Pardon My Take - Ryen Russillo, NBA Playoffs, Fyre Fest And Top 5 Coaches That Could Be Number 1

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Tax Day is here, until Monday. We talk NBA Playoffs and have an official Whompin bet for Celtics/Nets. (00:02:26-00:16:38) Kershaw getting pulled (00:18:13-00:23:26) and the Simmering Notre Dame vs LSU feud plays out on social media. (00:23:28-00:31:47) Ryen Russillo joins the show to talk NBA Playoffs, Minnesota celebration, and we draft top 5 coaches that could be number 1. (00:32:47-01:46:38) We finish with Fyre Fest of the week. (01:47:51-02:09:15)You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, we got our good friend Ryan Recillo. We're going to talk some NBA playoffs with him, go through all of it. We also have a special draft that you'll want to hear at the end of it. We're going to talk play in games. We're going to preview the weekend. Awesome sports weekend coming up. We got a little Kershaw. We got a little Firefest. A great, good Friday. Like you said, it's a literally a good Friday show. Shout out Christ. Yeah, shout out Jesus. And we are brought to you by our friends at Game Time. NBA playoffs have arrived and this playoffs season we're getting our tickets.

With the Game Time app, we will be at the Celtics vs. Nets Monday, April 25th. You should join us. You should get the Game Time app because buying the tickets on the Game Time app is super easy and took less than a minute and they delivered directly to our phones. Also, for the Final Four, I was able to share a ticket easily with PFT. It was that easy. So the Game Time app is the best and cheapest place to get last minute tickets. I think we're going to do some giveaways. So download it. If you don't have the Game Time app right now, you won't be eligible for the free tickets we might be giving out soon. So download it, download it, download it. Also come hang with us, you know, just buy tickets on Monday and you'll see us. Me, PFT, Hank, Liam, Frank the Tank,

Spider, Who's Who? out at the Nets Celtics game. Download the Game Time app. Right now go to the account tab, create a login and redeem code PMT for $20 off your first purchase terms apply. Download Game Time last minute tickets lowest price guaranteed. Go download that Game Time app right now and use that code PMT for $20 off your first purchase. Okay, let's go. It's part of my take. Welcome to part of my take presented by the Game Time app. If you want cheap tickets, last minute tickets, go download it right now, redeem the code PMT for $20 off your first purchase. We'll be at the Nets Celtics game on Monday night in Brooklyn. You go go to the Game Time app,

buy some tickets, come join us, use that code PMT for $20 off your first purchase. Today is Friday, April 15th, Tax Day and Billy is back. Have you done your taxes, Billy? Because we actually, we just said Tax Day and Billy just let out a very real, oh fuck. Yeah, no, actually Billy's right. Yeah, taxes are technically due on Monday, so you have the whole weekend to do it. So are you, are you, have you started your taxes? No, absolutely. Well, I've downloaded the documents. Okay, got them right there. So yeah, been talking about it for like two weeks. I know on Saturday, you said, I believe you said on Saturday, I'm doing my taxes today. I don't know if that's misquoted, but no, the process of doing your taxes is complaining for two months that you

have to do these taxes and then you get around to it. So Billy's still got a couple days. How do you think it's, how do you think it's going to go? Mr. William football versus the IRS? Because you did have the fight. This is the fight here. That's really why I'm, my brain's in a pretzel. Yeah, so maybe that was already, that was that money already spent? No, that's money put in different Roth IRAs that I thought I didn't have to touch ever. But now you got to pay taxes. So now I'm kind of crazy. You don't get taxed when you take it out of a Roth IRA, right? So when you make it, you still have to. Yeah. Yeah, I did this thing where basically I got it and I just put it away so I could never touch it. Smart, but not smart when the IRS comes for it.

Freezing your credit card. You ever do that move? Back in the day, you put your credit card in a glass of water and just put in your freezer, just so that you just use your credit card for a weekend. Like you literally freeze. Yeah, literally. I literally freeze my credit card. You sanctioned yourself. Yeah. When I was like, all right, I don't have money to go out this weekend. Don't even try it. Billy, if you take a flight to the Ukraine, then you could probably write that off on your taxes. Well, the thing is what's really taking me a long time is that because we live in this new world where like we work from home a lot, you can like write off anything. What year is it? What? And what, you, we work here. I know, but like sometimes we zoom in. Oh, I see what you're

saying. Yeah, you work from home a lot. You can write in. And part of your job, I don't know if people know this little peek behind the curtain. Part of Billy's job, PFD and I have mandated it. It's actually legally binding. He has to be able to squat 225 at all times. Exactly. I have a lot of like write-offs. Yeah, you can write off a certain percentage of your house. What about Minci's house? Can you write his off too? He's a dependent. So that's the big one. Yeah. And then like Wi-Fi and stuff. So I have a lot of expenses to write off. That's where I kind of am trying to do my tax the best. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel confident in William football versus the IRS this year. We're going to go get them. We have a great sports weekend though. Let's talk about that. It's going

to be, I love the first weekend of the NBA playoffs because you get eight games back to back to back. It's start, it feels like a big event. Starts early on Saturday. Starts early on Saturday. Hank, our games are on Sunday. I think you're what, 330 on 630. Did you hear the news about Ben Simmons? Is he back? Looks like I was right. I think I nailed this one because Ben Simmons is coming back. Wow. So they've just kept him on ice. They throw it. They put him in a glass of water, put him in the freezer. Ben Simmons is ready to come back. And yeah, he doesn't really have to do anything. All he has to do is be out on the court on defense and then just pass the ball in offense. That's it. This could be old takes exposed, but I think that's better for the Celtics.

It is going to be weird because that, there's part of Ben Simmons, uh, skill set never played with them. Right. He's never played with them, but he doesn't play offense regardless. I do think he's still, they are a terrible defensive team training camp. Yeah. No, it's, it's going to be, it will be a great story. They're on the same page and like the third or fourth quarter, like you can't, it'll be really funny. You can't reference or like, you know, talk about practice. Like it's like, uh, what if Ben Simmons comes back and it's just wet from three. They will be amazing. Think about it. Here's the best part about Ben Simmons. Simmons coming back with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. He will be open. Like they will leave him wide open. So watching him, I don't even know if Ben

Simmons has thought about this, that like he's going to be standing wide open many times and everyone's going to be like, shoot, shoot, shoot. And he won't be able to shoot. I have, uh, I'm not making it series of the year because the juice is too big. It's minus one 52, which I don't, I don't feel comfortable making a, uh, game of the year on that type of price. I still think the Celts are going to win. PFT has declared a wamping, which has to be five games or less. Well, so you just declared five games or less. We haven't even discussed it. Six is not a wamp. You don't get to declare the intention of the wamp. I think it could be six games if that's not a wamping. Well, wait, let's, let's talk about it. Six games. I think it could

be a wamping if they blow them out and they're four wins and then they're two, the two losses are close games. Like I'm talking four points or less. So they have to win each game that they win by 15 by 10. That's, I think that's a wamp. And if they win four games by 10 and then lose two by four or less, I think you just got to be confident in your prediction that it's a gentle wamping is five gentlemen's wamp. Wamping has, I think a wamping has to be five. That's what a, if you see a game, a series that goes six, you're not like, Oh man, they killed. Okay, let's compromise four games. That's a wamp. That's absolutely a five games. That's a wamp. Six games could be a wamp if one of the losses comes in overtime. How about that? One overtime

loss. Let's compromise. I think, I think six is a competitive series. Like that's a, if you see a six game series, I think if I got to put my nuts on the line for a wamp, you got to put your nuts on the line for a season of the year. It's a series of the year. It's minus 152. That's, that's crazy. You can't have people paying juice like that on a series of the year bet. So I just, I can't, I, you can't, because then I could just be doing game of the years minus 250. Okay. Six games, if both losses go to overtime, if both losses go to overtime, and it's a six game series, I'll, I'll grant you wamping. Okay. There we go. Hank, are you okay with that? It's got to be 15, not 10. Well, thanks to boss. So, okay. Okay. So fifth,

each win has to be over 15. The point differential has to be 50 plus. 50 plus. Total. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. There you go. That would be a wamping. I'm very excited for these playoffs though. And I'm also, I'm selling myself back in on the Warriors. I don't know why, but I am. They got like, they got all the guys. It's, I just don't want it. I think it's going to be Sun's bucks again. I don't want it to be, I want it to be, I want something new, something fresh. So I think that, and I do think the bucks are going to make it to the finals. So I'm actually, I'm looking forward to the Pelicans Clippers. On Friday night. Yes. I'm actually like excited about that. Our guy CJ went,

blasted off in their face. Step back to freedom. He, what, 27 points in the first half. That was an electric crowd in New Orleans. Awesome, awesome scene. I agree with you. That's going to be a great game. Jake pointed out earlier that the name, so the Smoothie King Arena obviously is where the Pelicans play. They call it the Blinder. That's great. I like, I liked when they, the magic, when they played at Amway and you could call it the pyramid. They didn't want us to say that one. The, in Houston, the juice box. Yep. That was good. Or no, was that Tampa? Minute Maid. Was it Tampa? Tampa? Yeah, it's Tropicana field. Tropicana was the juice box. Yeah. Minute Maid was the, the fraud zone. That's the Astros. Yeah. Hank, are you feeling,

give us a, a thought on how you're feeling? I think, I mean, if six games is a wamping, I think the Celtics are going to wamp the Nets. Oh, we get a wamp off. Nice. Nice. You want to put some stakes on it, Hank? Sure. All right. You have to get a cat. So do you. A cat bet? If a wamping goes either way? And you're not going to get a cat. I think if you're doing a cat wamping bet, it has to be. This is why like we always stop the cats because I was willing to take you guys where I was scared. That was the fatal flaw in the cat bet system. No. Whatever you're going to say, no. No, no, I have a good, the Wampus cat. Whoever loses has to do a Wampus cat. What's that? That's where you take like a big Wampus cat

dip and put it in. What? You guys never heard of the Wampus cat? No. This is where TikTok meets reality. No, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. So it's like, it's a Coach Harborough. No, that's a horseshoe. You go all the way around. The Wampus cat's like a full. Yeah, I'll find the video. Yeah. I'm in. All right. So either team wants then a whole tin of dip in their mouth. All right. And you have to hold it for like 25 minutes. Are you puke? Or are you? I'll puke. Okay. Fine. Deal. Hand shake has to be a wamping. So it's got to be, you know what, I'll get it on a tube because I do think the cells are better teams. So I'll be on your side. All right. Billy, you want to be on the net or Jake? Anyone? Liam? No, Liam's a Celtics fan. Jake,

you want in? I want Jake in. Jake, you're on the side. Come on, Jake. You love the nets. Done. It's not, no six game bullshit. It's five games either way. It's got to be five games either way. What about six games and then the margin of victory is 54. No, let's just go five. A real Wampus five games or less. Like that's agreed. Let's just make it straight for a split. Yeah, put in Boston. Okay. But you're, no, but all right. So Jake's in on PFT side. I love it. Peer pressure. I love it. Billy, you have to just do it with regardless. Yes. No, but I, yeah, actually like it took me a really long time to quit dip. Is it cool? Is it cool if I not? Yeah. All right. Good. You can do it with, with a Zen. Just an entire thing. Black Buffalo.

Black Buffalo. No, no, no tobacco. I really don't want to do this. All right. Well, you're in. Root for no wamps. Yeah. Root for at least six games. Actually, this is perfect for Jake because you just get to root for a good series. Yes. You're the true journalist. Yeah. All right. Other series. I don't know what other series everyone's like. That's by far the marquee series. I have a substantial amount of money on the Pelicans tonight. So when you get into the playoffs now, what's up with Zion doing like 360 dunks in practice and just looking awesome on the sidelines? His chain was so big last night. It looked so cool. He's only 21. Yeah. You don't want to rush him back for a nine seed. Yeah. But I mean,

if you get to the playoffs, I guess they're going to lose to the Suns anyway. This is kind of, I think if they win tonight, which God willing they do, I think he might come back. Okay. And the Cavs are going to maybe beat the heat. Cavs will beat the heat. I love it. That's by serious. Salty that he keep being the Celtic in the playoffs. It doesn't matter who they're playing. I'm dreading the Bucks Bulls. It's going to be painful to watch. I was actually saying, I can't remember who I said to you, but if you re-ranked all eight teams in the Eastern Conference playoffs like current form, the Bulls might be the eighth. The reseed of it. Yeah. In current form, in current form, they're playing that back. You could make a case for that. Maybe,

maybe the Hawks. And I say all this. I say all this. And I know that once the ball is tipped, I'll be all the way in and being like, Hey, we can win this series, but I'm, I'm down going it. The vibes are low. I'll be fully, I'll admit it. The vibes are low. Yeah. I mean, this, this is not the year. It was never going to be the year. Oh, January. I told myself it was you had like two months where you're like, you know what, this team, this team could make some noise. Yeah. I've got a series that will suck. I'm ready to predict right now. A series that I care about the least. Jazz Mavericks. That series is going to suck. Especially if Lucas. Yeah. Lucas, Lucas not going to be a hundred percent. That's the only reason why you would watch that series

with any sort of interest. If you're outside of Utah or outside of Dallas, it's going to be boring. I have a series that I'm very interested in as well. It's Toronto Philly just because James Harden in the playoffs is always a great story. Yep. Like we could have James Harden falling on his face and Ben Simmons fucking up at the same time, which would just be beautiful. Because then both fan bases won't know what to root for. And Twitter will be a blaze. Yep. Yeah. It's going to be great to watch. And then the T-wolves. I think I'm, I think I'm just going to be rooting for the T-wolves from afar. Not actually rooting, but like, Hey, this is fun. I want to see Pat Beverly who got fined, which I think actually it makes, it makes him stronger. He's like Hulk.

He's going to have probably the over under for Pat Bev technical fouls this series. I want to say is probably in my own mind, two and a half against him. And then he's going to draw over under three and a half technical fouls. He will be responsible for six technical fouls. Yeah. I'll put it this way. If Pat Bev can draw more text than he himself receives, I think the Minnesota T-wolves win this series. Watch out. Watch out. Yeah. He got a $10,000 fine for, I think, inappropriate language after the game in the press conference, but I really do think it's like the best thing that could happen to the Timberwolves just keeps fueling him. He's now mad at everyone still. I went back. I looked up some of Pat Bev's history because I

didn't know what his path to the NBA was. Yeah. He was like the best high school player in the country. Yes. He was playing. He averaged, I think, 37 points a game in Chicago. When he was coming up, he was an All-American. And then. Emasculated both Jordan's sons. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Dude was like a legendary scorer, gets to college, plays at Arkansas. And then he like, there was some sort of test cheating scandal and he didn't get drafted mostly because he got kicked out of school or he got kicked off the team for a little bit for that. Then he went overseas and played in Eastern Europe for like four seasons. So that's, he's got a big chip on his shoulder. He's a dog. He's a dog now. I love Pat Bev. I want, I want, I'm rooting for the Timberwolves. I'm officially declaring

my, my Timberwolves bandwagon fandom. Wow. For the first round. Okay. Yeah. I'm, like I said, I'm a far. I'm, I'm like, oh, I like that team. You know how it's like, you don't really have anything going in this series, but like, ah, even though John Moran is awesome. Um, what else should we, oh, we have some other things we got to talk about. Let's do a Chevy Silverado. It's the all new Chevy Silverado. It's almost draft day, which we will be getting into draft content very soon. Having our usuals on to talk about the draft. So it's almost draft day. Everybody's got an idea what their team needs. If you're looking to give your own team a winning season, you need the new 2022 Chevy Silverado from the popular LT model all the way up to the

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and dependable as the people who drive them. If you're a truck person, guy or girl, you got to be a Chevy Silverado person. Put some muscle on your team, make your story a strong one in the new 2022 Chevy Silverado. What's better than football and trucks? Nothing. Chevy Silverado 2022 Chevy Silverado. It is the best. Kershaw, that sucks. Should have kept them in. Baseball, just, and I know Kershaw did a good job afterwards of saying, oh, I had a shortened spring training like everyone did and I'm older. What the fuck, dude? Perfect games. There's 23 perfect games. 80 pitches too. Yeah. 80 pitches and I don't want to compare them to Matt Stafford because that's been done once or twice before. Or Scotty Scheffler. But Matt Stafford pushed his trainers away so that

he could stay in a game and win the game for the Detroit Lions. To beat the Browns. To beat the Browns. That is maybe the least consequential thing that you could possibly do in an NFL career as a quarterback. Clayton Kershaw was like, you know what? Yeah, I'll come out of the game. This is where my inner meathead comes into play. Oh, yeah. Where I'm like, I would fight every coach that tried to take me out of the game. You'd have to cut my throat with a razor blade and then you'd have to take a sledgehammer out and put a steak through my heart to get that ball out of my hands. Yeah. Perfect games are probably the rarest thing in sports. It has to be statistically, right? Fan gluing themselves to the court. Yeah. Although recently, more. The game's changed.

Yeah, right. There will be copycats. But I think we all agree, no hitters are nothing. I don't care about no hitters anymore. Right. They're cool. You know what I like is the platoon no hitter. I like that when teams use like six different pitchers. If your team has a no hitter, it's cool. Any other no hitter don't even like wake me up for. If anyone else, it doesn't matter about your team. Anyone else has a perfect game. I'm glued in. I want to be like watching. That's cool. 23 over like in the history of baseball. Some guys make their whole career off it. Oh, it's amazing. Shout out to Alice. Yeah, girlfriend. But yeah, that's like, that's, that's it. Like you get thrown out. Perfect game. That's it. You're good for life. You'd be like, I did something

only 22 other guys did. It's the coolest part of when there's a Hall of Fame induction ceremony in the list of pitchers stats. And then they say, perfect game, April 13th, 2022. One day, I was perfect. Yep. And so yeah, that sucked. We also had the Philly guy who threw, if you missed the clip, the Mets went to Philly. I think they won two out of three. And a Mets fan was videotaping the last out or whatever it was. I think it was the last out, basically like flexed in front of all the Philly fans in the, in the outfield. The Philly fan just didn't even flinch, grabbed the kid's phone and threw it into the outfield. And it was, I love it because I am long standing. I love the city of Philadelphia and I just want the city of Philadelphia to embrace

who they are at all times. And I watched that move and I was like, that guy did nothing wrong for the city of Philadelphia. That to me tells me that that person has never spent any time in Philadelphia before. Yeah. In Philadelphia, if you put your phone in somebody's face, it's going to get thrown. Yes. Or usually like maybe slapped out of your hand. That's step one. Level two of Philly fandom is you just take it and you throw it onto the playing field. That's, that, that move plays. I loved it. I loved it. Like I also, there's nothing more annoying than a person walking up to you with a camera in your face that's recording. Right. That's, that move is like, that's assault. Yes. I, I agree. Yeah. If you, if you, we talked about it a

couple of days ago, like the bubble that there is that you can't get into someone's face with the phone. I just love when Philly fans embrace it. And I, like, I know that in this day and age, there's been a pushback about fans being assholes. That should not apply for the city of Philadelphia. Like Philadelphia gets a pass where if you go there and you're sitting the bleachers, you know that you might get punched in the face. You might get puked on. And if you complain about it, don't go to Philadelphia. Yes. That's it. Yeah. It's like the rules surrounding Harambee's cage. Yes. Do not approach, do not try to pet. If you do, bad things will happen. Yeah. So I would know that the second you enter the Philadelphia city limits, like this is, I'd actually go as far

to say that Philadelphia might be my number one sports town. It's, they, they, Hank. Anything? But Hank knows that's the thing is like you would never be in Philadelphia, even given your extensive background and the love that you've shown for Philadelphia. You would never, like, take your phone out and then put it in somebody's face without the expectation that it could be chucked. Yeah. That's true. That's fair. You didn't like this move? Thought it was scumbag? No, I thought it was a, I thought it was a funny move. It was very funny. I, I, I respect the fuck out of it. That, the Met's kid was annoying. Like, he probably got his phone back. Yeah. And he probably got a great story. I mean, if the video was still going, that's like the greatest

video of all time. But best sports town is a stretch. That's awesome. What would you say is number one? Sacramento. City of champions, Boston. Two, I mean, New York hasn't won their terrible sports town. They haven't won shit. Probably LA. LA's pretty good. There's a lot of sports fans in LA. LA's big time, big time. Boston, LA. Big time. Jacksonville. That's Hank. It's actually a great move to do that as like a Celtics fan to just say LA is a great sports town. The Lakers are the second best team in history of the NBA because it makes all of your defeats against them look even better. Yeah, true. The other thing I had was, well, Aaron Rodgers should go to jail because he tried to kill a kid, but that's whatever. Did you guys see this league between Notre

Dame and LSU that's, that's, that's kind of simmering right now? Brian Kelly's breaking out the big guns. I did see that, that Coach O went up to Notre Dame. So it was like, it was a back and forth that was kind of subtle that if you had to like really be tuned in to pick up on it. So Coach O went to Notre Dame. He said he was, he was just visiting Indiana with his sons, of course, who doesn't this time. I would honestly believe that though. Yeah. Like Coach O, like Coach O, he probably his vacations are just going to different college campuses that have good football programs. Yes. And he, he does have a history with Marcus Freeman. He tried to hire him last year before he got fired. But he went, he went there, he gave a speech. He's like, you guys have the

team, you have everything. You have the coaching staff to win a national title. And then I don't know, maybe it was like a little bit after that. Brian Kelly basically had an interview where he was like, the resources weren't there to like win the national title at Notre Dame. And then Notre Dame Twitter account posted a picture of the practice saying no excuses. And then Brian Pollion, who is part of Brian Kelly's staff, who went from Notre Dame to LSU, tweeted out something like LSU has the best nutritional facility in all of America, like blessed to have this, these type of resources. Then on top of all of that, there was a deleted Instagram story by Brian Kelly, where I'll read it to you. It was a tweet, it was a screen grab of a tweet from a Pepe LaFrog,

was it Pepe the Frog? Pepe the Frog. Pepe the Frog, who said, everyone who's connected with sources inside the current program knows Notre Dame AD is retiring in two years, along with President Jenkins. Jack wanted to please the people so he didn't search for a coach and hired Marcus. Hope he made the right choice, but I doubt it. Brian Kelly. Brian Kelly is amplifying that. He shared this tweet on his Instagram story, then quickly deleted it. We need to get them scheduled. I don't know who can do that right away, but get them scheduled right now. Yeah, Catholics versus Cajuns. I mean, sell the t-shirts right now. Done. I just love this. It's like two football cultures that couldn't be more different.

Well, and then Brian Kelly, he's going on like a full court press in terms of his public image right now. So there was an article that came out saying, actually, Brian Kelly's fit in really well in Louisiana. Sorry. It was by Brian Kelly. It was like, I'm always going to remember this article back in like 2014, when Greg Siano was out of football after being fired by the Bucks, and he had, I think it was Andrew Brandt following around, or maybe it might have been somebody else that Sports Illustrated, just being like, look what a great guy Greg Siano is. Look what a good family person he makes breakfast. These coaches, they have like a network of guys they can call up to write these glowing articles. So the article about Brian Kelly in Louisiana was,

that's really actually how Brian Kelly usually pronounces the word family. There's nothing different about it at all. This is like the Knicks, they had a disappointing season, and Leon Rose, who's running the whole operation, didn't talk to the media at all, and then did an interview with Mike Breen, who's the voice of the Knicks, and was like, yep, talk to the media. That's it. We need, this is like our hope for Jake needs to become a true big J, so whenever we fuck up and have a scandal, we can just be like, sit down with Jake Marsh. He just lobbed softballs at us, we knock him out of the park. He's our fixer. I like that, Jake. But yeah, Brian Kelly actually does have a Southern accent. He wanted to clear that up despite the fact he was raised in New

England, and then coached in the Midwest forever. So clearing that up. Also, the food is not too spicy for him down there. He wanted to say that. It's not spicy enough. Well, so what I've learned recently, given what you just shared with me about the Instagram story, where he's taking a screenshot of a tweet, first of all, I'm shocked that Brian Kelly has Instagram. I don't know, it was probably someone else who's running his account, because it was deleted pretty quickly. I would love to see what his Explorer page looks like. Yeah, it's, it's, but there's no way. You know, it'd be funny if it was just a bunch of those like 360 cam videos that he did, but just different people doing it. He's just addicted to that style of video. So he talked about his dancing

as well. He was like, my dancing wasn't great. Yeah. Thank you, Brian. He lost that recruit. But yeah, he did, he did. But so he's, he's more online than I ever thought that Brian Kelly would be. Because not only is he doing this thing with his Instagram stories, but he's also directly addressing us, the internet with all the things that we've said about him over the last like three weeks or three months, however long he's been down there. I still love LSU. I will always love LSU. I love the campus. I love Mike the Tiger. I love the people that go to school there. I cannot root for Brian Kelly though. I feel the same way. It's gonna be different this year. LSU's the best. Like the people are incredible. The people of Louisiana are the best. Brian Kelly's

just not a likable guy to root for. I'm still LSU guy. Oh, there you go. It's my team. You're all the way in. It's my college team. Yeah. I mean, I still like LSU, but it's not the same. Even with Les though. It's not the same going from coach O to Brian Kelly. Brian, it's the definition of like, you love your mom. She leaves. Your new stepmom comes in. Yeah. And she's got totally different rules. Wicked witch from the west. You can't, yeah, you can't go out. Pat, your curfew used to be midnight. Now it's 10. I obviously didn't go to college. She's not getting stuck. Why is that obvious? Don't put yourself down. So I was a less guy than obviously when coach O went. You're no different than Steve Jobs.

College dropout to the fucking C suite. Sure. Hanks the college version of the Trill Ballons avatar. I like Duke. I like LSU football. And teams from Massachusetts. UNC women's soccer. Minnesota Duluth hockey. UConn basketball. Oh, Denver hockey actually. Yeah. They won the title. But yeah, this whole, this whole back and forth is the best. Anything else, anything else anyone wants to get off their chest before we get to Ryan? I agree with Gabe Kapler. What he's saying about the unwritten rules. You see what he was talking about. Oh, the bunts. So yeah, he was playing. They're playing the Giants against the Padres, I believe. And the Giants were up 12 to three,

I think in like the eighth inning. Yep. And they bunted to get on base. Yep. And the Padres flipped out about that because that's what you do in baseball. If you're getting the shit kicked out of you, then you cry about how the other team isn't winning with class. Gabe Kapler is saying, we don't follow the unwritten rules here. And his explanation actually makes a lot more sense. Like I'm always team. I love the discussion about the unwritten rules. Wait, he said that he was, they don't follow it. He got mad at his guy. No, he's saying that we don't follow it because he says that if you're playing in a series against another team, you try to win the series. Right. So why not like try to just get as many runners on base where I put as much stress on the other

team as you can. That's weird though, because his instant reaction, I don't know if you saw, he kind of, it looked like he went over and reprimanded the player. He might have done that in the moment, but then in the media, I agree with you and Gabe Kapler. Like they're, if you don't like guys bunting up 12 to three, then make a slaughter rule. Make a slaughter rule. I'm also just always glad to see Gabe Kapler in the news because if you haven't seen like his Instagram pictures that he puts up, this guy makes Julian Edelman's thirst traps look like they're like kids photo day at school. Yeah. This guy had, Gabe Kapler has like a nine pack. He is correct. Anytime you see a dude in their forties with a nine pack, that's a red flag. Yeah. Big red flag. Yeah. I, I hate those

jerseys. The Giantswear, by the way, those like the, the, it's, I think it's new. I don't know, but it's a weird tint of orange and there's no, it's, it's very bizarre. They have great classic jerseys and they messed with it and it bothers me. I think it's, I think it's maybe just an alternate, but whatever. Now I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud. All right. Anything else? Anyone else, Bill? You had a great trip to Dallas. Indio, California. Indio, California is what I was going to say. It was. So yeah, I can, I was going to talk about it in my fireplace a little bit. Yeah. Let's go to Ryan Rusillo then. Let's do it. Yeah. Before we get to old Ryan Rusillo, want to talk to you guys about our great, great friends over at Wood. Love Wood. There's no

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at getwood.com. That's G-E-T-W-O-U-L-D.com or at your local CVS. Now here's another great smelling man, Ryan Rusillo. All right. We now welcome on one of our favorite guests, one of our closest friends. It is Ryan Rusillo, host of Dual Threat, the podcast. Go download it right now. Ryan, good to see you. We figured you're kind of like us. You don't watch a lot of NBA regular season. So we'll chop it up on some playoffs talk. No, seriously, we appreciate you joining us because you actually do keep up with the league where we do not like the guys who drop in for the playoffs like us. Like I watch the Bulls, but I'm not going to pretend that I like consume constant NBA during the regular season other than the Bulls. No, look, as I've gotten older,

I don't try to find ways to tell people to enjoy stuff less. So what's the point now? I'm not going to argue with you about stuff. I'm not going to be like, hey, I don't tell people during college basketball season what's going on because I watched the tournament and then I prepped for the draft later on. So now I'm watching all this stuff going like, oh, wow, AJ Griffin is kind of nice. Anyway, so the point is, I think sometimes these last few regular seasons, there's a lot of nights where I wish I watched less. Because there are certain nights you get so fired up about the schedule and then you go, wait, who's out tonight? So it's just been a weird stretch. As we all know, this is kind of like part three, even though this is a full season. It was part three of an NBA

season where sometimes the regular season can be very misleading. And I've been kind of on this for the last couple of years where I feel like there's never been more of a separation between what playoff teams look like and regular season teams look like. So go ahead. Well, I was going to say right off of that, I wanted to talk about the box because I feel like that's the case for it, right? Like the box to me, and you can tell me if I'm way off, they've obviously had moments this year. Brooke Lopez missed some time, but they've had moments where they haven't looked like a championship team. But I always defer to, if they've done it once, teams kind of know, all right, this is what it takes. So like LeBron used to do it all the time where it's like,

this is what it takes. And I'm not going to kill myself in the middle of February. We're going to, we're going to, for the big games will get up. And then when it comes time for, for the spring, we're ready to go. And we're still the best team in the East. Yeah, I think Milwaukee deserves all the benefit of the doubt. I think the thing that's a little bit different is that, you know, for me growing up, usually you saw a team after like four or five title runs. And I'm not saying five straight finals appearances, but at least in the conversation that towards the end is when you saw them kind of back off a little bit, where now you not only have the box, which is fine, but I mean, the Atlanta Hawks halfway through the

season, we're like, yeah, we're sort of over this, we're sort of bored, you know, regular season. We're like, you guys haven't done anything. And you're actually a really good team. And they ended up finishing strong enough to, you know, end up over 500. We'll see what happens for the real playoffs part of this. But you're just like, who, who do you guys think you are? Like you're already, you know, it's like a guy who just gets hired is like, you know, I want to talk to you guys about my 401k and maybe changing the contribution rate on this. And we're like, dude, we haven't even made your name tag yet. So I, I, I get concerned about it a little bit because, you know, it can throw off some numbers. Like it's never been

easier to score last season was the highest efficiency, the highest offensive efficiency season we've seen in NBA history. And this year was number two. And part of that is the threes, but like from March on some of the offensive rate numbers were so absurd because I think guys are just over it. Like I just I've never like, we have the most accomplished scores we've ever seen the talent dispersal to see Anthony Edwards do some of the stuff that he does and no one would ever say he's a top 20, 20 player. He might end up being that, but like it's absurd what some of these dudes can do. Some of the stuff Jordan pool can do. And you never talk about him as like an all-star or anything like that. So the skill level is,

is off the charts, but I don't know if it's just being tired because of a shortened, weird, disrupted bubble season into another shorter condensed season into turning this all around. Or it's the new normal, which I'm a little afraid that the new normal is that this generation of players cares less and less about the regular season, which can totally throw off your playoff stuff. Because Milwaukee, as you said, big cat. I mean, the last 15 games of the season, they're a negative net. They were 21st in defense. You know, this is a team that you go, look at all these defensive options that they have, and you're like, where the hell is the defense? And maybe it's just because they know they're going to turn it on, but some teams can screw it up by thinking

they're just going to turn it on. The Celtics a couple of years ago when they got smoked by the Bucks in five games, that team hadn't even done anything. And they're like, well, nobody will beat us in seven games. Like, who, who are you guys? Like you haven't, you've never, you don't have the right to carry yourself like that, but at least Milwaukee does. Yeah. The switch is always an interesting thing. I just go back to, for Milwaukee, I know they're going to, they're going to sweep the bowls, maybe, maybe a five game series if, if DeRozan like drops 50 in an efficient game. But I'm, I'm realistic about that. But I just, I watched that stretch. I think it was maybe two weeks ago where they played the Nets and the Sixers, both on the road. And Giannis just went

supernova and it's like, Oh, yep. Okay. I'm not worried about the Bucks. Like they're a really fucking good team. Exactly. It goes back to what you were talking about really was, like you're saying some players don't care about the regular season. I think a lot of players don't care about defense. It's a dad take. I'm getting ahead of my dad years by, by squatting on that. But like a lot of players don't really care about defense as much as they used to. What team out there is the outlier though? What team would you say like punches above their weight class defensively? Oh, Boston. I mean, Boston was ridiculous once they figured it out. And I still think this turned around by this Boston team, you know, for those of us that watched it all the time, because I still

watch them every game. I used to, you know, do the broadcast for TV, the studio stuff and, you know, a bunch of my friends and family are still Celtics fans. So I told my dad at one point, I'm like, Hey, no more Celtics. It's banned from our phone conversations. Like it's just a banned segment. I can't do it anymore. I'm so sick of watching this team. They felt like they were soft, disconnected. They couldn't figure things out. And they made some defensive adjustments. And I think a lot of the players made kind of personality adjustments as far as like the way they carried themselves. So when they were locked in with Rob Williams, which, you know, there's some speculation he could be back at some point, maybe not in the first round,

that team went from what is wrong with you guys to off the charts defensively and they cared. I think Marcus Smart carried even more so because he was having such a good season and wanted to make a push to show that he could be defensive player of the year, which is hard for guards. So I would watch them certain nights going, look at their work. I mean, defense actually isn't that hard. Okay, I'm not saying it's easy to be all world defensively. But if you just care enough about rotations and you give effort and you don't freelance and you close out on shooters and you recover, it's a pain in the ass. You know, nobody wants to do what 70 games a year, I get it. But those that do and take pride in it, or at least smart enough, like Steph Curry always gets trash

defensively. And I know like, as soon as you say that, I go, okay, then you don't really know what you're seeing because I'm not saying Steph is going to lock anybody down. But he always knows where he's supposed to be. Granted, he's played with a lot of same teammates for a long time. But I'd rather have that than some super athlete that's just freelancing that has no idea what they're doing. So generally, I think over the course of season PFT, there's just teams that kind of mail that part of it in. But there are teams that still take pride in it, or at least players who they accolade. What about out West? What would be the team that kind of punches above their weight out West? Well, I don't know. I mean, when you say above their weight, do you mean I expect

them to be bad defensively, but they're good? No, I guess the team that has shown the effort like during the regular season, that's that's taken pride. Memphis is incredible. You know, Phoenix has a lot of different things they can throw at you and Bridges is kind of a defensive player of the year guy. You know, the biggest thing you're looking for now is effort and then switchability. And Bridges, I mean, he plays every single game. This guy's incredible. I mean, he plays every game. He's doing the exact opposite of what everybody else wants to do. And Chris Paul is a 37 playing at all NBA level. I voted from third team. Oh, really? That's a shock. I know. Some people thought I'd have him first team. Don't think I could have pulled it off this year.

How did you get a vote? What was that process like? The NBA called me and said I had a vote. Nice. That's sick. Can we get one for Jake? Jake Paul. No, Jake Marsh. Oh, more famous. Yes. UVM UVM zone. By the way, I my perception of the defense in the NBA kind of changed a little bit after I listened to JJ Redick talk about it. And he was like, everyone says that the defense sucks in the NBA. That's just couldn't be like farther from the truth. It's the shotmaking is so fucking good that it's just like you think it's bad defense. It's just incredible offense a lot of the time. Yeah. The strategies on what teams are doing defensively now to like they change. And I think you're seeing more and more teams adopt this idea of like force it out of the best

players' hands as much as possible. But that's what happened with Brooklyn last night is they would double the rant on the catch or any kind of movement where he was like stopping to make a decision. And then he's like, all right, fine, we'll play four on three with Kyrie. You know, the stuff Golden State used to do, they did it more before but with Draymond who would catch it at the free throw line. And then he's playing four on three with his passing and size to drive. Like that was ridiculous. And that's back when he used to shoot a little bit more there. So, yeah, I mean, look, I'm not going to disagree with JJ Redick. I agree. The concepts, a lot of stuff that they do. But I think we're in this kind, like I said, my headline would be

we're in a three season stretch of guys asked to do a lot. A lot of people had to do a lot all over the world because everything changed. But there's also as Adam Silver, the commissioner points out like it's a concern. It's a concern that we keep having so many players miss games. And I don't think it's a real reach to say, if you have this many guys being like, you know, it'd be awesome is to play 55, 60 games. And they're not going to be super locked in on defense all the time, even though I think that the concepts and what they do are far beyond because they have to defend so much space. That's like the whole 90s shit and comparing it now, like it's just, I'm sorry, man. Like I know the paint was crowded, but think how much easier it is to defend when you're just

defending less, less surface. Yeah, there's less guys. Yeah, they could shoot. Right. So on the defense thing, we have we have a disagreement on this podcast. Hank is actually kind of in the middle. I think the Celtics are better than the Nets. PFT thinks this Nets are going to womp the Celtics, which has to be five games or less. I just don't think I don't think the Nets can like that game, that playing game on Tuesday night was exactly what the Nets are, where KD and Kyrie have to play perfect. And even still, they just let teams back in because they don't play defense. I almost think like last night's game in certain games are like microcosms of what we're talking about, the bigger part of this. Like I always have a joke with you about the

Rockets and Lakers game one a couple of years ago. Yeah, you lost me a lot of money. I know, but I made you back. By the way, my my tips for you, I'm over 500 with you guys, A&M, Arkansas. Yes, sure. But you lost a lot of money. It was a lot of money. All right. Well, I don't know what your unit play is, but I apologize. So apology not accepted. That's fine. Listen to the Tom Segura podcast. I thought the Lakers lost that game because they were like, Oh, these guys suck. This is going to be easy. I think I think teams have moments in games where they'll go, Oh, all right, this isn't so I think the Nets getting up 20 is more a reflection of who they are compared to Cleveland. Because I think Cleveland, despite

how great of a story it is missing Jared Allen, they're different defend Lori Markin is out there one week garden Durant and bead into Rosen. I mean, he's like, what? I didn't sign up for this. I should have gone to San Antonio and just shot threes. So I I'm scared to death of Durant. I am. I'm scared to death. There's always going to be a little lingering part of me Celtics wise, because I watch the same group not really get it for a really long time. But this is three months of them basically being the best team in the league, the Rob Williams thing. And then adding Ben Simmons, depending what he's going to look like. And the great thing for Simmons too is this is the reverse of what he had in Philly. No one gives a shit in Brooklyn. You're not the

number one pick. You're not the guy, you know, we tanked for you're not the guy that was supposed to be the co pilot with this resurgence for Embiid. You're not the guy when Embiid struggling that has to go create his own offense. Now he's not he doesn't have to do any of that stuff. He has just has to cut off the ball and the other guys are facing more defensive attention and make dunks and layups and switch on defense and bring the ball up every now and then. So his life will be totally different. If he looks good, then yeah, I think the Celtics has some real issues because I'm scared to death at the rant. But the Celtics team just all the stuff combined, man, it's been off the charts with this team is done. And my I think it's gonna be a competitive series. I don't

think the Celtics are like going to going to want the nets. I don't think it's the reverse. I just Katie and Kyrie have to play so many minutes. And Katie actually said it. I think it was like before this season, because everyone was like, you know, if your foot was, you know, behind the line, the nets would win the title. He's like, dude, I was gassed. Like I had to play so many fucking minutes for this team. And you even see it now in April, both these guys had to play more than 40 minutes. I looked it up. They besides Fred Van Vleet and Siakam, and then OKC, who was playing like six guys down the stretch, Kyrie and Katie have the most minutes of anyone in the I know Kyrie missed a bunch. But like they are if this is a seven game series, and they're playing

44 minutes a game. And then the seventh game is in Boston. I don't know. I just think that's I just can get a defensive stop. Kyrie is fresh though. He's like he's the freshest that he's been bad. He's going to go stop on Lucky's little face. Do you think he's going to do that again? You think he's going to break out the the logo stop? He'll do something. I mean, it sucks because somebody's probably going to say something to him. You know, I mean, somebody and I don't think that's a reflection of the city, even though that's what get turned into, you know, like stuff happens in Boston where I'm like, OK, maybe I sound sensitive about it because I'm from there. I just think that, you know, certain certain things happen where you're like, oh,

that's that's only that city. And you're like, no, there's assholes everywhere. So I'm a little worried about that part of it because I also don't think Kyrie like Kyrie can say one thing, but then he'll do the other. So I'm not going to predict, but I would imagine in a hotly contested series. And the other thing too is Boston hates him more. They don't care about the Lucky part. This isn't about history. It's about a guy that sat there on the microphone before his last season started and said, I'll come back if you'll have me when he never was coming back. Like I have one guy that knew it the entire time, but you never know. And I'm not a reporter, but he goes, do not believe anything. He is fucking gone. He's gone. He's not coming back

to Boston. And I think even Boston thought he was coming back because he was telling everybody was coming back. So, you know, I know that people point to like the water bottle being thrown and him stomping on Lucky. Like he's got some shit in there because he's sick of hearing about it, but he's the one that fucking started the whole thing. It's not even debatable. I completely understand why why Celtics fans have had it up to here with Kyrie. I get that entirely. I just think it's funny that like the whole story got reported as a controversy because he walked on the cartoon logo at half court, which obviously is ignoring, like you said, like most of the situation that's around it. I just like reducing everything to their stupidest

element and then making that mean something that it doesn't. You know this game, Ryan? That sounds dumb. Did you think they'll cover up the logo? Yeah, they got to. Yeah, they have to. They got to put, you know, all they have to do is just put cones around it. People just, if you see cones, people respect cones. They're like, oh, better stay away from there. Yeah. You know what you should do? You guys should launch a t-shirt where it's just the center of the court with no logo. That would be good. Actually, Coley, Coley sent me something that he's thinking about putting up, which is it's the don't tread on me, the Gadsden flag thing, except the snake is like colored green with shamrocks on it and it's got the leprechaun hat

and the pipe and it's spinning a basketball and its rattle. It's actually a pretty fire shirt. I would like to get that up on sale. Wow, that does sound fire. Are we going to be tie dye? Let me ask you one last question about this series. Is there, I know, obviously, I get it, Kevin Durant's the best scorer in the NBA, but is there a chance, like you watch it every night? Could Jason Tatum go toe to toe with Kevin Durant? Because I think that's getting lost. Like everyone's, it's KD and Kyrie and obviously people are scared of the Nets because the Nets are not a typical seven seed, but Jason Tatum is pretty damn good too. Yeah, he's nuts. I mean, this is why, like, all right, I'm going to use a bigger thing here and we can relate it to your

bulls even. And it's the Lamar Jackson thing. Like I've heard over and over again that, like, we're unfair to Lamar Jackson because we changed the way that we critique him. And I'm like, I don't think it's that. I think you win an MVP. And now guess what? Because you won an MVP. Now, we're going to talk about you with the other guys like Mahomes, like Alan, like, you know, Herbert, who hasn't, doesn't have the accolades. But if you win an MVP, now you get thrown into this group of all the top quarterbacks and this is how we're going to, and I don't know, I'm even leaving guys out, right? That's not moving the goalposts of Lamar Jackson. It's the same thing with the Chicago Bulls. Chicago Bulls, it's just some ridiculous story. Like, wow,

look how good they are. Like, all of us thought that the Rosen contract was too long and it still might be who knows, but he was fantastic this season. They gave up a lot for Vooch. That's debatable, but they just started spending money and bringing people in. And instead of fighting for a 10 seed, the bulls were like, Hey, we're not title contenders, but let's go. But then they have this absurd record. They're defending great. Everything's working out. The roses getting MVP buzz, which was stupid, but whatever. It was fun for a week. And then it's like, okay, well, now I compare you to the best version of Milwaukee, a healthy Brooklyn, Miami, Philly. And it's like, I don't know that I like you in that matchup. And then Bulls reputable, reputable Bulls bloggers.

I'll tell you, Dan, we're like, well, I can't believe you. It's like, what do you mean? No, I'm judging you now based on the neighborhood that you're in. So bringing it back to Tatum. I love Tatum at Duke. All right, I've got receipts on this. I thought he should have been number one. And when Ange made the trade, I was like, Oh my God, this is crazy, like they're actually going to do it because I felt like everybody had just written it off. No, it's false. It's ball. And then it's Tatum. And I'm like, God, I think Tatum might have the highest ceiling of all of these guys, but again, full still with the injuries. So when Tatum's coming up and he's taken LeBron and the Cavs team that wasn't very good, and it was a pretty bad east

to seven games, and they're at home. And that's without Kyrie. I'm like, what can this guy be? Right? So I'm harder on Tatum than I am Jaylen Brown, because I didn't have the same expectations for Jaylen Brown, even though his story is incredible. So with Tatum, you're like, is he going to figure this out? And he hadn't for the longest time, back to the defensive strategy, double him, get the ball out of his hands and see what happens. He didn't do a great job with it. And they also didn't have very good personnel to give him a relief valve. You know, Dennis Schroeder, ISOing, Josh Richardson, you know, inconsistent offensively. And then Jaylen sort of left to come up with his own thing or Marcus is going to chuck a three up. And in this turnaround, Tatum

has figured out everything like there's certain plays that I see now and go, Oh, he sees what's happening now because he's had it happen to him all season. So now they're really nasty because Tatum, like the best players can do all the best shit, I get it. But the best players are the ones that understand still the right basketball play, which I still think is an audience we struggle with because we're all Kobe didn't mj'd out that we're like, no, no, you're a loser if you didn't take the shot, right? You're like, no, that's not really always the case. And I think Tatum's added that part to his game and can still go off for 40 in a playoff game. So you're right to expect that Tatum maybe hangs punch for punch for Durant. I think he's still a sliver below Durant,

but that's not saying much to say you're just behind, who I think is still the best offensive option in the NBA. Yeah. What about the the Sixers Raptors series? To me, that's that's an interesting one because people are going to be talking a lot about the coaches. One guy that's been pretty good in the postseason. One guy that has left a little bit to be desired, shall we say recently? Yeah, look, I love Doc, but he's got three of the Alzheimer's on his resume and they're tough. Yeah, no, Alzheimer's. He's like three of the five biggest collapses on his resume. The Clippers Houston one sucked for me for a long time as a Chris Paul guy. He's got the other Clippers one to Denver not that long ago. And then I still can't believe they lost to Atlanta. Like that's,

I mean, as bad as it was all going, go back and look at those games. I think they blew three 19 point leads or something ridiculous like that. So yeah, that's Nick nurses. If you ask people around the league, more people are going to tell you, I'd rather have Nick nurses as the coach than doc. But the Sixers are also one in three against Toronto. And Philly fans could point out that a Joel played three of those games. They only had hardened for two. Thibals gonna miss some more. He only played two of them, but Fred Van Vleet only played one. OG missed three as well. And Siaka missed a game as well. And even Scotty Barnes missed one of those games. The last time we watched them play without Van Vleet and OG and a full Sixer squad, I think for the most part,

it looked bad for Philly. Now maybe MB beats up on that front line and that carries him through it. But there's something a numbers wise that I brought up that's worth paying attention to is Philly since the hardened trade is the worst defensive team transition wise in the NBA. They're given up 65% field percentage and transition. And it's hard and doesn't care. He just is like, you know, remember, you get yelled at and like youth basketball, not getting back. No one ever yelled at hard. And more so on the defense, Thibals are their second best defender and he's not going to play in Toronto. Yeah, he's their best perimeter defender. I mean, some of the stuff he does as a perimeter defender, I absolutely love. And it's,

it's funny that the Kyree story shifted to Thibal really quick. It's like, yeah, we don't care about him as much because you're just not as good, right? It's just the way it works. This one is really tough to figure because even though some of the offensive numbers with Harden and Bede, like that pairing is, is in Philadelphia, I think one of the five best offensive pairings and all this different kind of stuff. I don't think Harden, a guy who I didn't like in his prime in playoff spots, because he's got about a 10 game resume, like what the fuck was happening here with you. And now he's slower. He doesn't finish at the rim as well. There'll be a playoff game where the crew just decides he's not going to get the free throws, even though his free throw averages

per game in the playoffs and regular season are actually pretty close for his career. I thought there was a time where, you know, there'd be a certain game with hard and be like, oh, tonight they're just not going to let it happen. We're in the regular season. I don't think that happens as much. So there's a lot of stuff here that favors Toronto, but it's also a huge problem because it's precious Atua and Kim Burch in the front line against him Bede. So right now eat them up. Right. Is there anything at all that points to James Harden being able to turn it on for the playoffs? Like anything in his entire career, anything just like in a microcosm this season about how he's been playing recently? Is there any reason at all to believe

that he's not going to go out there and do what James Harden does in the playoffs? Hmm. Look, if you were, I mean, this hamstring injury has gone on like, oh, what a year and a half. So it's pretty bad. I'm taking I'm picking up a vibe that you might not be a James Harden guy. Hamstrings are tricky though, Ryan. They really are. Like you ask any professional sprinter or a wide range to Sean Jackson's been dealing with a hamstring for like 11 years. His whole career. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, hell, if you're not ready that first softball night, you see guys blow them out left and right. Yeah. But like, is there it just seems almost too easy to be like this team as much as I like Joel Embiid. This team is like prime for another big disappointment.

Yeah, I love Embiid. Love him. And yet, you know, I was so happy that he had a shooting option off of him in the two man game that he didn't have with Simmons. Like Simmons and the Embiid pairings, like just kind of like fundamentally flawed. And we're like, Hey, I'm one of the last remaining post guys that can destroy people on the block. Alright, let's get the worst shooting threat ever to be passing it to you. Like so I felt good about this trade in the sense that it got both teams got rid of something that wasn't working. Simmons not playing and then Harden quitting on a second team in 13 months. So look, sure, there's part of me that knows Harden's going to go off. I mean, he's just he's still got the ball enough. He's still talented enough. His passing is terrific.

You know, he that in between lob and floater game is brutal. It's really hard, but he's the numbers are worse. And yeah, I have a I have a problem. I have a problem with anyone who's a professional athlete, who is okay deciding that they're just not going to be competitive twice in a year because they don't like their situation. Like I think there's something wrong with you. And I'm not even meaning just Harden here. But if you're okay, sucking on purpose. And having it happen that many times in a very short span, then why would I bet on your personality when everything's tense and it matters? And it's the last minute of why would I bet on your personality thriving in that situation when you've been totally okay, quitting another ones? And

that's why I love Giannis so much. Giannis is like, fuck this, let's go. And he goes at everybody. And even though it's not perfect offensively, even though it's hard to make that statement now after what he did in the finals. But I just know with him, he's never going to be afraid. Like he may miss, but he's never going to be afraid. And there's some other stars in this league that I don't think are totally wired for that moment. I would rather have a guy just be like, almost honestly, like I don't care. You know, like a guy that will just tell you, you know what, I'm collecting a paycheck. They're paying me very well. I really don't care to push myself that hard. It's just not in my DNA. I'm doing okay. I'd rather have that guy. You'd want to

max that guy out. You'd rather max him out than what? In a way, I would rather max that guy out than have a guy that like comes in saying, I'm going to try and give him my all. And like the first thing that goes wrong for me is like, fuck this. You know, like, because that guy, at least I know what I'm getting with the first guy. I think I'm still confused. Do you have, do you have another sport analogy that you can give me? I'm trying to think if I can do like Colin Coward. Right. Okay, so if if America's cop, my first wife, if you were to have, if you would have your first wife, I'd rather have her making 75 grand a year than having, than marrying up and her dad is rich, but then she gets busted for tax evasion. You want the first option.

Consistency is key. So you just, you just want, here's a sidebar. If a woman did a Cam Newton interview and said, I don't want to marry anybody that can't provide for himself, how would that have gone over? The Cam Newton interview was so funny because I saw it trending and I was like, Oh, he stepped in this. And then I was like, Oh, fuck, that's wallowing. Gilly. Shit. We're in it again. Like we can't stay away from it. They were just, yeah, it was a barstool podcast. I was like, I saw it and I was like, Oh, this is going to be funny. Everyone's going to roast Cam Newton. I was like, Oh, fuck. You're just like staring at him like, I don't believe that he's actually saying all these things. By the way, I'm not defending it or anything like that. I've just,

I'm pointing simply to like, all right, Cam Newton said some dumb shit and now everybody's going to lay into them, but I don't think you'd be allowed to be like, I can't believe that woman said that she needs her man to provide. Right. It'd be a different conversation. Yes. Absolutely. Have you, very important question. Have you decided what your spin zone is going to be when Chris Paul gets injured somewhere in the middle of the second round this year? Yeah, I'm ready for it. I mean, he's hurt. He was hurt in the finals last year, got surgery, kept it quiet, doesn't make excuses. I make those for him. Oh, nice. So pre hurt. You're going to pre hurt. Yeah. Pre hurt, which is kind of his whole career, but yeah, no, it's not great. It's not great. I don't have a counter to

any of that stuff. I mean, I just always hate when it's like ESPN will put up the graphic and they'll be like, look at all these Chris Paul exits or what happened here or there. I'm like, he wasn't playing in the game. Like you guys are holding this against him and he's not in there. That's part of being great. You got it, Ryan. No, you got it. You got to pull a big cat and you got to print up a fact sheet and take it around with you. But like instead of anti coach K stuff, like reminders of, hey, Chris Paul actually didn't play that series that you think that he choked away. Pro Chris Paul. That would be a great podcast idea. Just call it fact sheet and it's 20 minutes long and whoever's the most absurd supporter or crud, I guess, criticizer. I don't

even know if that's the right word. So whatever it is, is you just, you get your floor to lay it all out for your point and then, you know, maybe a little five minutes of back and forth and whatever. I think I have a question for you guys. I think we have first take and skip Bayless do it. You just invented first take. No, but you just, you have to be like, all right, what's, I thought I was going crazy when he was like, that's a great idea. So like there's the white guy would say he hates LeBron and calls him LeFraud and then gone. No, no, no, no. What I mean is like you find the guy, like who's the guy that thinks this more so than anybody else. Yeah, you would be the Chris Paul defender. You're right. I would be, I'd be a Chris Paul guy and we would shut you

down easily because we just be like, he's injured and he has no rings. That's right. He has no rings, but it means he sucks. There you go. I want to support you in the Chris Paul thing, but like you have to admit that if he doesn't win a title this year, like the bust word has to come out. I would say you could even bust. Yeah. No, you could even say. That feels a little harsh. I mean, he came out of caught. He was supposed to be the savior. You could say his whole career was a waste. He probably would have had a better career as a lawyer. Another sport or not even, not even post sports. No, not even a sport. Not even a salesman. Yeah. He should have done that as, no. Yeah, wait. No, you're his father, right? In your little weird hypothetical world.

I think he would have been a great debt collector. There you go. Yeah. And probably wouldn't have been injured as much. It's a lot safer. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know though. Maybe he'd be looking for confrontation. Imagine that guy harassing you for student loans. I mean, this is the, it's the final piece though. If he does get a title, it's like your entire career is vindicated. I'm not talking about Chris Paul. I'm talking about your, your career. There's more at stake for me than it is Chris Paul. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. He understands that. And just so you know, if he does win one, we're just going to be like, one. Yeah. And you can play, and Booker will score the most. So you can say like Booker carried him, even though Booker was in zero

playoff games before he showed up to the Phoenix Suns. I think my biggest Chris Paul win will be, oh wait, was that an incredible fact? You do walk around with this fact sheet in your head. You should print it up. If Paul gets one, I think it puts him in the rarefied air of like, he's like Chauncey billips. Yeah. He's like a lesser version of, he's a lesser version of, he's like a junkyard dirk. No, that's cool. You get O.K.C. to a seventh game in the first round, which I think is better than a ring in a way. Yeah, that is true. Many people say that. Here's, here's my victory lap on the Chris Paul thing that's already happened is that there used to be a Westbrook Chris Paul debate. There used to be a Darren Williams Chris Paul

debate and that lasted a very short amount of time. And then it was weird once he wasn't with Utah anymore. Jazz fans were like, yeah, maybe Chris Paul is better now, which happens far too often. And then there was a Westbrook one where I remember some Oklahoma City blog was trying to say that I was only saying Paul was better than Westbrook because I needed clicks and attention. You're like, Hey, man, I'm fucking national. All right. National radio show. So I just never forget that. And I feel like the greatest thing that ever happened to Thunder fans was that they lived with Westbrook thinking they knew what was going on and they thought they knew what was right. And then they got Chris Paul for a year and they were like, holy shit. This is how you play the

position. Yeah. And I saw some of the top 75 stuff going around. I forget who had a voter who didn't, but it was out there. I think even Ken, I think even Kendrick Perkins had Westbrook ranked ahead of Chris Paul like all time. And you just go, we're still here. This is still a debate. And now Westbrook's about to be in his 15 and five years for a Hall of Famer. Well, and hold on. So every look, the no ring thing. I'll finish right here. All of the individual battles that Chris Paul and all the arguments that used to happen. He's, he's smoked everybody in all of those. He just has and it just now he's not allowed to be, it'll be funny if he does win this year, because then guys will be like, Oh, I guess he's good now. Like, oh, I have 15 years later.

Yeah. No, I won't even concede. Some people will be like, yes, he's done enough to please me. Yeah. Thank you, Chris Paul for doing it for, for making me like you. It's also just one of those fun ones where it's like, obviously, you know, maybe we'll cut this part like Chris Paul's incredible top five point card of all time, all these things, but it's so much more fun to just be like no rings injured. You guys pick those guys hate them. I don't even hate them. I just think it's fun. I just be like to just diminish someone's entire career of rings. It's so stupid. It makes no sense. I know when we say it, it's the dumbest. It's the dumbest form of argument that you can make. And like, it's actually, it's actually made sports less fun overall, but there are certain

guys where it's just fun to do. What? It's crazy. No, it is like my favorite is even it's not in basketball. It's in like baseball or football. If you take like an offensive line, like Joe Thomas kind of sucked. He never made the playoffs. Mike Trout never made the playoffs. Yeah, he's a fucking ball. Okay. Who are your individual Chris Paul's? Oh, that we defend? Yeah. Carson Wentz now. I'll just say Brian Butch. Carson Wentz. He got two MVP votes in 2017. He's the best quarterback in the history of the NFL and 73 degree weather. And he's Mr. October indoors. There you go. Outdoors. Outdoors. Mr. October. Outdoors. I actually, well, I was on the take early that Matthew Stafford is going to be a hallfamer,

just because I remember like three or four years ago, I looked at his numbers and his durability and I was like, if this dude wins anything, like it's going to be open shut because his numbers are going to be right up there. So I feel a little vindicated by that. Mine and this is kind of an easy one for me is Scotty Reynolds would have been a game changing NBA point guard. And it's perfect because I never have to actually go through the scenario where he is because he's never going to play in the NBA. Just ahead of his time. But yeah, he won everywhere in college and his freshman year, I went to high school with him. I was a senior when he was a freshman. And I said the first game I saw, I was like, this, this kid's going to be superstar.

It's mostly about me making myself feel good about being right about something. I think, I think Tyus Thomas still could be a hallfamer. I have not given up on Tyus Thomas. He could jump out of the room. Jim, I would be genuinely excited if the commanders signed Mike Williams, the receiver from the Lions back in like 2005, the guy that went to USC. You remember him? Yeah. Oh my God, I love that guy. He was filthy. That catch at the back of the end zone for USC. I love him. But I mean, that's the stuff that you don't really know. I mean, this gets all back to the draft stuff. But I mean, people get married, you think you'd have your evaluations and check on that one

and it doesn't work out half the time, right? So fucking wide receivers. Are you kidding me? So, you know, sometimes you get a guy in the building and you go, oh, this isn't going to work out. I remember Charles Rogers, Michigan State. He was even better than Mike Williams. I mean, you're like, how does that guy not work out? And then there's just other stuff and it's like Tyus Thomas, it was like, would he have been better now? Did the bull sign him now in positionless basketball? Dude, he's got all the, he would be, if you put him in any draft, everyone would fall in love with him every time because he was that springy. It was just so different. He was so good. Because I couldn't, I couldn't, I was a total name drop here. I was

flying to Portsmouth, Virginia, which used to be one of the, well, it still goes on the Portsmouth Invitational. You guys should do a remote from there sometime. And I would go because you get to meet all the GMs and scouts of me because nobody went other than the locals. You were in a high school gym watching all of these picks that might not even go in the second round. But the big thing was you would just sit there and gossip and talk about stuff. And I remember being like, Tyus Thomas is going to go that high. Yes. He was like, yes. He goes, you can handle, he's six, 10, he's got the bounce. You know, all he needs to do is figure out all the other stuff. And it was like, yeah. So he has like seven things. He has to get better.

The other stuff for Tyus Thomas was a lot of stuff. It was all the things. You talked about a lot of stuff. Talked about a lot of cool stuff that you can do with your body. But then there's also a game called basketball. They have to be good. No, I have kind of a Tyrus Thomas, Strowmiles Swift to LSU guys. Yeah. A Marquis Chris Rule, who's actually, you know, he's in the league again. I have this rule now when I'm getting ready for the draft where I go. Okay. There's a lot of stuff that's really fun. Is he good at basketball? It's a question. It's a question I asked myself. Can I ask a follow up to PFT though? Yeah. What was high school PFT like? High school PFT. I don't, I don't think you're ready to know.

That's a whole other thing. That was my brother, actually. That's a whole other podcast we can get into. Yeah. That was a life advice three. Yeah. Well, yeah, we can go back to high school, do a little flashback that way. I don't know. I don't have much in the tank after that last one. That last one went very, very long. Like I always judge it by Hank basically being like, all right guys, I got to get, I like, you got to do something when he, when he does the fake, like I got, he does the wrap up or he goes to the bathroom. It's like, okay, maybe, maybe we should, by the way, the other one that I was just popped in my head. That's a nice couch. So I can see why it's on and we finished strong, but I thought we had about a

25 minute lull in that one. Are we done? Cause I can still get us a table next time. I need you to wear even like smaller shorts than you did the last time. Honestly, the video, I was grossed out by myself. So I apologize to you and your listeners. No, that's fine. They loved it. They, they, they, uh, it was a lot because they started working up the last two hours and I was like, I still think what are you trying to do? I once, uh, I still think Starland Castro could hit 3000 hits. That one was a bad one for me. He had the numbers, man. And he also was very young, very toolsy, but I don't think that's going to happen. But all right. So let's go back to NBA. I just remembered one more. It is an NBA thing. I think that like the, uh, the late,

when was it like 2010, 2011, 2012, the, uh, the Brandon Roy Blazers. Oh yeah. Remember that team? Oh yeah. That's the greatest honesty that never was. Look, Brandon Roy could go. He was, he was awesome. It was a couple of years before that. Um, but when he, when he was, he was putting up some numbers like, you know, you go for like a month to two months stretch, you go, nobody can do anything with this guy right now. But the reason why he went when he went is he was somebody like, it's, it's crazy. And this is the part of the job. I appreciate the most the people that, you know, I've known a long time, but like there'll be medical stuff where teams will, I don't say it. Like if I hear from a team, you're like, Hey, this guy's red flag city. I don't say anything.

Cause it's not my job. I'm not a reporter. We're just talking. And I'd never want to hurt a kid stock, even though this stuff kind of gets out there anyway. Right. But like the two biggest medical red flags that I got from a team once were Michael Porter Jr. Yeah. All right. I mean, his spine was dust. Right. When, when Michael Porter Jr. is putting up the numbers, he is in these six, 10 hitting these jumpers that look like, are there five guys in the league that can do what he does at his size? And I don't know. And then he, he finds a way through it long enough to get maxed a year ahead of time, which then you, you know, you didn't have to do it that way. But if you like the guy, you kind of do it. It's the opposite of what Robert Sarver does in Phoenix.

But then you're sitting there going, Oh, this is why he went when he went because of the flags. And Malcolm Brogdon was another one. Like, how can this guy go in the second round? It's like, well, you know, we're just bloggers or, you know, I can talk show hosts. I mean, obviously, I know you guys don't blog anymore. I have one, I have a pen name for a different one, but it's mostly political. This is all part of it. And that's kind of back to your brain. Point is that, you know, guys knew they were like, I'm not, I'm not quite sure how long his knees are going to last. And they were right because when he was good, he was terrific. But I know that was a super long brain and Roy answer. So we'll keep it moving. Sometimes fun just to remember

guys that like that dude would have been awesome. Yeah. Yeah. No, he's definitely at the top of that list. Going to get back to Ryan in a second. But before we do, Coors Light is back at spring time. The mountains are blue. When the mountains turn blue, you know, it's time to crack open an ice cold Coors Light and then go to the Barstool Sports Store to get the latest merch from the official part of my take. You know what? I'm going to put this ad read down. I'm just going to talk about these shirts that we have. Billy kind of designed a shirt. It's, well, you designed the mountains are blue emoji line of it's really a lifestyle brand and it works. And we've got these cool new shirts from Coors Light. We've got a couple of different styles. One featuring

Billy's mountains are blue proprietary logo. And the other that features the part of my take logo with the mountains and mean big cat chugging Coors Light on it. We love Coors Light. It's our favorite beer here at part of my take. It's the only beer that I drink. If they have Coors Light wherever I am, that's the beer that I'm choosing. There's no second place. Coors Light's number one. We love Coors Light. Go check out the new shirts, BarstoolSports.com. Actually, go to store.BarstoolSports.com and then search Coors to find them. You can find them on our social media too. I think we put them up there. Great shirts, great merchandise, our friends over at Coors Light are making it all happen this summer. You like that? That's kind

of a cool thing to say. They're making it all happen over at Coors Light. Now, back to Ryan Racilla. All right. Is it the Suns though? I mean, it's going to be the Suns. They are the best team by far and away. The West, the East, to me, I wouldn't be shocked. All right. Here, let's do it this way. Rank this statement. The East, I wouldn't be shocked if three teams went to the finals. And I count, no, four teams. Sorry. The Heat, the Celtics, the Bucks, and the Nets. I wouldn't be shocked. Those four teams. The West, I would kind of be shocked if it was anyone but the Suns, not saying maybe the Warriors throw in there, but it just feels like the West has a lot of really fun players and a really fun stories, but it's the Suns are leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else.

I know that when I was younger, I would talk sports. I would say stuff like, are you fucking kidding me? Brian Rose is definitely a one and worse to two in the Sox rotation. That's before your time. Maybe Hank won't even get that one, but then I remember a meeting. He's a fucking suit. Right. So when I went and I first started working in Boston and because Bob Ryan's the best, like Bob Ryan, you could just stop and be like, Hey, ask him a basketball question and he would like sincerely talk to you for as long as it took him to talk to you. Like it was incredible. And I remember asking Bob Ryan, I was like, this team sucks. Like whatever, whatever. And he'd be like, I don't know. I'm like,

what do you mean you don't know? Like you've been doing this 30 years and that was the whole point is you get older and you do this long enough. You have more of an open mind about all of it because when you're young, you don't know how wrong you are most of the time and you're convinced you're right. So I have a harder time now, like narrowing the field because I've just seen so many times of sports, something happened differently. Having said all that, Phoenix's profile is insane. They're 32 and nine in the clutch. Their road record is better than anybody else's record. Their clutch efficiency is double that of Milwaukee's, which is just an absurd number. They're better than they were last year. They didn't have any bigs, any other options beside

Aten. And I would say, you know, whatever they had charged, but that wasn't really a great option. They added to they have more shooting, they have more ball handlers, bridges is better. Paul should be rested at this point. Maybe that's the best thing that he did get hurt and missed a bunch of time. I already planning the seed of why he might not get hurt with this. And, you know, Aten gives you a viable big against the other big matchups that you may run into, even if he's not perfect. And Booker's taken it up a notch too. So I don't see how anybody beats them. I just don't. I mean, there's part of me that thought Golden State was starting to figure some things out. They had a nice couple of wins. They smashed Milwaukee at home. Steph was getting

going. Clay was coming back. Draymond was coming back. But Draymond, Steph and Clay played 11 minutes together this season. And but right before Curry gets rolled by smart, that derailed everything. So, you know, there's always going to be a part of me that respects Golden State so much. But that's asking a lot for now of it all to come together. And if they make it to the Western Conference Finals, come together against a team like Phoenix, who's even better than they were last year. And if Paul doesn't get hurt, I know here we go again. Maybe that series plays out a little bit differently, especially at the end of game four. So and maybe they're even more motivated, you know, the analogy I made this week on my podcast is remember how mad San Antonio was

all year long after they lost in the Ray Allen shot, lost that game and then lose the series? Like that was a driving force. Single mindedness. Let's get back there and kick their ass. And that's exactly what they did. Their Phoenix has lost to Milwaukee wasn't as is dramatic or, you know, you know, haunting, as I imagine. But that part of it, you know, the Memphis thing is great, but it'd be the youngest team to ever be in the NBA Finals. Dallas is one guy and he might be hurt. You know, Denver's one guy. They're even worse. They don't defend. You know, nobody likes Utah anymore. I love, by the way, the Utah. Shout out Quinn Snyder when when the story came out to Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert didn't get along. And he was like,

I see them eating lunch together sometimes. And I was like, yeah, they're best friends. That sounded good. Like I don't think he might have been, maybe I'll give Quinn Snyder more credit where he did the thing where he's going to make a quote that becomes a story instead of the actual story. But him saying that I was like, that they have lunch sometimes that doesn't sound very like they're that tight. Ryan, you're plugged in. Was was Quinn Snyder ever discussed to go back to Duke? No, Quinn Snyder has been talked about potentially the Lakers or Spurs. Oh, that would just gossipy stuff. You know, I don't know if it'll happen or not. But if you talk, it's bounced earlier, it's a disappointing exit. I think they'd shake it up, but they better get

in front of the Donovan Mitchell thing because I think everybody and again, and these are gossipy NBA circles. So I'm not saying it's going to happen. But if you place money on who gets talked about as the next star, because that's what the league is every six months, one of these really great players gets pissed off and they get their way. And now what they're doing is they're not going, hey, let me go shorter deals so I can press the issue with leverage and free agency. They're like, no, I'll just take the fucking max and then I'll ask for a trade. I don't give a shit. Smart. It's totally different. It's different in a very short amount of time. So I think Utah could make some changes if they're disappointed again here because, you know,

age comes in. I feel bad for Xanax, the general manager who I think is terrific, but, you know, hasn't always been easy. And he was he was terrific in Milwaukee and then they replaced him. And, you know, it was kind of weird, but it worked out from Milwaukee. So whatever. But I've heard Quinn stuff, but I don't I don't know what's going on with the Lakers. What I do love about the Lakers thing though. Oh, I heard. Yeah. But yeah, before you do your Lakers rant, I heard that LeBron actually didn't want Russ. He wanted DeRose in the whole time. That's what I heard. Yeah. Magic. And Caruso. He wanted Caruso. And Steph. I think we're so numb to the Magic Johnson appearances that we almost are desensitized to realizing how fucked up they are. Like, can

you imagine another city, right? Another city where you have this legendary, like imagine if Michael Jordan just said, I'm going to go like didn't wasn't involved with with the Hornet or anything like that, but just was hanging out in Chicago all the time. And then every six months when on first take it was like Billy Donovan fucking sucks. I would have done everything differently. Yeah. Just making up hypothetical. I would have signed this guy, this guy, this guy, knowing that no one's going to be like, Hey, dude, that doesn't work for the cap. Right. And I, you know, I've had a host in that spot where you're kind of like, is this guy wrong? And it's Magic Johnson. You kind of let him go. So I don't know if

Greeny is going to go. That doesn't work under the cap. And you actually couldn't have done that. And then I remember I talked to somebody pretty quickly after because I was double checking. I go, Hey, when magic was talking about that Derosin thing, I'm like, all the Lakers had other than the other like more creative stuff was a 5.9 mid-level taxpayer exception. And the guy I talked to was like Derosin wasn't signing anywhere for less than 20 mil. Like he just wasn't, right? He just wasn't. There are other options. And magic is like, again, it's the equivalent of like, we had Yanis one on my board. It's like, it just goes on and on. And you know, magic also when they, when they got rid of Dan Tony and they brought in Byron Scott, who was like the first

thing he's like, I don't know about these three pointers. Like that's fucking stupid. We're going to be long twos and boxing out on a free throw line. And magic is like, happy days are here again. And you go, what the fuck? And it's, I think that Genie Bus is in a really tough spot because there's a lot of voices. There's a lot of history. There's a lot of stuff. And she's the steward of this whole thing. And you know, it's, it's, it's a passion as a fan base for any sports franchise I've ever seen in this country. But the LeBron part of it is so weird because I think LeBron, when he, when he says things, he's saying things for reasons. And sometimes it's, it's powerful stuff. And then sometimes I'm like, I don't know that this is as powerful as you want

this to be. Like I think he was complimenting Oklahoma City and saying how amazing Presti was over all star weekend because they have a lot of draft picks. And he's thinking, well, if I'm really nice about Presti, maybe they'll use a pick on my kid in a couple of years. Like I think that's how they operate. And so when the Mark Jackson rumors started this weekend, I promise there's a point here. I'm like, there's nobody that knows what's going on in the league that would be like, Hey, we got to get Mark Jackson in here and fix this. Because Mark Jackson brings more problems. He just does. I don't give a fuck. I'll argue with anybody about it. The history is long and it's, and it's, there's a reason why the guy hasn't had a coaching gig in a long time. And

you're like, why would he be adamant about Mark Jackson getting a job? But Mark is also a clutch client. So I went, I wonder if LeBron says this publicly so that another organization, specifically an owner who'd be impressionable by LeBron would be like, well, fuck if LeBron wants Mark Jackson, let's get this guy in there. Because I do think there's this collective LeBron team thing where they plant seeds to try to get their way in a bunch of different areas, not just specific to how it works out for LeBron. So maybe they want Mark Jackson. That would surprise me. But I think that could be part of it too. That's interesting. I like that. That's a great theory. Yeah. That's much smarter than or three that LeBron was going to hire his son, his head coach.

Yeah. So that way his son could play himself and they would circumvent the draft that way. I think yours probably more based in reality. What about Westbrook as coach so he can't put himself in? Well, Westbrook had a quote today that was so funny. He's like, I don't know what Frank Vogel's problem was with me. It's like, oh, maybe we never really got along. It's like, yeah, I could guess why. So Ryan, put your MVP vote on the line. Oh, two finals. What teams are making it? You have to get one of the two. If you miss on both of them, you give your vote to Jake. Yeah, no problem. Phoenix, Milwaukee. I think it's a rematch. Phoenix wins. I agree. I agree. I think it's one of those years that because you, your Bob Ryan stories,

like I appreciate it and what you're saying because sports are that's why we watch sports are unpredictable. But the NBA playoffs are kind of predictable in a lot of ways. Like there are teams historically totally predictable. Right. They're most predictable of any of the playoffs. Right. Right. There are teams that can win it all and there are teams that just can. And I think that there's, it feels like there's a few teams in the East and there's one team in the West and maybe, you know, well, Chris Paul will get hurt. So we'll see how they deal with that. But I agree with you. I think it's going to be, we talk our way a million different ways about the Celtics and that's the heat, which has there ever been a more disrespected team,

one seed than the heat? Like no one talks about the heat. No, it's hilarious. I mean, I've made fun of myself going, they're going to be in the NBA finals and maybe going, yeah, I don't know if they score enough. It's crazy. We did this old podcast where we haven't even talked about the heat. They're the one thing and bands, one of my favorite players in the league and he missed a huge chunk and they still end up being the one seed. I mean, all their three main guys, I mean, the, the development that they do, and I wouldn't even call it like on the edge of the roster, at the bottom of the roster, you know, Struz and Vincent and Yertsevin having to play big minutes.

Duncan's not on the bottom of the roster. No, but when you think about the development of the pieces around it, no, I know Duncan's not at the bottom. Hazlum. You're going to say you're down to Hazlum. Yeah. Yeah. Hazlum has been developed nicely over the last 45 years. All right. I want to throw something at you guys. I don't know what your time frame here is. No, we go, we, whatever. Okay. You guys were talking Timberwolves celebrations. Yeah. Let's, let's hash this out. Do you have a problem with it? Because like, why, why are you telling people not to enjoy sports? That's my question. It's tough to argue with that PFT. So there's, there's no line though. There's a, what if they had a parade today? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's figure out the

line. No, I'd actually be fine with the parade because here's the thing. I'm fine with that. You'd be okay with the parade. It doesn't hurt me at all. Here's the other part of it. And, and someone said like, oh, if, if the Nets had celebrated like, if KD had celebrated like that, you wouldn't have a problem. Yes, you're right. Different circumstances. Certain guys who have won a title, you expect them to have a little bit of a different reaction. Being a Minnesota sports fan, it doesn't get talked about. It literally, like everyone talks about Cleveland. Everyone talks about Buffalo. Everyone talks about Atlanta. They have lost 18 straight playoff games as the twins. The twins have lost 18 straight playoff games. That's an insane stat. That's ridiculous.

They have not won a playoff. They've been in the playoffs seven times since 2004, and they've not won a playoff game. That's crazy. Side topic for your baseball podcast, should the AL central be relegated? Is the AL central even power? If it's power six in baseball, I think it's a power five in AL central. White Sox. Listen, this is the year for White Sox. That's whatever all my friends or White Sox fans are telling me. Move the SEC up to the MLB. Yes. And then put the replaced AL central back in college. So, so, so you got the twins. The T Wolves had one of the best players of all time. I don't know where you rank KG top 30. I don't know. Whatever. They went to a Western Conference final. That's it. Never, never went past that.

Seven first round exits to start his playoff career. The ultimate, the ultimate winner build is the ultimate loser. Yes. Yes. The Vikings have Kirk Cousins as their quarterback. They're 0 and 4 in Super Bowls all time. They also, I think we could, you could easily make the claim they have the greatest team of all time to not make a Super Bowl with that, you know, Randy Moss rookie year team that lost to the Falcons. 15-1 that year. Like, like such an insane team. That team was nuts. Nuts. Nuts. And they don't. That was your buddy that made the kick, right? PFT. Yeah. It's Morton Anderson. And he made it. He made it because Gary Anderson, no relation, missed his first field goal. I know. And then the, the, the Wild who they got

sent to Dallas, the state of hockey lost their hockey team. They come back and they lose every year in like the first or second round. I think context matters where Minnesota, if you're a Minnesota sports fan and Patrick Beverly, obviously there's more history with the Clippers and everything. Enjoy the fuck out of it. What's the point? You're not going to like, I, I, I, I have changed my opinion as I've gotten a little older where it's like, dude, it's, it's, being a sports fan is miserable. It is. You don't win. You, no one wins. You know what I mean? So you have to Most of us lose. Yeah. We lose all the time. Right. Right. And you invest time, money, you know, heart, you know, everything, like emotions. And it's stupid. It's dumb how much we invest in our

sports teams, but you have to find joy in other things. So I'm never going to, I'm never going to hate on people for, for doing that now. And the people that say act like you've been there before, those are people that for the most part are so spoiled by winning that they don't even get joy out of success anymore. They just get their joy out of telling other people not to be happy about it. Right. So like 2019, 2018 NHL playoffs, the capitals won a Stanley Cup game. I think they went up one nothing. I popped champagne and people were like, what are you doing? Act like you've been there. I was like, I've literally never seen a cap Stanley Cup win in my entire life. Celebrate sports. Sports are supposed to be fun for the fans. If you have not experienced any form

of success, celebrate everything that you can get the, the, uh, in 2016, no, 15 Cubs, they went up to one on the Cardinals. It was the, I think maybe it was the game before Schwarzer hit that fucking ball that hasn't landed. I remember me and my buddy, we got so fucking drunk that the next game that we were at, which was the clinching game, we were drinking water and coffee in the bleachers because we were so hungover, like celebrate the moments, celebrate the moments. And I don't regret it. It was fucking awesome. It was like a three o'clock first pitch. We beat the Cardinals to go up to one. It was fucking awesome. And I don't regret it. I regret it a little because I was very, very hungover. I, for the record, don't regret the champagne at all.

Yeah. Popping champagne is always fun to do. No matter, I don't care what the excuse is. More people should pop champagne just for like the small stuff that goes right in life. Do you have this, do you have the saber thing now? No, I, I'm more of a Andre guy or J. Roget. So you just kind of unscrew it, you pop it off. It's usually best enjoyed like a couple of drops of mimosas. So how are you going to counter what we just did? Because that was passionate sports fan. You're going to sound like a big grump. You're going to sound like a real fucking grumpy guy. Go ahead. I don't even know if I have enough room on my task came after that, but I'm going to give you a little backstory myself. I remember Hardo, Red Sox fan,

Rosillo, you know, mid to late nineties, you know, going back even further than that, I remember being like 10 and going to the bleachers and watching the college kids get shitfaced and beat each other up when I was like 10 or 11. And I was like, I cannot wait to be 19 and get drunk in these bleachers and just see what happens. And then I got to 19, 2021. I hadn't really filled out yet. And I was like, you know what I don't want to do is get my ass kicked by three kids from Hyde Park. So we'll just have beers because I don't want to get beat up here. So I remember, you know, later on bartending, unfortunately, the bar was owned by like a super passionate Yankees fan. So annoying. You know, he actually used to do like the 27 championships thing to me when we'd

argue about non baseball related subjects. I love that. No, I actually, I was tough. It almost almost got to a fight. He owned the place. And then I was like, fuck this, I'm going to fight you where I quit. I love that. By the way, sidebar. I love Yankee fans that do the 27 rings. I think that's like the scummiest, greatest thing. Like, why not? Right, right. Okay. So when the socks got to the wild card 98 99 and they celebrated it, I was like, oh, and then the Yankee guy was like, well, okay, cool. You know, and I was back like you've been there before guy because I'm like, this sucks. Like it's the wild card and you guys are acting like you just won the world series. Like this is stupid. Fast forward a couple of years later, get my first job in sports really,

sort of second, but really the first one where I was paid, but not really when I think about it. Minor League Baseball, I'm around it every single day. I'm around the players every day and seeing what they go through every day and that their ups and downs were very muted compared to those of the fans. It's the greatest experience I still have ever gotten in my entire career, because it kind of set like, I started just understanding sports way better just being around a team every single day, the mentality of it. But when things went well, and those guys would tear it up randomly, like then I got it. And I'm like, you know what, this is what it should be about. Celebrate those moments. And then you're so stupid when you're, when you don't know how

a team works, we're like, Oh, these guys are getting drunk like over the weekend. And then they've got a playoff game coming up. You're like, dude, half the team's drunk all the time. Anyway, so it doesn't, it doesn't, especially like back then, I'm sure it's a little bit different now, because like guys like posting deadlift videos on Instagram and shit, but I am with you. I am with you. But however, I do think there are lines at times, but the Beverly Clippers history, even though they got so sick of him that when it was more on him than I think it was, is necessarily the Clippers being disrespectful as he likes to frame it. There are some Pat Bev things, even though I think every team should have one guy that pushes the edge. If you're a

good basketball team, you kind of need one guy that's not afraid of anybody. So respect that part of Beverly that he's made his way from this career. But there's also moments where I get super annoyed with it. And on top of that, I did enjoy the TNT crew making fun of them. Okay, that's fine. Right. I liked all of it. It's fine to be like watching Shaq, Kenny, and Charles Barkley make fun of these guys for celebrating. That's, that's fun to enjoy too. That's okay to enjoy. I think if, if a fan base is of the mindset, like I'll give the example to Dallas Cowboys, for years and years, you know, they had the dynasty in the nineties, and then they would publicly say, with the Dallas Cowboys, we expect to win the Super Bowl every year.

You can't go back on that. So people are allowed to enjoy your misery when you lose in the playoffs, if you make statements like that. And if you win one playoff game, if you win two playoff games, I still don't think you should be allowed to celebrate as hard because you've publicly said things like we just care about Super Bowls and Super Bowl or bust. If you make that declaration, you can never move back in time and go back on that. Yeah, you're right. Because, you know, the guys that win, like telling everybody else how they should act all the time, which is part of it, which is part of the winning, you know, reward of the whole deal. You're Minnesota rant, though. I can't tell you you're wrong. I can't. But I also think it's okay

to make fun of losing your shit like that on a playing game and dancing on the scores table. But that had more to do with Pat Bev and the Clippers than maybe it was about a franchise getting too hyped about a game that doesn't even count as a playoff game. I'm cool with with them making fun of Pat Beverly. I was defending more Minnesota fans, like I think Minnesota fans have every right to lose their shit and go crazy. That crowd was electric. And I'm right. Like imagine being in the crowd going, All right, this is cool, but let's temper it down too much. You know what it is? That's not what people are there for. They're there to get away from everything else and have a release. And if that's,

if that happens for a few hours, go ahead. Who's who's the say you shouldn't do it? It's also, I should say, I've also been changed a little by like, if you have a college team that you root really hard for, especially a team that's not going to contend for a title, you have to have perspective of like beating your rival, having a big win. Like that's when people are like, Oh, why do you watch college football? There's only four teams that can win. It's like, I don't know, dude, because when my team wins 10 games and they go and like every 10 years can beat Ohio State, that's fun. I don't know. I don't know what to say. Like that's fun. I will celebrate that. So I think that's more of a perspective. Yeah, I think we got it. Yeah. All right. Last question.

This has been awesome. Roback question promo code take for 20% off your first purchase. Q zips and hoodies at robackroback.com. Use code take for 20% off your first purchase. All right. We're going to put you on the spot a little bit here. We're going to do, yeah, we're going to do a draft. This is like, is it cake? Yeah. Is it cake? That guy's a little too excited in the promo. I don't think it's that like when they have those breakouts for TV shows or promoting and the guys like, this show is insane. We're like, it's just sort of a cake or it isn't. Yeah. I've seen you in those shorts, Ryan. It's always cake. It's cake. It's cake all the time. All right. So we're a lot of hours into that cake. Yeah. PFT and I have, have, have done some research for this. So you're,

you're going to be a little bit behind the eight ball, but we're going to do a draft. Okay. We're going to draft coaches, top five coaches that you could be, you could consider the best coach in the NBA. Oh, this is great. Okay. So you got it. You got the premise. So I have the first pick top five guys that could be number one. Yes. No, I get the premise and I also realize what you're doing. Okay. All right. So you go. I seriously think Simmons and I saying there's top 20, top five guys discussion. I think that was the whole point and people, people just loved being like, how can you make five out of 20? It was unbelievable. How can people were like, they get so excited when they think you fucked up. Right. I just loved, I loved seeing that title.

Trust me. We fuck up. So there'll be another chance for you to go ahead. All right. I love this. I love this. So does this mean I get the first pick? We're going to go first, I'll go second, pick at third, then it's going to wrap back around. Yes. Oh, shit. So I got a value. So it's the top five guys. So each of us are going to have five guys that could be the number one guy. Okay. Got it. Five rounds of number one guys. It's completely different than just picking what we think are the five best coaches. No, it's if you could see the one guy, yeah, could be the guy that everyone's like, Whoa, that's the guy totally different guy. What about the past? No, it's got to be current coaches and still and Stan Van Gundy is eligible.

Stan Van Gundy is eligible. All right. Okay. So I got the first pick. Are we ready? Put this on a graphic board. This would be great. I'm also not afraid of projecting each of you guys your minds. All right. I'm going to take Spolster. Good pick. I don't know. Like at some point, he is what he is, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He's the best coach in the NBA. Okay. Okay. Well, whatever. Well, no, you can't. You can't. You can't. The listeners are going to vote. So you just poison the water. He's good. He's good. He could be a top guy. All right, PFT. Players don't seem to like him. Yeah. Okay. For my first pick, this is tough. I'm going to go Buds. I'm going to go Buds. All right. All right. I'll go

something old, something new. I'll go with Pop and then wrap him back around. I'll take, he's not really new anymore, but I'll take Kerr. I think it's interesting that you took Pop because that's specifically a guy that like was the guy. Well, he could be, I don't think he's going to be Don't poison the water. I don't think he's going to be the guy again. Don't poison the water. No, we're just discussing your choice. But he could be the guy again. He could be the little intelligent conversation regarding your choice. But it don't poison the water. Pop could definitely, if he wins another title, you don't think people would be like, oh, shit. Yeah. He's the guy again. Yeah. If he does win another title, yes. Right. So he could be, it's top five guys. It could

be the number one guy. My next guy is a email. Okay. First African American head coach in the history of the Boston Celtics. Also going to get one about a by the way, long overdue. Long overdue who's going to get warped in the first round. He could get warped in the first round. Some are predicting he's going to get warped in the first round. I'll say this. If the Celtics don't get warped in the first round, it's because they have the guy coaching them. That's the difference. All right. All right. I can't believe who's still on the board. I'll go Ty Lou and we'll snake it back around with Nick Nurse. Ooh. Nice. Nice. Nice. Good picks. Okay. Can I take Bronny Jr.? They called Ty Lou the Bella check of the NBA last night. They did. That was something. That was

something. Wow. Would you guys think a glue lady? She was, I'd like to see her use a stronger adhesive next time. Yeah. Maybe actually. What do you think they were going to do? She should have glued her face to the ground. Like what is gluing your hand to the ground? Do they imagine how powerful that would have been if she just like dumped it all over her face and then just stuck that forehead right at the top of the key? And by the way, did she want people to be eating poison chickens? Yeah. Or getting bird flu? That's a low approval rating. Yeah. Like no one came to her defense. I thought for sure somebody on Twitter would zag and be like, well, let's, let's see exactly what her position is on something. And then people would be like, oh, and then if it was something

that was popular on Twitter, people would be like, oh, you know what? That was kind of lame that people made fun of her. Yeah. And then none of that happened. She was like, there's this new Mel Gibson movie when I was scrolling through Apple TV, it had a zero on rotten tomatoes. And I'm like, oh my God, a zero? I was like, that's like the lady's approval rating, the glue lady. Yeah. She's a zero. She was a zero on rotten tomatoes. I'm opposed to destroying chickens that are infected with bird flu. That's a very specific, like, I don't think that's a glue worthy cause. That's like maybe, maybe a Facebook post. Yeah. Right. She started a Facebook group. She's like, we haven't had a ton of bites yet. All right. So my next one, this one's easy for me,

actually. Um, I've actually heard, I've heard rumblings and league circles that this guy could be connected to be the next Lakers head coach. Oh, in which case that could mean that he would be the guy as early as next year. That's Quinn Snyder. Ooh. Okay. I am shocked. I am shocked that I got this pick because it is he not the coach of the year, two years in a row now, and he's about to win a title. If Chris Paul doesn't get hurt, Monty Williams. I mean, that's, he's good. He will be the guy if they win the title. Yeah. I think he's going to win coach of the year this year. He won it last year, right? If I, if I'm, no, I don't think he did. I don't think he won last year. No, Debedo won. Oh, yeah.

Remember, they to like, first of all, as soon as you get it, you're going to get fired in less than 20. True. It's, it's a lock. And coach of the year in basketball, more often than not, it's who did something that we didn't expect to have happen. But I think because Monty had the team even better this year. That's, that's what's going to happen. Okay. It was tough. It was a brutal vote this year for coach of the year. Let me, you know what? This draft, this is going to bump some numbers, huh? This podcast going to kill it. It's going to start rivaling some of those political. I'm going to corner, I'm going to corner the market on the steves. I actually think Steve Nash does a great job because holy fuck does he have to deal with a lot. I think that's

fair. I mean, it's, I won't, I won't hear it. If somebody's like, Oh, Steve Nash can't coach. Okay. We could talk about rotation and we can talk about stuff like that. And that's fine. And like you're going to put, you watch your guy long enough. I don't care who you are, you're going to find a problem with your coach. Good fucking luck having the disposition that this guy had the last two years dealing with all the bullshit that he dealt with. I don't want to fucking hear it. It's actually incredible. It's incredible when you like stack up everything he's had to deal with. Steve Nash. Okay. PFT your fourth pick. Can I take whoever the next coach the Kings is going to be? Sure. Can I just pencil that one in? I think Kings are about to do big

things. They've built, really built something out there. No, I'm going to go with Nick Nurse. Already taken. Oh, you did? Yeah. Right. In the third round. Good pick, Ryan. Is there another Nick Nurse though, maybe in college that if you were talking about a guy who doesn't have the job yet. I'm going to go Nate McMillan. Did you just project Nick Nurse to the Sacramento Kings on top of anything else? Yeah, if we're reading the tea leaves, I'm going McMillan. All right, Nate McMillan. A little bit of honor achieving year, but still they went to the Western or Eastern Conference final last year. That was, that was something. All right, Ryan, your last two. I'll take Taylor Jenkins, Memphis. Okay. And I'm going to go James Borrego,

Charlotte. Okay. That team has no front line. There were versions of that team before when they had nobody or they had guys that were hurt and they were competitive. They had numbers a couple years ago or like, this team isn't any good. I thought they had one of the worst rosters, rosters in the league. And he's just, they compete. He's not afraid to kind of sit guys at times. They're totally overmatched front line wise. And, you know, I know that 43 and 39 doesn't blow everybody's mind, but they, they lost Hayward twice, I think two different times this season. So I think Borrego is a terrific coach. Comes from that pop tree as well. So. Okay. Nice. Nice. Do you think Jim Boilin will get another job? I hope so. Cause he's got, he's, uh,

uh, didn't they call it, they had what leadership council and then he used to call timeouts late just to be like, okay, let's, let's get a time out. Yeah. Did I tell you the Mike Singletary story? Did I ever tell you that? No, tell it to us quick. There was a guy that I knew that was playing in a pre-season game for Singletary when Singletary was the head coach of the Niners. And he's like, I've never, ever seen it before at any level of football, but like something happened and it was like a big third down defensively and Singletary called the timeout and people were like, what? And he waved everybody over and he was like, let's fucking go. He called it the basketball. This is a pump up timeout. Yes. Right. He called a basketball timeout in an NFL.

And I think it was an exhibition game. All right. Let's lock in boys. I love it. Did it work? The story is way better if it doesn't work. That's a pretty big part of the story, Ryan, because he, maybe he's the genius. Maybe, maybe that's how we need to be working it. Yeah. Oh man. All right. Last pick PFT and then my last pick and then we'll let you go. There's a lot of real shitheads out there right now. I'm going to go. There's tons of values. Yeah. There's a lot of value. I'm going to go. Michael Malone, not Mike. Michael Malone. Okay. Did you guys have him on? No. No, we haven't. Should we not just sound so nasty about it? Yeah. No, it never. All right. My last pick. I'll go. I'll go. I'll just ride the wave that we were just talking about. I'll go

with Chris Finch and the Timberwolves. That's a great pick. I feel like I got some value. Their personality changed with him. People got really mad because he was brought in because it was a very odd thing that you bring somebody from a different staff in midway through the seasons. Not usually what happened, but what people did, what people left out of that conversation was that he is really, he's held in high regard by a lot of smart basketball people. So when everybody was losing their minds about it, I did get some text being like, I know you probably don't, but like this guy's awesome. And think about where Minnesota is now. Yeah. They just, they're about to raise a banner. Strong pick. Ryan, thank you. We're going to ask you to,

we're going to call on you one more time during the NBA playoffs, probably before the maybe conference finals. Does that sound good, right? Actually, let's just, let's just base it off whenever Chris Paul gets hurt. Well, I know you're hurting my feelings so we can book this again. Or if he just has like a really underwhelming game. Yeah. Yeah. And the immediate aftermath. Emergency podcast. If he doesn't score a lot of points, it's just because he doesn't want to. Right. So you know, right. Just telling him. What about if he has turnovers? No, I looked at, okay, see game. I still think one was really his fault, but you know, again, I'm biased if you haven't figured that out yet. What if it's Chris Paul against Blake Griffin

in the finals? That'll be quite a story there. One guy. I'll be playing. Yeah. Cause Chris Paul be hurt. Ryan, I don't want to make, I look, I don't want to sound like a type of Blake because I like them. We all know how much we've got. I've got a couple of mutual friends who doesn't mean I get to hang out with them, but there was that one time it was, it was sort of fun. Yeah. All right, Ryan, thank you. Everyone go check out the Ryan Russell podcast. It is the best. We appreciate it. And we'll see you. Yeah. Like, I don't know, 10 days, 14 days, whenever, whenever the injury does happen. Hammy, July after the poll, I'll do,

I'll report live from Scottsdale for the parade. Oh, we will not have you on if the sons win. No, I think you guys should expense it and I'll be a correspondent. Oh, you're going to go to a parade. Like Chris Paul has already had a great career. You think that you really need to celebrate just like one title that he wins. One. Maybe I just want to go to Scottsdale. Yeah, actually in July, maybe. So you had a cliff for me. All right, see ya. Ryan was brought to you by golf time supreme. It's golf season. The master's just wrapped up time for you to get out on the links with your crew. Book your next tea time by downloading the exclusive barstool game time app. It's available in the app store. That's what I'm going to use.

I'm going to book a tea time at Augusta. I'm going to go down there with one club and I'm going to shoot a hard six on 18 with my putter all using the barstool golf time app. Check it out right now. You can earn rewards points when booking a tea time and doing reviews. To write a review, all you have to do is you filter to your course. You click the submit a review button on the course home screen after you finish around. You can download today. Start earning rewards points towards exclusive barstool merch. It is golf season. We're going to hit the links. We decided that as a podcast. We're going to be me, big cat, Hank, Jake, probably going to go out there and kick our asses. We're going to go out of the golf course. We're going to get into

golf. That's something that we've resolved to do. Spend some time outside and we're going to use the barstool golf time app for that. Download today. Start earning your rewards points towards exclusive barstool merch. All right, let's do Firefest of the Week. By the way, we have a great interview coming Monday with Jake Arietta. Already taped it. Very excited for that. Also, some different sports covered on Wednesday's interviews. We've got two interviews coming. Little soccer and tennis. Never had a tennis guest before, but we just wrapped that up and it was fucking awesome. Do you guys do talking tennis with a guest? We did not. That would have been inappropriate. Yes. I was thinking to myself, I don't want to get written up by Hank. Well,

he wasn't here because he was in the C-suite. But he knows that he's got people in every room. True. Hank, you're Firefest. Yeah. We talked about it at length on Tuesday. We talked about what happened for those of you out there that haven't listened to Wednesday show yet. Hank, why don't you just run it back? I just sent a picture to my family and the internet roasted my entire being, my face. They memed it, put it all over the place. Chelsea, chilling with Chels, made a nice painting. Yeah. It turned into memes, which turned into paintings, which turned into art, which is probably going to end up in the studio. Maybe not if it gets lost in the mail. Who knows what's going to happen with that? I don't want that. Oh, good. I don't feel safe with that around.

Yeah. I mean, she's like selling on eBay. That's great. Good. But memes are fucking guy in our Instagram. The person burns it. Obviously, in my new position, we're tracking data. We're looking at the numbers, always trying to get a leg up. We look at our Instagram and it's like a normal post, if it's a picture, not a video. It's like eight to 25 is probably the low and high range of a post. Memes posted a compilation of the memes of me, roasting me, and it got like 45,000 likes. Damn. I mean, that's tough to see. It's just tough to see. People love your face, Hank. Yeah. A beautiful, beautiful face. The Hank face. It's hurtful. Now, the woker amongst us would say that maybe this entire

thing was planned to get this sort of social interaction. But that would imply that I wanted this to happen to me. Yeah. Maybe you're just putting on a big act. Maybe you're super pumped that everybody out there knows that you work out really hard. I would say that if that were the case, I probably would have taken a more attractive picture. Well, let me ask you a question, Hank. As your new job as vice president of barcel sports, there will be a time where I'm sure they'll look over the numbers being like pre-Hank, post-Hank, huh? Seems like pre-Hank what? Pre-Hank becoming vice president numbers, post-Hank becoming vice president numbers. Yeah, I'm trying to fuck right up about it. This was an easy win though. This was a pull out all the

stops. Hmm. It's just something to think about. This is what it's like to be Billy all the time. Is he actually the VP now? Yeah. Yeah. That's like, well, he's our boss. He was VP, and then I think he just named himself Chancellor. And now he's P. Yeah, P and Chancellor. I actually got to figure out if this is real after this. Yeah. He's VP. I stay with Hank, workout pigs. Yes. I stay with Hank. Does that have anything to do with the fact that he's VP now? No, Billy actually did send me a selfie, and I was like, what the fuck is this? He's like, working out. And it kind of made sense where I was like, this doesn't even look like you're working out. It's just a selfie. And then it all clicked. I was like, fuck. Yeah. But I appreciated that, Billy. I don't think it was that bad.

It really wasn't. I think it was just bad that you sent it to the worst possible combination. It's just one of those things where it's like, you don't think it's that bad. It's going to be an average performing post. And then it's like, no, this like people laughing at you is like, actually what people want to see the most. That's really what it is. It's like, I wouldn't have cared. 8 to 25. It's like a high range. Pretty much everything we post is somewhere within that range. And it's like, oh, let's see how this did. But you knew that people love our misery. People love us looking terrible. Like what are the pictures that pop in me when I look at my fattest when I lose? Like that's just the good news is that people are perverts and sickos.

It's a great, it's a great meme and a great picture for those of us that know the backstory behind the entire thing. But if you're on the outside looking in, I don't think that meme it doesn't cross over. It would make you want to delete Instagram. Right. How soon until we get the first screenshot of somebody using it as their Tinder picture? Get on it. Good luck. Yeah. I mean, good luck with that. What if there's one dynamite? Yeah. All right. Pity, you're a firefest. My firefest of the week is it's a little bit embarrassing for me. I haven't really been sleeping that well for the last few nights. I slept really well last night actually. But nights before that and then the night before that and then the night before that

got really bad sleep. In fact, on I think Tuesday night, I didn't even sleep at all. And I just got up in the morning. I was like, it's five o'clock. I'm just awake now. I'm sick of pretending to go to sleep. And the reason why I haven't been sleeping that well is I've somehow found myself addicted to playing a flight simulator on my computer. Yeah, I've gotten like really into this one particular flight simulator, which is so realistic and detailed that I have to like go through the fucking step by step tutorial and checklist to figure out how to ignite my engines, wait till they're ready, put my flaps in takeoff position, close the canopy, idle for a second, go down the runway, taxi takeoff once I reach 250 kilometers per hour, communicate with my

wingman effectively. And it's a lot. Dude. And I don't particularly understand why I'm addicted to it. No. I used to play a couple of flight sim games back when I was, I don't know, like 10? No. It's not a lot. It's the right amount. I bought a joystick. Yes. I've got a joystick and I've got a throttle that I put on my desk. Everything you just said I have and I do it on my phone too. I love flight simulators. It's awesome. They're incredible. It's something about like, and you don't even do cool things. You just fucking take planes off and land them. Okay. So I am doing some cool stuff. Oh, you are. I like to just fucking, I like to just do like the shuttle from like New York to DC. Yeah. Those are cool too. I like those where it's like you

can you essentially what the internet has become now with all the different simulator games that you can play is you just pretend to do somebody else's job for a couple hours or yes. There's a tractor simulator. There's a train simulator, which that's actually awesome. Our guy Zod does the actual full train simulator that's like real time, like not sped up. Yeah. Like he will actually do four hours New York to DC Amtrak. Yeah. He's doing somebody else's job for it. But I'm doing this flight sim right now. I'm in the middle of a campaign in Ukraine where I'm flying SU-25s and I'm providing ground support to my troops. I'm taking out SAM sites, triple A sites, the whole nine yards. And it is like it's the weirdest thing that I've ever found myself addicted

to. But I've been up until like 3 30 in the morning. I'm ignoring when you guys are texting me late at night after we got done recording part of my take. I'm not responding to them not because I'm ignoring them, but because my eyes are glued to my computer. Yes. And I'm playing flight simulators for five hours at a time. Do not do not be ashamed whatsoever. Flight simulators are cool. I need they just are I need to dial it back a little bit so that I can sleep because then after I'm done, you will after I'm done playing, I try to fall asleep. And all I'm thinking about is my heads up display and I'm like that that bandit really got my six when I entered into the vertical scissors fight with them to shouldn't have split S you I if you're I think you're similar to me in that

like you get into it and you'll be addicted for like two or three weeks, then you'll probably find a way to wean yourself off. That's how I've always done like I'm not in it right now. I had one probably two months ago where I found the sickest game on my phone that was full flight simulator and I played it nonstop. It's it's awesome. And it's got to the point. I don't know if I'm even able to wean myself off it yet. No, you have to go hard. You have to go harder. Yes. Yes. Yes. So I got I got the joystick. I got the throttle. I don't like how the throttle feels. So it upgraded. I just purchased a new throttle. Yeah. And then I spent about 500 bucks getting an F 22 in my arsenal that I can then mod with all the different missiles and skins. It's awesome. It's it's

become an issue for me. No, it's no lean into it because that's what I'm saying. Like you whenever I get addicted to one of these video games, I just have to go full hard as in like as hard as I can go for two to three weeks and then I'll be like wake up one day and just be like, all right, I'm good. I'm done with that. It's like that movie adaptation where he's like I got so seriously in love with fish for a while. Then one day I was just like, I'm never setting foot in the ocean ever again. Yeah, fish. Yeah. I need to reach the point where I'm like, fuck planes. That's every video game I've ever had. I just go so crazy about it and then I just stop. I threw my I threw my joystick when I got shot down. I ejected like a little bitch instead of going down

with a ship. I threw my joystick because this bogey got me. Yeah, Billy. So you're not doing a commercial flight simulator. You're doing a like combat combat flight. Well, it's a mix of both because in order to learn how to actually get airborne and fly any of these airplanes, that probably took a solid 12 hours of playing the game where I'm just learning startup procedures and navigation modes and figuring out how to hit my waypoints and activate my RWR and all this shit. You understand as a person in the military, you have to like, you know, a Jag, you have to get to your baseline before you can actually go missiles hot. So you're like bombing Russian convoys. Yeah. Oh, Billy's in rockets. I've been using rockets, a 10s billions wondering if you

can be on the Russian side. So it so you bought so you bought a joystick that was for a commercial flight simulator, but somehow you can release bombs with it. No, I knew I knew eventually I would want to fire weapons with don't don't be ashamed. So did you like flip open the like you have the red button? That's that's the next level. I do have a red button on there, but it's a joystick with like six buttons on it. It's pretty serious stuff. In fact, I I looked into getting a joystick, a complete rig that also included like a chair, like you can you can buy a chair and sit in that in front of your computer. I got addicted to race car F one. I don't know, maybe it was early in the summer last summer, and I got like a big rig and I got I stopped at the chair. I was like,

no, I can't do this. I can't get a chair that makes it look like I just can't. If you have if you buy like a pilot's chair, like you need a room at that point, yes, because at that point you have an airplane chair right in your living room, right? And then company comes over and you're you're just exposed. Yeah, you realize what a weirdo you are. But I just maybe I need to find better times to do it because it's impacted my sleeping schedule to the point where some nights I'm just not sleeping at all. You just got to go keep going into it. I'm just flying over all the time over the Black Sea. Yeah, as hard as you can. All right, my firefests a pre-firefest. I would love AWL's help who listen to show of kids potty training this weekend. So I'm fucked.

Yeah, good luck. Yep. Thanks. Anyone who wants to help me out. I'm just not going to leave my apartment all weekend. So are you going to teach your son to pee in the sink? Eventually, we'll get there for sure. But yeah, I've been reading about how to do it properly. And it sounds like I'm in for a hell of a weekend. So these are little things you kind of take for granted before you have kids. You're like, oh, yeah, what potty training? That's like you just tell them pee in the toilet doesn't work like that. No, they don't get it. I was telling Big Cat about this the other day because he was starting to talk about potty training. But the one the one family that I've been around that has been in the course of potty training chose to do it the most

the weirdest fucking way possible, which is you just take all your clothes off your kids. Yeah, and then they just go around and they're free to piss and shit anywhere they want. Yeah, but they have to clean it up. That's me. That's the most effective. That's the most effective form of birth control I've ever been around is seeing that it's like, well, that's I don't I don't want that in my house. That's also a very effective way to get your kid to have like pretty big mental issues where it's like shaming them. I think the whole whole point and I've read a book about it with no big deal. It wasn't a full book. It was like 20 pages. But I read about it. And it's like, you got to be very nice about it treats all these things because you don't

it makes sense. I think that's how serial killers get born. It's like, if you shame them about peeing their pants, they then will just be like, all right, I'm gonna go kill some people. The only experience I have is with Leroy. And he was very easy. Dogs are easy. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a little because you can you can shame a dog into pooping out dogs if you give them like any type of meat or treat. Yeah, it's good. I actually want to hear Billy's take. I'm sure that you have ideas about how to potty train a child. Honestly, I feel like there's a huge parallel between raising kids and keeping like upper primates as pets. Yep. I feel like there's a lot of the same strategies for a while till the brain development kicks in. I know just a thought. So how would you train an

upper primate? I don't know. They don't have to go in toilets. Right. Have you thought about bananas using bananas as yeah, I feel like children are very like analogous to monkeys. Yeah, I mean, I guess but they again, the monkeys don't have to go in toilets. Right, but you could just sort of take care of them like you would a monkey. Yeah, but the whole I think once you have to party train them. That's when they yeah, like I put a tree in my house and be like, Hey, just climb up on this tree and shit on everything. Yeah. Okay. Or you can yeah, crap in your hand and then throw it at your man. Okay. Yeah, that works. I mean, actually, I'm gonna be fine. I just if people have tips because I know there's a lot of people out there

who do have kids. So I'm sure someone's like, Hey, there's the tip. I will. It's very similar to gambling advice. If you give me a tip, I will most likely take it. Like you just say it to me and I'm like, All right, that's how I'm going to do it. But yeah, this will be a fun weekend for your boy. Billy, I'm going to miss that party, by the way, on Saturday, unless you want my son coming and just shitting on everything. That's fine. Oh, okay. Cool. I'll be there. Yeah, that's chill. Um, so I was out in Indio, California out at Dmitri Bivell's camp. He is a canal Alvarez's next opponent. They're fighting on May 7th in Las Vegas. You can watch it on the zone. It's going to be an amazing fight. I was really up close and personal with Dmitri Bivell throughout.

Basically, I did two days of like his day to day routine and training. It was really awesome, a great experience. There's going to be a video coming out soon. Check out some of the other videos, some other Barstool personalities they've been doing such as Large, Ron and Nick. They've been going with other fighters as well. But I actually was in the ring with them doing drills, working on what he was working on. Just honestly, it was really awesome from that respect. But now my body is in shambles because I am not a professional fighter. You're not allowed to do this. I told you you're banned from doing this. I know, but I literally, but you're 22. I know, but not only my sore, but I got the shit beat out of me in a couple drills. Good. And let me tell

you, Bivell is fighting at 175. He's fighting Canelo. And when I was training, in my training camp, I was fighting guys who were sparring guys who were like 270 pounds. And when they really connected on a big right, it hurt. But they were 100 pounds heavier than Bivell. And every single one of Bivell's punches, 100 pounds less, was exactly like those guys' big rights. So like he's a professional, like a world champion. Like it was just crazy to just experience the difference up close because it was insane. So asking for tax advice about how to handle your winning paychecks. We would just start talking about work visas at one point, but I don't know where his taxes. The videos would be great. But again, you're not allowed to talk about being sore.

Can I talk about being sore for being punched? No, because like I'm going to give him pass on this one. But that was your job. And you did a good job. It was, it was insane. But anyway, went through all that. I'm sore as hell right now. I ate a burrito before one of the training sessions and got hit in the solar plexus. And it was almost that was a burrito everywhere. We've never been hit in that. That's the worst. Did you do three F 45 classes this week? No, no, but like doing the runs like honestly, if it wasn't for like actually having to be good at boxing, like a boxer's lifestyle is like awesome. All you do is like grill and eat and just work out in the head. Right. That's like, but that's fun if you enjoy it. But like it's just being out

in Indio, California, right where Coachella is. It's like a really awesome place in the world. Do you think at the end of the training he respected you as a man? I think so. I hope I think he's, I don't know what his opinions are on American in general, but I think, I think it would have been immediate. Yes. Yeah. I don't know. There was, it was a lot. I mean, look, but anyway, then to make matters worse. So I went through all that. Then my flight got delayed last night and basically I ended up getting it at 7am and then getting out, like didn't sleep all night because of the flight. Then finally got home and then I tried to fall asleep for a couple hours before I came in today. I fell asleep, but I immediately got

freaking sleep paralysis. Oh, that's the worst. Dude, that was scary as fuck. I've had that. Weird dark. It is so bad. Yeah. Some weird dark figure. It was just like, I was trying to like move and like punch us up because dark figure was just sitting on my chest. Was it whitey? No, no, because it was, but it was anyway. Was it Miley Cyrus? No, I wish. No, but it just kept, and also it was like punching me too, but I was probably just sore, but it was the worst thing ever. You have PTSD. It was so scary. You really are a troupe. No, no, I think, I think it had something to do with just like being extra, extra tired and being car sick. Yeah. No sleep paralysis. It might have sleep apnea too. That's a common side effect of sleep

apnea. Really? Yeah. You're probably going to have to start wearing a mask. On Tuesday night, we went to like two, like I didn't fall asleep until like two AM and whenever I don't get like that amount of sleep, I, I sleep walk like badly. Oh really? Yeah. So I was doing that on Tuesday. It's probably my deviated septum is giving me sleep apnea. All right, Jake, I'm excited for those videos. Everyone check it out. We'll remind everyone when they do come out. Jake. Yeah. I am in a little bit of a pickle on how to feel about the John Sterling situation. Oh. So on one hand, for those who didn't see. Yeah, go and explain it. It was hilarious. Hilarious. Stanton hit a bomb, but not deep enough. Stantonian blast home run,

but it was caught is what the call was. As high as far as gone, but caught. On one end, hilarious, like just a funny clip. On the other end, Yankee fans, not exactly, not that he needs a demo reel or a resume, not exactly a clip you would put on a hypothetical resume. Right. Some people saying he needs to hang him up. I'd say that might be. So it's like, it's a tough spot to be in. That's like one of those stadiums. Like anytime there's a big pop fly and you say it's high, it's far, it's gone. You're probably going to be right. It was left though. It was late. It's yeah. It was bad. And it wasn't the first time it's happened. It happened to playoff. Yeah. The playoffs, I think, with the camera and goals. Yeah. It was bad. It was bad.

It was bad. There's no defending. It might be. That's why it's a tough spot. That's why it's a fire fast. It's like his eyes are shot. Are you saying fire sterling? Never. Just saying. That's a mistake. Or if anyone else out back, if anyone else made that mistake, they would probably actually like get talking, talk to about it. Yeah. But I mean, the fact that you're bringing it up right, it sounds like he embarrassed the entire profession and the organization. No, it's just it's a mistake. Yankee way. Take his pin. Take away one pinstripe. Yeah. So I'm sorry, Jake. That's terrible. It's a tough spot. He's a nice guy. I met him once. No way that you think he's a nice guy.

I'm waiting for the day where you're like, that guy's a real piece of shit. All right. Numbers. 4. Jake here at a Monday. Wait, all the NBA playoffs. I mean, obviously, never mind. I was going to ask something about who hit the shot. It just, it was Stan. It would be great. 27. 27. It would be great if it was a deep drive to left. Yeah. 27. My number of, number of rings and Stanton. Everyone got their numbers? 23 times three. PFC, which is 25. 24. 3. They bruised. Yes. He hit a few bombs. He did. None of them fucked up by John Sterling.

Love you guys. You can train Falcons to hunt down drones on your property. It's pretty metal. Yeah. Guard Falcons. Shining away. I'll be coming for your lover. It's the better to be safe than sorry. Say I'm to me. It's the better to be safe than sorry. Take on me. Take me on.

I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. I'll be gone in a day or two. Take on me.

Take me on. I'll be gone in a day.