowledges it. Fair? Yeah. It's preseason?

The Championship is Philly versus Boston. Hang the banner. Today at 11:30 AM ESPN2. So thanks to Philly guy now.

Yeah, let's go Water Dogs.

Max, you agree with this?

Yeah. I mean, that account has just turned into a Max Meme account where they just pull up every bad video after each win.

Have they done a two sodas thing?

I don't know. I think so.

They've done everything. Okay, so if we win and the account has one of the players celebrate with two sodas, I will then acknowledge the victory.

Fair. If they do the Stone Cold, two Capsules.

If they just pour Coke on themselves for the entire after-party.

I'm surprised you haven't said anything about them finishing second for the first time as- Well, he said it's certainly second place.

No, we did say- That's on the table. But I've already said I'm not acknowledging this. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's get to Ryan Rusillo. Before we do that, we're brought to you by our friends at Topgolf. It's golf, it's not golf, it's top golf. It's Topgolf. If you've never heard of them, they have all this stuff to make them legit golf, like balls, clubs, turf, and even a ball picker, upper cart thing. But they're very much not golf, too. We're talking loud music, giant targets, heated bays, and unbeatable food and drinks day or night. There are a lot of big sports moments coming up soon, especially in March, if you're into college basketball and baseball. So if you want to catch the games as you play, Topgolf is the place. Since they want everyone to play, they just launched half off golf Monday through Wednesday. When you book in their app, all you have to do is book a Monday through Wednesday in their app, and you'll get half off the golf. Of course, even they have some rules. Half off golf Monday through Wednesday applies to gameplay only, isn't offered at the Vegas venue, it's only available when you book in their app.

For full details on the offer, visit topgolf. Com/pmt. We've been to Topgolf. We actually, speaking in the combine, we went to the Topgolf in Indy last year. Great time. So for a limited time, get Half Off Golf every Monday through Wednesday when you download and book in the app. For full details, visit topgolf. Com/pmt. That's topgolf. Com/ Okay, here he is, our 2024 NBA preview with Ryan Rosillo. Okay, we now welcome on one of our favorite guests, great friend of the program, for the February 19th NBA preview. It is Ryan Rosillo. We have some... First of all, thank you, Ryan. Good to see you guys. We're taping this before the trade deadline.

We are, but it's...

Where did LeBron get traded to?

I didn't see this coming. Look, I don't think there's going to be any good trade deadline jokes. I just don't. I mean, unless you guys are into the tax savings.

Oh, I'm into that. Yeah, you do really well on this show when you talk about tax.

You're really selling the NBA well.

I know. I'm reading those H&R blog ads, and I just start cracking up. I was like, Well, the H&R blog is there to help. They're like, Dick.

We have some housekeeping, though, we got to do before before we talk MBA.

Okay, because I have something for you guys.

First order of business, PFT and I actually were completely innocent bystanders to the cover art, which you did a whole bit on your show. You're like, I'm pretty sure they're fucking with me and making me fatter every single time I come on.

Every time.

Max knew, and our guy, Triggs, who does a great job. He's our artist, obviously knew because he was doing it. We had no idea.

Yeah, you looked like Dana White on the last one.

I I love that he did it.

I wish I'd looked like Dana White on the last one.

When did you... All right, so for people who don't know, for the cover art for the podcast, Triggs, who is unbelievable, he's been making Rosillo a little bit bigger every single time he's come on, and he's come on like 15 times, so he's now like Mondo Rosillo. When did you catch on that this was happening?

Well, so, Max, you knew. So what was nick saying to you?

This was all him.

This was out of nowhere. Right.

He was just like, I have a really funny idea.

And I was like, oh, I love this. I was like, I can't wait to tell the guys. He was like, No, this has to come out organically. He has to realize it on his own. He was like, I just wanted to make him look a little bit fatter each time.

Yeah, it was just a little bit. But then he was getting into more absurd things because I went from the Chris Paul fan club T-shirt to then it was like, finally, I was 300 and something pounds, and it was a Trey Young fan club T-shirt. So I was like, I think something's happening here. I'll be honest with you, the moment I really did know is when I DMed him and said, You're making me too jacked, I was like, Make me fatter and fatter and fatter. And then I'll blame them. Actually, Nick-The last few? All of them. This is actually my idea. Was it really? The whole thing was my idea. Shut up. Yeah.

Shut up.

Swear to God, I'll show you the DMs.

That's incredible.

Nobody knows. Nick kept it a secret the entire time. So you reverse got us. Yeah, it's like lost when Henry sitting there in the ball.

No, I don't believe this.

He didn't start doing it on his own?

Are you lying, Ryan?

I'm calling him right now.

All right, call him right now.

The fact that you said nick makes me think that you're telling the truth.

Yeah, I know. As I said it, I was like, I wonder if they'll be like, Hey, he already remembered his name because normally I would just forget it immediately.

That's incredible. So you reverse got us.

That's pretty good. Yeah.

I've been working on this for months, almost a year.

Wait, wait. That was great. Just to clarify, you only...

Hey, Triggs, Rosillo is here right now. He came up with the idea. Was it? Did he come up with the idea to make him fatter every time? Yeah.

He's been here a week. It was all long gone.

He was over a year. That's incredible. That's incredible. That's so good.

You're having a lot again next week?

February 19th, NBA preview. Ask him if he wants me to just make him fucking enormous. He's right here. He's sitting right next to us. He just told the story. We told the story being like, We didn't know that Triggs was doing this. And he's like, Actually, I was the one who was doing it. Yeah, dude.

He fucking DM me a year ago.

That's incredible. December '22. You know what? You can make them whatever you want, either really small or just maybe make them like a T-rex.

Godzilla. Tiny arms. Give them tiny arms.That'd be worse.Yeah. Ryan, to clarify, your big prank on us was making yourself look really fat.

And then blaming us for making you look fat.

But then I was going to blame you at some point. Yeah, it's good. That was the whole point where I was going to be like, who's doing your fucking art? Who is this What do you got? What do you got, some socialist in charge of this?

That's incredible.

Yeah. So as you guys were doing that, I was like, oh. We never actually talked about it because I want, finally, some listeners I was waiting for listeners to figure it out because it was getting absurd. But I was like, you're making me too jacked. You're doing me too much of a fair. I'm like, Just fatten me up. But stages, stages. So again, this is like 15 months of this, I think. And by the time the third one came out, I was like, All right, I think we're there. That's incredible. Like jokes. They work in threes. Yeah. So he was like, Are you sure? I'm like, Yeah, better. Keep going. But grosser. And he was like, All right. And I loved it. And then finally, on the third episode, it was posted. Listeners were like, Dude, what is going on with your cover art? And so then I was just going to attack you guys.

Oh, that's perfect.

But I didn't get really mad because I didn't want you to get mad at him.

It also would have been... You could have gotten really mad at us and we would We would have just been like, Great joke by us, I guess.

We've done it again.

That's why I think you were so... Normally, this would have 100% been something you would have done. But since you knew that you had nothing to do with it, you didn't know what to do. You were like, All right. There was no victory.

I'm going to show these guys. I'm going to look so fat next time.

The payoff really... There really wasn't a payoff. No. I'm thinking about it. The only thing you could have done different is have Triggs tell us that he was doing it, so then we felt complicit in making you fatter. Because when you said on your show, I think they're making us fatter, I was like, Okay, cool.

Yeah, I don't know that there really was. When I did this, I'm like, Oh, boy, when that day happens.

It's a perfect anti-humour joke.

Yeah, it was not even that funny.

The prestige.

But now it is. But that moment with you just calling him and not believing me.

That's great.

Then I knew I was like, Let me find the DMs. Because I knew I did it.

No, I respect the fact that you basically you commandeered our own employee. You're like, You work for me now.

I just thought he was making me look way too good. So I was like, Let's just go the other way with it.Oh.

Man, that's so good.It's good stuff, Ryan. All right, so then we had the other thing we need to get to.

I know, but let's stay on body type real quick.Okay.This will be quicker.Okay. So downstairs in the casino where I was like, All right, I'm just going to walk over for mine. I didn't realize it. We should probably hang out more. We're literally five minutes away from each other. I walked by a guy in black, sneaks, hat on, and I was like, Oh, that's got to be a big cat. And I was like, No way. I was like, That guy's thin. So it's actually a compliment. You look good. It was me? It was you. So I walked past you into the main lobby going, That can't be Big Cat. Yes. And it was.

It was.

He's doing the reverse of the album cover, the art cover right now.

Do you know what's a really good... Because I know you do diet tips with your listeners and you do with your life advice, That's gym stuff.

Yeah, we're always doing stuff.

Yeah, all that stuff. A really good tip for all your listeners is start a 40,000 or get a 40,000-square-foot office with a basketball court and full weight room in it. That will get you in shape.

I always get around with people about this, but I'm serious. You could be hot. I think you could be hot at some point.

You could be hot. But that is the key to fitness. Just make a basketball court in your office, and you really can't... You can't be sedentary when that happens.

No. When that happens. No, I mean, when I see the clips and I see everything, I'm like, This is incredible. I was looking at Matt holiday's setup, and I go, Should I just do that? Should I just move to North Dakota and have square footage? A huge warehouse Are you kidding? What is his set up? Well, it turned into the number one prospect in baseball is Son. But they've got this entire warehouse where it's literally any activity you could ever want to do. How could you not be a great athlete with that at your disposal. The fact that his dad was a sick athlete as well, probably helps.Chiseled jaw.Chiseled. That kid has a jaw.

So you don't want to do the Hank thing right now?

Oh, yeah, I'll do the Hank thing. I just wanted to do that because it actually was mean, but it wasn't.

Tell the story real quick, Hank. He told it on his stand up. It was actually perfect. Rusillo texted me asking if I was going out right when Hank's slide showed up that said, what was the exact phrasing of it?

Well, just Ryan Rusillo is the picture of a short PFT that's slightly photoshopped. 3 inches shorter version of PFT. I still, to this day, think it was a bit just based off our interactions. I've always been normal. It was a life advice in Los Angeles who did at the Super Bowl a couple of years ago.

God, that was a while ago.

I think you talked about it in and I was going-Oh, yeah, your balls were hanging out.in the episode.I.

Covered them up this time.

We were also the first people to be in your house in three years.

I wouldn't have been there yet.

You guys gave me advice because I was going to my brother's wedding the week after or something. You guys gave me advice on the best man speech. Then in the episode, you talked about cameos and doing stuff like that. I prefaced it by being like, I understand you guys get asked to do stuff all the time. I know it's a burden and can be annoying, so I try not to do it unless it's important. Obviously, my brother, who is a huge Rosillo fan. Huge. Probably listens to it. He listens to you more than he listens to us. He's been a fan for a while.

Well, He's getting older.

After the episode, I was listening to the live episode. I texted him. I was like, Hey, you talked about the cameo thing. I'd really appreciate it if you could just do a little video shout out for my brother. He's on his honeymoon. Here's some talking points. We still text back. Yep, no problem. Nothing. Crickets. He was like, No problem. I was like, He'll send it, and maybe he'll DM it. I don't know. Never came. Then I think the next time I saw you, he was like, Remember that video? You're like, Oh, yeah, I'll send I got you. And then it just never came. I was like, I think he's doing a bit.Yeah. No, there was no bit.I can never figure it out.

Every time I think about you, I think about the video. How often do you think about him? More than you'd think because you I just have a lot of content out there. So anytime a Hank thing pops up, I'll be like, Was the window that it had to be before that weekend? And then I think you would believe me in knowing that knowing your brother likes me that much, I would definitely want to do that for him. But I I thought there was this imaginary window where it was closed, and that's what happened, right?

Yeah, the next time I saw it was maybe a year later, and I was like...

Oh, and it was still open?

Well, you were like, I'll do it. You're like, Sure I still do it? I was like, Yeah, it'd be funny. Because it was like, I think you said the same thing. I was like, Yeah, it'd still be funny. I'm sure it'd be a funny video. Yeah, got you.

Sounds like the window never closed.

Yeah, so the window is still not...

Yeah. So you actually... I think Hank closed it last night, actually, when he told the story. He might have. We could still do It feels like this is coerced now. Yeah.

Maybe we'll give it another year.

Yeah, I want to come up with something right. I want to send the right message. I think when you had said it, I was like, okay, I feel like I have to do something funny. And then I was like, maybe I can get the wrong name to whoever is getting married. And I was like, actually, that doesn't always work out because then it'll be like, what's going on? So I screwed it up. I definitely screwed it up. I never did it intentionally going, the fucking guy thinks I'm going to do this video because I would never actually do something like that.

That's where I was confused. You're like, You immediately responded like, no problem.

Usually, I'm pretty good when I'm like, no problem. It's funny that it was a honeymoon pump-up video, too.

Nothing will get you horny having Ryan tell you, good job, buddy.

Yeah, see, I think That's why. And then I was like, oh. Then I was like, oh, he still wants it? So I think that's what it was. So you know what? This is a bit like our NBA preview. This would be perfect. I send a pump-up honeymoon video, and they've been married for two and a half years. Three years?

Maybe it reignites the spark.

Yeah. Three years.

Second Honeyoon.

Maybe they're like, this isn't going that well.

It also sounded like Hank just needed you to just be like, hey, Hank's brother, thanks so much for listening.

That's it.

Right. Do you overthink things sometimes?

What I was like, I was like, This has got to be good. Instead of just going, I can be done with this in five minutes. Less.

I'd say 30 seconds.

Easily, yet less. Yeah, you're right. Five would have been long with the edit.

Do you want to do it right now?

Yeah, just do it right into the camera.

What's his name? Will. All right. Here we go. Do it right now. And so what? Where are they going for their honeymoon? I don't even know where they went.

I don't know. I think they went to Mexico. Maybe. All right. You got that?

All right. Which is my camera? Do we want the middle one here? Or are we going-Punch it in. Use your words, please. We're doing a handheld here, like the office. This is great.

All right. This is great, too, because it's still not going to come out for another two weeks.

Hey, Will. Heard you're a big fan. It's Ryan Rosillo. I heard you have a honeymoon coming up. Hopefully, you're not a bigger fan of me than you are your wife, because that's going to get awkward. But I just want you to know we've all been there in those moments where you're a little nervous. I'm just telling you, think of me. Think of my podcast. Think of you emailing. I'm about to go for it. What should I do? What would I say? Run that through your head and do a good job making love.

That's so romantic, Ryan. That was great.

That was awesome.

Thank you. There was a little stumble there at the end. Should we do it again later? Let's just do it later.

I did also, I don't know if you have called your fans this before, but when I started, I was like, Any Resilience in here tonight? And it got a good pop.

Yeah, it did get a good pop.

Never heard that.

What do you call your fans?

I didn't know what to call them. I was like, Ryan Resilience. I was like, Any Resilience here? And people were like, Yeah, Resilience.

I thought when Will Cain called his listeners The Wilisha, I was like,. I like that. Yeah, it just couldn't be top, so I was out.

The Wilisha.

The Wilisha is really good. It is really good. But also people would look at his politics and be like, No shit. Free percenters.

All right. Resilience, something to think about.

Something to think about.

You guys are what? Awls? Yeah.

We're about Resilience.

Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. What was Rome? You were in the jungle.

You were in the jungle, yeah. Hey, Rome, thanks for the vine.

That's what you'd say if he'd let you call in, you get a vine into the jungle.

We got lucky, though. Awls wasn't something conscious, but then it worked. Then Dave would always say, You got your AOL things? He was like, All right. I don't know.

Did that work at all? That was great. You know what? I feel like it's not personal enough. Don't overthink it.

Don't overthink it. I don't know.

He also was two years old. He saw me talk about it last night. He was like, That was funny.

You know what? Maybe this will get him to listen to our show instead of Ryan's.

Yeah, there we go.

That could help Yeah, make sure.

Yeah, that's another listener.

Ever since this Kelsey pod popped, I've just been DMing Starlets left and right. Yeah.

Yeah, no.

We've been trying to get- Whose DMs you slide? We're trying to get Hank to fuck Beyoncé.

That's aggressive. I'm not going to say who it was, but I looked at an actress. I was like, I think this is obtainable. I think this is obtainable. I went in with like, Hey, if you Google me, you'll see a mug shot, and it's not a big deal. Here's just what you need to know. It's a good leader, yeah.

Life episode, my balls were out.

Yeah, but I've got great quads, and you're not going to run into a ton of guys my age that are putting in this effort, just so you know. House isn't bad. And then it was just seen.

Melissa McCarthy is married, though.

That's not funny. She is.

She's very funny. She's my favorite.

Sounds like you really like her.

I like her content.

Ryan, we don't talk enough about the fact that you have a good voice. When we have Dan Patrick on the show, we just talk about how great his voice is. You have an underrated voice for radio, for podcasts.

I'm classically trained.

Did you work on it?

Base 2. No, this is my voice. My dad's got a good voice.

You never had to lose the accent or anything?

I never really had it because I was born in Connecticut.

There's no accent there?

No, there's no accent. I mean, there's certain words that have a little twinge in New England in it. Instead of saying gut, I'll say gut or something. But I just always think it's fucking stupid when people give other people a hard time about how they'll pronounce certain words. I think New England has idea instead of idea. Yeah, that's a good one.

I love when Max talks Philly to us.

Yeah, but that's a real accent. Now, granted, the Massachusetts one is weird because there's just different pockets. You can have a South Shore kid who sounds like he's not even speaking English, and then you'll run into a Concord Mass guy who sounds like he's from Connecticut. There was no working on it, but I was in the chorus for a bunch of years. Your voice is That's right. You're a singer. Yeah, classically trained. Yeah.

You do have a great radio voice.

What? I've never heard you sing. You have a singing voice?

Well, it's pretty deep. Yeah.

Can you give us a song?

I don't know. I was trying to find the sheet music for it. I couldn't find it. We sang this thing. We went to Germany when I was in high school. You had to make the choir, and then there was a special select choir, which I know sounds like loser fest, but all these guys decided to try out because there was always hurting for guys.

A youth group for males, young males, that gets to We serve in Germany. I never told a story before on the podcast.

No. A bunch of the guys, our senior in high school, again, it's Martha's Vineyard, so it's a little artsy, a little weird anyway. They were like, Hey, this group is going to Germany. If you can make this choir, we'll all go to Germany together at the end of our senior year, when we definitely won't give a shit about anything. Back then on the Vineyard, they used to let the seniors get out of class in the beginning of May to work earlier in the summer save money when you were going away to college and everything, which I know, I don't think they do that. It's a long time ago, obviously. So we all tried out. We all made it. And I'd always been in the course before. I actually really liked it. I don't know what it was. I mean, I know it's not the coolest thing that you could ever say about yourself, but I was super into it. And we were learning really hard stuff. One was get happy, this old show tune. And then there was this other one called Requiem that we sang at a college. And then we flew to Germany, we got in the Stuttgar, and then we stayed in this little village called Heidelberg.

Or excuse me, not Heidelberg. We visited Heidelberg. We stayed in this village called Wenglingdon, and we had host families. And so every kid is getting picked up, like partnered up with his other buddy, right? Like, hey, who are you with? Oh, I'm with this guy. Where are you? Oh, we're down the street here. Okay, we're going to... I'm like the last guy, and my host family is late. Every Ristola story has to have tragedy. It's unbelievable. So everybody's getting picked up in these beamers and fucking Benzes, just sick as cars. Because if you're a host family, you're to take on somebody for this much time. He might as well, even though we were traveling a lot while we were there. And I get picked up in a piece of shit passat, and the woman couldn't have been nicer, and she was enormous. And then the daughter was fucking enormous. They were like, volleyball. She would have been an international volleyball player, and the daughter was raised to be this volleyball player. And I'm like, Where am I? I need to be near my buddies because they're right in the town. And they were like, Hey, dude, we're sorry, but there was no other host families in the town of England.

You're going to be in the overboy again. I'm like, Where the fuck is overboy again? It's like 25 minutes that way. And they're all giants. Yeah. And so we get all the way out there, man, and I'm in the absolute sticks outside of this really cool little village where everybody else was. I was like, Are you going to be kidding me. I get there and their son was named Jens, and he was nine, and he's like, Stecken shee-spierre, which means throw the javelin. He told me he was training to be a javelin guy, and we're just I'm throwing a javelin, not back and forth, but.Catch with the javelin.And I'm like, God, this fucking sucks. And so I call my buddy, and just to your point, I'm like, Are you serious? I don't even have a side guy, and I'm solo, and I'm in or whatever.

You're throwing a javelin?

Right. I'm throwing a javelin with Jens. Really nice kid, sweetheart of a kid. And so I call my other buddies. I'm like, What are you guys doing? They're like, Dude, we're with these grandparents. They're so lonely. They're like, We're already shit-faced, and now we're going out in town. I was like, You got to be kidding me.

You're stuck in Oibabaugen.

Right. And especially when you're 17, you're like, You guys are already drunk? Fuck, this is awful. So I'm sitting there at dinner with the family, and the girl played, I will always love you from the Bodyguard soundtrack on repeat. The son, I stayed in his room, and he straight up-Seven-year-old? Nine. Nine. Stereotype. He had the biggest Hasselhoff poster I've ever seen in my life. Love it. Right over the bed. And I'm like, going, I'm doing this for two weeks, and these guys are partying in Van Glingdon? You've got to be fucking kidding me. And so I'm at the dinner table, and then I hear this motorcycle pull up in the driveway, and I'm like, What is this? And they're like, Oh, Mark is home. And I go, Who's Mark? Who's his Mark character? And he walks in, leather jacket, tassels, pretty decent size, bicycle helmet, like, motorcycle helmet. That's That would have been not as cool. And he was like, I'm Mark. I'm the oldest son. Let's go. And it turned out it was a classic. It 180, where I had the best guy. And so instead of parents picking me up after every event, he was like, You go with, we ride.

You just pull up on his motor. You hop on the back. Would you grab his hips?

Put your arms around him? I did. I felt comfortable about it. I was hanging out with all of his friends, and then they were like, all the other Vineyard high school kids were like, Can we come with you now? Can Mark bring us to the things? And then one of my buddies had a shaved head, and he was getting jumped every time he went to these late night clubs and bars. And he was like, what the fuck? And they were like, they think you're a skinhead. The other Germans are pissed at you. He's like, just tell him I play high school football. They're like, well, they don't know that. Awesome country. One of the best trips I've ever had. And it was great because you never get hung over. Yeah, good beer. Because you're 17. And the beer is good.

That's a very long way to avoid singing a song.

Yeah, I'm not going to do it.For.

The longest time?

I like that story.

I want to try to find that. I promise you I'll do this. When I find the thing I was looking for, this Requiem sheet music, because I wanted to see it again, because I remember how hard it was and how into it we were. It was tough. We had practice outside of school. You read music? When I was back then, yeah. I could figure it out. You know what he's doing right now?

You're now Hank's brother.

Yeah, I'll do it soon. I'll get that video to you soon.

I'm not going to sing right now. Got it.

That's That's probably fair.

Let's talk to him.

Was that story long enough?

No, it was a great story. Shout out, Mark. You throwing a javelin with a nine-year-old. It's worth the story right there.

Pissed at the world.

We might actually have to do... We used to do little cartoon shorts for some of our stories, we might have to do that for that story.

Just a young Ryan Roussel doing a javelin. Here's the thing. We went fucking crazy on the second half of the trip, and then they had to do an announcement with all of us. The problem was all the seniors were like, We're already done. Finals, You don't own us? I'm already going to school. We're done. We're not coming back to anything. It was a really shitty timing for anybody being in charge. But I remember we were so wild that they had a meeting and they go, Hey, we got host families complaining about people throwing up, fights. We don't know what's going on with you guys, but we'll turn this plane around. I'm just like, No, you're not. It's not going to happen. They were like, From now on, every one of you has to get picked up by your host parent and leave with them, and then you're up to them. Then I was like, Well, that's awesome because Mark is picking me up every time.

This is my dad. All right.

Shut up, Mark.

Let's talk some MBA.

Yeah, what are you going to do? The association.

I want to start with the idea that are you on the precipice I know we got a lot of basketball left of having the worst NBA playoffs of all time if James Harden gets a ring.

This is an awesome question. I didn't know we'd start here.

Because the Clippers are good. They're really good. They are good. It's finally... They've been a joke for the last What since the bubble and the super team, but now they're good.

You could have been a lot meaner because you could have just made fun of the Chris Paul era Clippers there, too.

Yeah, no, I didn't. That's not a joke. No, we'll get to Chris Paul.

That's all right.Yeah. I was wondering, the best thing you guys could do with me would be what would be the hate list of if this guy wins an NBA Championship and work its way down? Because of all the years of takes. I don't even know that. Does it mean I was wrong about Harden 10 years if he wins it this year? Yes. No. None of this stuff happened? Yeah.

If he wins a ring, he can be like, fuck you to all the haters that said I couldn't do this.

I know that's what's going to happen. I'm going to feel.

If we get Kyle Lowry on the Clippers, I think That would be the best thing that's ever happened for the discourse of Ryan Rusillo.

No, actually, it was in Brooklyn when it was Kyrie and Harden together. But I like to rant so much that I was like, Okay, there's a sliver of what would I be rooting for, rooting against, based on how I think about things. But I say this a lot. Just because I think somebody hasn't won, or I don't like that guy, or I don't think he could be a winning player, to say he's incapable of any scenario to actually win this whole thing, he's the third option now. So I'm still in the clear for a decade-worth of takes. Okay.

So it's not his ring if he wins?

He'll have a lot to do with it because he's been really good for him now ever since that beginning thing, when they pulled that shit where they were pretending like Russ was actually going to start and play point card. And Harden was remember they went 0 for 5? Yeah. And you were like, it would have been really easy to go, this is terrible. Like, look, I just wouldn't want to be in the business of James Harden. I don't think asking for three trades and playing bad on purpose and then getting your way. He did a piece with The Athletic where the first answer he had was like, I wanted to go somewhere I could be paid.

Yeah, but you have to admit-That was his first answer. When he got fat, that was funny.

It was definitely funny.

That was funny.

But I don't know, man. I just think there's... If somebody can play bad on purpose to get their way, what are you going to be like in a really tight spot in the playoffs? That's fair. And there's way more evidence that those two things are connected.

I do think with James Harden, I've said this before, but I think that it's true in his case. I don't think it's a league-wide phenomenon. But with James Harden, I think he looks at the postseason as doing more work for less money. So he's like, I did my time. I played my season. I don't have any desire to do more work.

Yeah, I get to leave at five.

Yeah.

All right, let me ask this, though. Can the Clippers win at all if everyone stays healthy? I know that's always the if. But is this... I always find the regular season in the NBA, I just can't get all the way into it because I just know that once we get to the playoffs, the teams with the best players and the short in the rotations, sure, it's nice if a team has a great year and they win 48 games or 50 games, but they're not going to do anything in the playoffs. Obviously, the Clippers are a lot Not better than that. But can they win the title?

Yeah, I do think they can win the title, but it's a really bad health bet. It's the worst health bet of the four teams in the top of the West. Maybe you could argue Phoenix if you want to go... I did, I think, nine teams, where I said, If these nine teams won an NBA Championship, you wouldn't say, How the fuck did that happen? I think there were nine, and even that was being a little generous. Then I had other teams that I was writing off of, Let's mention them because they're good. But I don't really think you're going to be there with a trophy at the end of this whole thing. I still put Phoenix down as probably the ninth team because we still hadn't seen those guys play together enough. With Beal, Durant, and Booker at the time of this taping.

That's true. We started with the two teams that could be drastically different in two weeks.

I know, right. At the time of this taping, they're 11 and 5 with those three guys, and it's pretty good. And your bench isn't going to matter as much, and you're going to have more days off. I think there's the biggest gap I've ever seen between playoff and regular season basketball. If you don't believe me, listen to Bob Myers has done extensive speeches on this thing at some conference where I'm like, Finally, listen to this guy. It's totally different, the stuff that works in the regular season when people are just not locked in. They're not fighting through screens. Maybe you get them on some play. In the play, everybody knows everything you're going to run through. They know, oh, this screen to this screen means that this guy is going to be over here. So I'm not even going to fall for any of this shit anymore because I've already seen it for three games. You figure most guys are prideful enough to stay as locked in as they can as opposed to just a lot of regular season games, mailing it in. So I think it's a different product entirely. And that's why even though I really like what Minnesota has become, I'm not going to trust their offense late in the playoff series against somebody who I know.

I know what Booker is going to look like. I know what Durant is going to look like.

In NFL terms, it sounds to me like you're calling them frauds.

I know what you mean. It's effort. Effort can win you games in February.

I think that the best playoff teams have shot clock scores. Somebody who, when the ball is in their hands and there's like six seconds left in the shot clock and nothing else has worked, the first two actions got blown up. It's like a lot of times the ball is going to have been in that guy's hands, and he has to figure out a way to still score. And that's why everybody trades all these draft picks, and that's why they don't care about Harden's background. They don't care about any stuff because it's like, Hey, I'm actually getting one of those guys. And that's why we all lose our minds about these guys all the time. So even though I love SGA, history tells you The youth part of this would be an absurd aberration, historically, for them to win an NBA title. And I don't like the fact they don't have another big that can match up with, say, a bigger matchup that they could get in the playoffs. I love Chet. This is a great rookie year. That's asking a lot of him if Jay Williams, too, to be the front line against some of the bigger front lines he'd faced in the West.

So it's not fraud at all. It's different. It's very hard for me when I've never seen a team show me in those conference finals moments, moments, what you look like offensively, for me to just assume it's all going to work out.

You can look at the NBA every single year and say, Okay, this team's having a great year. But once we get to the playoffs- It's always the same thing.

You're like, Oh, the team that has the best offensive option, one of those five guys in the league, they're in it again. There's always except, but there's not many exceptions in that league. It's not like football where you're like, How did this happen? Right.

And once you get into a seven-game series, it's like, Okay, well, we We know how to game plan you games three, four, five. You don't know how to game plan Kevin Durant.

Right. Durant is just going to pull up at seven foot one. And look, you can double team and get a ball out of his hands. But now Booker's on the other side going four on three. Phoenix isn't perfect, but every Phoenix stat is irrelevant because they just haven't had those guys for long enough stretches. I think you can write off Golden State. You can write off the Lakers. Is LeBron stat padding at this point of his career? I think LeBron is the The best player I've ever seen. At the end of the night, you're like, holy shit, he had 27, seven and seven again. There are a lot of sevens in there. But he doesn't do the little things that I think are really important in basketball.

Anymore?

No, he doesn't do those things anymore. And maybe he will in the place. But look at his track record. If you go back, 2018, his last year with Cleveland, he played 82 games since then. And granted, we had two short in seasons. What a 70-game season, 72 It depends because some of the teams played an extra game. But he usually misses 25 games a year. They have been cranking. He's been playing big minutes. He's played the full season. Anthony Davis has played a full season to this point. D'angelo Russell can't miss a shot. But then you're like, well, wait a minute. Why do they stink? It's the same group. Because basketball, man, is all of these little plays where you're like, hey, did you box out consistently? Oh, you didn't? You fucking lose your guy boxing out all the time. You don't get back in transition. You lose guys on these baseline cuts, or you start ball watching when you're off the ball on defense. When you don't do any of those things, it doesn't matter if you're scoring big numbers. So if you would say, Hey, this is what they're getting out of LeBron.

Ad has been this healthy. D'angelo Russell, who at times I think is unplayable, hasn't missed a shot here for seven weeks. Rui is still around. Reeves, after the slow start, clearly, he was the third most important guy for them in that playoff run last year. You'd go, Oh, they must be a top four seed. And they stink. It's those little things.

Do you think maybe LeBron off the bench?

Sixth man of the year. It's the only award he hasn't won. It's true.

That would be... Mj never won it.

I would gain so much respect for LeBron.

I would actually put him above MJ if he got sixth man of the year. Sixth man of the year.

When the trade stuff happened for 48 hours, it was just great. That was awesome. I remember when I was still at ESPN, there was a weird story how Steven A had said that People close to Jeanie Buss were saying she'd explore trades for him or something like that. That was before they'd even won the title. I joked on my podcast, what is it? Somebody in a Pilates class going like, Hey, what do you think you could get for him? And then it got back to Steven A that I had said he got this info from a Pilates class, so he thought I was really dogging his credibility. I was like, No, dude, that's not what I said. We worked it out. It was fine. It's not a big deal. But it reminded me of that where it was this media blitz of 48 hours of something that was like, Wait, why would they even do that? The reason I was wondering if it would happen is Jordan guys would be like, Jordan never got traded.

It's great. You talked about the Suns. Were they 11 and 5 with those three playing together?

As of taping, yes.

Yeah. Isn't it crazy that they played more games together than the Nets had with their big three?

Wait, is it with Harden?

Harden, Kyrie, and Kevin Durant on the Nets.

Was it 13 games?

I think it was 13 or 14 games.

Can we get IT on that? Blame Eric Adams. Did you see Kyrie say that? Yeah.

That was awesome. Thirteen games?

Some fan was like, Kyrie, you never played for the Nets. He's just like, Blame Eric Adams. I know.

I've had a lot of people come in and be like, Hey, weren't you going to do the Kyrie was right about everything? I was like, Oh, that's an interesting segment.

What exactly was Kyrie right about?

Covid, the RSC flat. The documentary.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

I think a lot One of the problems that Kyrie got was like, even if I might be on your side on some of the stuff. I thought when COVID was first happening, I was like, How come everybody's an expert on this already? It seems new. Might we have questions a little bit later? But then as soon as you say, maybe I have some questions about how this all went down, it's like, oh, you got Matt Getz posters at home. I just think we're a little hard on each other on having an open mind about anything. But I think the biggest problem with Kyrie was you watched three videos and then you decided that's... And so even if we look back at retroactively, we'll be like, Hey, he made some good points. It's like, Yeah, but we don't like how he got there, which is totally unfair.

Yeah, the process. All right, so in the East, the Celtics look like the best team.

They do, but when the Clippers kick their ass, I was like, Man, that was a It was worth five losses. Yeah? I don't know if you guys saw the game. Probably not because you're a football guy. Football guy. Never miss a game. You see the ratings? 97 of the top 100 view cable shows. That's a fact. I love when guys are like, Where Where's your check out of it? Nobody's arguing. It's not popular.

The ratings rock.

They think if you're an NFL reporter, you're like, I did that.

That's what it feels like. That's the point I'm making.

My reporting about this league made it so exciting that people came in.

I'm going to stand up for football guys for a second. All right. There was a- You and Prisco on a text thread? There was a very loud NBA push that was like, football's dying. Nba is going to be the next big sport. Everyone's talking about it on social media.

Oh, Cuban was into That did happen.

Then you could talk about it all you want on social media. Then you see the ratings, you're like, oh, yeah, football is king and will always be king. That did happen.

You have to admit that happened. There was a window. There was definitely a window. There was a window. It was a window. Now, we just smashed them.

I love basketball, but it is funny when anyone's like, NBA is the next big sport. No, it's not. Football is.

Yeah, I do think that the NBA had a single elimination championship and played 17 regular season games. The ratings would probably go up.

That That's basically what the stars play now anyways.

Not anymore. Although it's going to be funny. It wouldn't be great if there was one year, the top 10 guys didn't qualify for the MVP. They're like, Tobias Harris, first time. Let's go. It's awesome. The Cuban thing I I love talking about this because I did bring it up, but I don't know if there's anybody that's more convincing on topics I may disagree with. There's plenty of stuff with Cuban I've agreed with, but there have been times over 20 plus years in the spotlight, just basketball-related stuff. I'm like, What is he talking about? But then I get listening to him explain it, and I'll be like, Am I wrong? Nine years ago, Cuban was like, I'd rather own an NBA team than an NFL team. And he said, Pigs get slaughtered.

No, no. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. If you have a good phrase. I bought it at the time.

Yeah, and then he sold his team.

Yeah.

I mean, that's one of the all-time calls, which was self... There was a lot of self-interest in the motivation him saying, Hey, I own one of the 30 assets in the world. I'm not going to tell you it's not going to be better positioned. But if you were to say to him, No, actually, you'll probably sell your team. And by the way, the call of an NBA team being more valuable than an NFL team is not even going to be close. It's going to be worse or a bigger gap. But I don't know, whatever, man.

The Cuban thing, though. Yeah. I feel like no one talked about the fact that he sold his team. It was not big enough news. He was the NBA guy. Nba is a great asset. The NBA keeps going. And then he sold it. Shouldn't that scare people?

Yeah, because when the bucks were sold, you're like, Hey, you guys came in. Sometimes the private equity guys would just be like, Wait, how much of a return are we going to get? Done. That's how I That's how I've done my job for decades. That's how I have to do it now. Even if you feel like there's some emotional attachment to something like a franchise, it's far more emotional than anything in your portfolio. But I'm with you, Big Cat, because then it was also sold to us. Now, but it's still going to be his team. It's going to be in charge. It was like, what's that about? If I'm buying a team, be like, oh, and by the way, you guys get to make all the cool decisions. Then that got shot down a little bit.

The whole story seemed weird to me because it really does feel like if there's one guy who's going to sell his NBA team, Mark Cuban should be the one that sounds off all the alarms.

There's a lot of transition happening right now with teams. We're all bubble experts after the big short, right? Everybody's just throwing around like, oh, you think it's a bubble? I'm like, I don't fucking Oh, Max. Where are you doing, Max? Wow.

Max is watching highlights over there, Max?

Max, turn it on your phone.

Somebody would have to convince me of when is that time coming where a live television audience is no longer that valuable. That's facts. I don't know when that's happening.

I know it's the one last great thing. For sports, it's always going to be. Yeah. Right.

So even if the ratings go down, if it's still the best rated thing, that's really what we're talking about here. Whenever you're comparing historical ratings, it's like, oh, it's down this, it's down that, it's down that. Okay, what are the other live audience shows? What are they doing? I don't know if there's owner transition because This deal is rumored to be shorter than people thought it would be. The new rights deal. The new rights deal. Like, oh, maybe it'll be shorter. Why would it be shorter? Because you don't like the back-end term, so it means it was less money. So now it's like, oh, well, we don't like this, so let's just do a shorter deal. I don't know if influenced him at all? Because you would think Hubin wouldn't be somebody who'd be like, Hey, this is the best I can do financially, and I have to have the ultimate win. I've got to sell as high as I possibly can. Like anybody who's ever bought and sold stocks and won or lost money, you're always going like, Oh, but if I'd done this, then... To your point, I don't think this should happen with a basketball team, especially that guy.

That guy, that's the point.

So what does that mean? And then I'll hear about three or four other teams where the analogy I've used is the beach house that you're your grandfather had, and then the kids use it, and then you guys go with all the cousins, and then it's on to the next generation. And there's just no way to making it work. You want to keep the house, but there's too many people at it.

It seems to me like the NBA is trying to pull a page out of the NFL's playbook, which is you want to ensure more ratings, let's have high scores. Let's have people score a fuck load of points. Are people scoring too many points in the NBA?

Well, scoring has never been easier. So it was really weird how when Embiid went for 70, then Luka went for 73. It was like, oh, my God, look what Embiid is doing. And then it was like, what the hell is wrong with the league? And I think a lot of Mavs fans took it real personal as if it was only about Luka. I can only look at things like nationally, right? I think people only pay attention to bias that they feel like negatively impacts themselves or their interests. If you were to go to somebody and say, oh, hey, does so-and-so hate your team? They'd be like, Yeah. It's like, Well, do they hate your team? Or do you never, ever care or notice when all the other teams that you have no interest in were also criticized the same way? Anyway, I thought it had more to do with what the hell is going on? Like, Kat had 60, then Booker went crazy in a loss, too. It's just never been easier to score. The pace is going faster and faster, rising tides as the efficiency goes up. Every year, a team sets the record for the most efficient offense in NBA history.

We're on a five-year spike. The free throw rates wouldn't tell you that We're in this free throw trouble, even though I got a lot of shit. Well, actually, I didn't get a lot of shit, but I had to talk to a few people about it when I just went off at the NBA officials, the Union account, when they came back at me to try to tell me I was wrong about something. I think the foul number isn't the really thing to look at. I think it's defenses are scared to death to even be in compromised positions because guys just fucking run into everybody now. Look at a guy like Harden. He's still getting away with that off-arm grab. He drives into somebody's hip. He brings his arms up, and they also let Let him invent a new way to travel on threes.

You can't touch anyone.

No. And the landing area, and one of the things I bring up, why are Kawhi Leonard's ankles more valuable than Kam Redish's? Because Zaza goes under Kawhi guy knocks him out of that series years ago with Spurs and Gold State in the Playouts. So then they're like, Hey, we're going to make sure the landing area is clear. Well, look, and fuck any Harden fan that can't accept this.

I want the Clippers to win so bad.

Harden When no one's around him, goes straight up on a jump shot. Even JJ read it because he got a bunch of calls in this awful fourth quarter against the Clippers at the beginning of February. I love JJ, but JJ is like, Hey, look, I had a natural motion that moved forward. It's like, Okay, but put him side by side when no one's around him. He clearly knows what he's doing. It's like on a national broadcast when LeBron's down for a little bit in the national broadcast, the 70th time he's seen it. Like, oh, a little gimpy. You're like, Dude, he's probably going to get Yeah. He almost died on Christmas. What a terrible day. It's hard to happen. I'd hate that. What do you tell your kids? What if you got him a jersey?

He knee Jalen Brown in the butt, and he was down for 20 minutes.

I know. Jalen Brown actually left the game. When I think of that, with the Zaza Kouai play, and then Kam Redish landed on Harden, who put his feet underneath the defender. Then they check to see if it's a flagrant on the defender. Kam Redish missed time. So the problem with any of these adjustments is you worry about the unintended consequences. Well, the unintended consequence for that one is now you can't even get a clear contest. You have to do these drive by contests. You add all these things up. And I don't want to hear about how, oh, there's not really that much of a change of the officiating. Oh, there is. Dude, I watch so much of this stuff. I'm sorry. I'm just not going to debate it with you if you can't see the shit that I see. And I think the legal try to figure out a way. The way it's explained is sometimes the stuff can be a year ahead of the league before they... Like the rip through, they figure that one out. They got better with flops and charges and that stuff. But you're just adding it all up. I don't think it's because of ratings, PFT.

I think it has everything to do with we're at a really weird place where the offensive player has never had this many advantages. And they're all awesome players, too. Ten years ago, there was 20 players that were shooting over 40 %. Right now, it's 49 players shooting over 40 %. It's crazy. It's weird. They're just better players, too.

With Harden, he is very smart. So if you tweak the rules, he will figure out a way to exploit it every time. When he retires, he should be like that guy in Frank Abbanale. And that was it. Catch me if you can? Yeah. The league should hire him When they think of making a rule, be like, How would you exploit this if you were a player? Show us the unintended consequences.

Yeah. Then he'd be like, I want to work for the NFL. Fuck this place.

Yeah, it's king. We're going to get back to Ryan in a second. He's been brought to you by Coors Light, ice-cold Coors Coors Light. I love it. Mountains were blue big time in Jacksonville. Blueest mountains in America. Blueest mountains I've seen in a long time. I think the mountains are blueer this summer, this spring, whatever today is. I guess it's February, but I'm in that vacation mindset. I was drinking Coors Light. It was delicious. From day to day annoyances to the big stuff that life throws your way. It's easy to get worked up, but there's a better way, a chiller way. Turn that canceled concert into a parking lot dance party. Too cold for an ocean swim? Play volleyball. Light a bonfire instead. That's choosing chill. And when you choose chill, reach for Coors Light. When the mountains turn blue, it's as cold as the Rockies. When you choose to rise above it all, choose chill, choose Coors Light. I had a couple of blow-up holes this weekend. Grabbed a Coors Light from the Cork Girl, cracked it open. All my worries went away. All my problems went away. Get Coors Light delivered straight to your door with Instacart by going to coorslight.

Com/take. Celebrate responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. And now, here's more Ryan Rusillo. So you think Do you think it is making the games worse? The scores, when you look at them after the fact, you're like, oh, shit, high scores are good. But if you actually watch the games, it's like, yeah, they're getting more points, but the points are more boring.

Well, I just don't know what the defense That's what I'm supposed to do anymore. There's even times, like the play that I tweeted out that turned into a bunch of people talking about it. And then I just don't understand guys on Twitter accounts. I've officiated in Juko in high school. That's absolutely a foul. You shouldn't want that to be a foul. It was like, Steph was in a compromising position. It's like bullfighting. If I were dribbling and I go, oh, my God, that guy's turned a little bit. Now I get to just dribble into your hip, and now it's a foul because you were in a non legal guard. It's any type of contact. I just wish there was... Look, in life, I wish we were judged more on intent. There's just so many times where it'll be like, Hey, what was happening there? What was going on there? Okay, maybe that's how it could be perceived. But what was the actual intent of the person? Was the intent for the person to be a fucking Oh, no, it was just a mistake. And in this case, it's like, was the intent to foul him or was the intent of the offensive player to be like, I didn't even want to take a shot, but I just dribbled into this guy backpedaling and then flung it up at the rim.

And there's just too many reps that are falling for this stuff all the time. But then it makes it sound like I'm painting it with this broad brush. The player's individual skill, man, when we grew up, there'd be like the two guys who could score, a rebounder, a ball handler. There'd be like the white guy that maybe hits one 0.7 threes per game or we're like, sharpshooter. And now, if you don't have five scores on the floor, you're almost at a disadvantage. It's crazy. These guys are incredible, the shot making that they can do. So I don't know if it's a boring, not boring thing. I think I just have nights where I get frustrated knowing that, hey, once the playoff start, a lot of this stuff is just going to be different anyway.

I think it was Sam Decker, who's a friend of the program. I like Sam. He said something. Sam was in the NBA for a while. He's now doing great in Europe. But he's had something about practice. Someone asked him, if you were shooting in an open gym with no one on you, how many threes would you make out of 100? He said, 90. He's not in the NBA. You know what I mean? That's how insane these guys are shooting. It's everyone can shoot. Every guy on the team can shoot.

I remember when Nash, I don't know if he was the first to do it, it was the first time maybe I was noticing it, is he was dribbling Granted, he's at this size disadvantage on any dribble to the rim, and he started just taking off on the wrong foot. So the defender, you're always timing it to be like step, step, and like, okay, if he's right-handed, he's going up off of this foot. He started going up off the foot before you thought he was, and then he was already at the rim and finishing. And you're just like, oh, my God. And that's like everybody now. Everybody has all this stuff. Now, I want to do a deeper dive on it, but I also think there's so much individual training that the individual ability to get your shot and get a good look or make these absurd shots in these different angles takes away a little bit from like, yeah, but you know what you're supposed to do when you don't have the ball? Do you know about any of that? Because if you're prioritizing all the individual drills, which are cool and all, there's a lot of positioning stuff that will happen where you're like, do you know actually what to do once you don't have the ball?

Some of these guys look like they have no interest. All right.

So in the East, who can win the title?

Boston. But the late game stuff, I think, is real, even though there's not a lot of stats that back it up, but I feel like I've seen it enough. But when people talk about Boston being a playoff failure, I'm just like, well, game six of the finals, and then granted, they shouldn't have lost that Miami team last year. But I would take their playoff failures over a lot of these other teams that we talk about all the time. And their one through eights ridiculous. If Porzingas is healthy, they're probably still the favorite. The Bucks thing is weird. I can't figure it out.

Yeah. Doc Rivers, difference maker.

Doc is awesome with stars. I saw it firsthand when I was in Boston. I know everybody wants to shit on him for the blown playoff series.

I want to shit on him for being a snake. Do you put any credence in that? And the fact that he got a young coach fired and he was like, Now it's me. Now it's Doc done.

Come on, dude. You really think that?

I've been told that.

I think Giannis never bought in.

I think Dame had a bigger issue with Adrian first.

And then Giannis.

Yeah. I can't figure out Dame. I knew he sucked on defense, and now it's like, Oh, my God. He's really bad.

Yeah, but it's like the Bucks, they should have known that going into it, right?

Yeah, but it's back to the offense stuff that we talk about because Dame's probably one of the 10 best guys at getting his own thing. You're like, all right, we'll take the bad defense. They're huge guys.

They're acting surprised that they got rid of one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and they brought in Dame, and they're like, Wait, our defense stinks. Let's blame the coach.

Well, they were going to blame Adrian Griffin, who, by the way, is one of my all-time favorite NBA players. Saw the game slow pace, just loved it. That guy, his pickup team would win every single game. You'd be like, Did that guy even score? So I've always been a fan of his. But athletes are brutal, man. As soon as you give him a chance to doubt you, they're just going to be like, This guy doesn't know what doing. And yet they were winning all these games. But they'd have something once every 10 days where they'd get destroyed by somebody. And you were like, What the fuck? What happened here? So the Yannis factor alone and Dame Got Cook in. And I don't think you can rule them out. But it's crazy how good the record is. And then you look at all that stuff, and then you'll watch them one game, and you're like, What is wrong with you guys? But we're only what? Four games in, five games in the doc at this point.

So Bucks, two. Anyone else? I mean, Embiid, obviously being out, that ends that.

That's over. The next story is awesome. I can't fathom them beating all those teams.

Well, they go back to the, and I learned this firsthand, Tibs can win a lot of regular season games. There we go. He can. He gets his guys. His guys play hard every night. Jalen Brunt is a star. I love him. He's awesome. He's so much fun to watch. But back to your other point, how many guys on that team can get their own shot at the end of the shot clock?

Yeah, he can. I don't think Ananobi is necessarily that guy, but his corner three numbers are always ridiculous. In the first, what, 16 games with the Knicks, he's even beyond anything he's been. In Toronto, he was actually getting to the point where he was like, You're 26, and you're going in the wrong direction on some of these stats. But Randa was her and was, I thought, horrendous in the playoffs last year in that Miami series in particular. It's a really cool story, but I've got to see it play out more over... I thought that was a really easy stretch of the schedule. Okay.

I did. Is there a third team in the East, or is it going to be just box Celtics?

Well, Cleveland scared me to death. Cleveland's good, yeah. Yeah. They won this whole time.

Imagine they had LeBron?

Who knows? He might be there next year.

I saw some Cleveland fans being like, Well, could Adam this year to trade deadline, he'd be the perfect piece.

Yeah. And by the way, he would have to opt out and sign for nothing to go there. I don't think he's going to do that at the very end of his career. Yeah, I don't think Cleveland... I mean, he came back and then they won. In that town, it's not exactly like parade town.

No, he did his job. He did what he said he was going to do.

He's supposed to go to the Knicks now, right? I could see myself playing there.

Yeah.

No, that was him. He just puts pressure on the front office. He thinks like front offices show up to work and be like, What do you want to do today? You want to get wings or something? And then the next day, they're like, Did you see LeBron had a Knicks towel on? Yeah.

Did you see LeBron twitted an apple? Yeah.

Hey, guess what? Let's start getting on the blowers here.

When he twitted the hour glass, people got in to work like 2 hours early that day.

Right. And then people ask him about it. He'll be like, What? Yeah. Nothing. He'd be a tough summer roommate, man.

Oh, yeah, for sure. He'd be leaving notes for you. Just so you know, you left a dirty dish in the sink. I cleaned it up. No worries. Yeah.

He was just put on the whiteboard. He'd be like, All of you guys suck. And then you'd come downstairs and be like, What was that? And be like, It's up to you to figure it out. Wait, it seems pretty self-explanatory and direct, and you wrote it. Do you want to talk about this? Don't need to.

You know.

Yeah. But do you want to move out? Didn't say that.

Do you think I want to move out?

Then you'd have to turn on the TV and be like, Windhorse I was like, I don't think LeBron will move out nor wants to move out of the summer house. And you're sitting there going like, Dude, we're sitting right fucking next to you. You could just say it to us.

Lebron remains committed to being as good of a roommate as he can be.

He loves cohabit for this time of year.

There we go.

I know that's not your hometown.

I do love how he just talked about the Knicks. He's like, Yeah, I could play here. I could definitely play. I also think there's something about LeBron where he plays in a cool environment. He's on the road and he's like, Yeah, I could see myself winning a title for the Knicks. That'd be incredible.

If you go to any city with nice weather that day, you're like, Man, I could see myself living here. That's what LeBron does for every place he goes. You pull up Zillow.

Let's do a non... Because we have a segment called Rizillo. That's fantastic. Where I went to New Zealand and I looked at property, and I was like, Okay, but it's going to take... When you order something on Amazon Prime, it's probably going to take forever. Yeah, you're going to live with some goats. Unless you're opening up some coin-based thing like Sam there, who they had private jets, fly Amazon packages from Miami to the Bahamas, and then said they only did that to remain competitive for the top employees. We're like, sweet. Allegedly. So give me a place where you guys have been, where you're like, I could do this. Give me the most aggressive place.

Okay, I'll give you one from this summer. I went over to Dublin for my friend Donny's wedding. I was there for about 36 hours. And while I was there, I looked at properties Donny does. You know Donny,, I love him.

You do love the one-time Don.

He's the best. And I looked at properties in Dingle on the West Coast of Ireland, and I was like, Yeah, you know what? A $300,000 house on the Dingle Peninsula? And And there's one road that goes out there, and you're three hours away from an airport. And I did the same thing you did with New Zealand, where it's like, realistically, this won't work. But still, what if?

I met with Adam McKay once. Big sports fan. Super nice to me. Moved out to LA. Hey, can we ever meet or whatever, talk and bullshit? He had to come on the pod. And it was one of those moments where he was like, Yeah, I've got this place out in Ireland. He's like, If you ever want it, let me know. And you're going, I actually do want to ask you in a year, can I stay at your place in Ireland? But you almost have to keep the relationship going on a very superficial level to then feel like it's not a weird ask. I don't know how to do that.

I think he says that to a lot of people.

I think he definitely planned on me never asking, Hey, can I stay? Correct.

He says that to everyone.

I'm going to start telling people I've got a place in Spain. Now we're outside Barcelona. I actually do have a place down there, Ryan, if you ever want it. It's yours.

Really? As long as you want it. I went to Barcelona last summer. So you're thinking Ireland, 300,000 I heard you got a new deal. Probably. You see my socks? Yeah, probably not going to dent it too much. 300k, you might not even be a mortgage guy now. Who knows? Who knows? It's with these rates, although they were going down as of taping. What about you, Big Cat? I, for For some reason, it's a lame fantasy.

I've been in the Pacific Northwest a few times, and I just... Something about the trees.

Is the movie Fear?

They're so fucking big. You love big trees. I like big trees. I could see myself maybe way Northern California, Washington. I don't know. But then it rains a lot, but I like the rain.

Yeah, and Chicago's beautiful year round.

Yeah, it is. We've had a mild winter.

Very mild winter. Really? Oh, yeah. Hey, if Chicago didn't have the winter, I would think about living But no ocean is always... Anytime I think of a place... Lake's pretty big.

Denver, Manhattan Beach. Lake's pretty big.

We're a tie, but the no ocean thing.

Oh, Denver's a good one. Boulder. We went to Boulder once and ate mushrooms, and I was like, Dude, I want to move here right now. Facts. That happened. That was great week. We did that. I was literally like, I want to live here.

If you wait 25 years, Chicago is going to be awesome all year round.

Global warming. You probably don't believe in that.

It depends on which charge you look at. Remember when they had the... It was the smog thing. It was like the fires from Canada or something. Then New York City, all of a sudden, people were just freaking out, and they were like, Oh, no global warming? You're like, I don't know. This just looks like smoke, to be honest with you. Then, Sourya and I talked about it, and somebody who hates me signed up Life Advice for every single climate change newsletter imaginable. Every time I open up Lies of Advice, it's all these different free newsletters on climate change, trying to tell me as if I didn't believe in some form of it. But yeah, 25 years from now, I'm going to be too old. I can't be going to like Wrigleyville. Hey, you guys. Yeah, you can. You guys remember my pod?

Yeah, you can.

I'm an accelerationist. I want Chicago to be so warm. I go in my backyard, I burn styrofoam every day. I bought three cows. I have them farting all the time. I just spray aerosol cans everywhere. Listen, the hotter it gets, the longer I want to live there.

All your machines were on corn. Because remember, that was the big thing. I was going to be all corn. Then they were like, Do you guys realize how much worse this actually is? I remember that. That was a big... People were trying to get into long corn.

Wait, what's your place?

New Zealand was up there. Was that it? I've thought about doing the south of France or something and trying to find a village. I don't want to live in any of the big towns. My new thing is villages. When I get to I'm in a major city internationally, I want to get the fuck out of there immediately and go to villages. I find myself, look, if you're in Barcelona, it's great, but I want to go everywhere else. I don't want to be there. I don't want to be in Nice. This is bougey as fuck.

What about football, though? I could never live any other country because of football.

Okay, but this would be it. It would be right about now, then I would move, and then maybe I'd come back for the beginning of the playoffs. So I'd live somewhere. I mean, look.

Oh, the NBA playoffs?

Right, right before the NBA playout. You're looking at basically a good chunk of February, March, April, and then beginning of May, maybe I come back. But live in another country for three or four months and really try. I'm likely not going to have a family anytime soon, so I probably should just do it now. I get really excited about, Hey, what if I did this? And the crazy thing about New Zealand from LA is it's 21 hours ahead. So when I was there, it wasn't really that. I had two Christmases, but it wasn't that weird because it was pretty close to what my normal routine was when I was back home.

Was that a divorce parents joke?

No, it's a time zone joke.

Okay.

It does play. Bermond told a good one.

Yeah, he did.

I was on two concerts.

Wait, so you would live in another country for four months?

I'd love to.

I don't hate that. Maybe I live in Saudi Arabia for four months.

This is also you guys are just doing the no kids talk right now. Get that, what are you talking about?

Get that live podcasting money? Yeah.

I can't believe you didn't hold out. Was Liv involved with the negotiation? You just dropped Saudi Arabia, and you already resigned, so you really thought about it.

I was in a background discussion with being a Liv ambassador.

Sometimes I wonder, could I just move to Tokyo?

The discussion was no, by the way. That's how it ended up.

Yeah, I figured that was probably the answer, so I didn't have a follow-up. I'll go, Hey, they love basketball over there. So why? I could be a less informed Tokyo Woj.

Yeah. That would rock. Are you a Woj guy or are you a Shams guy?

I'm such a Woj guy. He's the ultimate.

He carries Woj's water. Yup. When he ruined that recruit for Rutgers commitment.

Don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah, exactly. But if it's bad, Woj didn't do it.

I did see Shams. What did I see?

Phrasing.

Shams? Yeah, his Shams.

That's not what I was focused on.

Okay. I did see Shams. I think it was maybe a Blackhawk's or something. Oh, no, it was a college basketball game. Duke was playing Michigan State United Center. I said to him, I was like, Dude, when Woj beat you to that. What was the big overnight thing that happened right before the season started? Harden. I was like, He beat you to Harden. Are you ever going to sleep again? He's like, no. Dead serious. He's like, That ruined me.

Well, he doesn't sleep. He sends all those text.

Yeah, but Woj's story on that, how he was at the airport and he left, and he went home because he thought it was going to break. He's like, I'll just take a flight tomorrow. Commitment.

I asked Woj to come out of the boat when he was in Manhattan Beach, and he was like, he goes, I can't be that far away from the Coast with no signal. And I went. He's dead serious. I go, Hey, I got Starlink on the boat.Oh, did you?Yeah.

He came out?

It's awesome, dude. I anchor off a Malibu, watch Hornets games. I can't believe I'm not married.

It is great when people are like, touch grass for still and you show a picture of your boat and I'm like, I know he's watching games on that boat.

Yeah, I don't do that a ton, almost never. But I just felt I was a little spicy that day. Everybody Give me a hard time. I get it. I watch too many games, and I'm supposed to have a kid by now, and the shit that really matters. But if you're going to come after me when I've got a 46-foot prestige with twin these and. And I'm anchored at that moment off the Coast to Malibu with a sunset in the background and a CL in the hand and the Alma brothers playing at halftime, you can fuck off.

How many TVs you got of that thing?

Just one. We tried to put a second one on, but I was worried about it basically having to be replaced because of the saltwater in eight months. The guy's like, I can put one on the back of this. You're going to be having me replace it. I know there's other ones you can get and everything. But I also thought I was going to upgrade to a fly deck, like a '51 Asmouth.

One day.

I thought I was going to do it already by now, but I'm not going to.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought you only have one TV on your boat. It's brutal.

You know how it feels to slummit.

There are three TVs on the boat. There's two in the bed. I have two bedrooms, but there's only one in a viewing area.

So you have three TVs on the boat, though? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but I thought you meant in the viewing sense.

No, right. Where you can watch it.

A lot of houses have been forced into a bad setup that I've lived in. I had The last house you guys were at, the person in the song was like, I can't believe you're putting a second swinging TV in this gorgeous living room. And I was like, It's my house. Thank you for your commentary. This is the way the job is done. Without those two TVs, we're not in this house. Right.

That's right. I have five in my basement. It looks like a sports bar.

Can you really watch five basketball games at the same time? I think you can do it with football. I don't think you can do it with basketball.

Basketball is tough. Base is the best.

Base is awesome.

Yeah, you could have a million baseball games on.

Unless you really want to get in the pause thing with college football. If I'm like, Okay, be super locked in like a DJ. Speaking of Vegas.

Usually, though, it's like Peppa Pig in the middle and then whatever games I want to watch it.

How are those guys doing?

My kids? Yeah. They're pretty good, those guys. We still haven't... We still, probably, I'd say once a month, when I'm putting my son to bed, I put him to bed every night. But When I'm putting my son to bed and we're picking out books, he'll grab the LeBron book that you bought him, and I'll just put it back.

I'm like, no. I sent a LeBron book. Yeah.

We don't read that. That one doesn't get read.

I'm very I generated as a caring friend.

Yeah.

Hey, I got you a great gift.

Yeah, the Chris Paul. By the way- Yeah, it's a crystal hologram of Chris Paul holding Ryan Rusillo, like a baby. Have you not seen Is that a PFT?

No, I saw it. I saw it when you got it for you.

I moved again six months ago. When you're moving that last thing, you have to be mad at yourself. You have to be in a bad mood to move efficiently. You have to be like, Fuck this. I'm never looking at this. I haven't touched this in three years. This is fucking stupid. I don't need this paperwork from four houses ago. Who gives a fuck? Throw it all away. I was in one of those modes, just cleaning out the kitchen. I was just pissed how long it took me to clean out the other house before I moved. Then in my hands, like fucking the first Riders of the Lost Ark. I've got the Chris Paul, me holding him as a baby crystal on the stand with the light behind it. And I'm like, Fucking chuck this. No. And I didn't.

Thank God. You need it. Chris Paul might win a title.

I can't chuck it. Maybe a big three title.

Where are we at with Chris right now? Oh, no. Is it that bad now?

Well, he's hurt again, and Golden State isn't any good, and he's got a few hours to be traded. So I don't really know what the move is, because if you're trading for Chris Paul, you're a good team. So you're not trading a good player back. But then it's a $30 million salary. It's just really, really complicated to even make it happen. I'm not saying it can't, but I don't know what that deal is.

Back to the Clippers.

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All right, so is there any other team in the East?

Well, I feel like we were a little dismissive of just... This is always one of those deals where you go like, Oh, give the Knicks. I always hate the MVP conversation where it's like, Brunson deserves to be in it. Okay, cool. He's not winning. Yeah.

It's Russell Wilson. Yeah.

Congrats. He was in the conversation.

Yeah, we talked about him.

Everybody does that every year with this shit. It's this huge offensive thing that we haven't spent more time on it when it's like, Are you voting for him? You're like, Well, no. Okay.

But we should talk about it.

Yeah, we should talk about it.

We should talk about what if I did?

Who's coming in fourth? And that's how I feel about the Knicks right now. I think they're really good. I think they're tough as shit. I love the fact they have all these guards that play their asses off, that defend. To your point, like Tib's teams look a certain way. When I look at their top nine guys, I never go, Why is that guy getting minutes? Every guy serves a purpose. Really small guards. A lot of GMs will tell you in the playoffs, that's not really what I want, even though Brunson had a really good series against Miami. I just have a hard time believing that I'd be picking them to win four out of seven games against Boston. If they're both healthy, I'm not.

All right. So you said nine teams that you wouldn't be shocked if they won. Give us the real four, though.

We go five. It's Clippers, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee. And I would hold out a little hope for Phoenix or probably my five. Okay. See, if you go by age, which...

Well, Josh Josh Gidey.

They were also feisty in the playoffs last year, right?

No.

It took you a while. Yeah, it took me a while.

Talk about Josh Gidey.

No.

You're talking about France earlier. France has a much lower age of consent law.

I'm more into the ocean thing.

Okay. Wait, so international walkers?

Yeah.

All right, so-Formantera, south of Ibiza.

That's your speed.

Yeah, the Thunder a year away. Yeah, I just also- Which, Josh, you could say that, too.

Well, anyway. The youngest teams to win titles, their average age is 24, 20. It doesn't mean it's impossible. The Golden State team that wanted 15 was a really young team. Really young. Historically, I think a top 10, one of the top 10 youngest teams. If you take that team and then look at the other nine, seven are in the '70s, and then one's in 1980, and then maybe one's in 1950, or two are in the '50s, and three. It's been almost like a 40-something year thing that has happened one time.

The NBA is very consistent that to win a title, you do have to go through the wars. You need those scars. It doesn't happen. You don't see a team just all of a sudden, oh, now they just won a title. They have to get in the playoffs, lose heartbreaking payoff losses, and then fight, fight, fight. It happens every single time.

Yeah. Even when Boston won it in '08, it almost felt like a little ahead of schedule. Right.

But those guys also had been through their own personal wars.

Right. Garnett couldn't get out of the first round except for that one year. Pierce had all these disappointments despite the '02 run. It was really good. But I really believe in that. You can sit there and argue exceptions all you want, but history tells you it's pretty overwhelming that you need to go through some shit before you're going to be successful. Even with that, I don't like... Like, Sacramento, it's a great story. They're too small. I give you that Pelican's pick, I think, every time they play each other. Because I was like, I've seen it play. I'm like, You've got Harrison Barnes deciding whether or not he's going to play Brandon Ingram or fucking Zion. And then it's Valence Unis, who looks like Sabonis' older brother who doesn't like him. He's just Just so much bigger than him. So some of those teams that are nice stories, I think you need some big option for whether it's making Jokić's life a little bit harder, which is everybody talks about Minnesota having Gober and towns, They're like, Oh, they've got all this size. Look at his numbers against Minnesota. You don't look at them and go, Oh, wow, they've done this great job.

Maybe it's harder in those 38 playoff minutes. If you told me right now, Hey, I'm riding with Denver still. They're the same team, 35 and 16, 35 and 16. Offensive numbers, defensive numbers are basically identical. There's no Bruce Brown, but there's a couple of younger pieces where you're like, Hey, this certain night, a little bit more energy, a little bit more athleticism. I think they did a good job of at He's finding something that's potentially in play there. Murray, after that Laker series for him last year, I didn't have him in that group with everybody else because the point guard position is so deep. But the shit he did in that Laker series, that guy went crazy. So that would be maybe, Hey, can Jokuj hold up enough defensively? Okay, check that box. Is Murray really somebody who can carry them offensively? Yeah. As I'm talking them out here, they're the better health bet. But if you had said, Hey, by the way, when you get Kawhi, you're going to have a locked in Harding because he wants a new contract. Paul George is going to be healthy the whole time. And Kawhi is going to play like Toronto Kawhi.

That's the level he is at right now without having to be used as much because the other guys make it so much easier for him. It's going to be a lot of fun. It really is. And then I still think Phoenix on certain nights because I love Booker so much. I just fucking love the way that guy's built. I love the way he's... It almost sounds sensual.

He might be your new Chris Paul.

He might be. Yeah. I don't know if I can do that again. Can't get hurt again? I just don't know if I can do that twice in my lifetime. And Chris knows how I feel, so he's not... That's true. He's not worried about this.

Okay, so any other big NBA things that we should know or be aware of? I mean, the Mavs, what's Luca's awesome.

Luca's awesome, but... This is something we've already talked about a little bit, but is Luca so awesome? It's actually shitty for everybody else.

Heliocentric.

You came up with that word. Heliocentric, yeah. The history of the heliocentric offenses are really bad in the playoffs. You basically had one NBA Finals guy for a top 20 usage rate in the NBA history. It was Iverson. Now, as soon as I brought it up, then everybody that's into the numbers told me I was a fucking idiot because they found a number that proved that I was dumb. I wasn't trying to call anybody dumb, man. I was just trying to share information to make all of us better. The counter being that any heliocentric offense only has that because everybody else is so bad, and that's actually why. Look, I think basketball Back to some of these first things we talked about, it sucks watching somebody else have the ball all the time. If you're five or you're 35, it fucking sucks. All right? And so when Westbrook would put up those absurd numbers at the highest usage rates we've ever seen, that it's ever been tracked, when he No one MVP in 17, no one's ever had the ball for a season more than he did. More than Kobe's ever had the ball. No one had the ball that much.

And it took us a little while to be like, Wait, what happened there? And then between all the rebounds that he gets as a guard that nobody else in the league gets, and then all the other ones that gave him to him. Yeah, it sounds like I just like trying to tell the truth about some of this stuff. And by the way, his playoff history proves that whatever that was, it doesn't fucking work. Because for six months, you had everybody just watching him the whole time. And then, Oh, wait, they shut off drive in the playouts because everybody's locked in defensively. Now I have to shoot. I have to take bigger shots. Not to say that, obviously, no one else is not taking a shot the whole season. But when I look at Luka, here's the list. Jokić gives you the best chance on every possession of anybody in the league. He is a genius. Every single possession, you're like, Probably going to get a good look. Think about that. Think about having to defend that every night. I think Luka is number two, where it's like, if I needed a bucket, I might pick him over Jokuj because he can put it and drive a little bit better than Jokuj can.

I think SGA is on that list. Then that might be where it cuts off a little bit. Kawhi is playing at that again. We're like, Sir, you got to look at some of these numbers Kawhi is putting up. I'm like, Oh, my God. But with Luka, you go, All right, so do you just play five out in space it the whole time? Who's stopping anything at the rim? They'll have nights where they look like shit on defense. So I don't know what the perfect design is. Really, it comes down to Luka being like, How do you want this to go? And he's probably still a little too young. When he scored his 73, he was incredible. He could have had even more and forced it, but they had to still win the game. So he was making the right plays. He had a double team where I was like, he might force this three, and he threw out to an open teammate, and he hit the three. It was a huge three in that game. So he was still playing. For any shit he got for that game, you could argue his 73 is more impressive than Embiid's because Popovich just decided to fucking never double team Embiid the whole time until the very end.

But I worry about the Luca part of it where at some point you have to be able to not play on your terms to win. You have to-You got to go through the wars. Yeah, but you also have to go like, All right, the stats are fucking cool. You're always going to make... You're going to make any possible dollar that's even allowed under the CBA. Can you dial back a little of your shit to be a better team? And it might be too soon for him to figure that out. Yeah.

All right. My last question, Victor Wemenyama, how much of a bust is he?

Good question.

Thank you. He's incredible.

Notincredible bust?Not.

Like 5% bust?

No, not even.

How many points did Embiid score against him?

I don't even give a shit. He scored 1,000 against him. Wemenyama, everything about him this year, individually for him, is a massive success. He's more than what you could have hoped for. I mean that because of his personality. There's something very real about, you can do all the evaluation, you can talk to people, everybody can be on the same page. People can talk about this kid for three years, the guys that were really, really into it. I remember the first time, I don't think I can pronounce his name right. The first 10 times I tried to even talk about him. Then you're like, Okay, what's it going to look like when he actually is out there? He's incredibly smart. We know all the physical parts of it. I actually worry that I don't know how anybody can move well and not sustain two horrific leg injuries at some point. I'd be shocked if he didn't have that. But the way he carries himself through games, the way he talks with a very earnest thing that's not bullshit, he seems to be wired to be the face of that place. He's going to meet the expectations that are on him.

I don't know if he's going to end up being one of the five greatest players of all time. That still feels ridiculous. But his personality just seems so genuine in that he's been mentally built to take on the responsibility that he's going to have to take on for a franchise at a young age. Yeah.

I feel like San Antonio is a perfect spot for him, too.

Yeah. Part of me was like, Fuck them. You know, seriously. It's really like the Duncan thing because I remember being in college going like... And then my buddy's like, Dude, I fucking like Jónsi Billups, though. And you're like, No, no. I was devastated. I I think I went out that weekend, which is saying something in college. But it's probably, except for the time where they were having Sohan play point guard, and you were like, This isn't fun. I love Sohan, But you're like, when Benyama is like, Can I get a guard to get me the ball a little bit? He's going to be incredible. And then look, some former player will fire up a podcast, and that dope would be like, If he's so good, how come they weren't in the playoffs?

Yeah, I'll say that. Some idiot I will say that.

You said he's going to meet every expectation. Are we talking minimum four NBA titles? How many rings?

I don't know how many rings he's going to have. I'm going to never do that. Who are you talking to, man?

How many rings, Ryan? I want to know what my expectation should be.

I'll What side were you?

He's going to win three. Were you on Kaitlyn Clarke's side or Sheryl Swoops' side?Go.

Kaitlyn Clarke.Figures..

Although she did flop. She flopped against Ohio State. She flopped. Yeah, it was bad.

It was tough. When you say against Ohio State, you're really actually saying against an Ohio State fan.

Actually, we're Sabrina Ionescu podcast.

Yeah, I just found out who she is.

And you pronounced her name like zero hesitation.

They told me about her last week. Pretty cool.

I've known Sabrina for three years.

I said I. I didn't know who she was, so now I do.

I got to tell you, her kicks when they came out, I almost ordered them. I was like, Wait a minute.

Is that cool?

I saw them. Well, I think for you, your genre, yeah.I appreciate it, right?Yeah.Well.

Looking like a chick.I think you could do it.

All right, my last question, rowback question, robackquestion, rhoback. Com.

I'm not sorry, women's professional basket.

You're saying it if you haven't already decided.

No, you could easily pull it.

You're soft launching it to us.

Rowbackquestion, robackquestion, rhoback. Com, promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase. Use it as polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Rollback question, Ryan, what is a take that we have gone head-to-head with that I've been wrong and you've been Conference realignment. Okay. Because I was right about Jared Goff and Cliff Kingsbury.

No, I'm not giving you the Cliff one.

Yeah, Jerry is still out on Cliff.

I'd say that Jared Goff one with you and I is maybe the most contentious it ever got.

Yeah, because he's a friend.

Because you dropped that in the text article. I know, I did. Which I don't think- I was like, Hey, buddy, back off.

He's a friend.

Right. And then he got traded after he'd been in the Super Bowl. So I definitely felt like... But then- I feel like this is a tie. No. No?

He take the alliance, the NFC Championship game. He's a quiet leader.

I never had any win when I was like, I don't think my point was, I don't think Goff is the guy. And then I didn't get any... There was no point scored still when he gets traded from a team he was in a Super Bowl.

If the Alliance had drafted someone last year in his place, then you would have won.

Let me ask you this. What's more impressive? Winning a Super Bowl with the Rams or getting the Detroit Alliance to the NFC Championship Game?

Also, you might be right about two.

I'll throw that in there. Excuse me. I'm very happy for you and your good friend, Jared Goff. Yeah.

Because-pft is good friend, too.

When he was talking about how much it hurt him to be traded and everything, I was like, Man, good for him. And by the way, apparently, very good friend with Teddy Purcell, King's Manhattan Beach legend. So if he likes Teddy, then it must mean Goff is the greatest dude ever. All right, there we go. Because anybody who comes to town is like, Can you call that Teddy guy?

Is that the guy who stole my money on the Super Bowl Squares?

No, that was Diamond Dave. Okay. If you give money to Diamond Dave, that's on you.

Well, there's a two-week window where if you say you want to do these Super Bowl Squares, I'm like, yes, and I never follow up. My barber in Brooklyn took $500 for me every single year, no matter what. I never saw a number.

My favorite, when you did...

Never knew what my numbers were.

When you did it with Diamond Dave, it was within seconds, already understood it was a terrible transaction. Yes. Because it was really late. It was really late. Really late. You were super well behaved, for the record. But it was really late, and it was a core group of us. It was like, Yeah, I guess I'll buy some squares. It was like, How's this all going to work? And Dave was like, I don't know. Just talk to Rosillo about it or something. And we're like, You may as well just lit that money on fire.

But I had to do it.

You had to do it. You never know. I also Venmoed Big Cat 100 bucks. I was like, I'll cover half of it as an insurance policy. I see. $100 deductible, you're out, but I'll give you back 100. Because I was like, Yeah, do it. I'm on it. We'll figure it out. And immediately, there was no record of it. It's a good scam. So that's a different guy. No, when guys come to Manhattan Beach, they'll be like, Can you call that Teddy? I'm like, Do you not want to hang out with me? Do you want to put you two guys on a thread? So apparently, he's very close to Goff. So it made me... All right, I'll give that one to you. But I was... I just gave you two. That's a three-one, down three-one.

Yeah, I came.

That was a big comeback. That was a 23, Falcon's Pats.

Yeah, that was a big comeback.

But conference realignment, we actually called you out the other day on the pod. Oh, really? Yeah. You have a very mediocre approval rating on the pod after the Kyle thing.

I almost broke up your podcast.

You only like Conferentry Alignment.

Well, actually, Kyle almost broke up your podcast by DMing me saying, Hey, can I hang out with Ursillo?

Yeah, but he's a salt of the Earth guy. He's a salt of the Earth guy.

I like him. We've hung out.

Hey, you The Scattering Report on You is very simple. Top line, all about content.

Don't DM me. Right. Ask me to hang out with the guy you work with every day.

Content first, friendship second.

Well, I mean... What? If Hank DMed you saying, Hey, do you think that I could hang out with Big Cat? I would expect you to bring it up, bro.

Yeah. I'll be like, Let me make a video.

That's a good callback, Ryan.

But wait, what was your-I think it's over now.

What were you saying I just think you tried to tell me like, conference realignment because the fucking-Oh, yeah.

Because Arkansas at one point left.

No, my point has been very clear about Conference Realignment from the beginning is I don't like it, but I also am going to always watch I don't care.

I would agree.

And people don't think about basketball because I do love college basketball, and the new Big 12 is going to fucking rock. Arizona versus Kansas every year, twice a year. Yes.

Yeah, I don't care about that. Yeah.

I used I admit that.

I used to care. Once the Big East got destroyed in the way it got destroyed and it not being the same thing, I just was never going to be a fan. But I felt like because Wisconsin still can play all those teams in that division, which... I mean, you should hate it because now you'll actually have to play teams in your division.

Oh, I'm very aware. Our schedule is brutal now.

It'll be funny when it's like five SEC schools and six Big Ten schools, and then Florida State.

I Would rather it not happen, I'm going to still watch every Saturday.

I'm still going to watch, but I don't know why you would think it's cool now that Ohio State, Michigan. I'll watch it, and if it's a good game, I'll enjoy the playoff games. But Ohio State, Michigan, the loser, it's like, okay, cool. See you in a couple of weeks. Why is that good?

That part probably sucks.

I don't like that there's this many NFL teams in the playouts. I think it's stupid. Oh, yeah.

You hate it.

I'm big on, I know it's going to shock you, I like leaving people out of things.

Yeah, you hate the expanded playoffs.

I hate expanded anything.

Yeah, the play-in. I don't like that.

I don't like the playing games for the NCAA tournament. I especially don't like it when it's somebody that wins their conference that has to then play in the play-in tournament. Not the NBA.

I'm talking about like-I don't like the NBA play-in. I don't like the NBA play-in just because as a fan of a team that has an owner who literally will just stand and be like, Hey, we made the play-in tournament. And be like, Isn't that good, guys? It's a cop-out.

It's like the bowl guy. Like, Hey, played in bowl games four to five years. What are you talking about?

It's a cop-out for owners now to be like, We made the playoffs.

I'm thinking about joining a country club, and if they go, Hey, no. I'll be like, I respect that. I'm not even disappointed. I like how you guys operate.

Was that the old quote? Like, I would never want to join a club that would accept me as a member? Yeah.

The other great one is from Lords of the realm. Great book on baseball finance. If you want to dig into that. Oh, yeah. Sounds great. Yeah, Marvin Miller read about it, and the guy goes, What's the point of being rich if nobody knows? I looked at Ferraris today, so I'm going with that.

Did you really?

Well, yeah, the guy was hazing me. I did. Every time I see one, I'm like, Fucking A.

Jake, I would like the blog from this interview to be, Ron Rusillo owns a boat with a TV and is currently shopping for Ferraris.

All right, do it. I approve.

Why would you join a country club? You don't play Oh, I have been golfing.

I even took lessons the other day. I got to get the hands inside.

You're letting another man teach you how to swing a golf club?

Well, apparently, I'm not able to figure out on my own. I just swing as hard as I possibly can because the guy was like... No way. Yeah, I know. I'm talking. The guy's your club speed's like PGA level. I'm sure they did.

But if you pay me $500, I can fix this for you.

Right. It was just going to get my hands inside, and then I got to throw it out. He was like, remember that Tiger Joe? I'm like, I do remember that Tiger Jil. He's like, We're going to work it for a while. I love the guy that I took a lesson with. He was great. Fucking New York guy. Long Island, I think. Terrific. Shout out to Matt. Shout out Matt. He's looking to get maybe an audio gig. Okay. Yeah, maybe for you, his resume. Yeah, we'll take him. I like how he looks at me that way where I'll be like, he just goes like, Don't you work somewhere? Signed. Yeah. No, there was a guy. I can't tell. It was a little Captain Phillips-ish who was driving the taxi. And he was listening to this just absolute... I thought I was in a torture chamber of the audio, and I don't know what language it was. I think I even sent it to you. Yeah, I was on doing radio. It was brutal. It was 30 straight minutes of this. Hold on, let's see.

Okay.

30 minutes. It's straight. I was going to throw up. I was like, Just drop me off. He's like, What number is it? I was like, I don't fucking care. Let me out of the car.

He's probably listening to like, Sports Talk radio, but in his own language.

They were doing, Give us the nine clubs that you think can still win a title. And there was a Ferrari dealership right when I demanded to get out. And I was like, This feels like a sign. And then I went in there and was like, Holy shit. These things are pretty sick. And then I sat in one. It was great, too. The guy was So this would be your first Ferrari, sir. I was like, You're good. You're very good. He's like, How are you getting back to Los Angeles? Have you canceled your flight yet? I don't think I'll do it. All right, well, Ryan-I don't think I can afford it.

To go full circle, Trigg sent me your cover art, and it's Rosillo Machinist.

Oh, yes. Christian Bale is one of my favorite actors.

As skinny as possible.

Empire of the Sun. Did you guys ever see that when Bale was a kid?

Yeah, I did not see that one.

It's a great movie.

I just say yeah to every movie.

That is...

I actually read the book, Ryan. Sure.

The dick pick from Ryan Whitney.

We share. Yeah. Ryan, thank you as always.Thank.

You, guys. Thanks, Ryan.

We can't wait to talk NBA playoffs when we get to that spot in June. In June. But this was your NBA preview. I think we hit it all.

I think we did. I never really want to talk NBA with you guys. I know. It was perfect. I think it was good.It was perfect.

It was perfect. Okay, we're going to kick it to ourselves in a second for the lottery ball wrapping up. Thank you, everyone, for dealing with the Zoom episode. I feel refreshed from my vacation. I felt like there was no better time to take a vacation than after that '41 free throw thing because I don't know about you guys, but I slept pretty much all day Wednesday and felt normal again on Thursday. But it was a good vacation. You guys feel good? Rested?

I feel great. I feel great. I went home. I didn't shoot any free throws, but I rebounded a little bit. So I was a little sore. My hands were sore, so I heavily moisturized my hands. There's some great lotion on Tuesday. Slept for about eight hours during the day, woke up, had dinner, back to sleep for another eight hours after that. It was fantastic.

Yeah. So we'll be back in studio on Tuesday. I think we're going to have our good friend Paul Bissenet on for Wednesday's show, talk some hockey. We're post-football world, but we do have the combine coming up. And again, thank you everyone dealing with us doing a Zoom show for our vacation. Let's kick it to ourselves in the lottery ball. All right, numbers. Eighteen. We'll be back in studio together on Wednesday.

Eight.

Twenty. Seventy-seven.

What if it goes back to back? Fifty-five. This might be dumb.

You feel like you got it?

This might be dumb. Why? 99, 77, 55. 67.

Love you guys. I'm talking away.

I don't know what I'm to say I'm saying it anyway.

Today is a holiday to find you.

Shining away.

I'll be coming for your love of things.