Tiger’s Crisis, an NBA Mini-Mailbag, the Confusing Knicks, 'Survivor 50,' and the Yucky Red Sox | With Joe House, Jason Concepcion, and Bill’s Dad

5 and 50 grams for no 9 and 90 cents, or Golden Sea Food Reucher Lacks, XXL, 220 grams for no 9 and 70 cents.

Aldi, good luck for all of you. The build-sum is podcast brought to you by Fandle. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up new rewatchables on Monday, it was the last episode of Sea Armut. We did LA confidential, next week's going to be Eddie in the cruisers.

The definition of a one for us, but it's an awesome movie. Please go find it if you haven't seen it. If you like really good movies with a music theme, I would highly recommend it. We have an action pack podcast coming up momentarily. We're going to talk to Joe House about Tiger Woods.

We're going to talk about a bunch of NBA stuff, and I'm going to do a lot of great nail-back questions, so I need somebody to bounce them off. So, House and I cover a lot of stuff there. Old friend, Jason Goodsepsium, came on to talk about the New York next.

“What are we seeing with this theme heading toward the playoffs?”

Why is everybody so lukewarm? What's going on here? Then we talked about Survivor 50 for a while, which I wasn't totally expecting, but I had a great time doing it.

You can listen to his podcast, it's called Way to Second.

We launched it, I think, eight, nine weeks ago, and it's really, really good. Then last but not least, my dad, the Red Soxor 105, the Celtics, Tatum's back, Patriots have a draft coming. He just wanted to come on, so what am I going to do? I had to have him on.

He's making me too guilty, but I still really want to talk to him about the Celtics. That's what we got. I'm taking a risk by finishing this podcast on a Thursday afternoon. There's an OKC Lakers game tonight, and I'm really hoping that Luke Goods and score 75 points against Oklahoma City or something. I'm going to be really mad if I didn't wait until

after this game, if it turns out to be great, we'll find out maybe it won't be great. Maybe OKC would just kill the Lakers. I hope that's what happens, actually. Anyway, that's all coming up next. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Joe House.

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Twenty-one plus likes, states are 18 plus DC. Contact your Wyoming game, probably call 1-800-GameBork call 888-789-777 or visit uscpg.org/chat, Connecticut. Alright, Joe House is here. You can hear him.

I'm fairway rolling in the ringer game show. He was coming on. My podcast, all the time during football season is we struggled through our picks. I'm already talk about nobody believes in us. Talk about chip on my shoulder.

I am so ready for this next football season. I'm going to be possessed this summer. I can't wait. You talked about tiger on your podcast.

We never talked about it here, and it seems like now he's just gone.

Like he's at the Ryder Cup, he's going to be working on all his stuff. This is such a sad story.

“How surprised were you on a scale once a 10 that this even happened?”

Surprised. I would say a solid 8 because there hadn't been news reports about questions raised. He was carrying an extremely large load in terms of participation in the redirection of the tour. He's been a crucial element of a person in roll-ups year for how the tour might refashion

itself. He has been a super active participant in the TGL and the viability of that property really depends on him and he as he was getting physically stronger was making overtures towards participating on the champions tour and then it was revealed that he was training with an eye towards participating in the senior U.S. open.

That's a large load of stuff on his plate. There weren't news stories saying, all of this is going on, but we see tiger and he's in public appearances looking less than lucid or in public appearances looking like he might

And there had been in the past some of those observations made, but this was a full work load, full plate staring us in the face and so the idea of him, it also is not like public information whether or not he's driving his own car. It would have been my serious hope that he was mostly not driving his own car after the accident in California.

So I was surprised.

“I was surprised too, but I think the guy, I think his body is just so broken and I was trying”

to think of it from his perspective because you always think like, wow, if somebody jeopardize

you know, if it's an addiction, that's that's its own set of things, but all the stuff that just happened to his body ever since like his legs broke down in the 2000s, right? He's playing the US open with a shattered knee, basically, then he has the back starts going on him because he put on too much weight. Then on top of it, you know, he has the car accident.

He basically has like a bionic tibia, you know, I think his knees are shot. I think his back's fucked up and he has a fucked up leg and we noticed it when we would go to the masters and we were watching walk around. You could tell when somebody's like, not 100% just day to day, just standing. He just seemed like he was really uncomfortable and I, so I can't say I was that surprised,

but I was surprised by the timing because it was like, we were even talking, is he going to be at the masters?

“Is he just going to just go show up out of nowhere?”

Because we'll know, not not nowhere, he himself was permitting that question.

The question was being posed to him, you know, it was asked at Ribeira at the tournament that he's the host of, how does it look how are you forecasting this? And he was, he said on television to Jim Nance, if I can go, I'm going to go, I'm trying, I'm trying to get my body ready. And the question I have, and I asked this, you know, Nathan and I discussed this on the

fairway, Roland podcast, did the drug use, did the opioids? Was there an elevated, was that all part and parcel of him trying to get himself ready where he previously up to this point where, you know, he was physically unable to contemplate trying to do anything competitive golf-wise. Now that he's in ramp up mode, does that mean the pain meds need to be elevated?

And did that just sort of change the overall risk paradigm? You know, I'm going to practice, that means I have to take the pain meds. And whatever that cocktail is, it does have this, you know, narcotic kind of effect. And that, that, that narcotic effect is the thing that lets him go practice, but he shouldn't

“be driving a car, but he was driving a car, and that's what, what happened.”

I wondered if, you know, maybe the or was having been part of the picture up until this point. Or he was pushing his body to come back and his body wasn't handling it correctly. So he starts up in the stuff, who knows what you know, it's, it's crazy though. And it, it just, it was making me think like Kanye is playing in LA this weekend, right?

And he's playing on Friday, he's a guy for a completely different reasons when sideways, but was also a little like Tiger and a little like some of these other people we have that fly pretty close to the sun that have true greatness. And he got like the Michael Jackson movie came out this week. That's another one.

You could, we could argue about different reasons for that one too. But the point is he was the single most famous person of our childhood. He was our version of Elvis, and he went completely sideways over the next 10, 12 years. And sometimes that wonder about, you know, that level of fame and greatness. It seems like it's really hard for a lot of people to handle.

That's the sustainability of it. Like what it feels like to be that dominant, beloved, I don't think we think about that piece of it enough. That's the unique element of golf. I mean, you're, you just mentioned two entertainers and entertainers can have careers into

their early 70s, mid 70s, of the 80s, a whole of Mick Jagger now, you know, in the five. Yeah, and there's still whatever tours they're doing. Golfer can compete, I mean, Tiger won in 2019, won the Masters in 2019, you know, Jack won a Masters when he was 46, Phil Nicholson won the PGA Championship over the age of

50, Tiger just turned 50. So if you have the physical wearer with all, then you, you can do it. And there is the incentive to try and keep it going and nobody's more incentive than Tiger. He is, you know, the the entire sport, modern golf, you know, owes it everything to Tiger. The level of Tiger in 1997.

Yeah, and it's golf and you, there's kind of no ceiling on golf with athletes, with professional team athletes.

There's always a ceiling, even for LeBron, he probably sees the ceiling coming at some

point.

And the stuff we nitpicked on as all like stupid shit, right?

“But for the most part, like he really handled his business when you think like just being”

like a child, prodigy, basically, all the way through. It's about as good as it's going to go. I don't know if anyone's doing that in terms of him physically, or do you mean in terms of him? Everything role model.

I'm saying.

He never got sideways in terms of life, right?

Never really. Of course. On the court. He somehow stayed healthy the entire time. He never really unraveled in any way other than the decision, which made us all mad,

but really like he switched teams. Whatever. The grand scheme of things. Yeah. But, yeah.

This is something Eddie Johnson, who, you know, our friend, who host that Eddie and terminate show.

“He's always said, like, we're never going to see this part again.”

Like somebody handle their business as well. Just from start to finish, just be an adult and a role model. And, you know, he does a million things that drive us crazy, but they're all like meaningless stupid things. It is a good parallel, though, because he did change the industry.

I mean, he single-handedly ushered in the shorter contract, you know, the player empowerment era that we can quibble with and that we come complain about. But, the brawn was the driving force behind all of that. The leverage recognizing the levers that the players have and he uniquely. And Tiger also kind of occupies that same space.

One of the roles that Tiger was playing in trying to, you know, provide direction to the PGA Tour and Brian Rollap was really the voice of the players. Yeah. He was, you know, there's no union. They're not organized.

But, I really was sort of liking him to the head of the players union if one existed. Because he's the most respected voice in the room on behalf of the players. It's just an absolute, you know, ton of responsibility and he clearly couldn't do all the things that he was trying to do. And this is the problem.

Who's that now, Rory? Rory doesn't carry the same sway as Tiger in the room, but somebody's going to fill the vacuum. Maybe nobody does. There are guys, so Rory was somewhat marginalized.

Mark, I nominate, I nominate homeless hubs. Adam Scott has been, he might be, he's 45 years old. He's still playing outstanding golf. We're going to talk about him in the context of some master's cards as this gets going this week.

Very excited for that. But he might be the eminence in the room and in Tiger's absence. Yeah, we got master's Holy shit. We're not going this year. I mean, what do you think I'm doing here?

I know. We've got it. We'll do our best. So fairway, Rollin, you're going to have all your picks. Oh, yeah.

Sunday night with Justin Ray, that'll be up overnight for early preview Tuesday, Nate and I will get on and kind of finalize the card based on what we're hearing on the grounds and some visual information, what we see. Who's playing the best right now? Like what, what golf are some amazing question, amazing question.

The answer is kind of nobody.

“That's, that's what makes this so fascinating.”

Well, he's got a back problem and it hurt him in his performance at the Player's Championship. Call him or a cow. I had been playing awesome. He also has a back problem. He just withdrew from the San Antonio golf tournament where they're playing this week.

And he may not play in the masters. Scottie Sheffler, I don't haven't checked the news today. He's, he's due to have his second child any minute now. And again, I'm, I keep making this joke. Can somebody give that man a calendar?

Like, you know when the master says, count nine backwards, count nine months backwards. It's okay to have a kid in March. That would be fine. Sheffler won early in the season and then has some top 5s, but not up to his own standard. And so I'm going down to Bryce and D. Shambha was coming in, having one, two consecutive

events on the Liverpool. He's got something going on.

And he was crying at his, um, the press conference immediately after the second tournament

that he won and referenced a personal issue that he's dealing with. Oh, no. John Ram has won on live also this year, calendar 26. So feels really wide open. That's the thing that makes this masters really compelling.

Well, the NBA also feels really wide open. We're doing some bad, some mailback questions. I have you on as a, I like to do the mailbacks, but have a lie about it. I haven't sent you any of these. I'm so happy.

This is my favorite thing. So I've gotten a bunch of SGA questions. And relatively timey because the MVP, the odds of dropped, we've talked about it a bunch on our threads and stuff, but I picked to that kind of captured the spirit of the kind

One is from Casey from Long Island. I don't understand your insistence on associating SGA with the all-time great guards this early in his prime. Until times you compare to what he's doing to Jordan and Kobe, he's been an elite player for four seasons.

It seems like you're prioritizing his peak rather than the sustained excellence of the all-time greats. If he's still doing this in the 231/32 season, then we could start discussing it until then as my favorite podcaster would say, let's drink some settled down juice. That's one.

And then the other ones from Matt and New Zealand, this is the other variation of this.

“When you're hard of hearts, do you genuinely like watching SGA play basketball?”

Whenever I hear sports media people talk about it on this, he's so skilled with doing so impressive. And even though his game is kind of built on not even really playing the game properly because he plays a certain kind of foul-baiting, almost anti-bask ball, which we hated when hard it did in Houston.

I believe that I'm sober in the players are like shares to blame for the league, encouraging this stuff. They should be held accountable if anything can change.

I don't agree with that second email, but just both of those, I do feel like a lot of people

feel this way. So what should you take? I think the first email has some good points in it. I agree with you. It actually made me think like, yeah, maybe I should, maybe not a 20 ounce glass to settle

down juice, but maybe like an eight ounce glass. Let's let it back to back titles before we bring MJ and Kobe and Jerry Weston through this. And yet, what were the conversations? We should go back and see if we can tap into it. You probably wrote some columns.

When Steve Nash went back to back MVP's, how are we talking about Steve Nash and what his career trajectory might look like? He didn't even win the chip.

We were upset that he won the first two MVP's.

“I actually thought he should have gotten the third one, but yeah, because I think the thing”

to me with SGA is, this is now a presidential turn that he's done this. This is four years of excellence, like my dad's coming on later and he said SGA is the best player saw this year. He's been going all the soapy games. So that matters.

But I guess the thing that I said when I was talking about is, this is four first teams in a row. This is 31 plus a game for four years in a row. This could be back to back MVP's, back to back titles. This four year run matches any other guard, anything really anyone's done except for maybe

MJ because he got the three titles. And I think that's doubt to say that the, so yeah, okay, if you need maybe two, three more years to really move in there. Yeah, they don't, folks don't want us to be invoking the all-time great yet, but he certainly on a path where if he continues at this level, it is sustained excellence.

That's a great observation.

“That's what we're looking for out of him.”

But another MVP, a back to back MVP, plus we're re-anticipating back to back titles. The best odds, right, we're anticipating them at least getting to the Western Conference finals. And then we'll see what happens from there. There's some stuff where people, because the stats are inflated, like, right, this is

where in the steroids area for basketball, like what, what, what, in baseball and that people doing steroids, but just the numbers are out of whack compared to what had in the past. So a guard averaging 31 a game, this season is the equivalent of probably 27, 28 a game in the 90s. And as I see that point, Shea is averaging, first of all, 32 a game, but 31 and a half, whatever,

but a shooting 55% and if you're going to, like, disparage some, and I haven't even said it on voting for you, but, you know, he is the best crunch time stats across the board. He scored the most points, he's taking the most shots, he has the most free throw attempts, any shooting, like, 52% in these games and I test why he's unstoppable. And to me, that matters more than any part of the case, he's on the best team and he's

the best guy at the end of these games.

So an incredible, especially over the last, what is the 10, 12 games, someone just outrageous

fourth quarter numbers, right, well, so that leads to, I want to go back to Shea, but that leads to an email from Trevor V, you're in this email. You and House both hammered the under and the Lakers win total, they already crushed it. After the three seed in the West, Luca is averaging absurd, 34, 8, 8 and has the team that you and Joe House, the preeminent MBA experts on the planet, peg this an easy

under. It's like, kind of a nice compliment for you, that's obviously disparaging towards me. Trevor wants to know, why is Luca not the MVP getting this laugh from Laker fans lately? You obviously felt he had a terrible team around him as he took the under on the Lakers, which by the way, was like 48, Shea is the MVP for having the defending champs, which

took the over on exactly where he thought they'd be, crack a please, that's how he ended

Crack a please. I like it.

The Luca case, Luca has been the most viable player in the league, or Co MVP with

Wemby for the last, really since the All Star Break, I would say, that's great. It's great. It's the best, too, guys. It's a measuring stick. It's an 82 game season.

And fourth one. That's right. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. Well, it's just, he was player the month in January, but somewhere near the

end of January and around that three week stretch was pretty if he for him and the Lakers, just from the I test. And there was some November, December stuff. There was one other stretch in there. I don't know, S.J. has just been so consistent the whole time.

“I think that has to matter when you talk about the award.”

The MVP of the Lakers is JJ Reddick.

JJ has had to take this credit. Is it that hot? I mean, the thing that we were waiting for with Luca was for the flip to switch for him to be committed to playing defense and what you hear, which the flip or the flip to switch. What I said, however I said it, the flip to switch, are we that old?

He was going to flip the switch. We need a hint of this. This is your, you're firing now. I'm the one. This is a problem.

You would not talk about it. Yeah, you got it, but he's motivated to play defense now. And on top of that, there has been a liberating effect. We should, you know, re-examine. Remember where we were early chemistry wise between him and Reeves.

And then Reeves was hurt for a big stretch of time.

And the team wasn't as good defensively without Reeves.

And it wasn't as good offensively without Reeves. Now look at their net offensive and defensive ratings. Over, since they all start break, they are like fourth in the NBA on offense. And they're inside the top 10 on defense. They're still in the 17 to 20 range.

And why is on defense? But this, this measuring period, they are inside the top 10 on defense. And what, what do you attribute that to? Well, everybody that I listen to all of smart people, people that you talk to. Luca is trying to play some defense now.

“He is an important part of their defensive improvement.”

And sure you can say, LeBron, you know, found his role. This is a role that makes the most sense for him. He's also reciting this somewhat alive. We have trust that. We have 40 dunks from LeBron.

And right, and 8, I mean, when we were sitting and trying to forecast how this like your season might go, it felt like even money that it was going to be a catastrophe. A disaster because they had gotten run the F off the basketball court in the playoffs. And what they did in terms of personal additions coming into this season didn't look seismic to me.

I'll go further. I don't think they expected this in the beginning of February because they would have done more trades. A great point. They didn't do anything.

They didn't do anything. They didn't. They kept all their picks and it was clearly a transition year for them. And they felt like they kind of punted on it. And they only moved, they really made, was Gabe Vincent for Lucanard.

And who's a better fit for this team and is kind of perfect in some ways. But for the most part, you know, they weren't even really kicking the tires and talking about different guys because I don't think they thought they had it this year. Now you watch them, you know, people are smiling during games and people are happy and jacks and hazelnuts.

Play them together. The whole team, people are talking about the bench.

“I said this before, I'll say to get that the trade deadline passing was the best thing”

that happened in this team because you got to give credit to JJ. But I mean, all the passive aggressive stuff, all that who might be here, who deserves to be here, what's going to happen with LeBron is LeBron going to be hat. Like all that stuff just goes away, the moment everyone stuck with the team. And the moment they were stuck with the team and then LeBron missed a couple of games and

came back and then all of a sudden, now everyone's happy. LeBron does look in better shape, though. I will say that. I agree. I agree.

I agree. I agree. And it looks happier. So we do the conspiracy theory about a motivated man, you know, whatever's going on in this personal life of pouring it into the work, pouring it into the work, pouring it

into the work. There you go. Because there's he might be, you know, if he is a free agent, if he's a thing, if he's a very prominent person in the LA community and a relationship free agent, and he's out there, you know, wrecking homes and figuratively, maybe he sounds somebody doing the basketball

court. Maybe he has maybe he's looking, but he certainly motivated. He has an awesome case and there's probably years where he would have won. Miss averaging 348 eight and the teams can be three seed. When he has been the most dominant player in the week for two months now, you know,

Yokeage is going to average triple double for the year and it's going to finish fourth

It's, we've had this before, like 87 was like this, bird one, three straight in an 87 finished

“third in the voting and had his best year.”

If he had a better year than all three of his MVP years of finished third, because this

is how it goes down, we'll see what happens. All right. Next one. This is from Tom and Adelaide South Australia. Adelaide.

Adelaide. I think that's right. I love the Australia. Australians love the pod. We love them too.

I'm in Australia. My most hated non game feature of the NBA League Pass, the horrible in stadium MCs during timeouts. They yell, make some noise and I can't hear you, constant yelling, it's so fucking annoying. I'm watching Spursverse Warriors right now, wanting to stab my ears with needles, there's

two more on Zio, who wants to t-shirt, make some noise, maybe I'm old. I think that's a great email. I completely agree with it. Groups. Everything.

What? No notes. Why did they just punt on the timeouts? They just show the jumbo trun footage and you just watch all the same idiots trying to dance and get on the jumbo trun that you see if you're at the game.

Why do I need to see that? There's some. There's got to be some lane for some kind of entertainment for those of us who consume these games by league pass. Give us something special because we're not there in that stupid stadium, be getting engaged.

This is why I'm here. I have an idea. Let's go. Let's go. I feel like this is a real chance to teach NBA fans about the sport during these

times.

“I think there's like 12 commercial breaks during the game.”

They could make 200, too many videos about the history of the NBA and it's like we're going to a timeout. Here's two minutes on Paul Westfall. He made four straight-all NBA teams, first team on BAs in the late 70s and was a white guy who could dunk on dudes and he made the 1976 finals and he was fucking awesome.

Here's some highlights, and here's three talking heads talking about him. Now back to the game because our biggest frustration is all these people under 30, like they, you know, they try to wait into the historical stuff and they have no context on anybody. Well, let's do it.

Great games, regular season games, players, teams. Do like a little 83, six or three thing. Oh, we're going to commercial. Here's Mara Ellis, Kits and Deshot against Phoenix. Here's two minutes on how that happened.

Like fucking teach us stuff instead of like, hey, I want to teach her.

Well, think about the incredible incredible archives that the league possesses.

They're serious on stuff, like mind blowing and we're not even, I mean, we've been privileged enough to be able to have, we have an interest in old NBA fights and we've, we've, we've got about new to it. I just said you're going to have to put your John Schumat now, we're not suggesting that the league would, yeah, they're not going to turn the lead past the fights.

But what the point I'm making is that there is history to be shared here and people should see what hersey Hawkins look like. People should see, like, you know, what how Alvin Robertson played, like, crazy old names. Yes, exactly. You know, who's awesome, Sidney Monkrey?

Here's some highlights. I mean, the 83 bucks almost, it was their best chance to make the finals. And then they ran into the faux faux sixes and here's, here's how that series went. Like, I don't know what we're doing. All right, we're going to take a break and then I have more mailbox stuff for you.

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The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll, he's going to the basket. So many throws him an alley hoop and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley hoop, but it's not an hoop. It's just kind of an alley.

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Multiple entry periods. See official rules at micklobeautra.com/portside for free entry entry deadlines and prizes and details. All right. One more look a question from the mailbag.

This is good for us to tell history when it's from John. With Wemby's descendants, if Luca doesn't lead the makers to a miracle title this year,

there's a good chance he will never hold the best player in the league championship belt.

I know you love lists, so I'm curious who you think were the best 5 to 10 players ever who were never at any point of their career considered to be the best player in the league. So I went through the pyramid. First time guys, don't worry about them. Tenth guy in my pyramid list, Steph Curry.

Was there ever a point in Steph Curry's career where everybody agreed he was the best player in the league? The 2015 NBA LeBron. There though. Nobody thought he was, because he was the NBA, but nobody thought LeBron was better the early.

Wow. So you could say 2022 when he when he singlehandly basically brings go and say

“to the title, I think he gets it for that year.”

I think we like 2022 and we're like, that's the best part in the league. Okay, maybe that was the first one I had doubts on. I don't have doubts, but your your observation around, you know, how does he jump over LeBron? And in 2022, how's he jump over Yokech? He maybe doesn't.

So that's the first one. So I'd have him Jerry West, who was incredible, who I still have in my top 12. But Russell was there and then immediately praised by Will and then Russell again, then

Karim, he was never who's the best non center, but he was never the best player.

Never had the bill Oscar Robertson, Kevin Durant, even in 2014 when KD won the MVP, I still felt like we thought LeBron was the best part in the league. Sure. 2014 absolutely. John Havlochek.

Okay. Did we ever think Yannas was the best part in the league, even though he won MVP's, maybe after he won the 21 finals? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, so he didn't cross him off.

I think Yannas.

“Durant, who is he in 2011 when he ran through everybody and won the title?”

I don't know. I'm still not sure. I thought he was the best part of the league. So he's on there. Belgium billers on there because he went against Russell, so there I just gave you seven

guys. Curry, West, Robertson, Durant, Havlochek, Durk, Belgium biller. It's the sad that we couldn't even include Charles Barkley, but he can handle it. I had Julie serving, it was a yes when he was in the ABA, so he doesn't count. Garnet, Malone, and Barkley, all three of those are in.

So if you're rounding out to 10, okay. Ryan from Portland, Oregon wants to know, have you seen the ads for this TBS show foul play with Anthony Davis? It's been running during March madness. I have, I have seen them.

Would you ever have thought Anthony Davis would get his own TV show? How many other NBA players would you have guessed as the host for this before you landed at an Anthony Davis?

“And I think for me the number somewhere between 45 and 50.”

Maybe there's something that we're missing, like the Anthony Davis hasn't had a chance to cook. Is that possible? Is that like what we think?

Behind the scenes, maybe he's been doing it for all this time, really, and it's finally

being shared with us. So it's finally being revealed. Let, let a deco, we've been, we've been hyper focused on, can he play consecutive games

Well, he played, you know, well, he has the most time to host it. I would want Anthony Edwards to host that show. Yes.

“I think that feels like a good Anthony Edwards.”

Yes. He's actually funny. Anthony Edwards makes me lie. Yeah. Christopher would have been another one.

I would have thought would have been good for the show like that. Yes. Anthony Davis, no. Sunny wants to know Zach mentioned that Donovan Klingan looks like Gunther, the

professor, becoming the first person in mainstream media to make that point.

Shouldn't we start calling Klingan the rim rim general because Gunther is the ring general. Doesn't this instantly become a top five nick name in the NBA, the rim general. A plus. A plus. Give that email.

The fucking rim general. It's a tremendous, it works in, and in, in Portland, especially Winston writes in. I got by the way, please stop sending me tanking emails again. I can't the truck and I talked about it on Tuesday and it just, it's like the gates open. Winston did have a good point though, tanking is like pornography.

You know it when you see it. Instead of making more rules, the teams will eventually inevitably get around and power the commissioner to hammer teams that everyone knows are tanking. There's a good of the game closet at the moment. It's not specific enough.

The commissioner needs to start hammering people to show he's serious. I've heard variations of this, including a competition type committee that's a tanking committee where they would watch the wizards give up 83 to bam out of bio and just be like, we're taking 10 ping pong pong balls away. You're going to have 10 less than lottery after that.

You don't think that works.

“No, the problem is you have to rewrite the incentive structure.”

You can't have a connection between performance on the floor and the number one overall pick. If there's a connection between game outcomes and getting the number one overall pick, you're fucked. There's no getting over it.

You can imagine 10 million iterations.

But as long as that link exists, if I'm incentive to do poorly to have a chance at that pick, then every rational actor will do poorly. The only way to change that is to randomize who gets the number one pick. If you want teams to compete, then you have to incent them to compete. I've seen, I saw a nice thing guy in the Washington Post, a law professor said,

to do the first two thirds of the season, it's fine. You establish a kind of position, but then you can improve that position if you win over the last third of the season. The incentive is to win when this moment occurs for us every year from the trade deadline to the end of the season and wins can improve your position.

Then you get competitive games because you're trying to win at the end. You'll have a certain sort of place because you've demonstrated over the first two thirds of the season that you suck. But then if you really try, even though you suck, to go win games, you can improve that sucky position and that's desirable.

I mean, as long as bad team gets number one pick, then the incentive is for the number one for it to be bad. A couple different people had variations of this idea, but I tweaked it into an idea that I kind of liked. I thought of it from when the NFL, when they told people, "I'm now going to attempt

it on sidekick," and you tell the other team, "Oh, you're on sidekick, okay, we'll

“get our guys out, but you have to announce it ahead of time."”

What would happen if teams just basically announced were tanking?

And you could decide at any point in the season, they put out a, basically like best odds for the number one pick, just tanking group. But you have to tell us that you're tanking and you're throwing away, and then everybody who has tickets for your games now, it's 50% off. But basically, if they announce it and either you announce it or you don't, once, if you

don't announce it, then you try to tank, you don't get it to be in that group. 'Cause you're one shit stop. So in November, it'd be like, "Six teams have announced they're already tanking." And they're just in that group. And then they could try, you could play guys, you could try to beat teams, and it wouldn't

matter 'cause you wouldn't let you're in that thing anyway. You don't like it. I mean, there's an integrity to the games element you announce. So what's the deal? You're saying you would announce that you are tanking, but you don't have to worry that

question doesn't care, right? We knew, you knew that in October, that watch I did. I did. That was right. Like motivated.

All right. We have these spots for the tanking lottery, do you want to be in there or not? Do you want to throw away your, you're not allowed to make the playoffs? Your tickets are going to be 50% off of the entire year, but you can reserve your spot in the tanking lottery right now.

Like, that sounds great. We're in awesome.

How's that any different from where they are now, which is the inability to put more

than 8,000 people in the stadium on a Tuesday against, you know, four. I don't know. Fiction perspective.

“I think it's, you know, that's not really much of a, of a distance set of, Adam Silver,”

grow some fucking Chester and figure this out, please. Clancy writes in, would you trade Palo for a top three pick in the 2026 draft? Who are the top three? Well, what say it's Peter Sandobanza and Kim Booser in some order? I would not.

The number of how expensive Palo is, not 100% positive. He's a winning four playoff rounds per yet from a defensive standpoint. That defensive mistake he made. Did you see that three he gave up when they lost and he just got lost? He just got lost on the biggest play of the game.

I don't. 100% trust him as a two-way guy. I think it's impossible to have a fair view, a fair assessment of Palo based on the context in which he's entered the league and, okay, that's not the question. You could trade him and have one of these guys on a rookie contract.

So my person, we trade him for any of the top four. Well, the rookie contract element of a change is the, the equation, right? Because does this feel like something Sacramento would do? Well, let's think about it.

Sacramento gets the second pick and they're like, we can't add the second pick again.

Last time we had the second pick, we took Marvin Baguette over, look at that shirt. We've had to trade this thing. So we'll get rid of Zach Levine's last year of his contract and the second pick, we'll get Palo and we'll have an established superbar. And we're going to be lighting the fucking B in next year.

“I think that, I mean, Sacramento is a bad example because Doug Christie's the coach.”

But I think Palo, well, they would hire an actual MBA coach. Okay. But they do that. If they do that, like that's, that's a goddamn good trade. I don't think that's a, I don't think that's a bad trade at all.

I think there's a version of Palo that we haven't seen yet. And I know I understand all the criticism and, you know, when we're having to question effort and when he and the coach are doing the, the press dueling press conferences about who's playing for the, for the, for the fate of the team, that's all bad stuff. But I, I mean, he's really talented.

I would trade him for defense in five seconds. You would take it. Yeah, they're three. I would have to really study the tape and feel good about it. But defense is like, I think the band is going to be a monster.

You know that that he is a 20 plus point score, a 10 plus rebounder. Yeah. So we're talking about Palo is can't booster that. He's an interesting one. I don't know.

I don't really know. If he's in the top three, that's a good question. Could Booser give you everything Palo's giving you with hierarchy, both end stuff. And he's making one fifth the money. The one fifth the money is the thing that the till they have some big tax stuff coming.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Three wants to know, you said you would not trade the top five picks in the upcoming 2026 draft for Wemby and said that to an amel bag.

Do you agree with that? I thought you considered it. I thought when you got fired. I can't really find it. Yeah.

That's right. Do you see that? No chance. Wemby hit my window. That last night.

I was so excited. Amazing. I mean, he was 35 and 14 and crushed it flushed it flew by it. Daniel wants to know, is Wemby at age 22 number one overall on the all-time trade value list.

And who are some of the other all-timers? I feel like I've answered this before, but we'll do it again. 87 MJ, I think is one great.

“I think he was like first or second team on B.A. his third year as a garden was just in.”

He was probably singlehandly worth more money than any other guy in the league. And this is a league that had bird and magic and Barclay and all these dudes.

He was a one man billion dollar franchise basically for sure, even though they weren't worth

that much left. 1999, Tim Duncan coming off the title, okay. Knowing I have him for eight years and I'm just going to compete in incredible. I mean, Karim doesn't count. I just did guys that we've seen like post merger guys, because Karim would be number one

on this. Yeah. Yeah. 1986 a came two years in, going toe to be like demolishing the Lakers, taking the Celtics to six in the finals.

This is best. Good one. Wendy. By the way, I'm not ranking these. I'm just giving you guys.

Wendy's. Probably 2005 LeBron, I would say, because he was only 20 at that point and was already in

And you knew like the next at least 15 years where had him or we're going to be spectacular.

“1994, Shaq, second year, Shaq, which I think he was 29 and 10 first team.”

Magic and bird.

Their first rookie years.

2010, Durant, somewhere in there, and then Moses, when he went to Houston, when Buffalo traded him. And all of a sudden, Moses was putting up like 20 and 15 every night, we're like, what's going on here? And he was like 20.

He's a one team during a league pass commercial. These people need to be a league pass commercial. All right. So I just gave you 10 guys, who's number one out of all those guys I listed for you. MJ 87.

That's right. That's not even close, not there's loss for the brunt. Is that a loss for the brunt? That would turn to certain another MJ LeBron. Thank.

Yeah. Only you did. Wow. MJ changed. JJ was reading and it was his fault.

The direction of the industry, because 80 drank basketball into the modern.

“Yeah, because 86 as the 63 point game against the Celtics, 87 averages, I think 37”

a game or whatever. And he's first to him on BA, you're taking him first. Which is Wemby, I mean, there's the injury potential with him. That's it. That's good reason.

With good reason. But I think he's in the area of MJ LeBron, young LeBron, young Duncan, young a team. He's in, I have no problem including him in this conversation. I've no issue with it whatsoever.

Ethan Jensen has a Wemby question. My dream for the NBA is to turn Wemby into a villain. I think he's the perfect future villain. He's cocky, empowered, and French. I'd like to start sooner than later.

I'm a jazz fan, but would love to everyone start hating Wemby and then we need Anthony Edwards to defeat him. It's the most fun outcome for NBA fan in the next 10 years. Villain Wemby. You know who agrees with this?

Who? To Kobe. To Kobe. He's been trying to say it. I know.

Maybe he wrote that under the suit name. I was thinking the WWE this happened in the mid 90s when they were trying to make bread hard a good guy for a while and the fans weren't really responding and then they leaned in a like, well, we'll make him in the hard foundation villains. But bread heart wasn't really a villain, so like, what could be his hook and it's basically

like, I'm from Canada, we do it better than you do it. He Americans have gotten lazy. We're better than they're like waving the flag and like, we're nobody believed that. Maybe that's, but maybe he has to do hard foundation when Wemby, they're from a country that's figured out political leadership better than you guys is waving the French flag.

So there's going to be natural enemies of the spurs that will treat Wemby as a villain. Oklahoma City is, is there already? Oh, yeah. It may be, I don't know. You know what?

No, you know what's going to start it if they play the Lakers in round two. I mean, not going with. Let's get that. Well, so how is Wemby a villain in that series? He's going against the Lakers, that's the most popular French as we have.

He's going against all the Lebron fans, all the Lucas fans, the city Dallas, all the Laker fans. The city of Dallas. Yeah, everybody. Dallas is jumping in.

Now he's only for Luke in a win the title just so they can imagine. You don't already hate Wemby. I wonder let's, let's ask Dallas how they feel about it. I definitely hate Wemby.

“But I, the reaction of Golden State, like I think by a large as Wemby goes around and plays”

in these stadiums at the level that he's playing at, there is a significant concentration

of people that are making noises every time he does any one of the incredible things

that he does. Like you, it was loud in Golden State. I didn't see him. You haven't been watching him. You haven't been watching him.

He was out. He was out when they came. When they came. We're going to have to go see a playoff camera. You have to see this.

Let's do it. There's nothing like this. Very good. So I'll follow anywhere. So Nick from Victoria BC, some good destinations in the smell back.

I did that whole thing was Zach about whether this was the weirdest NBA season of all time. I enjoyed it. He said, one thing you forgot, we were introduced to Albany and Bruce, black Tony and the Blazers wondering where's my coach.

I laid out the weirdest season ever and forgot that the Blazers coach coach, one game then got arrested in a game scandal because of black Tony. And Albany and Bruce and Albany and Bruce totally forgot that.

And then the Asian woman had an incredible name as well.

I'm going to look her name up David H chimed in on that other things we forgot about like Kate Cunningham being an MVP candidate, blah, blah, blah, but he's like forgot about weird. Forget about the best. Go upstairs, yeah, you forgot about all the expansion insanity that's come out of nowhere.

That's a good one.

“You forgot Philly got to duck the tax from Paul George but did it by trading a guy.”

All the Philly fans loved and enraged them. You forgot about the prediction market discourse and Yana somehow owning a piece of calcium. You didn't mention the Pacers going from game seven to the finals to potentially having the worst team. You didn't mention the 65 game rule, the pistons horn and sprawl and Westbrook versus

the media, which has been one of the weirdest things. And then he closes by saying, I now want to see the Simmons carpool become an annual event with your favorite under appreciated draft rookie. So maybe I got in the car with a cuff next year. He comes to a pod and just drive back to the so-called tell.

It could be, could we get the sponsor? Let's get a camera in there. I mean, it's not, you're not ripping off carpool karaoke because this isn't entirely different animal.

You know, it's when Jacobi and I when we were first year at Grantland and we pitched

them this whole idea for I've talked about this for podcast and cars and we were talking to like some SUV and doing the whole thing and it was like too complicated and then like, I don't know, year or two later, the court did the that carpool karaoke thing. We were like, fuck, like we had the idea. Yeah, I was just going to be driving her out of an SUV.

What do you think?

“How many episodes are there of sign felt driving around, do it, you know?”

Yeah. He did that too. We had it. ESPN screwed it up. Like they screwed up everything when we were at Grantland.

One photo. Dabab in New York. He said if there's is expansion and they have to move a team to the Eastern Conference, could they open up a bidding war between the Timberlives, Pelicans, and Grizzlies to move to the East Coast.

But any of them actually trade draft capital or players to want to go from West to East.

Would you sacrifice a first round pick or pay a hundred or sacrifice a hundred million

dollars you're getting from the expansion thing to have just a better chance? I don't think so, but I like the idea, I like the concept, or maybe you give up Zion and the expansion draft, he mentioned.

“Which is further east, isn't Memphis or norlons?”

I mean, if you look at the map, it's really stupid, Memphis should probably be in the East, but Memphis is also really close to a couple Western, we just a map is too, I don't think the Eastern teams New Orleans is another one, like it's unclear why norlons or Memphis is in the West. All right, you'll like this one house, Connor from Oregon, as a lifelong Blazers fan, I don't

think they're getting enough attention as Zionist estimation, not only do they own the buck's future picks, but they just handed control of the team to Tom Dundin. We just watched Mad Ish be a completely gut, a fun finals contender for Kevin Durant.

And he's basically worried that this new owner is going to get new owner syndrome right

away, trade all their assets for Zionist to go with Drew Holiday, Dame, Yannis, Denny Obdia, and whatever else. So they have they can swap picks with Milwaukee in 28, they have their 29 pick and they can swap again with them in 2030. I do feel like this is the stealth, Yannis destination now, fascinating test of your market

theory, you know, you advance this in the last 10 days or so, around what is the market for Yannis, what will market, what will Yannis fetch in return because of the diminishing asset, you know, the history of a player, a person that plays the manner in which he plays, having sustained health, that team you just said, that's a pretty good team. I'm I'd be interested, that's an interesting team.

What if you traded the rim general down, have been clinging, I just used that. So rim generals in there, and basically Milwaukee gets all the picks back and more Portland picks, and here's Scoot Henderson, you can have them to and figure him out for a year. What about the defense of specialists camera? I'm keeping him if I'm trying to win a title.

All right, as I said, when I talked about this in Goldsbury, it's going to come down to a desperate team or a team that really is excited to make move. New owner in Portland got my eye on it. They're odds anywhere where we can pick the next destination. Now, come on from the server, the advice number.

This is the email. This is really the reason why you're on. Last year, you were on and we decided Dallas is going to win the NBA lottery. And then I didn't stick to it. You said it. You said it. I laid out the case. We laughed. We were like holy shit that's going to happen. And then when it actually got to the week of the lottery, we forgot to bet it. We're not forgetting this time. This is from Mike Smelts.

It's obvious the Warriors are winning the lottery. All the factors line up.

“Adam Silver wants to punish the tanking teams. Well, the Warriors aren't a tanking team.”

The league doesn't want to waste Steph's last few years. They want to keep the Warriors a marquee franchise. Gifting the Warriors the top pick. Let's the team either add Peterson or DeBancet to juice the Warriors core or they trade it like the Cavs did for Janice or LeBron science there. Steph Janice LeBron, Dreyman and Brani is a starting five.

He suggested, I love this. So Golden State, if they lose the first playing game, they would have

a 2% chance for number one. They would have a 9.4% chance for top four. Your thoughts. I mean, first of all, I'm almost positive. It's the smell to the that I know. Just for the record, America, I had nothing to do with with fat fingering this email. I had no idea. It was coming into you. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's the best one. A top four pick for sure. Because then it throws the cent off. Then that top four pick was one and 11 odds,

basically. They can't win number one. Because number one would really do that. Dallas, they did it last year with Dallas. That was insane. That was the worst thing. I'll never

forgive the lead for that. I'll never forgive it. Well, second was the funniest, funniest,

rigged lottery outcomes where we'd be like, Oh, my God. I can't believe they did that. That was so blatant. Gold States won Indiana winning, even though they have like 50, 50 odds to get it. But to bone over the clippers from getting a pick between five and nine, that would be pretty funny. That one. That's, that's, we're gambling on that. That's, that was certainty. Dallas getting it again. I know. God. As the other apology for Nico, what if they just won back to back?

Well, they do that and they force because because Cubans trying to buy the team again. He wants to buy it back.

“Honestly, keeping needs to stop doing interviews. Why'd you sell the team in the first place?”

Why'd you sell it to those guys? And you hired Nico Harrison. Stop talking, minus minus minus minus minus. Stop talking. Your blood, the blood is all over you. Stop talking. Michael Finley had nothing to do with that trade. Oh, my God. Just want to get that out there. Okay. The other team that would be funny from a rig standpoint, Portland, 1.5% chance for number one, 7.1 chance for top four. Just because somebody bought the team. Okay. And they're trying to get a Seattle expansion team going.

And that guy would be one of the eight votes. I'm like, I'm not fucking voting for that Seattle's two and a half hours from my back yard. It's like, well, can we offer you a little, AJ debates? There is a, if only there wasn't history, a demonstrated track record of the league doing this multiple times.

If only it has to never 12 times. Exactly. Do you know somebody told me Utah has never moved up in the lottery?

Pickin' the history of the franchise? Yeah. Wow. That doesn't seem possible. Alex join her. Once to know, could an all-Jayland team win the 2026 title? That would be starting five. Jalen Branson, Jalen Williams, Jalen Brown, Jalen Johnson, and Jalen Durran. It's pretty good. Bench. Jalen Sougs, Jalen Green, Jalen Smith, Jalen Williams, Jalen Wilson, Jalen Wells. So Jalen Branson, Jalen Williams, Jalen Brown, Jalen Johnson, Jalen Durran. That's a pretty good team.

I don't know if they win the title, but I think that's like a confidence final team.

“How do they rebound? That's the only thing they're having a hard time with. Well, Johnson App just tenting Johnson. Yes,”

I know, I was going to say it, but the only problem is they would Jalen Branson bring Rick Bonson, Branson. I think, hypothetically. So I think that fucks the team up. He's not a Jalen. Rick is not a Jalen. No, but Jalen is going to be on a team. So then Rick Branson has to be an striker. No, I just didn't. But no, we need a Jalen assistant coaches. He also suggested the coach would be the one and only Jalen Rose, which I fully support. Great. We saw his work in the 2014

celebrity game two more. Tim writes, it's 2035. You move back to Boston because crunch cross country flights are suddenly a whole thing on the body. I don't even know what that means. House is nearby for coverage of his second major heart attack. That's not nice. I'm just really about sports podcasts are mostly robot clones trained on your voice. You're getting all, but you have slightly enough fastball left to revise the final dish in the Book of Basketball.

Meanwhile, the spurs have stacked two more titles in the 2020s and another two in the first half of the 2030s. Can they get to six titles? Bubble up San Antonio, well, one at least one title in five straight decades. Would that make the spurs the best franchise ever for a Celtic

I'm pouring Tim some central down juice. San Antonio hasn't even made the finals yet. We're

given the six more titles. And how dare you say, House is going to have two heart attacks? My second

heart attack. I'm not going to have any heart attacks. I'm not going to have any heart attacks. I'm about that. I'm on cardio fitness right now. Sure. I'm going to pressure 14 over 77 last time. Yeah, we're walking. I did send you a picture of the Wendy's chicken parmesan. Samage from 1989. Let's go. Which led to a whole text conversation about.

“That's another like, what are we doing? Why isn't this available?”

Why don't we have chicken parmesan fast food sandwiches anywhere? And it put us right. We immediately could launch into all the throwback food items from from bygone eras, but the chicken parmesan. How are they? You just have you make the tomato sauce? You melt the cheese on the

chicken and you just pour the tomato sauce on it. They already have everybody's got a chicken offering

right now. It looks pretty solid chicken offering. I would honestly. We're like hoppies on this. Well, much like this is a great time for an MVP thing like just great MVP candidates. We've just so many great chicken sandwiches right now. It's a great moment. If we really, Chick-fil-A really pushed everybody to another level. It took us three years. It was like step curse three point shooting. Big guys had a shoot, changed the volume of three as you want. Like he's

ground zero that. I think they tried the big art yet. The McDonald's, the big the new big McDonald's big

“burger. Have you tried it? I have. Oh, okay. Did you do it for an ad read? Was it an ad read?”

Nobody. My wife likes to cheeseburger from time to time. I understand. Who doesn't? No, I haven't tried it. I really wanted to, though. I wanted to get you excited that I've tried it. I wanted it to be so jealous. Big art law just makes me hungry. Me too. And I love they did the whole thing with with the Bose O CEO eating it like in the in the company cafeteria whatever and giving it the most flaccid, you know, enthusiast. I think it's a bit. I think it's a bit.

Yeah, I think it was a little bit a bit. It was a bit of a bit. It was a bit of a bit. It was a bit of a word. Yeah, it's a great job with it. But I'm telling you, I need to eat this burger. I haven't had it yet. And I have a whole concept for for burgers that I'm going to share with you offline. Like I have some burger concepts in mind. What do you mean? What are your past ideas? It's a burger. No, there's a whole thing out there. You want to create a ringer burger?

I'm going to try some burgers. I want to eat some burgers. I want to see, you know, put some cities up against each other. How is this actually pretty good? Okay, arch burger. Oh, okay. It looks like a giant meal. What's the good? How say about is it too much? Well, you know, on server last night, survivors have been really good. That two hour episode and somebody won a reward.

And they won Applebees. And Jeff Probst went through the whole Applebees. He's like, you can have a big and cheeseburger and just like close-ups of the food in HD. If I could made me, my wife and I went out to dinner last night. I wasn't even hungry. I was hungry by the time they did it. Like those are the, then I was thinking, like how much shitting do they do after when they haven't had normal food for two weeks? And then they have like a

bacon cheeseburger and high sodium, high saturated fat, you know, high sugar. I threw them, right? I don't know. It certainly isn't good. The outcome is not good. There's no good outcome from

I'm going to have my first food in 12 days and it's a bacon cheeseburger. Yeah. All right. Last

question from Sean Moynihan. He loves half baked ideas with Kevin Wilde's. Who doesn't come on? My half baked ideas anesthesia bars. You go in and they put you under for how many hours you ask. You wake up and go about your day. Now the kicker here is we're getting real licensed anesthesiologists. So it's completely safe. It's an above board operation. Think about it. You're at the mall with your better half. Okay, honey. I'm going to the anesthesia biology bar. I'll see you

in two. I hope you find everything you want at the store or say you're anxious about catching a flight. You show up five hours early. You get put under for three hours to 30 minutes until you

“need to get to your gate. The only thing that could go wrong is your heart stops or whatever else”

kills people while the under. But how much more? But how much worse is that the be bored? I think there's something here. I mean, granted, I can't think of a better person to ask than Joe House for this question. Well, I don't want to put you on blast. So I'm not going to pose the question to you, but I'll just tell you from my own personal experience that the drugs that they administer when you go in for a colonoscopy are the single best experience that I've had under under any anesthesia,

they administer so that they can they can do that very vital check of your intestinal fortitude.

“It is so goddamn good. When I woke up, I said, "Oh, don't wake me up. I don't want to be awake."”

Right. Back to that to that. It was really a glorious state. So much so that I asked if I could come back in six months. They said, "No, we're going to wait three years is fine." Yeah. That's good. But if you can deliver that to me, especially the airport concept is especially like, let me be in that frame of mind. Now you're a little groggy, so maybe you don't want to go do anything like get a little plain, but what if they did it on the plane? What if that was part of

what happened on the plane? Like your flying test travel? Your flying, my friends are somewhere and you just knocked out by an anesthesiologist. There's a 10-hour flight from Washington, DC to Honolulu and you're telling me that four hours that flight, I can have that beautiful. It's so well rested. You're ready to go conquer the world. I knew that this and you'd have great thoughts.

“All right. Where is off? So masters, all the prep, all the previous stuff is going to be”

on fairway rolling. I'll probably make you come back on next week to talk about golf. I'm bringing Nathan with me. We're already inviting ourselves. I'm just going to be, you know,

Thursday around that we can talk about with you. All right. Good to see you, house back in a second

with Jason's Epsium. Sometimes the greatest financial victories aren't the huge flashy contracts, but the mid-level moves that maximize your cap space. Just like tax act hubs, you get a great return by finding every deduction, even the small ones, to maximize your refund. And great returns, presented by tax act. We look back at the best decisions GMs have made to land in an expensive player who paid huge dividends down the stretch and owners that have seen their team

valuation. Skyrocket. Look at the Celtics. They had a huge luxury tax bill last summer. They had to figure out how to shed some contracts. They were able to turn Christophe's porzingus

Andrew Holiday into basically four months of Anthony Simons. And then like an eight million dollar

version of the porzingus contract and the giveaway a couple of underground picks. All the sudden they're under luxury tax. And the guys who were playing for those guys, we're doing just as well, Shireman, Keda, Hugo Gonzalez. They just figured out how to patch together because they were shrewd about it. That's the Celtics. Great returns was presented by tax act. This tax season simplifies your moves, maximize your refund. Visit taxac.com and learn more, conditions apply.

See taxact.com for details. All right. Our friend Jason Sepsione is here. You can hear him hosting a fairly new ringer podcast called Way to Second, which is already gone in a whole bunch of days. I didn't listen to the one this week yet. We did the Havana syndrome this week. Havana syndrome. Wow. Is it fake or real from your perspective, though? I don't, I'm not versed on this one as well. I got a deep, I'm going to listen to your pod and do some deep diving.

And then okay. I feel like every like 15 episodes I should just come on with all of my scattered thoughts on the previous 14. We're holding Zodiac. Oh, for you. Oh, yeah. Ready to roll. I got a lot of thoughts about Zodiac for a long time. I got to feel like there's layers. I do feel like our tax thread just for this podcast with a few others could almost be like its own sub stack. I was mailing weird daily mail things that somebody found. Yeah. Yeah.

Yo, what's up with this? Yeah. The bully doesn't match in this. Do you see this? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Couple things to hit. I want to talk about the podcast at the end, but we're

going to talk next first because we just talk basketball at house. And I was my dad's coming

up after you who I had a record with and I was saying how the next sort of one team. I don't want the Celtics to play in the playoffs because I feel like the interesting. I feel like the Celtics are the one team. The next probably feel like we can beat those guys. And I'm not sure there are

“other teams in that list. Well, I think that our first round match up. I feel like is a team that”

I feel good about. Which one? Who's the first round match up going to be? I feel, I feel, if it's silly, I feel pretty good. Now, let me knock on wood and not like start any kind of, but that's a team where I feel like I have a reasonable amount of confidence. Yeah. Everybody else, I feel very, I feel increasingly nervous about including the Celtics who listen, if you had talked to me in the middle of the season last year before the playoffs, I'd say, you know, no way we touch

still in existence? I don't know. I don't know if we're seeing that team. The weirdest thing about

the Danks and a lot of people have made this point. I'm not inventing it. It's just that they're five best guys do not play well together. And now we have lots of math that proves this. And so you find it mentally. It's like when these five guys play together, it's not that good. And they fall behind and then bench guys come in and then they rally back. Not a great recipe. Starting line up has been a problem for two years. The problem last year, it continues to be a

problem. Net rating tells you that you're leaking water with the starting line up, but and the fact that they are unable to kind of change it, let's you know that there is something. It is kind of the crux of the issue with the team. There's some sort of deep-seated personality friction that means you can't change the starting line up of the team. And you know, I don't know if that's cat and Mike Brown. I don't know if that's bridges and cat or the rest of the team

and somebody else. I don't know what it is, but it's clearly something and it bubbles up every few games to be double the team. Yeah, I guess my biggest question. And I talked about the

city of the day how basketball such a naked sport. We always operate what we see on a TV and

“whether guys are getting along along like they should and whether they're happy. But I think if you”

go through other than J. Limbrenson, if you just go Nick by Nick and you were able to put four drinks in them and after three hours you were like, hey, I got to ask you. You happy? How many of them would say yes? I think Alvarado would say it's happy. I think Alvarado's love and life. But how many of them would be like, no, I love my role. I love the amount of shots I'm getting. I really love playing for Mike Brown. How many people would actually say that if you

drug them and ask them for an answer? Well, I think we should we should preface this by noting that there are a lot of guys on this team where no matter what team they've played for in the past, this still would have been any. You know, OG was not like loving his role as a Toronto Raptor early. Like so cat similarly, they were up and down things. So there's going to be some

“carry over in that regard. But I think you're right. I think the I think there are under the surface”

divisions in the team. I don't know what they are, but you hear whispers about it all the time and certainly you know, I have a couple ideas as well. But certainly when you see them, you know, the game against Houston where it just felt like nobody wants to shoot and they're doing it in this kind of like petulent manner, tossing the ball around like, well, I was told I should I have to share so we issued it. That kind of feeling everybody kind of uninvolved. Yeah. And it's

the kind of thing like when they went to a nine or whatever it was earlier in the season, that

would felt like every game. And it feels like that's never going away with this particular group.

And I think, you know, part of it is just there's obviously you feel good about jailing. Obviously Josh Harden, jailing are like a solid too. And I think outside of that there's probably different divisions wherever you look, depending on the circumstance and what's going on. It's because the glass had full that I've heard people point to whether there's one stretch or whether we have that the best defensive rating for the last 30 games. There's only four teams that are in the top

“eight on both sides, offensive defensive rating. So that's why you have to take a seriously. But then the”

flip side of that is all right, if I'm using ratings and doing that thing, your starting five is the worst starting five by rating of of all the teams that have a chance to win a title. So what if I do with that, if you're telling me to also look at this, I think that's why it's been so confusing. Yeah, I don't know what to make of this team from one game's then. It's truly like I don't hear. I am a supporter of the decision to to untubed to conscious to unconsciously uncouple from

tips. I think it was the right move. I think we've seen enough of tips who is a wonderful coach and is the guy, if you're building a culture, get that guy. If you need to build a culture, if you need to build a personality of a team, go get him. Yeah. But I think we've seen enough to understand that there's a ceiling and there's a certain limitations to what he does. But he was able to get some kind of ferociousness out of this team despite the divisions that existed. And

to fire tips was always a two-part, for it to be successful, it would have to be a two-part

plan. You'd have to one get rid of tips which didn't decide to do that. And then to hire the right guy is my brown the right guy. I'm not sure yet because I don't know what the personality of despite the fact that they are, whatever, top five offense. And for a time where, you know,

“a top five defense and I think they're middle of the league now, I don't know what the other than”

Jalen Branson late. I'm not sure what the personality of this team is and under tips they they had one as imperfect as it was. Yeah, that makes sense. You get to a playoff series and you just want to be in a situation where Branson's trading baskets with whoever the best guy in the other team is, right? That's when this team were within four. Now we have our closer and we can actually crack down and get defense. But I think one of the problems for them is that the rest of

the league is just better. You know, two years ago, when they didn't have as much time as I do this

year, but two years ago, the league wasn't as good. Now you're looking at even like in the first round

you're playing, let's say you play Toronto in the first round. Like Toronto is going to be almost a 50 in team actually. It has been what 20 in two and one in two. These are teams that are playing well. This isn't like roleovers. No, completely agree. At the same time, the team that I really don't want to play out there is Charlotte just because that is, and I don't think there's anybody in the East. Do you want to play Charlotte? Like, there's something about them where they don't know

any better and they will just erupt from three and next thing you know, they will steal a game from you. And that's a team I don't want to play because of the way they play as well. I watch them pretty carefully. The three games that they lost at home, or they won the first one they lost the next two. But it's interesting. The reason you don't want to play them is also the reason you do want to play them because with four minutes left all of the sudden it's like,

"All right, La Mela, what do you got?" And he's like, "Watch this, I'm gonna shoot a 38 footer, but then it'll go in." Like you just like he's a complete wildcard for better and worse.

“And you know, Kahn's 20, like you saw some of these more, the mix will be able to I think”

wear down Kahn and Miller a little bit. Teams are already kind of using the deobotating against him. They're pulling away from the basket. But the La Mela things just wildcard for both ways. Like I feel like he could shoot them out of a 20-point lead with four minutes left in the same way that he could bring them back. I don't know what to make him. I mean either. And the other thing that makes it difficult with the mix is obviously you have the jail in peace, which you can count on.

But there are other kind of edge. Is Mitchell Robinson, and you just don't know how many minutes he's gonna give you when he can play. But in the play, we don't have the back to back. So you know you're gonna actually get it. Right. And when he's right, he's a guy that you can you can kind of plant your flag on, but then you have all the issues of fit with cat and now what happens there. I mean really the cat pieces the one because everything could be it's like we're trying to reverse

“engineer a way that this team could work if it would if it all you need to do is just like”

hey can cat just like get with the program. Right. On a night-to-night basis right his defensively has been approved. That's great. But like can the shot also be there? Can the rotations also be there? Can the screen setting also be there? Can the not just weird temper tantrums not be there? Can all these things be there on a consistent night-to-night basis? And you just wonder. It's hard

to know. He's a mature guy and this has always been a thing for that's another thing that's this

is not didn't start now. Right. The crazy fouls. So yeah. I'm sure you're on a slew of mixed text threads. Yes. Who is the most polarizing player on the text threads? Is it cat? It's cat and bridges. All right. So what what are the bridges complaints? The bridges complaints is though let me preface this by saying we need to forget about the draft fix. Right. It happened. It's water under the bridge. It happened. It's gone. It's done. That said,

like, you know, in private spaces with your next footprints. If you're going to talk about the drug fix, you're going to talk about it. And you're going to be like, hot. You know, where was he? Where he disappeared for this period of time. I think he's been consistent for the team, but consistent at a level that was not kind of the level that I think you were expected

guarantees that you're going to be at at least one finals, giving a ball those assets. You're trying to lock down something. Right. And by the way, like, I still think the logic behind all of these moves is pretty sound. You can't hit every bet. You're not going to, you're not going to win every single

“bet. I think these were calculated moves. It's an open question about whether they will pay off”

and just, you know, to what level. But I think the underlying logic still makes sense. Like,

we were going to face Boston a million times in the playoffs. And so you want these two rugged

wing defenders to try and slow them down somehow that brown and Tatum. And that makes sense on paper. It just hasn't, despite the fact that we did beat the Celtics last year. And that was one of the greatest moments in my life. We would, you know, we'll see what happens this year. The Celtics look very, very scary. You know, and Tatum is like, has like Wolverine mutant, healing factor. I don't know how this happened. Like, is starting to look like that guy again. Yeah. And they just

look unbelievable. So we'll see what happens. All right. So it sounds like you're more glass-haffled, glass-haffled than glass-haffled. No, I'm, let me be clear. I have made peace with whatever will happen. Okay. There's going to be, my brown is going to be held to a standard that, honestly, I get

“it. Like, if they don't make at least the conference finals and do well there. You have to get past”

brown, too. You have to. Right. They have to. They can lose in the conference finals, but it can't be like five games. They have to do well. And he's going to be held to that standard, and if they don't, then it's not a success. And I think that's slightly unfair to him, but that's life. And I've made my peace with that. Can I tell you the dumbest thing they did? Not just trying to get the foreseed. Sure. Like, go backwards. Honestly. Well, I don't, I don't much rather be in the foreseed

and play to trade a team that you know you can beat and just have the four or five match up. And then rest all these dudes come up. Because honestly, I think this is what Cleveland's doing. I don't trust what Cleveland's doing at all right now. I think they're delighted to be the foreseed. I thought that Laker's game was really weird by them. I didn't really understand it. And I know Luke was playing great, but I just think that's a game. Like, if you're trying to win the title,

you're like, we have our guys. Let's fucking go. Let's lay the smack down. This team's a contender. We're in LA. And they'd like, they were out of that game from the get-go. It's weird. I don't think they care us. I agree with you. I'll say this for why I don't think it. If the next were a team like the grid and grind Grizzlies in the middle of the run, right, where they know who they are. Right. Or if they were, you know, the mid-period spurs, right? And they

rock solid. They know who they are. You got them. Cruz control for two weeks. Cruz control.

“Coach has been there for a million years. Your veteran guys are pillars of the team. I think you can”

do that. I think with the team that is still dealing with the changes that happened from, you know, the previous two seasons. And that has made a drastic, like, a significant coaching change. And it's had the owner go on radio and say, like, we have the group to win the finals. I, there's a lot of reasons why I don't think you could do it. I think you'd need to be a more established in the postseason club for that to work. I think that's fair. Well, can we talk about the

most positive element of this next season? I think the incredible, incredible performance by

celebrities every game. I think it's the most star-packed group they've had tonight. And you have real regulars now. You have people that were going when the team was fucking terrible that are just minted. The ones going to be a lot of this people for life. Matthew Moff. Matthew Moff. Matthew Moff? Yeah. Moff. Moff, where do you want to sit? Just tell us each. Yes, you have like the random Larry David will come back. But just in general, like they, I think it's better than what the

lakeers have gone right now to be honest. I think you're right. And some of them, you know, Moff Dean is, I mean, Moff Dean is an OG at this point. There was the, you know, the next did a 50 greatest moments at MSG documentary that aired on the MSG network that is narrated by Matthew Moff Dean. This is from, it must be 12, 15 years ago. So we've been around in periodally,

is always there. Purgate is always there. Right. And lately you've had like Ed Sheeran,

Aaron Judge is there all the time. So we're still are, still are is there, like, cleaning for like. Cooper Hoffman. Cooper Hoffman, uh, shallame is. Well, I mean, I do

get shallame for the playoffs or does he kind of, is he going hiding after the Oscars? I feel like

“he's got to lay low for a while here. No, I think I think after a disappointment like the Oscars”

where I think you can argue, maybe narrative had had something to do with the showing. I think you you recharge your batteries. I think you go to where you're constable and where people love you and where you're, you know, you're part of the atmosphere. And I think you go back to MSG in that atmosphere and you just recharge like those shots of today, that's to me. It is most charming and is most seemingly authentic. Like, he's clear that he loves the nicks and has for a long time. I think you,

I think you go. I think you absolutely go. So this is basically dirt dig or going back to Jack Horner's house at the end of the book. Exactly. That's exactly right. Jack, you know, go back to where it's started gag. She goes to jail to let Jim, will you help me? Jim, come inside. Okay, come on. I have a game game five tickets for you. Yeah. You want to sit next to his ass? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh,

“yeah, macaroons. It's another one. I think the nicks, I really think they're beat the Lakers pretty”

handily right now. It's a good run. The Lakers were never able to recover from Nicholson just getting

really old. They never were able to audible. Denzel's not around enough. Leo's not reliable enough. They just true. They've never nailed it. And honestly, Nicholson's kid. I just don't think he's in care of it. He doesn't have the juice. They should have really heard some. Well, let's let me just note that flees there every game. Yeah. Diane Cannon is there every game. That's the thing. You have like one girl is there a lot. Yeah, that's true. Well, fair else a good one. Yeah. Yeah. They're there. There's

still people. It's a lean in. All right. Well, you sound some optimistic. Um, Survivor, you've been watching. You didn't see last night. Survivor 50. Um, which I think has been the first Survivor series that really parallels what it's like to follow like basketball or professional team sports. We have the younger younger people who were in their primes. Older people trying to hang on, trying to maybe they weren't what they were 20 years ago. But they had the expertise and the

and the know how and all the same things about the show that drives me crazy. Um, just blown up

personified. Like they always get rid of whoever it's the best looking people are. I get rid of them

whoever the most charismatic people are. Let's get them out of here too. And we just send up with like the quietest like most manipulative calculating people. It's always how the show goes. Well, do you watch traders this season? Of course I did. Come on. Who's talking to? I felt like Rob.

“I think he would be great on Survivor. Yeah. His ability. I mean, you put your finger on something.”

His ability to play into his looks in a way that makes you think that guy's great looking but he's dumb. Yeah. You know, he's not there's nothing there. And just lay in the cut quietly. Yeah. You know, being the hot dumb guy and then all of a sudden make moves. I think I understand that Jeff Probst feels a type of way about other reality shows. But I think that guy would be I think he would be incredible. Like he ran the table. It was it was an unreal performance. Get

that guy on whatever the next Survivor all star season is because I think it would be incredible. And that show is so much harder to pull off than Survivor because they put you in these rooms and it's like you're eating with your other with your other traders, right? It's just the

three of you. And then like Lisa Renner comes in and she's like, hey, you guys never dawns on earth.

Maybe they put the three people together that are the traders. It's really like a dumb collection of people for the most part. This Survivor won the cool things about 50 was these people, they played it. They've watched all the seasons. You have people on there that have studied every season and all the things they can remember every mistake or thing and the other opponent did. So it almost moves to this like higher level of chess. I've really been into it.

I've been into it too and obviously don't tell me. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you. But I'm going to say against my better against my original hesitance. I'm like gravitating to the risk God. Something about his arrogance. The way he bent, he is a cocky dude but in a great way. He did a thing in the previous season where it seemed like he was going to use his immunity. He didn't

the game in a fantastic way. Why do we have like Phil Ivy, like peak Phil Ivy at the post table?

“And it's been it's been fun to watch him. I think a great example of a person who maybe overplayed”

a little bit is the great Mike White. Oh, let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think he felt like the fame factor and people's desire to have a cameo and season five of White Lotus season seven was going to carry him to the final force about and he clearly got played completely. It worked for Angelina like I think it worked a little bit. But it worked twice. It was a good work twice. Well, it's interesting because he, you know, it's fascinating how people get in their feelings. It's like

you're manipulating people, but then when you get called out from manipulating, you're like, but you're manipulating. He tried to manipulate Christian who in their season. David's versus Goliath, Christian had a kind of unshagable alliance with this other kind of name, Gabby, who actually betrayed him. And he like, Mike tried to use that against him, which immediately made Christian

“think Mike's trying to use this against me. I think he's too dangerous. I got to get him out.”

Yeah, Christian's fascinating. Sure, basically a social path. Like he's looking at everything. I don't know who's going to win, but he would be one of the ones I would pick because he's he's playing the game the hardest, putting the most thought into it, but isn't obviously a threat.

I don't, the thing I never understand was survivor. I would just think the four

kind of strongest, most athletic people should just be like, let's just fucking the four of us will figure it out. We get the four. We'll just win every challenge. Let's look out for each other and that's it. I think the problem with that, particularly I also watch Australian survivor, in which that is a more viable strategy and Australian survivor that is because it's a lot more physical than than American survivor. But you don't think it can work in

America. I don't think it can work because it's been sniffed out as a strategy for years now. People try to cut it out. Yeah, because you can think it in 50. They were just trying to get real out of the best challenge people right away. That's exactly what, you know, I kind of like that about American survivors. They're like that person's too good. If you know what I don't like is Syria who like any time they have like odd numbers that's like Syria is going to be sitting

out this challenge. It's like, what the fuck is she ever? She said she has anyone sat out or challenges that her and somehow she'll make the final three. It's like, come on. I just simply cannot criticize a legend if they're letting her get that loophole. They, they, you know, good for her,

“that said politically. Get her out. She's like, she's when the strategist. She you have to be careful”

with her because it's, it's the fact that people leave her around and then she forces all these relationships with people who genuinely like her. Yeah. And then when she starts trading information and being like, well, you know, who said this and here's this, that's when she gets really dangerous late

game and you never know what would happen. I just think in, in American survivor, if you are

dominating physically, you've got to target on your back. They can't wait to get you out. I love that you're banging out Australian survivor and doing the compare contrast. That's really next level. I didn't know where do you even find Australia survivor? Is it like you too? No, it's on it. Well, I have a, I have a VPN. I pay for a VPN. You're amazing. Only to watch Australia, it's literally the only thing I do with it on the 10 play network. And let me tell you,

we get all the Australian commercials. I've learned a ton about Australian culture through the lens of their commercials as I watch Australian survivor on a week to week basis. Some of it is really great. And let me say this. There's a character named, he calls himself King George. Yeah. And when I tell you, when I tell you Bill, his second appearance on the program, which I believe is all stars is the most incredible run of survivor, polyticking. I've ever, he is a

non-a-physical character. And he was faced off against these beefy, stud athletes who were thinking time and time again, this is a type of person like I stuff in a locker. No problem. We're getting this guy out. Yeah. And because this guy George was like a, he's like a political consultant,

he was able to like flip arguments in a way that I have never seen before, ever. And bring

like these grown muscular people like to the brink of tears time and time again with just his

if you weren't survivor? What would be your divide divide and conquer? I'm going to go in. I'm

going to talk to everyone. Not about the game at least hopefully seemingly. Just you don't chat about your life and what's going on. It's an crazy hit we're here. You know, just get little bits of information. I want to touch base with everyone so that I have some perspective about potential gameplay strategy, perspectives. The way people might hopefully go through the game. And then I will start when the time is right. Just putting information out there.

We're getting information information training. You know, information training, but the number one thing is you've just got to, you can't, you see it happen time and time again and survivor people get in a funk. They get, they get the numbers or against them and they're sitting on the beach alone.

You got to get out and you got to talk to people. You got to get out of your head and you just

got to walk up to them and talk about whatever the beach, where you go to the bathroom. Where's the best place to take a bister on here? Where do you think the idols are? Like whatever, what are you eating? You know, and just make some sort of connection that you can use. And if you don't do that, you're just not going to go anywhere. Yeah, that's right. Right near what I would be doing.

“I'd be trying to just build relationships. Because I think those are, I think you actually build”

real friendships. It makes it harder for people to turn on you. But I asked, I think you can't be sneaky and you can't lie. Like if you're doing the thing where you're walking around, like I'm going to, I'm going to go look for an idol. You don't want to tell anyone you're looking for an idol. And then somebody get, what were you doing out there? And it's like, oh, I had to go to the bathroom and you just look like you were bearing a body. I just feel like I was fucking looking for an idol. I know

there's one out there. What else are we doing? There's no TV. I'm going to walk around for two hours. I try to see if there was an idol. So that means you wouldn't do the thing like, like Jeff Kent or Cliff Robbins in May, he twisted piece or Scott Pollard, where you go in and you try to pretend that you're just some guy. Like, oh, you know, I work in accounting. I don't know. You wouldn't do that. Oh, if it was actually like me trying to being worried

somebody would recognize me. Yes. I would, I would probably bring it up. I think it's weird or not to mention it. If somebody is like, what do you do? And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm in media. I mean, doing in a Somalia stuff, you definitely change your voice. I think I think, you know, like, if there's a way people are going to write you down to you, yeah, for sure. I don't know,

“there you go. That's what I was talking about. I just don't think you can be sneaky ever.”

The moment you're sneaky, people file it away and they don't trust you from that point on. So you just have to be transparent about it. The thing I'd be the most worried about is what T-shirt I was wearing. I would think about that all the time. It's like, if I got it in a survivor for the next two months, I'd be like, what am I going to do? Is it Boston T-shirt too cliched? Do a band? Do I do like a ringer T-shirt, just own it? Because like, it's the last time you, oh, you're

going to. The person has that one weird T-shirt he has that he wears every day, right? And it's just like a bad T-shirt. It's like, that was it. That was the best one. But I, they probably can't wear anything that's trademarked, right? You can't wear bands. Maybe you can't wear sports team. Correct. So I don't know. I was going to have a lot of time thinking about showing like that. As I understand it, they ask you to, you know, you bring your own clothes and then they go through

what you brought and tell you what you can bring to where during the game. You probably want to like a thicker T-shirt. I'd want shorts that were a little longer because you're sitting and you don't want, like, then to have to ever have to blurc over your crotch because one of your balls was hanging out or something. Don't work that. But I would be terrible at Survivor because that the McContek lunches and allergies, that'd be a fucking mess.

Well, I think they'd give you, they would probably give you medication. They'd let you take your clarinet and, you know, like, people who wear glasses like Genevieve this season in Christian, sometimes they have them sometimes they don't. So it's clear that they let them have access to their lenses at times. So I think you'd be okay there. Mike, like, when's the last time

you slept outside? Oh, I wouldn't hate that. Yeah, oh my God. I never even as a kid. I didn't

like that. Yeah, that'd be tough. I would like if I knew I was going on, I would definitely, you'd have to learn how to make fire. All the stuff that made the first season so much fun when they had no idea how to do anything. And then probably try to make like two or three real friends.

“When you're on there. Yeah, that's what you got to do. Yeah, because I think that, that's”

one like people like Siri. That's why she lasts because she's a good hang and everybody's,

better than me? You think you better than me? You think you better than me? You know what I would

do? I talk about this with my wife all the time. I would, if I got on, I'd be like, give me the HGH, get me the trainer who does, hemsworth and gets him ready for four. Yeah. And I want to get like in shape that would get me eliminated from the Olympics. Like I want to be ready to go. Like Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike was like that. Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike had the washboard. Mike, Mike, Mike was like, yeah. Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.

I want to get jacked. I don't want to have a situation where I go out there and I'm like, oh, man, I look terrible out there. I got to get jacked. The one persona that seems to work over and over again is strong. Friendly and dumb. Yes. If you hit those three things in a row, you're going to make it to the final five. You're not a threat because people think you're too dumb to be a threat. Usually they're smarter than how dumb they seem. And they're a good

hang. They're usually from, you know, not a typical city. And people just seem to gravitate to

“those guys. And those have been a lot of the most popular survivor people. Yeah, I agree. I think”

another secret, too, is you need no matter what alliance is you get into, you need the one rock solid alliance thing. Right? Go to the final three with. Like, that's it. Whatever else we talk about with, whoever else we talk about it with, it's you and me and we're going there. And if you have that, then you can build other things on top of that. Like, that's, and you saw it with Tony and Sarah Lucina. Yeah. When you have that, that is a way to go deep into the game. I can't wait to lie

more, too. I can't believe the show still works. It's unbelievable. I remember Summer 2000, I was living in Boston. It was like one of the hottest summers we ever had. And career wasn't going amazing at that point. It was I was right in the theme, but it was okay. And the Lakers won the won the first Kobe Shack title that year. And the Celtics were every Boston team was terrible. The Yankees had just won the Lakers now. We're had this new dynasty coming. And I was just like,

what the fuck? Like, what good thing is going to happen? And survivors happening is that's going on. And I was just didn't like Richard Hatch. And I was hoping he would win. And then he fucking won the

first season. I'm just never winning anything ever again. And then Tom Brady showed up a year later and

everything was fun. And then, you know, Hatch has turned out to be kind of a gritty fellow. It is own regard. It's funny to go back and watch those two those old seasons because he was just real. He was naked all the time. It was naked all the time. It was a bad guy. And then, you know,

“and then it's, it's a microcosm too of just like the culture. Remember when they did”

cook islands 2006 and they divided everybody by race, the race war. And then I almost can episode episode two, they realized, oh, bad idea. And they were just like, hey, guys, forget it. We're scrubbing the tribes. And we're just, and again, everybody reaching the bag and you're giving a new buffet. And everybody's getting mixed up. That was a crazy idea. We're not doing that. But God, who's the oldest person who's been on?

Good question. Like they've gone into their 60s a couple of times, right? Yeah, there's a good question. And there has been a woman in her 60s. And now I'm not sure if I'm mixing this up with Australian survivor. But yeah, no, wait, there was the Navy Seal guy, Rudy. He was like 70 something. Right. Because that was really up there too. I was thinking, uh,

“been interesting show for my daughter. Because she'd be really good at the challenges. But I think”

the food would ultimately kill her. Like she really enjoys like making meals, thinking about what

she's going to eat. And if it was just like the rice and you never know, I feel like she didn't

travel, my son would be probably much better off. But I can't imagine what would be like to have somebody know on the show. And then they come back and you're just like, what happened? I can't tell you. And you're just like studying every face they make for the, I can't imagine having someone I know go on. And I've had like multiple, like friends, try out and get like within a couple of rounds. You don't. Yeah. X-ringer colleague, Sean, you got to like the third

minute. I forgot about that. I'm like breaking news here on the podcast. Yeah, you got like he got close. Wow. The closest experience after this is a friend of mine from college,

But friend Cara McDermott from college. Wow. It was the most exciting just rooting for her, not knowing if she was going to win or not. It was like, so I can't even imagine what survived. Anyway, survivors back. Who knew? Survivor 50. Props. You know, they're doing a lot of wide shots with him this year. I think he looks great. He looks great. Maybe over 10% out of my note. Well, here's a theory of friend has is that they're using the, um,

“the dimples to tuck the stuff in there. That's how they're doing it is to tighten everything up.”

They tuck it in the dimple. Interesting. Yeah. But I mean, it's great. I mean, it's just a be careful. But you don't want to be careful. You don't want to be careful. You move through both of the secret and right area, like just to just to move the camera back a little bit to toe it. Yeah. It's so great. I mean, harsh light. There's so many bad reality shows like my wife was watching this show on a boat where you walk the plank and people, the plankets that you just fall into the

sea if you get voted out. That's like, wow, we've really run out of ideas with these, but survivor

50 still kicking it. All right. Wait a second. Uh, yes. You're a fairly new podcast. I think I'm coming

back to talk zodiac at some point. But we got a total of those. There's going to be a lot of good stuff going on. What's the feedback, Ben? People people like when the stuff exists when they have other maniacs like us talking about this stuff. The feedback's been really great. I've getting people a bugging me to do various topics, including gladio, which was a secret NATO program to have like partisans behind communist lines. If the communists invaded Europe and that those groups

potentially were connected to various right wing terror campaigns throughout mostly Italy,

“there's a lot of crazy conspiratorial stuff that is less crazy when you dig into it. And that's what”

we aim to do is get into the crazy stuff, but also be like, okay, what is actually here? Like the JFK one is a great example of, you know, over the over the years, one thing has become clear. It's 100% there is a coverup that would basically been admitted. Like, yes, forget who killed them. There is a coverup going on about what all happened there is in particular with relations to Cuba.

Yeah, because the the conceited of the pod was always stuff that made you go.

Yeah, wait. Wait. What is what? What's going on? What happened? So one of the reasons we were batting around was this one where the scientists just keep disappearing or getting murdered and we're up to like, Nate and clearly something's happening. So it's less a conspiracy pod,

“more of a curiosity pod. It's how I describe it to people. Let me say about the scientists,”

it is up to eight. Only three of them are actually mysterious. So let me put the five of the scientists. There's one that was there's several that were murderers and it's clear who did it. And it's like there's either family connection or something like around the neighborhood and all ties up. It makes a lot of sense. The three who we don't know what happened are really, really weird, including one who was like videoed miles away from their house walking in some random

neighborhood, like without their phone without their anything. And another one who left with like a loaded gun and no identification like those are weird. Yeah. Well, and then that we we didn't do a full episode on Savannah Guthrie at because there weren't a lot of places to go. But that's that's so there's like some sort of line of, I don't even know what that episode would be. That story's just awful. And I don't even, I don't even really know what the conspiracy theories would be about

it yet. But the scientists won, there's a little more meat because of like what you just said about. All right, not only was it was the person dead, but there's what's up with this video. Why did

that happen? Yeah, and never found. Yeah. And when you think about it in the context of, I mean,

listen, you know, that the US has been involved in programs to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, like, is could it be that there's a program to hit or kidnapped our scientists? Like it's not on her own. It seems realistic to think about, you know, there have been numerous military personnel both from the US, US Air Force, and from Britain's Air Forces that have been charged and convicted of helping the Chinese pilots get better and providing them with services,

things happening. Like it's like the, did you see the story about the two recent illegal biolabs that were discovered one in California and one in Las Vegas? Yeah. And one of them, like nobody even knew there was anything in that area.

“Yeah, it was like somebody saw a hose connected to another part of it. I feel like what is that?”

They called like a code enforcer and they found like Ebola and, you know, AIDS virus and, like, monkeys and cages and weird stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's like, what's that about? All right. So there's a lot of these types of stories, especially these days. All right. It's

way to second. It's you. It's Tyler Parker. I'm popping on at some point over the next couple episodes.

And I will, I will, I will see you soon. I'm sure. Thanks for coming up. Thanks for having me. All right. We're taping this Thursday afternoon. My dad is in Boston. We have the Celtics nearing the end of the regular season headed for a two seed. And almost as important we have a red sox season that feels like it's in a lot of trouble. So I don't know. I think it's, I think it's all over. One in five year out.

I might be. What are you want to talk red sox first? It's hard to talk red sox. They've been looking so terribly and terrible. And the lineup is atrocious. Yeah. Last year, they could hit lefties and they had refsider and Roman Gonzalez who started refsiders in Seattle. And at least like when they played lefties, he were like, oh, this is going to be good. This year, the lineup against lefties was in a bombination. The lineup they had yesterday, where they had,

what was it? Durbin was six. There was never hit yet. Connor Wong, who somehow has five hits,

the season was ninth. And then who was the guy that was eighth? I'm blanking. It was something. I can't kind of fall off of. You're a favorite new player. They signed it for six million bucks. The sad thing is I talked myself into this team before the season and spring training. I was like, oh, hi, it is. We have pitching. We have a bullpen that res, Roman will make a leap. We'll figure it out. And then you watch for six days. And I'm panicking. Well, you know, the the management, the general

manager sold this team on when he couldn't sign Alonzo and other big headers. He sold this team on pitching a defense. Yeah. Well, the pitching has been horrendous and the defense is

“been terrible. Yeah. I think they have an error in the game, right? Yeah. And he said it would it would”

make up for the lack of a big slumber coming in here to hit third or fourth. Do you have a lot of

confidence and contraris or anything around? No. I mean, the turbine was the big one because they trade a cow hair, some forum where they got in the in the devil's trade, which nobody said from that trade. And then he's he looks good for the brewers and Durbin, who when they signed it, my nerd Red Sachs fan friends went nuts because he was in the bottom 6% of swing swing speed. He had like one of. He was in the 94th percent of his low bat sounds like is this a hunch? Yeah, the head was

pretty focused at it. Okay. And he was really worried about his slow bat speed. And then it was even worse watching in person. And now the way the announcers are talking about him, it's like he's dead, but he's he's still coming up for a bat's a game. But you know, the bat's free, that's an interesting I didn't see that, but he can't catch up to the festival. No, that's so far anyway. He's he was so bad that I'm one of my Red Sachs threats. We were going through the worst Red Sachs setters we've seen in

our lifetime with Bob Bailey in 1978 being the what being the worst one. But also Tony Payne is last season. There's been some bad ones. There's like bad free agents like Jack Clark. But this guy like he batted six yesterday with a start for crochet. And you know, you just felt like he was an automatic out when he came up. I mean, the obvious problem is they have no alternative. Even my Mayor, Mayor, my Mayor looks terrible. He's hitting 200. They thought of moving him to third, but he's

not hitting. He's Roman's best friend though. He's on the team for the next 15 years. So we need him to start hitting, because he's going to be in charge of struck out four times Roman's final. All the guys who are in the WBC. Well, the craziest yet, I've watched every game yesterday. They're down six three in Houston. Houston just killing them and Houston looks like a completely different team. So they bring in Whitlock to get some work. And this guy came Smith who's on the

Astros who ironically is now on my AL keeper team. So I'm a little investor and he is a 14 pitch at bat against Whitlock. And all of a sudden, Whitlock's over 30 pitches in the announcer

“is like, oh, God, he's never thrown this big pitches in and in and it's like, what's happening?”

He shouldn't even be out there. But it's like everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

about it. Like they're, because they want to be too critical, but they can't also think of anything

“positive to say. So it's a lot of, oh, what a start. One of them, I think Maloney in the beginning”

of the game said, you know, we're one and four. He mentioned a team that's one and five. So we can't be one and five. We can't go there. Yeah. Well, we're one and five. Yeah. Well, and they lost the trophy start. Crochet. Yeah. I had a lot of confidence that Crochet would turn it around yesterday, but, you know, Houston kills us as certain teams that we, when we go to Houston, we play poorly every year in Houston. And some other guys never change. Like Karei is back on Houston now. It's like,

I thought he was gone. Why do you have him again? And he's killing us. I agree. I thought he was a Minnesota. What did he do in there? Nelson is back. And Alvarez just goes, he hits 500 against the Red Sachs. Like he's just kills that. I kind of understand why they did it because our weather in Boston has been terrible. But to start on the road against three difficult teams,

“it's tough. Yeah. Uh, I'd rather they were home except they couldn't be home. Like today,”

it's pouring rain. We've had terrible weather, you know. I mean, I don't see if they played a pattern to come out. If Taylor had a comeback at home, what Friday night, right? Yeah, but Friday, they have to noon, I guess. But if Taylor hadn't come back, if we had this Drake may, this Drake may

Super Bowl followed by the Red Sachs sucking. And then the Taylor never coming back to the South

X. I would actually worry about your personal welfare. No, I, we've talked about the Super Bowl. I'm okay. I'm excited that we got there. Um, I, I did before this podcast. I just listened to NBA today. Yeah. And they were showing lots of clips of the Celtic game from last night against Miami. Miami and they asked Perk what he thought and he took a moment. I don't know who's agree with whatever Perk says. Perk said they're coming out of the East. So I felt

good about that. Yeah, he's been pretty bullish for a while. I thought they looked awesome. It's weird. I felt like that Jalen Jason thing could have gone one of like seven ways. And so far,

it feels like it's gone the best possible way where they've each had little moments. They figured

out how to like, you take this part. It's almost like watching two guys on a cross country drive, just figure out who should drive and who's going to be take a break and then who, now you drive and sometimes that'd be a Jalen game, sometimes it'd be more of a Tatum game. And, and they don't feel like when one guy has kind of been controlled the other guy doesn't feel like he's completely out of the offense. I, I've been really pleased. I have been to it.

“We talked about it. I think a week ago that I still feel that one of them has to be in the game”

at all times. And it looks like Mazula came to that realization. Yeah. Because lately, one of them is, unless one of them is not playing like in the Atlanta game. But there was a nice moment in the fourth quarter yesterday where Brown and Tatum just kind of would near each other on defense and they slapped hands. I think they're good. I think they're good message. Yeah, they're good. No, I've been watching that stuff too because there is so much Jalen talking

about this, you know, this stuff we talked about before Tatum came back. And if you were reading between the lines in the wrong ways, you could be like, he seems pretty happy to have his own team. But I think both of these guys are much rather win. And, you know, they've been together a long time here. This is nine straight years where they've been playing together. Right. And it, but the other good thing is the bench can come in as long as one of them's out there.

And there's all these different ways the game can go that are positive. Like we could have the hot-priture game. You could have the game where like the wings just kind of create wreak havoc for six minutes and get steals and boxing all these things. Or you could have a game where Tatum just goes off. There's a lot of variance with them, which I don't feel like we had the same variance last year, the deal. No, the bench is really diverse in terms of, and guys

have matured and taken a step up. I mean, Jordan Walsh, not one of my favorites. But I have to give it to him. He's playing a lot better than he was a year ago. Priture, Priture can have games where he's unstoppable. Right. My worry about Priture a little bit is in the big game against like the next on a heavy defense. They can take him out of the game a little bit.

But yeah, the next are the next are officially looming. And it's where we talked to Jason

confident about the next, but the Celtics are the one team. The next have a lot of confidence.

They're kind of built to beat the Celtics and even getting somebody like Alvarado for the Priture matchup. Alvarado is just annoying. He's going to guard you for 70 feet and he's going to stick his feet near your feet and he's going to push and check you and bump you and I kind of

“think that's how to attack Priture, which a lot of teams don't do. I agree. We talked about”

it over the last couple of years. A number of the moves the next made seemed to be the counter act of Celtics. I don't know that anybody's all that fearful of Detroit, particular, you know, the unknown is Cades, Cade County Hems. Well, they said he might not be back until the playoffs. Right. Yeah. Well, the one thing that's happening with them now is they're getting nobody believes in a synergy, which makes me nervous. Exactly. I did something

on Sunday about how they weren't one of the 10 scariest teams hitting in the playoffs. It was like, I think it was front page on the sports section of the Detroit press. Like, yet more people don't believe in Detroit. It's like, oh, God, here we go. But, you know, I don't care about Detroit because if we're fortunate enough to get to the Eastern finals, that's when we see them. Yeah. You know, we don't see them before them. Now, the next of the series. Well, although, you know, this Toronto

Philly, all these teams are flip flopping around and like, we're doing this today in Toronto's now, the seven seed and Philly is the six seed. Philly, like, pretty scary in one game last weekend. But, I also feel like we've had a lot of success against them over the years. But, are you scared of either of those teams? I know. But, you know, I know the lap playing that well and the still only one game behind the next. But Cleveland bothers me. They have sides that we don't have. And a lot of

confidence against the subjects. Mitchell always loves playing the sets. Loves and always has that

40 point game against us. But, you know, I'm, I'm not sure if I want, you know, because the next or only one game ahead of Cleveland. And I don't know who has the typebreaker. I'm not sure who had rather play in the second round than next or Cleveland. How about you? Oh, I'd rather play Cleveland.

“Okay. I think the next thing they can beat us. It might be the one good team in the conference.”

They could actually feel that way about. But, I think they have a lot of confidence. The other thing is, I was thinking about last year, the thought of Tatum going there and MSG, that part sucks. Right. You're going back to basically the scene of the program. That's just hanging over every at New York game. And thought of that. And then, um, I don't like that. We'll take big leads. And then we're kind of back with this. This has already happened a couple of times. This is the

share will be up 20 and then relax, you know, and do all the worst parts of the stuff that happened last year. And then like last night, like last night against Miami, it was 53 points in the first quarter and then somehow it's like a 12-point game. Going into the fourth quarter, it's a 10-point yes. So this is like habitual with this self-examined for a reason. And the next or this team that's

always down like 8 to 12 points for most of the game. And then all of a sudden they're making this

row and you're like, what happened? They were just down 16. And so you have one team that can't hold on to leads the way I would love it. And then another team that seems to love coming back which they did last year in the playoffs in the devastating fashion two times in a row. Last year did the next the next played Detroit. They beat Detroit. Yeah, but it was it was a pretty good series. Yeah, it was a good series. It was a good series. It was a neither or

series. Wait, you went to the okay, see game last Wednesday. I did. Hey, what was the playoff crowd like what walk us all the crowd? It was definitely a playoff crowd. But I'm the beginning of the game was a nervous crowd because okay C has handled us. And they, I know they beat us in okay C this year, but we didn't have the full squad. But we played great. It was playoff atmosphere, you know, back and forth, back and forth. It was a

great crowd standing quite a bit. And the salted crowd is not usually as a standing crowd.

“And it was great to get that win. I think that was a critical win. I looked at how many”

wins we have against like super teams to share not too many. Yeah, we're below 500. So that was a big win. Yeah, that staff became a big deal like a week ago, but if you picked it apart, there were a couple of games where we didn't have guys playing or they said, guys playing the spurs game or brown got thrown out. I thought some of it was explainable. Yeah, but also didn't tell them for most of the year. We only have six games left. I'm not sure how often they'll play Tatum in these six

I would just wouldn't play Tatum in that. So what have you seen from seeing Tatum in person and what are people in the stand saying? Well, if you asked me 10 days ago, we could go, I would have said something differently. Last night, the last couple of games annoyed and played against the Atlanta, but he's going to the basket more. Yeah, with force. When he came back when I was at the games, he was very tentative. Almost like he was afraid of falling or not not falling,

afraid of landing on the foot poorly. Yeah, stepping on somebody's foot. Stepping on somebody's foot. Exactly. Which we see happen all the time. Yeah. We saw that happen to a heartbeat run up a junior the other day and he was out a couple of games. Trusting that ankle, you don't want to see him twist the ankle because too close to the Achilles. Yeah. But he looks a little less tentative now. I mean, he's still known to the basket.

Every game he takes a couple of shots, I wish he didn't take, but Brown does also. Yeah. I just like, I don't remember him being so forceful and fierceful on the boards. I mean, he got 18 boards last night. That's crazy. Yeah, I was saying this act. Like, I wonder, the just watching 60 games on the bench made him rethink some of the stuff that both he could do, but also the team might be missing. Yeah. We really missed the fence of

rebound in the whole season. And then as soon as he came back, he saw that he and he and Kater are

great defensive rebounding combination. And it's critical not to give those offensive rebounds,

which we always give up. Right. But since he came back, it's really different. Well, there's a couple ways this team's different than last year. There are much better offensive rebound in team because the two centers aren't 25 feet from the basket. Right. Last year, it was like, take a shot. If went in or not, and then the other team was coming back the other way. This year, both centers like to crash the boards, they have these wings like Hugo and and Shireman is like,

“I honestly think like if if we could vote for this guys who come in and tip a rebound,”

either backwards or to a team, right. He's got he's like a lead at that. I've never seen a less conscious quenchable player better at like the dumbest go possible. But I'm telling you, it's going to he's going to like swing a playoff game with that one of these times jumps over like five guys tips it to you. No, you know, the two players that I'm really pleasantly surprised about there was all kinds of wondering what when the season started about our center position,

because we lost our three centers and Kate has been terrific. Yeah, but your granddaughter never

gave up on him. That was like her guy for two years. Yeah, but he got he didn't get much time now. And he was still a little goki out there. He has some moves all of a sudden and he's a really good rebounder and is a good defender. But the other guy is Shireman. A year ago, you and I talked about him a little bit and I just didn't think he was going to get any time at all. No, he seemed

“like a goofball. He's wearing like the T-shirt under the jersey. Yeah, it's like, what is this guy?”

We're here. How do we end up with this dude? His corner three is deadly. His well, the one where he'll fake it and then he'll take a step to the side and that feels like that goes in a hundred percent of the time. Yeah. I think he's a sneaky good rebounder as I mentioned. And I think defensively, he's like, how's there? Like, he's challenged him and he can kind of stay in front of everybody. It's impressive. And then in person he's bigger than you think. Yeah. He's actually a little bigger

than how's there in terms of bodybuild. How's it been better? Yeah. Obviously, last night he was great. Yeah. He's been not out and cold this year. But the one thing I'd say is it's all coming together for the playoffs. Now you get knock on wood because that injury is right around the corner. For somebody in your hope, it's not one of our guys. But I don't know. I kind of hope we play

Cleveland in the second round. I don't want to see New York. I don't want to see Spike Lee

in the Boston Garden sitting three rows ahead of me jumping up and down. You know, what we

“want to say, shall I make? Because I think he's in hiding after the Oscars. I don't think of his”

right. And I don't think he'll be there for a couple of weeks. You're an Oscar choice after the No, I was rooting for him, BJ. I love them, BJ. I think we've hit the part of the pod where you need to apologize yet again to Joel Masua. You did it when he won the title. And then this year,

coach of the year, the runner-up. I think Picker staff's going to win, but he's probably going to be second.

“But this team, I think I remember talking to after I went to that Washington game that they won.”

When they were like one and three to start the season, and I was like, "Yes, suck. I don't know. I feel like we should just blow this up. This is this team has no chance." And he kind of wouldn't let them tank and is such a maniac. People say, "Who's team is this? Is it Jalen's team or Jason's team?" It's like, "If you watch the game, this is Missoula's team. This team belongs to him and he doesn't give a shit. He'll bench anybody. He'll do whatever the intensity.

Like if we ever get in a fight with the pistons, like some sort of altercation, like I'm worried he's going to fight Isaiah Stewart or something. It's like being forced around the team. So I don't know. You're not acknowledging. No, I'm not ready to apologize. I'll see. We'll see what happens after the play-off. What else does the guy have to do? We were no longer overunderers. 42 wins. We've 51. What do you want?

I think one thing I do like about him is he has the locker room. Yeah. And he has the respect of the players. There's some coaching strategies that grab me crazy during a game. But, yeah, I'm not going to apologize. That's like you were mad that he was taking out Tatum and Brown at the same time, you know. I mean, it wasn't made no sense. We particularly, I don't know what game it was, but we

started the third quarter or fourth quarter with neither of them. And all of a sudden we lost 10 point lead in a lost game. Yeah. I know why he's doing that though because I think he's trying to

build confidence in these guys so they're not just like always a jayman and jayson team,

“but we are a jayman and jayson team and that's what the team is.”

Yeah, I see it. I see it both ways. I guess so. No, I think he's had a good year. I'm glad he's going to finish that. He's a little bit out there. I love yesterday when he said he doesn't want coach of the year award and he thinks it's a stupid award. I don't know what of the coach would say that, but yeah. All right, so this has been a good season for you. Who's the best player you saw in person this year? She Alexander. Unstoppable. You know, that baseline or

baseline jump shot that he has or a foul line or it's a little bit a little bit further out. I don't think we stopped at once. Yeah, and he can get to the rim anytime he wants. He's the best player I've seen. Did you see that? He saw Wemby, right? Yeah. I mean, Wemby was terrific. He had that unusual game where he had, was that, no, that was at home in at San Antonio at the 83s. Yeah. But there are times when he just disappears for some reason. Wemby? Yeah, you just

all know. Alexander, Alexander never disappears. Yeah. He carries that team. They've won games,

because I watch, I watch the MTV, quite a bit. They've won games. They shouldn't have won, because he carried them. Yeah. I'm assuming, and thinking he deserves and will get the MVP. He feeling the same way. You're more of a Wemby guy? No, he's still favored. I'm still going to vote for him with six games left, but you know, it's an 82 game year and we have four

“guys having transcended seasons in the wrong way. Yeah. And I think there's cases for everybody,”

but if you're on the team that has the best record that was missing the second best guy for most of the year, you were steady the whole way through. I test wise, if you go to the games, he's like unbelievable. I mean, this is the way he plays. It's like when in the 80s, when Andrew Tony, who was the most underrated part of the 80s, we just couldn't stop him. And it felt like he could get in those zones. It just feels like that's like every game for Shay, where he's just Andrew Tony,

made two games a year. He's shooting 55%. When when I was at the OKC game, I kept wait. I love the time that he was on the bench. Yeah. Because I'm not sure that anybody else scares me on that team. I think it's a collective group that play very well, but he carries them. There's nobody else carrying them. What was the, what was the fan reaction to the fallbaiting and some of the cause again, that he gets. There was a lot of booing on the roughs. He gets calls. He shouldn't get.

Yeah. When you see the replay up in the jumbled pond, there's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, because he doesn't get touch, he has a great way of using a shoulder to touch the defender and then moving back and making

but he's, he's so skilled at it. Look at me, found shot to get to every game. He hit like 25 on my game. All right. So you're feeling good about the Celtics terrible about the Red Sox. Have you started studying the draft for the Patriots yet? Well, I should also mention, I'm excited about the Bruins. They're, they've been playing very well. As you know, I, I don't jump in into the playoffs. Yeah, I know. Well, the playoffs will be soon, and they'll be in the playoffs. I'm looking forward to that.

“Yeah, I've studied the draft a little bit, but if you, if you want to do 20 seconds on the Bruins,”

let's hear it. I thought you were going to look warm on this team. No, no, I, I think they've done a good job with the four lines. They've assembled different groupings that have done very well.

Macarois is, I think, playing like a, a first star defenseman. Yeah. Swamins been a really

terrific all year. I think they could go far on the playoffs. I'm looking forward to hockey players and basketball playoffs. It's like a whole school Boston and not having to watch the Red Sox. All those playoff games will be on. So we're out at the Red Sox. I get to look at what their over under is now. It's the alternate win totals. It's, it's not so much that they're one and five. I don't like the team. You know, you look at their lineup. They're over under, drop the 84 and

half. You know, well, it doesn't seem like he likes the team Alex Corra. He has that look on his face. Like he has him gone to the bathroom in three days. So what does, they want this being countering and to be general manager. And I like the days when we had Dumbraowski. Because he wasn't afraid to make a trade to bring in a superstar. Now, maybe maybe the message from John Henry is, we're not spending money. You can't bring in that guy. Oh, you think that's a message? That's, that's the message.

“I think that's established. The problem is they, they traded divers and they said they're going to”

reinvest the money. They gave Anthony a new contract. And then I think they thought they're going to sign a breakman. And he's just decided he didn't want to sign with them. But they didn't get a lawn, though. So now all of the sudden, you're doing all the short-term stuff in your pain, kind of

falafos, $6 million. When he's, you know, we're a placement player. And that's always been

the Russian. If you look at the six million dollar players, they have, if you got rid of them and just use that money to get in a long time. Right. They just don't do it that way. No. It's not there. I don't think they carry there because the ticket prices are highest in the mages. We look, because we're going to Simpsesco next week for the rewatchables. And we were, I was just curious looking at the ballpark prices there. And like a Tuesday night, you know, a Wednesday afternoon,

whatever. And it's like less than half of what Red Sox tickets have cost. The Simpsesco, which is a major city, but they just don't care. They jack those up. You know, people are going to pay for them. There's one other thing I'd before we go. I'd like to bring up the draft. I'm already looking at, but you want to tie that. I might, my two, you can't teams of both in the Sunday, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where this thing is. I've always been in

the women play tomorrow. You have been a women's team, but I don't know when the men's thing. You wear like a BC. You were in for whatever the Massachusetts school was. And now on the sudden, you're like an actual Yukon. I went on the bad wagon. We have no good Massachusetts. Well, that's true. We division one basketball. But now we're getting Bill Murray's coach for BC. Maybe he'll, Bill Murray's son for to coach the BC team. But I can't hurt. No, I know. So you're focused

on the Yukon. So big sports weekend for you. It sounds like big sports weekend. Can we get your review on the Madison with Michelle Feifer? I really enjoyed watching it. I liked all six episodes. I liked the ending. It made sense. I didn't know there was a season two until you told me. I thought the younger daughter was atrocious. The older daughter was also hard to take. Yeah, the grand, the two grand kids were pretty spoiled. They were off. But otherwise, I liked the interaction

between Russell and Byfer. And the scenery was gorgeous. So thumbs up. Yeah, thumbs up on that one. Any new, I wouldn't watch that except you and your wife recommended it. Any CBS shows that have

“really caught your fancy this year? Well, there is that new show CIA. Yeah, what's coming out with CIA?”

It's in New York City. It's okay. And it follows FBI. So, you know, they did, that was a good

They're just like coming up with eight o'clock fire. No, eight o'clock FBI, none of

“CSA. That's the other channel on Wednesday night. Oh, that's Emma. That's Emma. Yeah. They do Chicago Fire,”

PD and the other one. Yeah. Yeah. And yet, you're not watching the pit, which I just started watching. I'm the last person who got something. No, I haven't gotten into that. My wife started watching it. I got sucked in and all of a sudden within an hour. I'm completely abinging it. You've been

finished the season. Now this weekend, we're going to watch the whole second season. The pit's great.

I know it's going to be good. We just have the ER because they're all saying it was going to is like a much grosser kind of more intense version of ER, the NBC show. Right. And it is. There's some stuff for you like, oh my god, I can't believe they showed that. But it's really good. I do need to feel like it. It's an HBO, you told me, right? Yeah. Well, it's on yeah, HBO Max.

“But you should watch it with your with your wife who's a doctor because I'm sure she'll pick”

it apart like you pick a part, Joe Mizzola. I'll never do that. They would never. She does.

She picks apart every medical area. She should have really the ER when we would watch ER in the first year. Yeah. You're right. Oh, they don't do it that way. That's so much ridiculous. It's like when we're watching like a basketball movie or something. But I think you would really like the pit. I'm giving it a try. I have a little time in my hands. Well, you don't you have a little time, but you've adopted a puppy that has kind of done. You're not going to bring that up again,

right? You adopted Ruby. Ruby is 14 months now and I hope some day that she's behaving.

It hasn't happened yet, but oh man. I was saying if she was a kid, she would be in the class with like three teachers watching her at all times making sure that she'd be in foster care. What a spring for you. All right. Well, I'll see you. I'll see you in Boston for some playoff games. Looking forward to it. I like this net new setup here. Thank you. Yeah, we got that because we can use it whenever I'm, whenever I'm back there. All right. Thanks, Dad. Good to talk to you again.

Good luck. Good luck to you. Thanks. All right. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to House and Jason and my dad. Thanks to Gahoundard Wardo as well. I have the Sunday podcast.

“I think we're looking at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday. Going live on Netflix with me in Zaclo. Lots to discuss”

NBA was and new rewatch most coming on Monday. We're doing any of the cruisers. So that's the docket. Enjoy the weekend. Have fun. I will see you on Sunday. Must be 21 plus in present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino. Or 18 plus in present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming, no purchase necessary afternoon required bonuses. She has not a job of profit boost tokens restrictions apply, including any token

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