The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Ravens Statement Win, the MVP Convo, and Not Burying the 49ers. Plus, Durant and the Lethargic Suns.

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Russillo shares his thoughts on the Ravens’ dominant win over the 49ers, Brock Purdy’s four-turnover night, the tenacious Baltimore defense, and a clearer MVP picture (0:33) before reacting to Luka Doncic’s 50-point performance in the Mavericks’ win over the Suns and discussing what went wrong in the Lakers' loss at home vs. the Celtics (11:58). Ryen closes the show with Life Advice (30:33). Host: Ryen Russillo Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We do a quick episode for you today during the holidays, so no guests, but a nice recap on Baltimore's dominant win against San Francisco and an MVP conversation that's probably over. And I'll recap Dallas's big win, Luka's historic night and what is going on in Phoenix,

and some issues for the Lakers and their loss against the Celtics, and extra life advice. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine, that's no. A bottle of wine, yeah. And a snow day, again, no. But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping, total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats.

Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Your headline, Baltimore dominates San Francisco in San Francisco. So now what? What does this mean? I'm glad Baltimore didn't lose by one or two points with the safety where Lamar Jackson early in the game trips over the ref in the end zone, leads to the safety.

I think a lot of quarterbacks have been like, hey, that guy was in a lot of trouble. What was going to happen there? He's probably going to go down anyway. With Lamar, anything's possible. So he probably would have figured out a way to get out of it if the ref hadn't tripped him. Probably a very short list of quarterbacks. Maybe throw Justin Fields in that group as well. But guess what? Baltimore did not lose by one or two. They smashed the Niners. I wanted it to be a clean game. I wanted to see how they matched up. It was not a clean game. Purdy was terrible. Worst game of his career. Three turnovers in the first, three picks in the first half. And we'll get to all the turnover stuff here in a second. So as I say, hey, wait a minute, I wanted to be a clean game to see how they really matched up. That feels dismissive to Baltimore. And I don't want to do that because Baltimore's defense was causing these problems. So let's run through the picks for Purdy. The first one in the end zone is awful throw. Terrible decision. He doesn't see the defensive player, Hamilton, to the right side of the throw. Just doesn't even see him and makes that throw. I don't know how you do that early in the end zone. Just awful. Surprising, because that's the thing that

Purdy normally wouldn't do. It doesn't mean you're never supposed to do it, or it's never going to happen in your career, but it's just like that stretch where they were losing earlier in the season. You're like, wait, why is he making these throws that he normally doesn't make? This is the part of him that we think you can bank on. The second pick was off a tip. Now, sometimes with tip balls, you go, well, it was a tip, so it's not really on Purdy. And I've seen a little bit of that today, but it's also an incredible play by Baltimore's defense to get up, tip the ball, and then have a guy on the other side of the defensive line to go up and grab it. That's not an easy play with all these massive bodies all around you. The third pick was tipped, but it was tipped because Purdy was running like crazy against the Baltimore pressure that was significant all day long. This is a Baltimore defense that now

leads the NFL in total sacks with 54. So this is who they are. The offensive line for San Francisco, you'd expect, okay, they'll hold up better against them. That didn't really feel like the case. It just felt like there was pressure, and then Purdy got lost. He was confused, was not confident, throws it back into traffic. Another tip ball, technically, but it was because of Baltimore's pressure up front. And then the fourth interception, his arm was hit as he threw it. So at first, when you're watching it live, you're like, what was that throw? And you're like, oh, his arm was tipped.

But again, Baltimore's pressure. This group finds a way every single week, it feels like. And the numbers back it up as well, because we did a massive number fest with the Ravens last week. and it ended up being minus five because Donald had a fifth pick a little bit later on. But there was a moment in the first half. I think there were a lot of moments in the first half and then at halftime where I felt like, well, Baltimore kind of needs to blow this thing open because three of those red zone possessions were three field goals. McCaffrey scores a touchdown. It's 13-12 Baltimore. They're like, all right, look, terrible first half.

Purdy can't play that bad again. They'll fix some stuff up. They're at home. They're a great team. Look, I would have picked the Niners ahead of this game because of how I feel about them. It's not because I don't think Baltimore is any good. I think I've turned the corner here on Baltimore quite or this will be a competitive game. It's a massive reset. Nope. 17-0 third quarter from Baltimore. That is a sign of a dominant team. That is a sign of a team that can win a Super Bowl. Instead of feeling yourself, look, Lamar's been around enough. This coaching staff's been around enough where I didn't think they were going to sit there and start celebrating and be like, what size is your ring? But to come out and dominate like that in the third

quarter after having a lot of things go your way in the first half is an incredible sign for them. So 17-0 in the third quarter when it was 30-12. But you're looking at how much time is left. And I don't know if you were doing this. I doing it you're like okay well if they can get one here they can get one here and then they find a way to you know and the first throw Purdy throws after the 30-12 score for Baltimore to make it that score he throws behind the receiver it's almost another pick which would have been a pick six and at that point you're like okay he's he's toast I know he added a touchdown later on. Well, at least San Francisco did with the Darnold score. But I kept playing kind of a time left possession math game of being like,

is there a chance this game could still get weird? Because Darnold did come in. He gets a touchdown. And then they're trying to score in front of the two-minute warning. If they score in front of the two-minute warning and they have that and they have their three timeouts, could this thing, could something really weird in this game happen? There's a difference between Darnold coming in and being like,

hey, the game is lost and Purdy left because he had another stinger. He probably could have gone back in if the score were different, yet they decided to stay with Darnold. There's a big difference. This isn't even a knock on Darnold. But when you don't think there's any chance, like there's no pressure on you whatsoever,

it was entirely different. Then when there's a possession before the two-minute warning where you're like, no, this actually kind of matters because there's something weird could happen, especially when they have all the timeouts. And with the Niners' defense, like when you get one stop here, like it's not out of the realm of possibility. And then Darnold takes an absolutely terrible sack, throws a pick, game is over.

So whenever I look at the turnover math, you know, I've done this with the Eagles and Jets game earlier this year. Like, well, how does that happen? Like, well, look at the turnover math. Like usually if you give up two or if you're minus two, let's put it that way,

three for them, one for you, you're going to lose that football game. Kansas City against Vegas. You're like, well, how did Vegas beat Kansas City in a spot where Kansas City needs to kind of show something here? Well, two defensive touchdowns, 14 points right there. So that's how Vegas beats Kansas City. So it can all feel kind of dismissive at times for the defense,

but at least specific to this game, yeah, the math, you're not going to win, but Baltimore was the reason the math even happened so maybe Baltimore's the best team in the NFL it's the best win of the season that is the single best win

for any team this year in the NFL to go into San Francisco and dominate like they did so I think you know me well enough at this point like sure if you're in power rankings, fine, you put Baltimore one. I don't know who else you would pick. But I'm not off of San Francisco. I'm just not.

I think we've learned our lesson, at least if not this season, if you've been watching the sport long enough. Like, we just keep cycling through these teams all the time. Baltimore's the best team in the AFC. I don't even know who else you would put in that conversation. The Kansas City struggles continue on offense. It doesn't make any sense because, all right, you could have a down season or whatever,

but it just feels like it's getting worse and worse at the wrong time. Do we like Miami again because they beat Dallas? They finally beat a playoff team? I guess so, but then we'll wait to see what happens against Baltimore at Baltimore next week with the Dolphins. Do we like Buffalo? Yeah, we're going to like Buffalo happens against Baltimore at Baltimore next week with the Dolphins. Do we like Buffalo? Yeah, we're going to like Buffalo. I still kind of like Buffalo.

Would have liked to see this most recent win be a little bit more dominant, but you're not going to put them ahead at Baltimore at this point. And on the other side, when you do this with the AFC, or excuse me, with the NFC, you like Philly? I don't know that there's been a more disliked team that has this kind of record. It's incredible. I mean, they beat the Giants and people were pissed just by how the way the game played out. And then when you factor in who this team is defensively on third down, they're terrible.

conversions in the league and all the teams that are down in that group like the last five or six teams that's that they're all not great to awful football teams and yet here the eagles are going can they put together some kind of run the dallas thing we've only updated their legacy every single week for about 10 years so that's kind of where i'm at with it at least in san francisco not writing them off but if you want to say baltimore is the best team in the nfl there's there's not really any strong argument at this point to tell you that you're wrong I guess I could include Detroit in that because I think we like them again eight and seven Tampa frisky four in a row with Baker maybe but you get the point so maybe it's really two teams in tier one the only problem is one of them just got their ass kicked.

MVP update. So much for that, huh? You did it, folks. You did it. It felt like there was a really hard push from a lot of different circles to be like, Purdy can't win this thing as if he wasn't worthy of it.

Because if Mahomes had the Purdy numbers and you'd say comparable record because that's kind of where Kansas City is at this point, but going into it for San Francisco, no one would have ever looked at those numbers in the resume and gone, no, that guy's not winning the MVP. But there was just something that was very anti-Purdy. Well, don't worry about it, anti-Purdy people, because he's not going to win it. He was the odds-on favorite from FanDuel going into the matchup against Lamar.

Now he's fifth on FanDuel. The latest odds I saw were plus 1,300. Your MVP favorite, it is Lamar Jackson at minus 170 on FanDuel. Tua is third. I think McCaffrey might be second. Look, San Francisco could roll against Washington and the LA Rams to finish the season,

but I don't see how any voter's going to feel good about voting for Purdy over Lamar. It was a primetimear. It was a primetime game. It was the only game that was on. I mean, you get the point. It's when it's the featured game. And I know that it's going to be 17 games in the body of work. And that's what these awards are supposed to be. But I've seen it before. I don't have a specific example, but just if you did kind of an apples to apples thing of like a Heisman showdown of two quarterbacks, say both quarterbacks for Ohio State and Michigan

were like the leaders, and then one guy loses but has better numbers. Heisman voters, again, that's a wide, that's a massive, massive voter base. It's just a lot of people voting on that award that I don't think are super locked in, but they wouldn't give it to the guy that lost. They just

wouldn't. So I don't see how Lamar would lose votes to Purdy after that game. And I'm not even saying that he should. It feels like it's his award for a second time. Unless what, if Tua were to win, Miami beats them in Baltimore, Tua has the better stats, outduels Lamar? Possibly. But I think when you talk about value to the team, it's hard to argue that Tua is as valuable as Lamar is to the Ravens. You know what I love about college football bowl season? The names of the games. Thankfully, you can bet on every matchup

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See terms at Sportsbook.fanduel.com. I want to touch on two games in the NBA for the Christmas slate because I'm not going to do all five traveling. So I thought one of the most important things that we saw yesterday was Dallas' win in Phoenix. Let's go into the fourth quarter. Phoenix is up 92-91.

Just to update it, Kyrie's out for his ninth game. That's not a Kyrie joke. I'm not criticizing it. If you're not all caught up, Derek Lively's back. Almost called him Blake. Luka went for 50. Let me recap his box score in this game for you because I saw what was posted. I guess it's true, but what he did yesterday apparently we've never, ever seen in the history of the NBA. So he goes for 50. Let's look at some plays.

Grayson Allen, who had 19 in the third quarter, is defending Luka. And there was a high screen for Luka, and the defender for Phoenix, who's assigned to the screener, just decides to stay at the free throw line. And it wasn't because it was drop coverage. I don't know what he was doing. And Luka off the screen using it is wide open and just waltzes into a wide open three. This was a bad sign and kind of tells you where Phoenix was at emotionally, mentally, whatever you want to say because it was so gross to see.

I mean, I cannot express how awful this play was because it's like, what are you doing? You're just going to let Luka get clean off of a screen and just walk right up into a three. So Vogel took out Grayson, even though that wasn't really Grayson's fault. It was the second defender. I mean, unless there was some other part of this that I didn't understand what their concept was or what they were trying to do.

They brought in Okoge, and then he was done after a minute eight and brought Grayson back in because of the offensive part of it. Maybe they just wanted to get Grayson. Maybe he had nothing to do with that defensive play because, again, I don't think it was Grayson's fault on that. So then they come back at Luka with the hard double teams. So hard double on Luka,

swing, Jones, wide open three, double on Luka, swing it again, Derek Jones layup. They had another double to the left side, hard double on Luka where he just waits and waits with the basketball. You think he's in trouble, but with his size and his vision, he's just kind of never really in the amount of trouble that most every other player in the league would be in.

Look, I'm not including Jokic in that. You get the point. But he throws it to Lively for a dunk. to Lively for a dunk. Lively's underneath the rim, and guess what? Booker's telling Durant, like, hey, look at your assignment, and Durant just stands there. Let's Lively get the catch. That was all on. Like, if you're going to double that hard and know that you're playing three on four behind it,

everybody's going to be locked in. And it was impressive how not locked in Phoenix was. That's how bad it was. So the Luka doubles aren't working. He's torching them because everybody else around is making the right play, and the shots are going down. A little bit of a three-point barrage there from Dallas. They go on a 17-4 run.

There was a moment in here that was pretty funny where Luka thought he was fouled by Grayson, complained about it for like two possessions, and then the next time down offensively, he just decided to slam into Grayson Allen. Just slammed into him. Nobody really seemed to catch it, and Grayson wasn't going to do shit about it.

And Luca got his revenge and pretended he kind of didn't do it, was back in. I'd have to go back and look at it. It looked like Luca thought he got hit in the face there because he was touching his face. He's prone to do that at times. But if there's a Luka, Grayson Allen, let's just put it this way. If there's a blank, like a fill in the blank versus Grayson Allen altercation, I'm just going to take whoever the other side is from now until forever.

KD had, let's see here. He had a bucket at like 1140. Yeah, that's right. Field goal at like 1140 and then 1120, I think he got fouled on the three. And then he made all three free throws. He never made a shot again. He had three disastrous turnovers. I don't know if you saw the other turnover earlier in the game

where Booker ran back and was the only one to go after Luka. And you could hear his audio. I think, I hope that's real. I mean, on Twitter, I think everything's fake now. But he basically was pissed at nobody else. Well, here's the point. Even if the audio was fake, nobody else did anything. Everybody just watched.

Booker tried to be the only guy that defended Luka on the way back. The problem is Booker is wired different than Durant, and certainly Beal are, but Beal doesn't play. And look, he got hurt. He came back. It sucks. It's unfortunate, but we've seen Beal in street clothes quite a bit over the last few years. Durant was terrible. I just can't emphasize this enough.

If you only watch the fourth quarter of the game, because Phoenix actually had a lead in this. Grayson was terrific. They had been down earlier. I don't know why Phoenix would pick that fourth quarter on Christmas, primetime game. That game's supposed to be a big deal. It's supposed to matter.

You look lifeless. It's not like Dallas defense is suffocating at this point. Maybe it's just Luka. Maybe you have moments where you're so helpless against him because there's nothing you can do. Again, it was so bad. It was so

bad watching them feel like they didn't even want to be out there in the fourth quarter for a team that has some real aspirations. Like, look, if you stink and you're already 10 under 500 and you had no goals whatsoever beginning of the year,

I kind of understand it a little bit, but like a younger bad team still probably would have played harder. But again, they wouldn't be on Christmas night. So Lucas final line, 50 points, 15 assists, six rebounds, eight made threes, four steals, three blocks. Apparently that stat line has never happened in the history of the NBA. Embiid is putting on a statistical show right now. I didn't know if Embiid could win back-to-back MVPs because I think there'd be a little post,

huh, Jokic is better than him, which I think most people felt, but the MVP vote doesn't always play out that way. But I'd wondered if Embiid could actually win back-to-backs, losing in the second round again, and Jokic winning his first title, if there'd be some sort of carryover Jokic correction. But Embiid's stats and what he's been doing you're like nope he's back in this and probably the favorite today but there could be a real Dallas has a top four seed

with this kind of stuff Luka's doing it's not impossible and it's still too early to write off anybody else as if Embiid's already wrapped the whole thing up. Phoenix has gone from 11-6 to 14-15. And I think the most disappointing part of Phoenix's day was before the game even started. Woj was on the ESPN broadcast for NBA Countdown. And he had a story that talked about, essentially, I'm just going to paraphrase it, of Phoenix being aware of durant's frustrations and monitoring it so if loge is sharing you that just sharing that uh with us you know you understand what i'm saying that means there's probably more that's how i read it i don't

know i didn't talk to him about or anything like that but when i see something like that like why would this why would this be a thing and i don't know what that means. At this point, Duran, this is what you wanted. You got your way and you're there and it's on you to fix it. And the other thing that Woj said that I thought was really interesting was the lack of supporting cast, the lack of assets moving forward and the flexibility to do things. Dude, they traded all this stuff for you because you wanted to go there. And by the way, remember that report when it happened? Because it was just less than a year ago. I remember being in Arizona for the Super Bowl and Bill and I doing a big trade podcast. And part of that recap story, I think from Ramona

Shelburne on ESPN was that Durant wanted it to be a low profile transaction that he didn't want to turn into a bidding war, which is even more insulting. Like, oh, you're demanding a trade with four years left on your contract. The extension is about to kick in. You wanted the general manager and coach with Brooklyn fired. You didn't get your way. You came back. Then Kyrie, the worst guy to ever hit your wagon to in recent NBA history, decides he wants to bail. So then you want out too, but you don't want there to be a bidding process because you only want to go to one team. And Brooklyn, I think when you look back on it, you can say, Hey, they did pretty well with that thing. So for Durant to be upset about the lack of assets, look in the mirror. And I have been a huge Durant fan. I've defended him at times

when I wonder, I think I always defended him because I was like, you know, in a world of fake, I feel like he's always been real. And even if you don't like his version of real all the time, I'd rather have that than some of these other dudes where I don't even feel like I know them whatsoever. But that report was before the game. And then we got that kind of fourth quarter and overall effort from Durant where he's screwing up all over the place. And it's like, now you're going to be mad? Like, at least with the Beal thing, they didn't even give anything up, really. You know, because he had the no trade clause and he ended up going to Phoenix. And even with Beal, I don't think Beal's somebody that all of a sudden is like, okay, Beal's back. We're safe. Beal's here. Everything's good now. safe feels here everything's good now so i don't know about the standings they're 11th now they're actually out of the playoffs today the stats i said are all kind of irrelevant until we get to see those three guys play together uh the center stuff's probably been a little bit better nurkish didn't play yesterday but metu went nuts um and there's actually been i think a couple of the

bench pieces that make enough sense look with deal booker and durant all right and the surrounding pieces that should still be enough to be taken seriously as a playoff threat and now i i don't know how anyone would take the rant seriously of like if they're what's the next move for him it also leads to another thing that i think is really interesting with the new cba stuff that we've all spent a lot of time on what the unintended consequences would be an example that go back years ago where the max contract for an NBA player was seven years for the home team. Essentially new team would be six years. Uh, if you were resigning with your team, it was seven years. And then the GMs, the owners are like, dude, these deals are so long. And if we get it wrong with one of these guys and we're locked

into it, and it was even worse then because the cap is lower. Um, and you can get into the math percentage of the cap of what these deals actually were. But the unintended consequence basically turned into, well, hell, if I'm only signed for four years, you guys wanted these shorter deals. This is more player movement that led to more player empowerment. And you had somebody maybe with a year left saying, I can get out of here. Then you had a guy with a year and a half left saying, I want to get out of here. And then we had guys like Ben Simmons and Durant saying, I want out of here as soon as the extension starts. we had guys like Ben Simmons and Durant saying, I want out of here as soon as the extension starts. And you're like, so could it be like, if it were the old days, would today's NBA,

somebody signs a seven year extension and then goes, all right, I want out of here. And that's kind of where you're at with the mentality of some of the players. It's like, look, sign the paper. Don't worry about becoming a free agent and doing the one-on-ones where it's one year and a player option. And then the opt out to have this power and freedom like lebron was doing which some people followed his lead now it's just to sign the deal and then just force your way out so when i look at the new cba and some of the restrictions where they're significant and windhorse brought this up like you look at the future trade market how much is it going to change and i don't know if the unintended consequence could lead to the lead to things that we've never seen before meaning you know right now if right now, if you want out, you just go, I want to go there. You're like, okay, so you want to trade, you have money left, but you only want to go to this one team. And then the player usually ends up getting his way. are going to learn whatever the next generation of players that have this kind of juice are going to say well hey i want out of here i have my contract but i want to go there you're going to go well

with the new aprons and the new restrictions i can't even send you there and either there'll be confusion or they won't believe them and then it'll have to be explained and it's like no no everybody used to just get their way i now want to get my way like well yeah're like, well, yeah, I don't think that's actually going to happen. Does that mean the players will give up? Does it mean there'll be less movement? Because I think that was one of the underlying things that was happening here with the league, where it's like if you make it more restrictive financially,

it should make the movement more restrictive as well. I just wonder if you could have a time where a player would be going, you know what, just send me to the Pacers then. And I don't mean like specifically the Pacers, but I want out. All right, I want to go to L.A. No, I want to go to Miami. You can't. I want to go to New York.

Nope, you can't. They've all spent too much money. All right. What's the deal with Utah? What's their cab number? Let's do a little Celtics. They win in LA. Lakers hitting a weird stretch here.

There's one stretch in the third quarter that I want to talk about. It's 58-57 at the half. Boston at that point is only 4-21 from threes. They've gotten up big early in the half. Boston at that point is only 421 from threes. They've gotten up big early in the game. Interesting to see Porzingis out there in this matchup just because in the past, Porzingis was thought to be somebody that could bring AD away from the rim defensively.

There were some times that happened. I think the Lakers even switched the defensive assignment there for AD. AD was great yesterday. He was not the problem. But the problem is that the Lakers, the good news for the Lakers is the stuff that I saw

in the third quarter is really fixable. But it's a bit like Phoenix. I mean, the Phoenix thing in the fourth quarter, I know I keep hammering it over and over again. It just was that ugly.

But with the Lakers, there's just a lot of plays in there. I'm like, what are you guys doing? Like, these are just simple things. If you just get back on defense, you at least give yourself a chance. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to get defensive stop, but I can

guarantee when you don't get back, it's going to be really easy for the other team to score. And it happened way too much in that third quarter. There was a play where Reddish lost Przingis. Just let him run behind him. Przingis-Aliup dunk off an inbounds

after an Anthony Davis turnover where the chair was kind of pulled from and he fell in the baseline. If you remember that, underneath the hoop was a turnover. Drew has a wide open three. I don't know if that was on LeBron because I think LeBron was actually trying to play defense towards the rim with somebody else

from the Celtics lingering there, but nobody was back. They just couldn't figure out how to get their matchup so many times in transition, but that's not even in transition. That's often inbounds and you're already that scattered defensively. There was a Jalen dunk on a curl because Przingis was at the three-point line bringing Anthony Davis away from the rim. Brown gets that curl. And it's something that I've seen at times. And I know having Vando back full-time, it's not going to happen with Russell.

I think Rui's better against bigger bodies than he would be somebody because Rui's just so big. LeBron's probably playing the worst defense of his career, which is to be expected. I don't even know that I'm really knocking him for it. But there are just times where good perimeter players make the Lakers look slow defensively. It's just something that I notice, even though some of the overall defensive numbers are really good.

So I don't know if that was on LeBron on that one, on the wide open Drew three. We mentioned that Jalen Dunk. He had Torian Prince hit the two threes. He was five of seven. He kind of kept them in it. There was a Reeves three that made it 83-79. There was another play in transition where

Drew Holiday ran past everybody, but he saw LeBron sizing him up for a block from the other side at the rim, so he kicked it back out. That led to a Jalen miss, but then follow up. He scored. And then at 83-79, after that Reeves three, D'Angelo Russell comes in to save the day. I understand the NBA rotations. Watch this game a long time. They're like, okay, we sub

you out at this time and we put you in. Okay. I don't know that in that moment, D'Angelo Russell is the guy you want coming in. Everybody knows I'm not a fan. We've been over this, but it's in that moment where you'd almost like to see a coach go, I think my team needs something else and it's not him. So Russell comes in. He has two possessions that are back-to-back where no one else touches the basketball. To be fair, he made the first shot. The second one, he had a house or thought he was going to get past him. Didn't just like like everybody else in the league does, and then bricked it. He then defensively had a play where

he completely loses Hauser. Doesn't even notice him. He's guarding no one. When you are guarding no one in an NBA game, that should be the first alarm. Like, who am I guarding? Like, I don't know. I'm just going to hang out here. Hauser

burns him. D'Angelo Russell then pretends he's super frustrated with it. Horford off a made free throw. No one gets on him. And Horford hits a three. I think it might have been Rui's guy, but then Anthony Davis

and D'Angelo Russell, the audacity to do the palms of the sky thing being like hey what are we doing here what are you doing you're doing the same thing over and over again and then my favorite one might have been um D'Angelo Russell back on D Derek White cuts and gets behind Russell and gives him like a little shake and Russell's kind of turning around pretending he kind of like I guess pretending that he's showing he's giving some sort of defensive awareness because he's watching the ball and what White did is he kind of like a receiver like ran the route like he was cutting it inside towards the paint and then just flares out to the corner Russell

doesn't even notice it turns back the other way, hey, maybe I should catch up to him. And then White hits a wide open three. 95-82 at that point. There's a little bit of a press to get it under 10 again there. The good news, Lakers fans, is it's fixable. All the stuff I just said is really easy. The problem is you're bringing in a player in that moment that's never wanted to fix it ever. And you brought him in at 83-79. I know what the plan is, the substitution pattern.

They're rigid in the NBA. And I'm not even saying that they shouldn't be because I think players need to kind of know like, hey, this is when you're coming in. This is that moment. But there should be some freedom from a coach to see how a game is playing and go, you know what? I don't need a guy who makes even worse mistakes than all the mistakes that we're making right now in the third quarter to come in. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork.

I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life Advice. The email address is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. We are going to do a longer

one here because we didn't want to bother any guests during the holidays. We just did the double open and some life advice. I think everyone will still enjoy that one. Okay. How are we doing? Let's see here. Everybody good? Good holiday? We're doing great,

man. Doing great. Kyle? How are you guys? I guess I should have checked in everybody have a good Christmas how about that with little kiddo running around what was it like so I had my brother and sister-in-law and their three-year-old daughter staying with us the last couple nights as well so we did Christmas night

and Christmas Eve night and it was great it was just chaotic and I didn't sleep so here we are you know we're feeling good but definitely caffeinated and ready to get some sleep tonight. I was good. I didn't even get but I like barely got buzzed on Christmas last year. It was I tried to squeeze in a little frolic before going to dinner. And Bill, I think, actually had a little wine. And he was I think he was like my aunt was like hey maybe don't be like on the verge of bombed for christmas dinner and bill i think bill didn't notice last year but my aunt did and

if she noticed i was like all right we're keeping it together this year i've had maybe two glasses of good wine tried caviar for the first time oh pretty nice uh i also tried some duck pate for the first time and i just was like you know what let what? Let me just sit back. And I think it was a great performance for me. Managed to only watch a little bit of the Pats game. Didn't even really get depressed. It was just a good Christmas.

We brought my father-in-law into the mix. He came over to Bill's house and we started blending, chopping it up. So I think all in all, it was just one of my better Christmases.

My wife almost got blacked out, but I was a model citizen on christmas oh man from a family that doesn't drink the concept of my family like anybody being drunk at a holiday thing it blew my mind i mean i think i've covered this before like i just remember in college guys would be like oh i'm going back and they'd be like oh dude like it's it's a marathon i'm like what are you talking about right it's like we drink all day i was like you you drink all day in front of your family what do you do at night like what what's happening like oh we get arguments there's an uncle i hate like i mean i know

everybody listened to this but for my family that concept was just so it it's never happened i mean it's never happened i don't know that and it's not like my family's just my parents don't drink you know siblings do and it's like this i don't know i i just the concept i know it's that's the normal one my situation is not normal right but i i cannot comprehend like me being home and just powering through vodka sodas and cord like starting with chorus lights like i'll be behaved. And then it's like, all right, let's get a couple on it.

Treating Christmas like a case race. Right. Right. Right. And then you just go like, cause I, I ever tell you the story about the guy. Let's just say it's a,

it's a friend of a friend in the satellite of friends where he got so drunk that he opened all the presents. Everybody went to bed and he just started jamming in the basement. He just started jamming in the basement by himself, keeping the party going. Wow. And he just went upstairs and I think took his clothes off and then opened every present. And then all the kids came downstairs and all the presents were open.

And their cousin or uncle or whatever. Yeah. Look, I'm not saying that happens all the time. And certainly Kyle would never do anything like that. No. I would yell in a restaurant without knowing I'm doing it. So I didn't do that this year. That's all right. T is the season. I was yelling at. Go ahead. Go ahead.

No, we I grew up in like a family where, yeah, we had we would have a good time. And like my my dad is one of seven. My mom's one of five. So it was always like a million people as a million cousins. There's the kids table. Right. And, you know, you have like the cousins that, you know, really well and the cousins that you don't. And then you're watching out for aunts and uncles seeing if like anybody's getting a little too weird they're gonna trip and fall somewhere like you're taking bets on who's gonna like pass out first so we had we used to have a good time this one was just a little bit more mellow because like we just have younger kids and it's a little bit weirder but i am i'm definitely very familiar with the rager christmas uh basically it's like it's a it's a couple days basically of like it's christmas

eve because we're an italian family so it's like everybody comes over christmas eve night and then it just kind of keeps rolling into christmas day and it's honestly couple days basically of like it's Christmas Eve because we're an Italian family so it's like everybody comes over Christmas Eve night and then it just kind of keeps rolling into Christmas Day and it's honestly more than even a day it's like three days straight of just like kind of being mostly buzzed and I kind of missed that this year to be honest with you. Are you a seven fishes gang? I like I've never seen that up close I've heard some people love it some people

hate it. Are you seven fishes people? We did like the shrimp scampi on on Christmas Eve. So a seafood dish, but you're not like, we got to do them all. Okay. But my mom would also make lasagna on Christmas Eve. So it wasn't like an only fish thing. But yeah, that is like a hardcore Italian.

That might be like a New Jersey Italian thing. I don't know. Seven fishes. How about that? That was a perfect example of stuff we were talking about on Friday Feedback where I, a day after Christmas, I'm like okay first email this guy needs a roommate and i don't say anything about christmas to anybody uh my look i'm glad we got that in okay let's because i do want to do a bunch of these though so do we cover it i think yeah we're good

yeah what did your daughter get what was the number one gift for her? Well, I mean, she doesn't really know, you know, she's, what, 14 months. So she doesn't, and even, you know, I think it's like a couple years before they really even

understand the concept. Like my three-year-old niece didn't really understand Foy Santa. Like we got the cookies out and like the carrots for like, you know, the reindeer to quote unquote eat.

And she didn't, like she came downstairs and like wanted to play with toys she already had rather than open up the new toys that she was going to get. So it was kind of too young in the household didn't, like she came downstairs and like wanted to play with toys she already had rather than open up the new toys that she was going to get. So it was kind of too young

in the household this year, but she got like this really cool, well, I don't even, I don't even know what it's called. It's basically like a box that's a speaker and you can put like different, different like action figures on top

and it starts playing music. So she got like a Moana one and she got a Frozen one, obviously. So Let It Go has been going in the house mostly, but I honestly told my wife, I was like I kind of feel like this is just for you. You want to listen to

these songs because she doesn't know what the hell these songs are. She's one years old. She doesn't know what's going on. It's Maddie's. My wife is just bopping around to these different Frozen and Moana songs. So it was a gift for my daughter, but it was really a gift for my wife. Quote unquote for the reindeer. I mean, they're 16 year olds who listen to this podcast. Don't ruin any

Christmas magic, buddy. No, they're real. I mean, they're 16 year olds who listen to this podcast. Don't ruin any Christmas magic, buddy. No, they're real. I mean, listen, they ate them. They were great. You know, the reindeer love the carrots. Yeah. Santa loved both cookies we gave him. So good for him. You know, get a good night. Okay, let's get to it. What are men allowed to borrow?

I don't know where that accent just came from, but it's pronounced borrow. Six foot, 195, lots of reps at low weight. Okay, player comp, Eddie Jones, but only because I want to shout out Eddie Jones. If he and Kobe's Lakers careers played out a thousand times, is Eddie the all-time great in at least one of those scenarios? No.

What I want to know is this. What are grown men allowed to borrow from other men, and what should they grow up and buy for themselves? There are a few items I'm comfortable lumping into the borrow category. Lawnmowers. I live in a mid-sized city with small yards. Not everybody in the block needs their own mower for the 20-minute job. Trucks are another borrow. No need to rent a truck, let alone buy one. If your buddy's got something, he's willing to loan you for an afternoon Home Depot run. Camping tent, easy borrow. Been loaning mine to dads for years.

I'm a bit less confident when the borrow categories get grayer. For example, what are the rules on borrowing another man's clothes? The question has a bit of urgency. My wife and I are a few weeks out from a formal wedding down in Scottsdale. It's a suits requested affair. It was black tie, but it's since been downgraded to don't get a tux, but wear something really nice. It's been years since I've done the friends getting married every other weekend circuit. My profession is business casual attire. So I don't currently have a sleek suit that fits the way I want it to. I've slimmed down too much to feel good in the suit I have on standby. I was telling a good buddy about this the other night and he held up his hand and cut me off. He said, stop, I got you. He wants to fit me head to toe with his attire he's very fashion forward fellow and we were

roughly the same height and build so it could be a great situation or a great solution who knows i could walk into his closet uh six and a half and walk out of it with an eight with the right cuff length so i asked again as a 40 year old man can i borrow another 40 year old man's suit or should i tack the expense of a nice suit onto the other wedding expenses and hope that i can get a few uses out of it over the next five years i'm'm kind of out on the third option, renting a suit, unless you want to talk me into it. My wife seems indifferent to my dilemma. She's more focused on what shoes should be rolling in with. I should also mention that I can afford a suit. It wouldn't be a huge hit for me, but I'm also not swimming in money and like to be thoughtful about how I earmark my funds. Thanks,

fellas. Feel free to suggest other borrows, not borrowers for men. I wouldn't do it. Not a chance, but that's me. Because I would say based on the email, I think you like to borrow things. When you said that about the mower as if it was this commune deal where it's like,

hey, I'm in a small neighborhood. Not everybody needs their own mower. Maybe somebody else can do it. Home Depot also does let you run the trucks. But look, if you're good buddies with another guy who's offering up the truck so you can grab some two by fours, I'm not telling you doing anything wrong. I would let you borrow my mower. Now what I want you taking it like, hey, it's my Sunday and I bought the mower and like every Sunday, I know that you're going to take it because you just didn't want to spend the money on it.

I may say something to you about my wife, but it means I still like you. But it sounds like if your buddy's really into this and motivated to get you outfitted and you don't want to spend the money on the tux or excuse me, on the suit here because they downgraded from the tux. So that's fine. We're all different with money and that kind of stuff. I would say more often than not, clothes post 40 40 men borrowing other men's clothes uh that's that's a no like if i had a buddy come over wearing a shirt and was like do you want to go out tonight i imagine we'd already said that we were going to go out and then he's like going through my closet being like you mind if i wear this instead of what i'm wearing i'm just like what the fuck so of what i'm wearing i'm just like what the so that's me that's that's my opinion on it but this is so specific you said that he was fashion forward that is excited to do this for you do your

thing man save the money uh i don't think this is wrong i wouldn't do it yeah i don't think dude should ask to borrow a suit to go to a wedding because if I was wearing another guy's suit, open bar wedding, any wedding worth its salt is probably an open bar wedding. It's just going to be another thing. You got to make sure that you got to be on. It's not like you don't want to give this guy a suit back with a stain on it. Obviously, you'll probably dry clean it before you get it back to it, but it would definitely be in the back of my brain.

But that aside, I don't think as long as you're not asking to borrow the clothes, if this dude's like happy to help you out of this thing. And it's like almost it almost seems like you'd be doing him a favor at this point, depending on how excited he was. This is kind of like you hit you hit like a you hit like a loose change lottery. You didn't we didn't win the lottery, but you bought a scratcher and you won like one hundred fifty two hundred bucks because how much you would have spent on a suit. And you're not broaching a weird question. This guy's like inviting you and wants you to do it. So as long as you're going to be careful and you're not to pull the ripcord at the wedding guy and got to figure out how to get a vodka cranberry out of there the next day before you give it back, I think it's fine. I think it's good that he offered. If you asked, that'd be weird. It sounds like you want to do it and you just want our approval. I have no issue with it. You don't have to tell anyone else at the wedding. No one's going to know that you're wearing somebody

else's suit. They're just going to be like, wow, look at this super stylish looking dude. He must be very fashion forward. They don't even know. They're like, wow, that's borrowed? Whoa. So I say go for it. Personally, I don't think I would do that. It's just because I'm... I say go for it. Personally, I don't think I would do that. It's just because I'm, you know, when you say like there's similar statures, I just I like a suit to fit a certain way. I have skinny legs. It just kind of is what it is.

The most pants look baggy on me. So I personally would not do it. But I don't really see any problem if you're happy with it. And no one's ever going to really know, like probably like your wife and this guy, if he tells anybody, if you have mutual friends. So I think knock yourself out and go there looking dapper. You borrow a tie, no problem though, right? Oh, I do. I wore Danny Cannell's tie that he gave me years ago to a wedding.

This past year, so absolutely. Cufflinks? No, I don't know. You wouldn't borrow cufflinks? I think I would, but I don't wear them. It sounds like we could piece together almost a whole suit one piece at a time shoes shoes. No, basically just tie probably just a tie. That's it. Not even not even the shirt not no blazers. Definitely not pants, but I would say as far as like other sharing things. Yeah, I've never been a I don't dude sharing clothes just

has never been a thing in my group, but maybe it is another guy's group from friends. That's cool. I'm happy but it's not like, you know back remember like back in like college when like all every girl they would like wear each other's blouses they would just wear all each everyone else's clothes like dudes didn't do that with their like button downs you know like so i that's just kind of really foreign to me i would never do that yeah but it happens right yeah i mean we had we had a couple guys grabbing stuff here or there, and you'd be like, okay, whatever. I mean, I think I, I don't know.

I didn't wear jeans for like eight years. I had like a weird no-jeans stat there for a while. You were wearing all the people's jeans? Slacks? A big Chino's guy, yeah. Chino's, nice. Yeah. There was seriously, you couldn't have enough pleats.

Well, somebody, so somebody would be like hey rossilla i i gotta wear that like sears sucker ralph lauren polo like and then you'd be like yeah here you go for a night that that never happened in my friend group yeah that happened that happened i actually had a pretty sick uh i forget what the madras j crew some people some of the ogs know what i'm talking about because there was a matching short to go with the long sleeve thing. Crew. Some people, some of the OGs know what I'm talking about because there was a matching short to go with the long sleeve thing. We're talking early 90s. Like it was always sold out

and I was able to, I was able to get the shirt, mail order catalog. I think I actually had to give somebody cash so they could order on their credit card so they could be sent to me.

I think I may even grab that before I went to college and then brought that with me and was like, I'm only bringing this one out. And it was, it was, it was a hot, it was a hot little number. And I had a buddy, one of my roommates was like, can I wear that? I mean, that shirt survived seven or eight moves. And I think at one point somebody was like,

have you, because it, believe it or not, went out of style. I don't know how it happened. Yeah. I just donated a Robert Graham the other day. So there's somebody in Torrance right now just killing it. Killing it. Go ahead. Well, for us, it was cold, you know, pot stamp, tippy top in New York. So it was a lot of like hoodies. Like I'm putting, throwing together a good fit today.

And I think I need that orange one. I'd really like to see how that goes. So there was a lot of hoodie trading because it was like, you know, jacket, hoodie, shirt underneath. So there was a lot of, it was just like sort of like customizing armor. It was, so we did a lot, we did a lot of hoodie swaps. Maybe I really missed out. I don't know. Yeah. We just never did this. Different kind of friendship. It sounds super fun. It sounds great. No, it's not. It's not. Cause at that, it gets ruined. It gets stolen. I remember I left a bag of clothes like those North Face bundle bags or whatever. I didn't have one of those nice bags back then, but I left a bag of clothes in the first week i was back at school a dude was wearing a staff t shirt that i'd had from a gym that i volunteered at and was like dude what the fuck and he's like

well you know you weren't here i'm like i wasn't here like yeah that was the whole point i wasn't here like he grabbed the one that was awesome because it was like a sick shirt because staff shirts back in the 90s huge huge boost power boost and then there was also the one blazer the one nice blazer that i owned i think it was from j crew was like this kind of it wasn't velvet i couldn't afford that but like this nice wool multi-purpose deal that was gone and then another guy was wearing it and i was like dude that's my blazer and he's like it's not he's like i got it this summer i'm like you bought a a winter blazer this summer cheapest time to buy and he was like yeah right and i i he's like i'll show you the receipt i'll show you the receipt i was like well let's see the receipt he's like well i have to

have my mother mail me the receipt because she and i was like it just doesn't make any sense that the perfect thing that i had it's the same size it just that that is missing and now you imagine that's the thing it's like you're gonna steal from guys that you live with you know like how far is it gonna go uh all right so look i don't know what else is on the list there i well real quick real quick i feel like if you're the guy tools, so, you know, my dad, I borrow stuff from my dad. That's the only person I borrow to. Like, I just, I think I talked about this on a pod recently. I borrowed this reciprocating saw. I had to cut some wood and, you know, that's my dad's got that kind of stuff. I don't know that I'd have buddies that have any

of that stuff though, you know, but it does feel like if you're the guy on the block that everyone's borrowing his like power tools from, that's kind of a cool position to be in because you're the hard-up man's man. I kind of aspire to be that guy. I just am not that guy. Mounted some shit yesterday. Buddy took my stud finder, had to do it the old-fashioned way, and I nailed it. Only one errant hole in the wall.

Just knocked around, did a little 16-inch measuring, and I fucking got it. You're just going to hope the guy was on was on his centering with those studs i think he was it was actually a little it was a little more than 16 inches but it's it's we're in studs we're in studs and now i got a nice pan hanging rack thing above my load bearing wall oh couldn't be that that i'm not sure about yeah Yeah. All right. Final result. Go for it. Sounds good. The guy's really excited to do this for you. But, you know, if it's going to be a roommate, well, if you have a roommate and you're in

your 40s and your barn is closed, that's a different email. Okay. Getting triggered by LeBron Jordan debates. 18 years old, 5'10", 185, pick up hoops comp, Colin Castleton, but two feet smaller. Recently have been by myself a lot, which has led me to the last year every day going down a rabbit hole of Jordan LeBron debates recently. They've made me so angry that I had one day where I sat in bed all day fuming, would not talk to anyone. People saying stuff like it's not a debate. MJ is clearly better that no matter what LeBron does, he won't be the guys piss me off. The thing is, I don't give my opinion on it. I just watch videos

that get me triggered because I can't respond. This has made me lose interest in being a Laker slash NBA fan and become extremely depressed on top of it by myself all the time, which makes me keep watching. I can't stop. It's making me depressed. And no matter what LeBron does, it will turn into he's the best career not the best player which pisses me off what would you do if you were me will not do that this is not healthy self-saboteur right here yeah i will say i i i had something similar so i used i and i stopped cold turkey recently so you as you know many people who have listened to this pod have known that I'm a big FIFA guy. I like playing FIFA the video game.

I played it for basically my entire life for the most part. And last year, I had a daughter and I'm sitting in the basement and I would play weekend league, which is this thing where you play online games and keep your record and you get points and you get rewards from that. And it would make me so effing... I'm going to not swear because we talked about this last but it made me so mad it would and it would put me in a bad mood the rest

of the day and i'm like i'm doing this to myself i'm actively choosing to play this game that i hate that is ruining my mood every weekend and this year was the first year i just quit fifa cold turkey so that's what stop doing it to yourself man you just like delete youtube off your phone you know block the lebron jordan keywords in whatever searches you're doing like you just have to you have to go cold turkey and quit otherwise like you're just going to kill your mental health for however long you keep doing this i think a lot of people have this thing though like i do it usually when like somebody says something that i know probably they didn't mean to say it that way but i'm like oh

yeah this dude's about to get cooked and i'll go i'll go through comments and i'm not like not because i want to agree or disagree. And I'm not like holding back the urge to type shit, but sometimes you just get in the comments and that's just, I think that's just a part of the year of, you know, of this decade or whatever. So, and my wife does it too. It's usually about, I don't know, something related to like reality TV or, uh, uh, you know, a new album that Lana Del Rey dropped or some, some bullshit that I don't, I don't really care about, but I'm like, I'll come out, I'll come in the room and I'm like, what are you doing?

I just see her scrolling through comments. I'm like, you're just, you're just digging shit up, huh? She's like, yeah, I am. So I think everybody has that thing. Uh, I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe block the keywords if it's, if it's affecting the rest of your day, but you know, I'll spend, I'll spend a Marb red outside looking through the, uh, looking through somebody who definitely missed stepped onstepped on Twitter and is trying to explain it. And then there's a bunch of comments.

I'll spend some time doing that. So I think everybody does that. But if you're letting it affect the rest of your day, I don't know. I'd make a change. No one ever changes their mind, man. That's what I would tell our emailer here. Okay? I've never once seen one person go,

you know, I've been on the MJ side of this, but really good meme. I've switched my vote. This is LeBron Jordan stuff that is out there. It is extreme politics, left and right. There's plenty of stuff that I agree with, I think, on both sides of the political spectrum, but there'll be times where it could be a point

that I agree with, but I see the way it's being argued. And then I'm like, I don't even want to agree with this person now. There are the ways that these Jordan LeBron things can get packaged where they're completely disingenuous to the point of being almost misinformation because you found a way to log something. One of my favorite things is when a guy I'll put like an MVP argument against the other one and he'll be like total free throws, free throws per game, three, three free throws per 36 minutes. You're like, dude, you just basically use the same stat three fucking times and it's the same thing,'m knee deep in it. I'll never escape it because it's what I do. But what you should think about is you're putting all these hours into reading commentary from people that will never change their mind. I've never met a person. I've never seen a person on social media go, you know what? Great argument. I see it your way now. But great argument. I see it your way now. I've switched sides.

I've seen a hundred first take debates on this, but the 101st, man, Stephen A finally got me. I flipped sides. We're good. One of Skip's tweets finally turned me. Yep. I'm in. I'm in now.

Look, I thought there was a reasonable argument to say that LeBron was more talented than Jordan. I think there's some career stuff that it seems absurd to me that LeBron gets knocked for going deeper in the playoffs and losing more often in the finals. Yeah, the finals record 6-0. Yeah, it's better to go to less, but then you win six of them. Yeah. It's better to go to less, but then you win six of them. It's kind of hard to say that it's bad to be 6-0. Again, nobody's saying that, but when we did during the pandemic, Bill, and I did the rewatchables, it reinforced the Jordan position for me.

And I don't know why I would change the mind, because now it's becoming a resume debate, not who the actual better player is. And then you can start changing semantics all over the point. The point is, is that all everyone involved in it, like some of these guys, I'm like, are you making money? Is there some foundation for, is it like a super pack for Jordan people? You know, cause I like as a Jordan guy guy which even sounds ridiculous to say but as somebody that agrees with the jordan side of the debate i see pro jordan stuff that i despise that i'm like that is that's bullshit and that's being way too dismissive of lebron despite i guess if you know

we all we decided to break up into a country based on lebrron Jordan. I'd go to the Jordan side of the map. All right. Let's do one more. One more. Oh, there's a good one for Kyle. Good pick. Merry Christmas. I've been a big fan of the show since SVP and Rosillo,

since you broke down the poison pill provision in the Jeremy Lin contract when he signed with Houston. All right. No problem. 37 years old, 5'11", and three quarters. 240. Baseball comp. Oh, no.

Basketball comp. He's not giving himself six feet. He's Philip Seymour Hoffman in the long game, Paul. 5'11", and three quarters. You're six feet tall, dude. Congrats. I know.

Congrats. Great day for this guy. Six feet tall. Somebody would chime in. I'm 5'9 and 15'16. I'll keep this as brief as possible. I have a frolic room situation at a bar in my area. A lot of the staff and regulars are people I would consider genuine friends,

and we hang out outside of bar situations on a regular basis. Oh, wow. So not just friends. When you're there, they go to outside establishments. Kyle, do you do that with your Frolic Room guys? Oh, yeah. I mean, we go to Denver, Salt Lake City. But yeah, we'll do other stuff too around town.

We golf. I borrow their golf clubs. They're still all groupies, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the funniest things ever when we did the Denver show for that. I was so confused. I was like, those guys at the Frolic Room are that into the podcast? And we're like, dude,

they've never listened to an episode. Are you kidding? It has nothing to do with you. I hope you guys should make up Frolic Room ski crew shirts. Yeah, that would be good. Wait, you guys went to Denver and Salt Lake? Yeah, they'd be like, yeah, these guys are huge.

They're really into ski towns. All right, keep it brief. We already covered that. So they hang out. It should be noted that most of these friends are women. There's a new regular, let's call him Spaghetti, who's trying to ingratiate himself with us anytime we're hanging out. He's always been nice enough to me, to my face, and he tries to make a genuine effort to be my friend. and he tries to make a genuine effort to be my friend. The issue is I have that every one of the women has a story about him being a creep to them. This guy knows I'm not a fan of his. He seems very concerned with getting my approval anytime he's around. My question is, is it my place to say

or do anything to Spaghetti? Should I leave it to the establishment to handle and mind my own business? The lines are blurred. Some of my closest female women friends in the group are also employees. Any advice would be much appreciated. All right.

So it sounds like old spaghetti playing the long game here. He sees you at the bar. The women seem to like you. And again, if you're hanging out with them outside of it, I'm kind of wondering what your situation is on the dating scene. Like I imagine if you're single at some point, you've hung out with one of them or you're strictly that disciplined and that platonic or maybe they're not into you or maybe they're not into you at all um but i don't i

don't know that dynamic i would it's different for me i would have been a harder sell to my wife it's like hey i'm going to hang out with the girls in frolic room it's like no i'm waiting for my uh i got my uh my old pyrotechnics holly Hollywood guy who's got a fucking butterfly knife on him and my, you know, my Vietnam vet and a couple 40 year olds who I've gotten close with. Like, it's not like I'm not hanging out with Janet and Carol and we're going to talk work and industry night. We're, it's quite different. So if you have a girlfriend, that's going to be a tougher sell going forward. I'll just let you know that right now. You guys are going to make the switch to 14-ounce mugs?

Look, I think what Spaghetti's doing here is he sees all this attention that you're getting, and he may not even like you. Now, look, new guy on the scene. It's tough to make new friends. Really tough for guys. He thinks he maybe has another regular there. I guess my question would be, and let's let Kyle take this one, but what do you want out of this? It'd be awesome to protect everybody and get his face or pull

him aside in a non-hostile way so you don't actually have to get his face and be like, hey man, I don't know what your deal is, but I've heard a couple of times you've been a little creepy and button it up or whatever. That can make you look like the hero it also could just be the right thing to do so there's no ulterior motive here with all of this but he may want your friendship he more likely wants your friendship uh friendship to open up the access to all the female staff yeah it's it's hard when you're trying to become a new regular like you walk in a bar and you just kind of know whether it's worth sniffing around or not, you know, it's like, it's not a love at first sight thing. And no, I just, you wonder, you know, you walk in and you're like, all right, I like, I like the vibe at this time of day or whatever. I like these dudes,

the bartender's great. So like, and I've, I've been there where it's like, it is a little strange. It's a little awkward when you're like, all right, these guys already have this like connection. They've already, they already have all these stories that I don't know about. And they're already talking about other people that I don't necessarily know. I'm the new guy. So that's a little awkward phase. I've had to do that two, three times in my life. And it's worked every time.

Maybe that says something about me or maybe it doesn't. I don't know. But I think... And the other thing is with Frolic, they do a bowling thing once a week. And people know about it. So sometimes some people that you wouldn't necessarily want to hang out with end up at that thing. So if you're, if you're doing like a large group outing outside of the bar, you can't

totally, you know, shut off to whoever is coming. Cause it's like, it's, it's kind of that group and the bar, like anybody can go in there. So if, if there's like an extended outside of the inner, inner circle that goes to these outings, like, it's going to be hard to be like, all right, these guys can go in there. So if there's like an extended outside of the inner, inner circle that goes to these outings, like it's going to be hard to be like, all right, these guys can go, but you guys can't. If it's a frolic room situation, the bartenders are cool. You know, maybe you let the bartender know too. And maybe that guy will be alone. You know, if he has a regular at a bar, there's a good chance you'll be alone waiting for somebody to show up. You know, it's not like we don't all text each other like, hey, who's going today?

Sometimes we just show up and because we're sure somebody will show up. You know, it's not like we don't all text each other like, Hey, who's going today. Sometimes we just show up and cause we're sure somebody will show up. So maybe that guy will have some time alone with the bartender. If the bartender is on that same page with you and maybe that'll come up somehow without you having to be like, you know, throw the vibes off, be like, I'm the guy who I don't like this new guy coming into the, you know, to the group here. So I think if I didn't just Michael Scott that I felt like I said a lot of words, but if you guys understand what I'm saying i think maybe maybe a confrontation in in the bar throwing off the vibes forever because that guy doesn't get banned from the bar just because you don't like you know his aura or whatever he's got going on with this group of girls so i wouldn't i wouldn't

play protector at all i mean a bar genuinely generally has bouncers and bartenders and i think if you want to slip them some info maybe that's cool but i wouldn't i wouldn't be the fucking sheriff of this bar i do not have the experience level that kyle has on this but i would say i'm not like anti-opening the borders of friendship here but i'm not gonna help a guy i don't know like facilitate basically if you think he's just there to meet more girls like he could do that on his own so i'm not interested in becoming someone's friend because they want to meet more girls i i think you know there's probably some people listening like well this guy's acting up all the time well it must be in that kind of gray area of like hey i'd love to have your number or do you sell feet pics or you know do you ever want to get a meal sometime, you know?

Because if it was so egregious, then to both of your points, the female staff members probably go to the bouncers or go to a manager and say, this guy's got to go. He clearly hasn't done anything that's so crossed the line. It's just, you know, some guys just give off creepy vibes, you know? Sometimes even non-creepy people, it's just an interaction where now all of a sudden it's like this other person is like, eh, I don't know about that.

But the fact that you have multiple people all saying he's kind of dipping his toes into weirdness backs up the claims here. It sounds like our emailer doesn't want to do anything. It doesn't sound like that's something, like I would look forward to it. I would be like, cool. I'll say something like, awesome. But if you don't want to do it, I don't think you should feel as if you like have to, I don't, I don't think this is like a mandatory part of your role. So I would, I would do what the women asked on this one, you know, are you, Hey, next

time it comes up or, Oh, spaghetti's here. And you'd be like, do you want me to say something? And if they say no, then that's pretty much all you need to know on that one. And then of course, if he crosses that line, then it's a different conversation. And it likely means somebody from the staff on the male side of things is probably going on. It doesn't even have to be that. Like maybe one of the women, the manager was like, Hey, spaghetti time is up. This is not going to work here. Um, some people like to put the cape on and some people don't. And if, if you don't feel comfortable with it, uh, I don't, I don't know that you have to, for what sounds like nothing bad as of yet for this guy to get banned because of an incident. Yeah, I think the other thing that I mean, when there's a dude that's clearly trying to be in and we know he's not going to be in and he's chatting you up and he's, you know, he sees you come in and he moves a seat.

He moves down like six stools. I mean, maybe it's initial what up. There's a little fist bump for you as he's going on with the story i'm pretty much looking straight ahead i'm talking to the bartending when he comes by it's just it's it's clear it's not painfully clear but it's clear if you're paying attention i'm not into it so you can just do that like don't engage with the stories you'd be like oh yeah wow cool it's crazy whatever like yeah that's crazy whatever but you're not like you can tell and then when your buddy comes in you're like that's how that guy acts with a friend and they'll get

the idea without you having to be like hey could you just fuck off this way you can just you can tell and then when your buddy comes in you're like that's how that guy acts with a friend and they'll get the idea without you having to be like hey could you just fuck off this way you can just you can just sort of let him down slowly and he'll get the idea hopefully unless he's one of those people that just doesn't take any subtle hints but i think i think you do that a couple times you change the demeanor that guy's not going to want to you know go bowling with you guys or whatever it is you're doing outside of work maybe well selfishly if you can't stand him and it's it's not going to get better with this guy i doubt there's going to be a moment where all of a sudden you're like you know you know who i really like i didn't like him at first he's the creepy guy lebron is the best you're right yeah right this you could be you could end his potential courting by using one of these experiences and be like,

hey, man, I'm not into you because of this, this, and this. And I'm sick of hearing about you. And you make people uncomfortable. And I'm not into it. And there you go. And the old Jay Cutler, the old don't care and just keep on doing your thing. Don't care. All right.

I care about you guys. I hope you had a great holiday i hope everybody did as well that's listening we'll be back on friday with matt liner we'll do a preview of the bowl games with him and we'll have a life advice on that one as well ron russell podcast thanks to kyle thanks to steve ringer spotify Thanks to Steve. Ring or Spotify. We'll be right back. problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fanduel.com forward slash rg in colorado iowa michigan new jersey ohio pennsylvania illinois tennessee and virginia call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text next step to 53342 in arizona 1-800-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org forward slash chat in connecticut 1-800-9 with it in indiana 1-800-522-4700. Visit ksgamblinghelp.com in Kansas. 1-877-770-STOP in Louisiana.

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