Brian Windhorst
Appearances
Pardon My Take
Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Those weren't Knicks fans. Those were not Knicks fans. Those were hooligans. Okay. Those were not Knicks fans. Knicks fans were not a block away from the garden at 1230 in the morning. Okay. Knicks fans were off celebrating with themselves.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Well, the truth is that there is other footage that apparently is not going to become unearthed where there was some hands put on. Not by me. Hands were put on me. Nothing serious happened. Like people put their hands on me and I had to shove their hands off. And I basically jaywalked across 35th Street to get away. I mean, I was never like in serious danger, but like, you know.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It was not a pleasant experience at 1235 in the morning. Yeah. Leave Wendy alone. Those were not Knicks fans. Those people were not the same people that I saw like two hours earlier enjoying one of the great moments of the garden in most of their lives. Yeah. So. I don't equate the two things.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Agreed.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I want to say ESPN security has taken beautiful care of me and all of our people. And I am in the hands of ESPN security and I am all good. Thank you for your concern.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So technically, as far as I know, I hope I got it right. The clock is going to stop when the ball technically hits the ground. When the ball goes out of bounds, that's when the ball is out of bounds. It's not out of bounds when it crosses the end line, it's out of bounds when it touches the ground or touches something, somebody touching the ground.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
If a player obviously catches it and is out of bounds or you throw it off a guy's foot or whatever, that's when it's dead technically.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
and it the clock will go dead when the referee blows the whistle it's it's a computerized thing there's a connection the clock stops when the whistle blows so the guy catches it the ball goes dead and with like i don't know six five six tenths left but had the guy not caught it the ball would have hit the ground and the game would have been over So I don't think there's any controversy there.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Right. But I think the official blew the whistle. I can't speak for exactly why, but if the official doesn't blow the whistle until the ball hits the ground, the horn goes off because we're talking about half second. Got it. I mean, 0.5 seconds, they're probably not going to make a shot. I put it this way.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
If you're a Wolves fan and you're upset that you didn't get the extra three-tenths of a second because a fan caught the ball when it shouldn't have been caught, it should have been deemed to have hit the ground, I don't know what to say. We can't really have an intellectual conversation. They were fortunate that they were given three-tenths. I think that was a good compromise by the officials.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They scored. You know, this wasn't a game where the Thunder won it with their defense. They won it with their offense. I mean, so the fourth quarter box score of this game is pretty impressive. First off, the Wolves scored 41 points in the fourth quarter of this game, shot 50% or over 50%. I don't have it right in front of me right now. Actually, I can get it right now. Hold on.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
The Wolves in the fourth quarter went 14 of 28. That's 50% where I come from. They made six out of 13 threes. They out-rebounded the Thunder. They committed fewer turnovers or the same turnovers than the Thunder, but gave up fewer points off turnovers.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Um, like I know that there's going to be a, and probably even on my network, there's probably going to be a cycle here where Ann Edwards gets blamed because he didn't score 40 himself. The wolves scored 41 points in the fourth quarter. And because, you know, Dante DiVincenzo and, uh, Nikhil Alexander Walker had awesome performances, um,
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
the loss of the game or the window, I prefer to say the way the reason the Thunder won the game was because Shea had 40 and Jalen Williams had like 34 and Chet had over 20 and Chet Holmgren makes one of the great plays of his young career time place, you know, on the block shot late in the fourth quarter where he is totally beaten on the spin move by, I think it was Alexander Walker.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
He's no, it was Jaden McDaniels. He's totally beaten on that play. It's 99% of the way into the basket and he recovers because he's seven foot one and makes a totally clean block. to basically, you know, pivot off of the, you know, give them leverage. I mean, this was a game that the Thunder took and won very impressively.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It was not a game, in my opinion, that the Wolves lost, but I know that that's not necessarily going to be the prevailing opinion because the Thunder, for whatever reason... kind of get a little bit disrespected. And I would just encourage everyone who feels that way to reevaluate after the Denver series. And after this game and this performance in this series, I would reevaluate that.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Exactly. And like, so to me, and I will see how this plays out. I don't know how the father, you know, I'm not under, I've been around too long to give anybody anything. We'll see how this series plays out. And then there's a whole nother series, but it is very possible. that the NBA title will come down to the fourth quarter of game five that they played against Denver.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Now, to refresh your memory, I believe the Nuggets were up nine points. They are in Oklahoma City, but still, they're up nine points. They have Jokic. They have Jamal Murray. They have Aaron Gordon. This is before he, you know, gets hurt. And they come back and win that game.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And in that game, there was, you know, Shea was really good, but Jalen Williams hit a three from the corner, huge clutch shot that basically gave them the difference making play. So they win that game. Then they win a game seven.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
which again, I understand Gordon was hurt, et cetera, but still this team hadn't done this before when a game seven, then they come in here on a night where, you know, I thought Minnesota put forth a really good effort. Maybe it wasn't an, an a, but it was a, a minus, you know, pretty damn good performance. And they win in this game extremely impressively as a team and,
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I mean, they are taking the steps that you want to see. And as you said, Kat, Shay is like 26 now. Jalen Williams is his third season. Chet, this is technically his third season, but he's only played two seasons because he missed his whole rookie year. I mean, what are you supposed to take from that?
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
What you're supposed to take is that the supporting cast around them may change because of the second apron rules and they'll draft other guys or whatever. They may not be able to afford to keep all these role players. But I could see these three guys, us talking about these three guys in playoff games like this for the rest of the decade.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, and they've got so many good draft assets. They still have most of the stuff that they traded Paul George for.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, this is the worst Thunder team we'll ever see to win a title. Do you realize that the Thunder have had an unlucky month? Because... I was fascinated by this. I talked to Sam Presti who was in the room and he, he, he like made it sound like it was no big deal, but I, I kind of don't believe him. So I want to take you into the lottery room. Okay. So the, there's four numbers drawn. Okay.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
One, two, three, four in that order. All right. So the 76ers have the fifth best odds. Okay. And if their pick is, goes to seven or higher, the Thunder get it. All right? So that means if two teams move past the Sixers, they lose their pick and the Thunder get it. All right. First number up, Dallas Mavericks. Hot damn. Cooper Flagg's going to be a Maverick.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
That's one team from behind Philly moves in front. Now all of a sudden, Philly's sitting there one minute into the draft lottery with the sixth pick. Okay? Next drawing, San Antonio Spurs. Also behind the Sixers. Boop! The Sixers have the seventh pick. That means that the Oklahoma City Thunder, who, by the way, also have the 15th pick in this draft.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Now, you know, you're not necessarily going to get an all-star with the 15th pick, but, you know, you get some good players with the 15th pick. Okay? For, I don't know how long it takes them to reload the lottery balls and then redo it, but let's say it's 90 seconds to two minutes, three minutes. The Thunder had the seventh pick in this draft.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And then, and only then, Philly's number comes up third. So they get the three. That was the only chance they had. If they had stayed, if they had hadn't gotten the third or the fourth, they were losing their pick. But the Thunder actually had it. Now, the world didn't see it that way because it happened before we were watching.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But Sam Presti is sitting in that room going, oh, my God, I just got the seventh pick. I got the best team with the best record in the league, and I'm about to wake up with the seventh and 15th picks in this draft. So I just want to point that out while I agree with what you guys are saying, that this team's got a lot more stuff that they can do to improve this roster going forward as well.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yes. Not purchased, by the way. Reserved. God, did I get a huge amount of reaction from that. It's an ode to the power of your podcast, more than anything. Let me just make something real clear. when you make a reservation, you don't pay, you don't pay upfront. You can make hotel, you know, knock on wood. They don't change this rule. You just make the reservation.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
You got to give them a credit card. They don't take any money. I mean, I realize that's the case like in Vegas, but you know, at Oklahoma city and in Indianapolis, they're not, you know, by the way, it was an issue for, uh, if I had been covering the Eastern conference finals, you would have had to prepay for, you know, Indy 500 weekend. That would have been one, but yeah,
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
You don't have to prepay. I saw people saying, would you spend like $30,000? No, I spend $0. ESPN spends $0. Yes, I have three different hotels in New York. I don't know which one I want to stay. Maybe I want to stay in Midtown. Maybe I want to stay in Downtown. Maybe I want to stay... By the park. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what the weather's like.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah. I've got a selection. You know what was sad, though? Like, not sad, but it was just I had nine different hotel reservations in Boston. And Cleveland. And Cleveland. Yeah. I had even more in Boston. And I had to cancel them all. It was like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I had like nine I had to cancel because I thought the Celtics were going to make it. Clearly the hotel reservation game.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And by the way, I had none. When I did that pod with you guys, I had none in Indianapolis.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Well, all I can tell you is he didn't get any treatment after the game either of the last two nights. And when I came out to do Scott Van Pelt, he was – uh, dressed and talking with people outside the locker room. Um, I, I had gone to the thunder press conferences to hear Shay and I missed him. He was not getting any postgame longterm treatment, you know, long treatment on anything.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So I'll, I'm sure everybody's got bumps and bruises at this point, but, uh, Okay. Nothing that would be clear, like he was soaking a knee or an ankle or anything like that.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Well, I don't think they can keep this team together. The big piece is they can. So Julius Randle is a free agent. Alexander Walker, Nikhil Alexander Walker is a free agent. And Nas Reed is a free agent. He has an opt-out, which I'm sure he's going to take. And Ant's contract is very large. Rudy Gobert's contract is way up there. they have new owners coming on Mark Laurie and Alex Rodriguez.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They have gotten a whole bunch of minority owners that can, you know, they've they've demonstrated the NBA that they've got a whole bunch of money to operate the team. But I would be surprised if they were able to resign all three guys, I suppose they could trade another player off to, to, to keep it. But maybe they can. I mean, I don't know.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But I would be kind of surprised if they could afford all three. What they did last year when they traded Carl Towns. They saved money. And then they had Rudy Gobert opt out of his contract and sign a new deal. And the headline was Rudy Gobert gets $100 million. And I know that there were some people that felt a certain way about that.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They were like, wait a minute, you traded Carl Towns to save money? Then you gave Rudy Gobert $100 million? What are you doing? But Gobert actually took a pay cut. He opted out of the rest of his contract, took his – average salary down and then added years to the end. And the reason that they did both of those deals was so that they could afford to keep Julius Randle and, and Nas Reed.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They may not be able to afford to keep Alexander Walker. So you're still going to have a good team. And, and they also, they traded for Rob Dillingham, uh, last year, um, you know, jumped up in the lottery to do that trade. And then you've seen Terrence Shannon jr. Um, there's been great the last two games. Those are their first round picks this year.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So part of what they, what they did, cause they are a smart organization. Um, they drafted those two young guys to develop up to, to, to develop around, um, uh, Anthony Edwards, but there is possible that, that all of this core is not going to be back, uh, next year.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It's a great question. Good question. Because you're asking because of the fouls, right? That's what you're asking.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, I don't like... I don't love watching free throws. Um, but here's the thing about him. And this, this happened tonight with the, with the, uh, when he threw the ball in between, uh, I don't remember whose legs it was. A lot of times you see him go down, not every time, just to be clear, not every time.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
A lot of times you see him go down and you're like, wow, that was, uh, he might've exaggerated that context. And then you look at the replay and and he did get hit. Um, and there's also a lot of times where he gets hit and it doesn't get called because he's constantly driving. If he didn't lead the league in drives, he was top two, but I think he led the league in drives.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
He definitely led the league in free throws, average three free throws per game. And so it kind of like that, that ball between the legs tonight, like it looked for sure. Like it was a travel. People are screaming in the arena. That was a travel, um, And then you look at the replay and it wasn't. It was just a great play.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So I get that it is not quote unquote always the most entertaining product to watch a guy hunt mid-range shots and go to the floor. His body type, despite him being very strong, his body type when he goes down, it doesn't always look like he got hammered. Um, but he's actually kind of brilliant at it.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And, um, I was talking to a, to a scout this week and he, what he was saying is he's like, look, I'm watching this Pacers Knicks series and I'm seeing hand-to-hand combat on Jalen Brunson hand-to-hand combat. uh, on the interior there. And I'm, then I watched the Western finals and I see Shay getting regular season fouls.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
In other words, what you would see, you know, a hand check or something that you would see in February, you're all of a sudden seeing in may. And you're like, I don't know about that. And I guess I would understand that, that, you know, you're used to some physicality and it doesn't look like there's a lot of physicality that happens when he gets fouled.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But I got to tell you, when you were, when you actually review the plays and you review everything, He is getting fouled. And no, I don't love it, but I also respect it because I respect the mastery that he's got.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
This, I think you're in the majority. By the way... I thought one of the most interesting parts of this series, I don't know if you guys heard because we haven't talked about it on ESPN, but Shea and Nikhil are cousins. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. There might even be a photo that exists of them as like one-year-olds. That's wild. But maybe, I don't know, maybe that hasn't been found yet.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I haven't seen it. That's wild. More than 85 times. But in game one, I think, there was a play where Shea obviously took a dive. He literally threw himself on the ground. And I think the foul was on Nikhil. And he immediately cursed and looked over at the bench and said, review that bleep. And they did. And it was called out. So even his beloved cousin...
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
you know, who is like his second brother or whatever, you know, their bond runs deeper than even their blood. Even he at times thinks it's bull. So, you know, take that.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They have that rule.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
You can call a technical foul on a player for flopping. Now it never gets called, but you can call and like, and when it does get called, it's always on the defensive player. But I believe, and again, I don't have the rule book in front of me. And frankly, I don't know the rule because it's so rarely enforced that you'd never see it.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But if a flop is a flop, I do believe the officials have in their latitude. It's kind of like the tush push when they just declared that you could give you a touchdown. I didn't know that rule. I'm pretty sure that they could do it. But I mean, just saying that they could do it doesn't mean that's ever going to happen.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Well, but again, here's the problem. Like sometimes it looks like he flopped and then you watch the replay and he kind of did get fouled. It wasn't like the greatest, most impressive foul in the history of, you know, Rick Mahorn, but that's the problem with it is that, you know, obviously there are times that happens, but I mean, look, He just won the MVP.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So like it's hard to tell him that his behavior is not being richly rewarded. Right. So he's what he's doing and is damn impressive. And it's also being verified. Yeah. So that's that's reality.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
First off, this series could be anything. It could be 3-0 Knicks. It could be 3-0 Pacers. It could be 2-1 Knicks. It's 2-1 Pacers, obviously. But either of these teams could have – you could roll these things through and you could have had a different generator come up with a different result. And because of that, I don't know what's going to happen in this series. I just don't know.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So now Tibbs, this is fascinating. Okay, so he played 15 different lineups in Game 3. I'm sure it's happened. I can never remember a team this deep into the playoffs conference finals playing 15 different laps. Maybe if there's like garbage time where it's, it's not a game, but certainly in a, what is effectively an elimination game. Secondly, seven, uh,
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
of the lineups had never played together before. Now, we have not looked that up. I will stand on that being a first in history, that seven different lineups played in down 0-2 in a conference finals game.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And by the way, I understand why there was a lot of frustration that Cat didn't play down the stretch of game two. But he was making a tactical decision that I understood. I'm not saying I agree with him, but I understood the tactical decision. The decision is whenever I put Cat and Brunson out there, we have difficulty stopping the other team. We can't get stops.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And when Mitchell Robinson is out there, we do, you know, Joe Missoula in the last round, when he was fouling Mitchell Robinson to get him off the court, the same thing was kind of plaguing them. They're everybody in their starting lineup and several of the games in that series was underwater. They were under, they were all minus and plus minus.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And Missoula was like, the reason I want them off the floor is because he's the only guy who positively affects the score when he's out there.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And so Missoula was basically talking about what Tibbs and this Pacers already see. And Carlisle pretty much said it after game three, he comes out and he goes, well, They played better defensive players. Yep. And now some of that reason he played 15 lineups was because Brunson was in foul trouble and McBride was in foul trouble and cat was in foul trouble.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And so now he's now the circus wheel is starting and he's just trying to catch up. He didn't plan it that way. But what I want to know is what would have happened if Brunson played his normal minutes in the fourth quarter? Yeah. Maybe then they win. Like, I'm not trying to tell you that I know that, But there was a reason why Tibbs kept him on the bench till there was a minute 30 left.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And it wasn't because he was afraid he was going to foul out with 240 left. He kept him in because under that current lineup, having cat be the featured offensive player with only one defensive sort of hole at the other end was working.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Now, part of the reason I think it was working is that the Pacers were guarding the Knicks, the way they guard the Knicks as if they had their normal lineup out there, they were guarding, uh, sham it. And, um, who else did they play? Uh, They were guarding them like it was Bridges and Ananobi.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And if that happened again, they would know that they're going to put two people on Cat with Brunson's on the bench. And if Landry Schammett can hit an open three, God bless you. But they were leaving Miles Turner out there on an island and Cat was toasting him. Which is, by the way, that's the way Cat operates. He's an all-NBA player.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
he's an all-NBA player because he destroys you on the offensive end. But against the Pacers in a playoff setting, having Brunson and Cat out there together is sometimes difficult.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And so what I think is probably going to happen in game four, in addition to Robinson continuing to start because he gives them a better opportunity to balance out their roster a little bit more with how they can defend – I think you're going to see the stagger. What I mean by that is the time which Cat is on the court without Brunson and Brunson was without Cat expand a little bit.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They're going to squeeze it out. Even if it's literally just by a minute a quarter. Again, I'm not arguing to play Cat more than Brunson. I just think If you only have one, because by the way, at the end of the game, when they both were out there, there was, I think, one defensive possession where Tibbs had to have maybe two. The Pacers immediately put them both in the pick and roll.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And they didn't get a basket out of it because the Knicks were able to get it done. But even down the stretch, Tibbs did a good job and kept his timeouts. He was pulling Brunson and Cat out of the game because he didn't want either of them out there. Um, and, uh, so look, it's a tactical thing.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And if Brunson has a 45 point game, which he is absolutely capable of doing and his offensive prowess outweighs whatever happens defensively, which has happened dozens of times in his next career and will happen dozens of more times, uh, Cool. I'm not arguing that they are quote unquote better without them or whatever.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But I do think they give themselves a better chance to win if in the 48 minute pie, they have some of they have more of it where only one of them is on the court, especially if you can get. Miles McBride did a couple of big shots or you can hit bridges or, or, you know, whether it's Landry Shaman or whoever. And I think that's what they're going to probably have to try to do in game four.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I wish I could give the person the credit that I saw this from, but, you know, because of the, the, the, the tracking systems that now have, they can track where everything moves on the court.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I saw that the ball that Brunson or that, that Halliburton made in game two, where the ball bounced and went straight up in the air and came back down was the highest bounce off of the rim that has happened in the playoffs this year.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It literally had a chart of every ball that came off the rim and Halliburton's was the highest bounce. So, yes, I think they were running a little bit hot.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
That's what that was. That's crazy.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, I wish I could. I wish I could. I saw it on on X and I wish I could give the person credit. And I should have before I said it, known that. But that was the key. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that there is something to that. Another thing I'm going to say is that a big factor is Aaron Neesmith's ankle.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So what do you hear about that?
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah. Well, it's not good when they announce he's a game-time decision the day before. Right. You've got to figure he's going to probably play because it's a playoff game. If you're a game-time decision, you're probably going to play. The question is, how effective can you be? I spent time today talking to the ex-players who I work with at ESPN, Adonis Haslam and Iman Shumpert.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
and, um, uh, and perk talking to him about like, you know, when you roll your ankle, cause sometimes you see that you see a guy roll his ankle and then he'll finish the game. And then the next, next day it's like, it's blown up. And that's the kind of ankle injury where you may be missing game or two in the regular season.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Um, you know, talking about the stuff that you can do to try to keep the swelling down, you can play, but look, he's going to be affected and he's super duper important and he plays a hundred miles an hour. So that to me, more than any X's and O's thing or whatever lineup you want to play or who's ever got a hot shot, that potentially is a huge X factor.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And another reason why if you're a Knicks fan, you think that you can do it. First off, the Knicks win on the road. They win close games on the road. It's an ode to their mental toughness. Their number one attribute, in my opinion, is their mental toughness. And that all comes from Brunson. And Tibbs to a certain extent.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Um, you know, and, and some of their guys are, you know, Ananobis heart rate never increases. And, and, you know, bridges is shown to be can be, can make big plays, but it's, it's mostly comes from Brunson. The guy is an absolute stone cold killer. And so when you are, when you've won six road games, um, You don't care if you're down 2-1. You believe you can do it.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
So the Knicks will come in with belief, and they could come in with one of the most important players who guards Brunson being diminished. So I have no idea what's going to happen in that game, but if I'm the Knicks, I believe in myself.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I think basically the league was like, you have to do something. And, you know, it was like maybe they checked in a couple of times. We're like, hey, is something have we done something? And, you know, now it's like a nice little like secret weapon. Now there will be something to fire the fans up and fire Tyrese up. By the way, so here's the problem.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It's very difficult for me to talk about this because I have a good relationship with the Halliburton family, which a lot of people do. It's not like I'm trying to sound a lot of people. If you're around the Pacers or you've been around Team USA, you know, John and Brenda Halliburton. OK, you just know them. And by the way, like one of the more remarkable things that's happened in the last week is
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
After Tyrese hits the game winner or won the forces overtime and does the choke sign or whatever. I guess it was game one. A minute ago, I said it was game two. He does the choke sign. His mom, Brenda, goes to the Today Show the next day and stands in the rain outside the Today Show with a Pacers sign. I love that. Did you guys know that?
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Well, yes, and I'm not sure that was very helpful, especially he brought the towel. But I adore John Halliburton, you know, and I've spent a lot of time with him, like, with Team USA across the planet. So, like... I am biased when I say I want him to be in the building, but he obviously can't go out in the court and he don't bring the towel.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
That's what I would tell John, John, don't bring the towel. Okay. Just don't antagonize. You want to get yourself down on the court and you, you know, if Tyrese is in a situation where he's playing in a possible clinching road game, you want to be able to go whether it's in the conference finals or it's in the finals. But yeah, Brenda Halliburton, who again is just wonderful.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
She went with her friend, They go to the Today Show. And I Craig Melvin, I think is out there and Carson Daly and Craig Melvin. And this woman goes, Yeah, this is they're like holding Pacers. I mean, she's just a woman from from Wisconsin. Mm hmm. Go into the big city. Why would what do you do in the big city for your Wisconsin? You go to the Today Show. It was the next morning, like at 11 p.m.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Tyrese is putting the choke up on the Knicks. And at like 815, she's outside the Today Show. She got up early, got her Pacers flag out and was on TV. And like, you can tell that they're like, do we really believe this is Tyrese's mother? That's amazing. And there she is. Like, I mean. wholesome. Yeah. Right. I realized that Tyrese and the way he plays is, is somewhat hateable.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
And if you're a Knicks fan, you hate him. I get it. But I mean, I have a hard time not wanting good things for the Halliburton family. I guess if that makes me biased, so be it. But, uh, so, um, yeah, I'm glad John's good. By the way, I think the John Halliburton story is,
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
you guys would know this, like on the metrics, people care about this because on all the ESPN shows I was on today, we pushed out other pieces of Nick's Pacers coverage to get John Halliburton coverage in there. It's a hilarious story.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I didn't see this. This is new to me.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Great question. I don't exactly know the answer. The Hawkeye, I believe – don't hold me to this. I believe this is its second year – I mean, we're going to go down the rabbit hole here. Your listeners are probably going to be like, I don't care about this.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
There used to be this other different tracking technology that they use, and then that contract ended, and then this new company came in with this new technology called Hawkeye, and they put these – These cameras up in the ceiling and they're used for like mostly internal stuff, you know, for internal tracking and stuff like that.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
This year, late in the season, was the first time I saw them using it in replays. However, for all I know, and I don't know, they were using in Secaucus all year. Right. But this is a newer tracking system called Hawkeye that does exist. No, they didn't just put it in to get LeBron. It's been used on other players in the postseason. So, but...
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I can understand why LeBron thinks something went against him. Nothing's ever gone his way.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, and it got that right. As far as I can tell, the one frame, it got it right. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was a bit people were a bit in the league. People were like, we don't want to switch off our old technology. They were kind of against the Hawkeye. But now I think the Hawkeye has come into its own. This is why you're the best.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I don't know how good of a I don't know how good of a how good of a story it was. But yes, it's a new thing. There were meetings at ESPN with our stats people with the Hawkeye operation to detail the incoming Hawkeye. And I guess next time they need to invite LeBron, he should get on the Zoom with the Hawkeye folks. CC him on that email.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
I don't think so. I do not think that is in the plan. I think the real question is, will LeBron opt out? because right now he's got a max contract and a no trade clause. And if he opts out, the Lakers could ask for concessions. Now, their history is that they take care of star players, and it's a smart way to go. It's a good investment in the future.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It was something that Jerry Buss started and Jeannie Buss has continued. And so do I believe that they wouldn't give LeBron what he wanted? I don't necessarily believe that. However, when you opt out of your contract, you know, it's time for negotiation. Now he was a second team, all NBA player this year. They've never really negotiated with him to give him what he wanted.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But if he thinks that the Lakers may want to try to offer him less or not give him the no trade clause, he could, in theory, just opt into his contract. And so, and he could just say, I'm opting into my contract because I'm taking it year to year and not indicate that there was any issue with the Lakers. But I do not think it's in the cards that he's taking less money.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
It's not that necessarily he wants every dime, although he does want every dime. I don't think he believes that free agency has got anybody in it where if he takes less money that the Lakers could go use their mid-level and have a transformational player.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
They may disagree with that, and they may come to him with a plan where they show him that if you take $12 million less, we can sign this guy, and maybe he'll change his mind. But as far as I know from my conversations – The intention is for him to continue to make all of the max, which he has earned.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Yeah, you can be nice to me. Just, you know, you can say something if you don't like it. Fine. But just, you know, I don't like necessarily having stuff thrown at me or having people put their hands on me in that way.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
But, hey, I just want to say to Knicks fans, that was a wonderful, wonderful night for the Knicks fans. Being inside the garden for that game was amazing. There was pure euphoria there. And, um, let that be what the memory is of that. Not, you know, these punk kids who were, you know, frankly stoned and, uh, you know, had nothing better to do at 1230 in the morning. They're high on the weed. Yes.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Stay off the weed as Stephen A tells us. Some people may, there, there may have been some weed smoke blown in my face as well.
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Brian Windhorst, All American Rejects Lead Singer Tyson Ritter, Knicks Save Their Season, Thunder 1 Game Away From Finals, Recapping The Sports Weekend + Jordon Of The Week
Did you get secondhand? Look, I can't move very fast, but I was moving as fast as I could move. Let's put it that way.
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NFL Week 12, Fastest 2 Minutes, The Commanders Lose A Stunner To The Cowboys, Eagles Roll And Who's Back Of The Week
yeah uh okay let's take another break and we'll do hey this is ria from chicks in the office in case you haven't heard it's officially an abercrombie summer the anf vacation shop has everything on your packing mood board i was excited to see their new one piece the anf marina strapless classic and deserves a margarita by the pool
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NFL Week 12, Fastest 2 Minutes, The Commanders Lose A Stunner To The Cowboys, Eagles Roll And Who's Back Of The Week
and you know every vacation needs that one photo shoot worthy dress abercrombie has tons of boho and floral options to choose from have an abercrombie summer shop their newest arrivals in store online and in the app
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NFL Week 12, Fastest 2 Minutes, The Commanders Lose A Stunner To The Cowboys, Eagles Roll And Who's Back Of The Week
Oh, what?
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NFL Week 13, Fastest 2 Minutes, Bears Fire Eberflus, Eagles Are For Real And Josh Allen vs Saquon For MVP
Hey, this is Ria from Chicks in the Office. In case you haven't heard, it's officially an Abercrombie summer. The A&F Vacation Shop has everything on your packing mood board. I was excited to see their new one-piece, the A&F Marina, strapless, classic, and deserves a margarita by the pool. And you know every vacation needs that one photo shoot-worthy dress.
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NFL Week 13, Fastest 2 Minutes, Bears Fire Eberflus, Eagles Are For Real And Josh Allen vs Saquon For MVP
Abercrombie has tons of boho and floral options to choose from. Have an Abercrombie summer. Shop their newest arrivals in-store, online, and in the app.
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NFL Week 13, Fastest 2 Minutes, Bears Fire Eberflus, Eagles Are For Real And Josh Allen vs Saquon For MVP
Thank you.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
It's on a special edition where you have to crack open the back cover, and there's like a little slip of paper back there. And if you're really lucky, you can find it. But, you know, it's rare. It's like a Pokemon.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Oh, my God. Beautiful.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah. Did not see that one coming. You know, like LeBron could probably be angry at me for like 15 or 20 things and like legitimately be like, That take was wrong. What you did here was BS. I remember the first time he got really mad at me was when he was a rookie with the Cavs. The newspaper that I was working for at the time, the Akron Beacon Journal, he bought a house in Akron.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And we in the newspaper published his address and a little map of how to get to his house. And he was like, I remember he pulled me aside and he was like, this is some super fucking bullshit. And I had to agree with him. Yeah. Even though I had nothing to do with it. Like sometimes I was the conduit for that. But listen, he could have been mad at me about a bunch of things.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
What he actually was, got mad at me about, I didn't think was right, but you know, he doesn't know me anything. If he wants to be mad at me, fine. Over the course of 25 years, he's going to get mad at me. I'm going to annoy him. Whatever. We'll get through it. It's fine.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I've got nothing physically on him except for that. He's got me on everything else, so I guess I'll take it.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Do you guys probably don't remember this, but there was like a moment, I think it was in the off season. Maybe somebody can find it. I don't know. Maybe he deleted the tweet, but there was like this, there was like this moment, like one day where he just like announced I'm giving up on the hair. Yeah. It stuck with me. We did great. Um, thank you very much to me.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
He had some sort of witty and I was kind of like a quasi announcement. Yeah. And then we saw him next season. It was very clear he had not given up. Yeah. He had just begun to fight. So I don't know what that was all about. Maybe we'll wait for his book where he can explain what that was about. Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Don't be ridiculous. I'm going on Sunday for Easter.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Am I excited for any series in the East? Let me think about that. It's a little tougher in the East. I got assigned to go do the Cleveland series. And, boy, am I excited. Listen, the Cavs are good. I mean, that's fun. Yeah, I know. I know. I typically try to stay home in the first round. Stay home. It's not like, you know, come to L.A. or whatever because –
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
The first round, first off, I don't know if you guys heard the NFL drafts is next week. Like on Monday, like ESPN will forget my name for like six days. And then they'll crawl out from the sixth or seventh round. And, you know, Greenberg will hang them up and they'll be like, wait a minute. Is there an NBA still playing? Yeah. But, you know, the first round. it's really spread out.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
There's like a lot of days off. I'm not really, it's, it's, it's not the most exciting, you know, everybody gets excited for the start of the playoffs and then the first round kind of drags. Yeah. But I am very excited about the West series, but specifically Clippers nuggets. Yeah. The Clippers finished the season 18 and three. And I went to a couple of their games and Kawhi looks awesome. Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I remember the 2019, the 2019 finals when he was playing for the Raptors, that one year play for the Raptors. I watched Kawhi go through some pregame shooting routines where he was as impressive. The Steph routines are legendary because he does all these dribbling tricks and sometimes he hits like 27 threes in a row and he throws up half court shots and he throws up shots from the tunnel.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Well, as you can imagine, the Kawhi ones are boring, but all Kawhi does is look like a machine. And I remember watching him make like, I don't know, like 96 out of 100, like 17-footers. He would need two assistant coaches. This is pregame. This is not on a practice day. This is like two hours before game time. He would go through so many shots that the assistant coaches would have to tap out.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Because like they were kind of guarding him or whatever.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And like, he never missed, he never missed. And like, that's what Kawhi looks like right now. Yeah. And so I'm excited about what he can do. And then obviously Jokic is like a incredible force. So that series to me is, is really interesting, and I'm going to try to see if I can watch all those games.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
That's pretty much exactly the sentiment.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I don't think so. To be honest with you, I don't have 100%. There's some stories out there about what happened with Memphis, but I don't feel comfortable enough. to say them on a worldwide famous podcast.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
But I will say that part of the reason I think they did it was because the general manager, Zach Kleiman, like really, really likes this guy, Tuomas Izalo, who's the Finnish guy who they, who they hired as an assistant. And I, like, it was like, it's kind of a crazy story. Like he said, He did in Europe kind of what's the football coach from Indiana? Signetti?
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Signetti. Signetti kind of stole it from him. So he had his team in Germany, in Bonn, Germany. And they were like really good. I don't, don't ask me what division they were in, but they won some championship.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And then this team in Paris, Paris basket, who's kind of like a big team, but they're kind of like an underdog, even though they're in a big city, they don't have a ton of money and they've, they've just done. Okay. So they hired him and he brought six players from that German team to his Paris team. Cause in Europe, it's, It's kind of like college right now.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
It's like most guys have one-year contracts. Yeah, there's some players who get multi-year deals, but most guys have one-year contracts. So he's like, I'm bringing my whole team with me. We're going into the transfer portal and we're bringing this team to Paris. And like he brought in those six guys and they won a championship there. He got noticed by the Grizzlies.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
They were obsessed with hiring him. Um, the, the wizards wanted to hire him and there was like a bidding war. Plus he was under contract for Paris basket and they had to pay, buy out his contract. It is more, I talk about the more it feels like college basketball and they get them to come over to be this lead assistant. And I think.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
they just thought that they just think this guy's a genius and maybe he will be proven to that. Maybe he won't. But like, I think part of what was going on there is they were like, look, I think it was kind of the same thing. I think they were worried that somebody else thought he was a genius too. And if they got to the end of the season, somebody else is going to hire him.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And so they were like, let's hire him now. Even though the guy they had in there had had a pretty good record, Taylor Jenkins. So, but I got to agree with you. I got to agree with you. I don't, PFT, I've never seen two guys get fired that late, especially with teams that had winning records that were going to the playoffs.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
So this is how I vote. This is how I vote with my mouse. I decide that a team has a chance to win the title when I book hotel reservations in that city. Because here's the thing. As you know, most hotel reservations you can cancel. So there's no penalty for making a hotel reservation. And number one, I want to get into a certain hotel. And what happens in the playoffs is you never know when –
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
All of a sudden, 5,000 people want to come into town for a game. All of a sudden, sometimes hotels get sold out. Sometimes they quadruple their prices, but they don't pay attention. They don't seem to know that their basketball teams are good. The finals schedule is out in the fall. I booked a certain hotel that I want in Boston. I booked it in October.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Wendy's list. Yeah. And I booked the, the, the, for the, for the Boston hotel for the whole final. So whether they're the home or the, you know, wherever they're at. Cause I was like, they're going to, they're going to probably be there. I booked it out. Okay. Um, like probably January, February, December, January, Oklahoma city.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
booked booked that out booked that sucker did they call you were they like i think you made a mistake sir you booked a hotel in oklahoma city sir you booked a hotel in oklahoma city for two and a half weeks are you uh are you sure you meant to do this we think that you may have made an error so i had i had boston and i had oklahoma city then the calves you know they started 15 and oh but okay some teams start hot the cows went on this winning streak in january
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And they went through this like stretch. And every time they played a team, the other team would come into the post game and be like, holy shit. Like they're like Giannis did it. Michael Malone did it. JJ Redick was like, do you know what you got to do to like beat these guys? Like, like there was like this stretch of like, they went on like this one of their winning streaks.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And like, it was like uncanny every game, a team, a coach would come in or a player would come in and be like, this team is good. I was like, all right. Cleveland on the list booked, you know, but, but by then I could figure out like if the, if the, if the Cavs won the East, they were probably going to have a really good record. So I think I only booked home games, but you know what?
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
No, I probably did book it all out. So I booked out Cleveland. So how many more have I booked? That's that's now we're at the nitty gritty. How many more have I booked? All right. I have Los Angeles booked. But did I book for Inglewood? Where the Clippers play? Or did I book for downtown? That's the question. Wouldn't you like to know? Fingers up. Where did Wendy book in LA? Did you book both?
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Did you book in the middle of both? I booked downtown because our studio's here. I mean, that's a top audience. I just wanted to mess around. So I booked LA because...
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
There's a where there's a world where I could see the Clippers or the Lakers doing it I would I favor the Clippers to do it more than the Lakers but the Lakers draw of all the draws you could have the Lakers draw is probably kind of favorable because not that I'm
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
looking down on the wolves in fact the wolves are staying at the same hotel i'm at now i just saw them all on my way over here and so i'm not saying anything bad about them because if you know i'm sure they're listeners and i'm gonna see them you know at the starbucks and there may be words i'm not looking for that i'm not looking for that heat yeah so um uh no i booked in downtown la
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And, um, and I booked Denver, um, before Michael Malone got fired. I should have, should have reevaluated that. Um, because I just have so much respect, um, so much respect for, for Jokic. So that's my list. Is it, is it a, is it an exhaustive list? I didn't, I did not book out San Francisco. Um, I'm not there yet. Cause they're just so small, the warriors. Um, and, uh, You know, that's my list.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
It's probably actually bigger. Usually it's only about it's more than normal. Yeah, because I know that L.A. probably would book up like crazy. So L.A. is probably borderline. I probably really didn't need to do that. I don't feel that strongly about that.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
No, obviously I cancel. Um, I cancel, but, um, yeah, it's like, it's like, cause you look at my like account and there's like 39 reservations and you're like, what the heck is going on here? And as like, we get closer and closer, I start canceling. It's like, it's like refreshing. All right.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I'm, I'm, I'm getting, cause you're also getting towards the end of the season, you know, you're, you're, you're finalizing it down, but yeah, that's like my, you know, my, I couldn't give you a higher compliment than booking a hotel three months out in your city.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
So I have all these rules about things that I want. First off, I want to take flights that I don't think people are going to be on. Because, I mean, look, if it's Oklahoma City and Boston, you're not going to have 75 options, right? So maybe that.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
But I like to take a flight that I don't think other people are going to be on because I don't want to sit there and talk about the series for three hours or in the gate area or whatever. I'd rather... break from it when I'm not doing it.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And I try, you can't always do this because sometimes you're in a city, we don't have a choice. I try to stay in a hotel that I don't think people are going to stay in. Yeah. Okay. I don't, when I'm not at the arena or whatever, I don't want, and I also have this rule during the finals and I stole it from Greg Popovich rule of five. Uh, no dinner is more than five people. Ooh.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Um, I will maybe sometimes allow a sixth, uh, If it's somebody's spouse, because the last thing, cause you know, sometimes the spouses come to the playoffs and I don't want like somebody to be like making a choice between like a work dinner and like going with their wife or husband or boyfriend or girlfriend. So I will sometimes bend, but generally it's five. Cause this is what happens.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Cause you know, there's a whole bunch of people traveling. There's all these different groups of people. A lot of people who don't travel during the year and they'll be like, oh, we're going so-and-so. Hey, can we bring along so-and-so? Can we bring along so-and-so? The next thing you got 12 people, you can't get in. The tables are all messed up.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
You know, the bill comes and somebody's had six bottles of wine and now I'm paying, you know, $745. I can't talk to those seven people down there. I want everybody at the table to hear the other people rule of five. And if I go to a dinner and I say, how many people are there? And they go, oh, there's four of us. You be the fifth. I go, okay.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And then if they call back later and they go, hey, we're adding so-and-so and so-and-so, I don't care who it is. I'm like, okay, you guys have fun. I'll go someplace else. I love it.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
It's happened and you go on my list. You don't want to be on that list. You're a big list guy. These two individuals don't know, but these two individuals invited me to a dinner at the last finals. It was in Cleveland in 2018. I got there. There were people on the roster that I hadn't known about. The table was bigger. Done. We haven't gone since. Maybe they know. Maybe they figured it out.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Maybe they haven't. Done. Don't do that. I have limited time. I can't be bothered with this. And here's the other thing. If it's a big party, I am not afraid to do the Irish goodbye. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I am not afraid. Like, I will specifically not order. Like, I have done this where I've sat down and all of a sudden it's 12 people, you know? Water. We have to drink water. All right.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I'm going to go to the bathroom. Goodbye. I love it. I didn't sign up for 12 people. I didn't order an appetizer I didn't pay. Yeah. These are my rules. Yeah. These are my rules. Guys, I've been covering Lake for 23 years. Yeah. Do you know how many road trips I've gone on? Do you know how many dinners I've gone on on the road? I don't need it in my life.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Typically. Yeah. You know, they're, they're, I don't want to disrespect them. Like they could like, look, man, if they like beat the, they beat the warriors like four, one or something, we might sign on and see what, uh, see what reservations are available in June in Houston. Um, I reserve the right to add to that list or delete from that list. But I will say this.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
They are built for the playoffs. If you look at the guys that they've drafted, you guys are actually good people to ask about this because you guys follow the NBA, but you don't get into the NBA super, super. Well, you guys bet, so you guys know. All right, what do you guys know about Ahmed Thompson? He's a freak. Okay. So you guys, that's a bad example. You guys, that's a bad.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And I'm excited to watch them guard Steph Curry. Cause that's going to be awesome. So I feel like the world, I mean, obviously if you're a rocket fan, you love him. If you're an NBA fan, you may be a little bit aware of him, but I feel like. the basketball public is going to figure out who Ahmed Thompson is over the next two, three weeks. Yeah. This guy is a absolute freak amongst freaks.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Like all the great athletes that you see in the NBA, uh, He's like the great athlete's great athlete, and he is going to be attacking Steph. Steph has seen every defender in the world. I think KD had that great line in that documentary about the Olympics where he was sort of mocking the other teams, having camaraderie and growing up playing together.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
He's like, how's that going to help you when you guard Steph? I agree. Like you can be the most physically imposing defender in the history of the sport. If you lose Steph Curry, he gets the corner turned on you. You're giving up a three. I don't care what you say, but they are built with defensive minded players, which you need in the postseason.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
The other thing is like the Warriors real weapon is Jimmy Butler. And the one thing that you can do on Jimmy Butler that can maybe kind of bother him a little bit is put like really big size on him. This happened in the finals two years ago. You know, Jimmy had that great run where he led the heat all the way to the finals.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And look, Jokic was untouchable, but they had Aaron Gordon, who just has enormous size. Like, I think he's like 6'10". They put him on Butler. And like, Butler isn't... he does very, very rarely. Can you find a guy who can physically impose Jimmy Butler and Gordon could kind of do that. And so like, they have players like that. They have, you know, Dylan Brooks, they have, uh, I'm in Thompson.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Um, you know, they have Jabari Smith. They have, you know, these guys who have got good size. So while they don't have star power and they don't have like experience, um, Although Fred Van Vliet is their, like their leader and he's got a ring. They do have some things going for them. So I wouldn't count them out.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I actually think that other than whoever Oklahoma city plays in the one eight, I think you can take the little numbers next to the teams, the seeds, and you can throw them out because I don't think there's a discernible difference between the two, the three, the four, the five, the six. Obviously you get home court if you're the higher seed, but yeah,
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Golden State is favored in this series, I think, in the sports books. On one hand, I respect it because I don't think there's that much of a difference between the teams. On the other hand, that is not acknowledging what Houston's got going for them.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I think he's played with double-digit teams. If it's not double-digit teams, it's got to be like nine. Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Oh, yeah. Like like the Kevin Bacon.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah. I think there's two Seattle Supersonics left in the league.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Guys who play with the Sonics. Yeah. And I think it's KD and Jeff Green because Westbrook's first year was with the – he was in Oklahoma City, I'm pretty sure.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
So I think Uncle Jeff and KD are the last two Sonics who had Sonics jerseys.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Like somebody's getting thrown out, right? Yeah. Here's something else. Houston plays, like, super physical. Like, that's how their coach, Ime Udoka, like, teaches them to play. He wants them to play physical. And so you know officiating is going to be a deal in this series. You know that how Houston gets officiated is going to be something. So you know that from the opening tip-off.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Draymond Green's going to be working it. Obviously, sometimes Draymond goes over the edge, but if you look on balance, the Warriors might tell you that on balance, he's way ahead because he does sometimes intimidate officials. Now, the officials that you see in the postseason are more veteran. It's maybe not going to happen.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
But Draymond, I could see Draymond going to work here because he knows from the beginning of the series that the way games are officiated are going to matter, and he has a whole game within the game of what he's doing with the referees.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
You sound like you're a first take producer. Yeah. That is exactly. It popped in my head.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Good. Very good. Agree.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Um, so I think there's, I'm at, let me just say who I don't think there's pressure on that. You may be, maybe not you, but the fans, but I don't think there's a lot of pressure on the Lakers. Okay. Um, that's not what people are going to think. They're going to think, oh my God, like the lake, you know, if LeBron doesn't win, like, uh, you know, there goes the Jordan comparison.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Um, uh, I think the Lakers are better, are going to be better next year. And I think this year is all about them. getting the reps in together and learning to play with each other under pressure and figuring out how LeBron and Luca and Austin Reeves are going to share the load. They're not equipped really to handle it. I say handle it. That's the wrong word. They're not equipped.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
They're not built. The roster isn't built out to win 12 playoff games to win the West. In my opinion, they could prove me wrong and then laugh at me. I could get called weird again, but I, I, I don't think there's a lot of pressure on them. Um, I don't think there's a lot of pressure really on the warriors because I think they're kind of in a free roll. Jimmy has his contract.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
The warriors have their titles. Like if they can make a run, um, They did it, man. They, you know, Seth has four rings. What was it? If he gets a fifth, like that's supposed to like take him to upper echelon. They want to win. They did great. You know, Jimmy doesn't have a ring, but no one's going to say that Jimmy Butler isn't a great pressure player.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Like his, he obviously would want to win, but his reputation is kind of secure. I think there could be a little bit of pressure on Donovan Mitchell because Donovan Mitchell, when he was in Utah several times, I'm not sure he had two 61 teams.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
He definitely had one 61 team in Utah and they've never, he never made it to the conference finals and it wasn't always his fault, but he is not always delivered at the highest. He's sort of been up and down. He's had some playoff games where he's been amazing, but his team has never like over even achieved much. That's overachieved.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And he is, by the way, he has spent this whole year as the Cavs racked up 64 or 65 wins, whatever they had saying, none of this matters. This 15 game winning streak to start the season doesn't matter. The 16 game win streak they had in the, in the, after the all-star break doesn't matter. The three all-stars doesn't matter. Him making all NBA doesn't matter.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
He's like, because I've been on great teams before and it doesn't matter if you don't win. And I think that's true. And look, I don't favor them to win the East because, But if they stub their toe and, like, don't get to the conference finals or if they get to the conference finals and they've built out this team, this team is, like, set up.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
They, you know, they went and made a midseason trade for DeAndre Hunter, which, you know, is going to cost them a lot of money in the future. And they, like, get blasted by Boston 4-1. Like, they got beat 4-1 by Boston a year ago. Then I think people are going to look at him and go, well, can you, are you really a difference making player? Like, are you really a type of guy who can carry a team?
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
So while I don't look at them as favorites in the East, I think there's pressure on Donovan to have a great playoff run and to carry the calves with them. I don't think there's pressure on the Celtics per se. However, if they get to the finals, there will be pressure on Jason Tatum to have a great final. Because he wasn't great in the 2022 finals. And then last year, he was good.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
He led the Celtics in points, rebounds, and assists in the finals. He did not play poorly. He just didn't shoot the ball well, and he wasn't amazing. This is the one thing people always make the mistake. They're like, oh, Jalen Brown won the MVP. Jason Tatum must have sucked. No, there was 11 votes for finals MVP. There's 11 voters. It was 7-4.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
you know, there were people who thought Jason Tatum was the finals MVP. He just didn't play amazing and awesome, but he has played in two finals. He hasn't been amazing and awesome in those two finals, even though he's got a ring. So I do think if he gets there, especially if the Celtics crush the East, like last year, I think they went through the East 12 and two and,
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
If they do something like that again this year, it's going to be like, okay, Jason, now you got to show up in the finals to solidify where you need to be as a player. Yeah.
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What do you think? I mean, there's pressure if they're in trouble in the first round. Yeah.
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They better win that series. Detroit won 13 games last year or something, 14 games. you know, they've got no, they've got a couple of guys on their team who have playoff experience like Tobias Harris, you know, Tim Hardaway Jr. But like, you know, the guys that they're relying on, you know, Cade Cunningham, you know, Jalen Duren, the guys that they're relying on have never done this before. So,
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If the Knicks screw around in that first series, that would potentially create some pressure. I'll give you that.
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So it's kind of a weird spot. Oklahoma. city is kind of going that route. Cause like Oklahoma city is this youngest team in the league. How often do you ever see the youngest team in the league be the best team in the league? We almost never see.
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It's actually the reason why Oklahoma city, not maybe the reason, but it's a reason why, like the thing I've noticed about Oklahoma city is that the players don't respect them. Um, like they're not afraid of them. Um, even though they won 57 games last year and they won 68 games this year, like nobody who wins those, that many games over two years is not a championship team.
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Um, but they're the youngest team. So you just don't respect young guys who haven't done it before, no matter how many regular season wins they get. So they're going in, they are actually favored, uh, The reason I think that they're favorite, you guys know the gambling way better than I do.
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I can't honestly say that they should be favored to beat Boston four out of seven, but the sports books must be getting so much money on the Celtics that they're trying to get money on the... Thunder? Is that maybe what's happened? I don't understand it, but I would say that the Thunder being favored, I don't think that's the way the players in the league, based on my conversations.
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If the Thunder don't win it this year, specifically if they don't get to the finals, you will see it flip on them. You will then see people like me saying the Thunder better get this done. Do the Thunder need to make a trade or whatever?
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Right now, they kind of live in a zone where they're not having expectations like, well, you better back this 68-win season up by getting to the finals and almost winning it. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. They don't really live in that world right now. They live in a bit of a – not that stressful of a world. But that will change if they stub their toe and go out early like they did last year.
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Yeah, he did have a treatment, but, like, they were playing him. It's not like they shut him down, so... he definitely has been talking about it. And when the player talks about it, like that's a sign. Like it's one thing if the team says, Oh yeah, he's dealing with something and the player doesn't say anything.
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When the player says something about it, like I'm dealing with something, I pay more attention, but they were playing him.
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Like up until their seed, you know, he played straight through until they're, until they knew they had the second seed. So, uh, I know it's not my knee. I don't know how it feels. You know, he had like an injection in it. But, you know, in all honesty, Boston might not need him for a month anyway. Yeah.
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Yeah, I think so. I think he's I mean, you know, you never want to assume anything. But I think the intent is for him to play sometime next week. He's not going to play in the first game. So look, I had a blood clot 15 years ago. I am not an athlete quite clearly. When I had the blood clot, like they wanted you to be on the medication for at least three months.
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The medication sucks, has a bunch of side effects, like drags you down. Nobody likes it. but you got to be careful, but it's life-saving. You know, the thing about a blood clot, I know from just having one is that the big thing is to, is to diagnose it. That's because the problem is people die when blood clots, when they don't know they're feeling sick.
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They don't know why people die when blood clots are not diagnosed. So the big challenge is diagnose a blood clot. Then you deal with it. So they, so what Shams Charania said, like is that Dame started blood thinning medication for, two weeks before they actually found the blood clot. Oh, wow. Now this obviously creates some followup questions that we would all like to have.
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And Dane hasn't done a interview yet. And by the way, like aspirin, I think can theoretically be called blood thinning medication. So I don't want to sound like, but something that he did when he started feeling this issue was,
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helped mitigate this and even that like i mean he was he was going to the mayo clinic like they know what they're doing so it is kind of amazing like when i heard he had a blood clot and like the bucks were saying like no we think he can come back i thought they were just like trying to put up a front like trying to keep you know trying not to let anybody have information because you don't do that in the playoffs but sure enough he's been cleared by by the mayo clinic
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So the Bucs have had nothing but bad news on the injury front for the last three years. Three years ago, when they were the defending champs, Middleton got hurt in the first round. He went down in the first game and put his hand on the ground and sprained his wrist or something like that. And they had Blues in six games or seven games to the Celtics the year they went to the finals.
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Next year, Giannis gets hurt in the first round. They go out to Miami. Miami ends up going to the finals. If Giannis doesn't get hurt, maybe the Bucks are back in the finals. I don't know. You know, I don't know. Then last year, you remember Giannis, like it's 10 days before the end of the season. He takes an inbound, turns to run up the court and falls down, hurts his calf.
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Giannis has played in two playoff games last two years. So they've had nothing but rotten injury luck for three straight years. It's really short circuited this team's opportunity to win another title.
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Yeah. Um, And so for them to get unexpectedly positive injury news, I would say karma was on their side for that to happen. So I'm, I hope he's fine and I'm glad to hear it.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
So Evita Zubats from the Clippers. I don't know. Is he a big name? So this guy is having an absolutely incredible season. And he's just big, strong, brute player who, I mean, he's been in the league like seven, eight years. It's not like he's unheard of, but he took a leap forward this year. And I think part of it is because like James Harden, does a great job bringing a lot out of centers.
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He did this with Clint Capella years ago in Houston. Part of it, I think, is that Harden was the full-time point guard for the full season. But Zubats is just a beast. And I wouldn't say he's had success against Jokic, but out of all the guys who have played Jokic a bunch of times, Zubats has actually been able to check the box and say, I did a good job in this game the most.
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So he is going to be front and center in that series. He is been one of the best defensive players in the league. He's a beast on the interior. He doesn't mess around. You know, like we're in this era where everybody and their brother shoots threes. Zoo doesn't do that. Zoo's like, forget about that. I am playing that game. I will come in and I will shoot my 65% on the interior.
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So it's a great opportunity for the, the world to kind of be introduced to Zoo. And I don't know, like, again, I don't, Cade Cunningham has been an all-star, but he hasn't been on the, um, sort of the front page. Okay. Cunningham was like a borderline MVP candidate this year. He was so good for the Pistons and the Pistons haven't made the playoffs in like seven years.
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So like, and they weren't on national TV a lot. So like, there's a chance again, if you're a casual NBA fan, you haven't really seen Cade Cunningham. So I, I hate to give this to a guy who was an all-star and is going to be on the all NBA team, but I,
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I feel like Cade Cunningham, especially playing in New York, playing at the Garden, I think he has a chance to sort of have his profile really elevated.
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You remember that happened with Trey Young? Yeah. I mean, Trey Young was a major college star. I mean, I guess Cade was, too. He's the number one overall pick. Yeah. Trey Young went to another level because of that playoff series with the Knicks a few years ago.
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And I say that as someone who's from Cleveland, who spends a lot of time in Cleveland and, you know, makes a lot of appearances in Cleveland. They're not going to be happy that I say that, but like, you got to knock the champ out. Um, and they did, they went two and two against them this year. And Donovan Mitchell averaged like 32 points against the Celtics this year.
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Like there's a world where this happens for Donovan, but he's got to prove to do it. He, you know, and so, um, Those were the two that I made for the, you know, the first two that I made. Yeah.
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Yeah. I am staying with my mother in Akron on Saturday night. There you go. And will not ESPN will not have to pay. from my hotel rooms in Cleveland this upcoming week.
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Cat, what would you say is the most important thing that the Bulls need? A guy. Absolutely. How do you get them?
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The lottery.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Thank you. Checkmark, checkmark. I'm ready to hire you as GM. Oh, what did the bulls absolutely not do this year? They didn't get their lottery odds up. Um, what I, the way I said it, I declared this like 18 months ago, the bulls are in a rebuild and they don't know they're in a rebuild. Yep. And that's almost the worst position to be in. I will say this.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
You could be the Sacramento Kings who have a bunch of Bulls players making tons of money that didn't work with Chicago and are now convinced they're going to work in Sacramento, so convinced that they're firing coaches and GMs. Saying, why isn't this working? Why are we not in the... And by the way, I have nothing against Zach Levine and DeMar DeRozan. I know them a little bit.
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I think they're good guys. They just didn't work together in Chicago. Why would they... Anyway, that's another story. I said that. I said it was the Bulls front office lost two playing games on Wednesday night. They did. I know. Here's the thing. The Bulls got booed off the floor, and so did Sacramento. I know. The Bulls, ex-Bulls players got booed off.
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And AK is sitting there like, oh, this is crazy. I can't believe this happened. I can't explain one of my podcast partners, Tim McMahon. He says, boy, he has a line. He goes, boy, you came in third, like the bulls in a three team trade. I love saying that. And I didn't see our tourist condition. This is press conference today. I'm going to follow it up. I was, I was working.
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Somebody told me, he said something to the effect of this may not be an exact quote. Hey, just give us some time. We're building timeline.
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So a couple of, I don't know, maybe a month ago, we ranked like at ESPN, we use like these seven different ways to rank the rebuilding teams. Like there was like, I don't know, we called them 10 rebuilding teams. Like we all rolled up our sleeves and we did all this analysis, looked at all these stats and everything like that. And we ranked them.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And really the only difference between the teams who are doing successful rebuilds, like the Spurs and teams that are doing unsuccessful rebuilds, well, the Bulls technically aren't rebuilding, but whatever. are the fact that they got lucky in the lottery. If you looked at this, you could be like, the only way to do this is to get lucky in the lottery.
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Maybe they will get lucky in the lottery and Cooper Flagg will be showing up in the summer. If that happens, it would be amazing because Kobe White is good. Josh Giddey does have promise. Bezelis, their rookie, would potentially be a pretty good fourth guy. But if you don't have the dude, you're not going anywhere. So you've got to kill yourself to get the dude.
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And the Bulls aren't doing things to get the dude. That's what would drive me crazy if I was a Bulls fan.
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What would be the best option? I mean... If the Bulls won the lottery, now they're like, what are they? They'd have the 12th best odds or something like that. I think they're 1% right now. Could jump up to 2%. It would be amazing if Cooper Flagg went to Chicago for the league. Why'd you say that? For the league?
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For the league, because I don't know if you heard, it would be better if the Bulls are good for the league. It would be better for the league, but they've done their best not to get a... What I kind of don't want is the 76ers to win it. Yep, agreed. Because they were, the way they got to that seat, they finished the season 5-31.
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you know like one of the most amazing parts of the nfl season for me i don't follow that closely was that one game where um who were the eagles playing where um they kept doing the the tush push and like there was kept being penalties and the referee was like look as a commander if you jump okay i'm sorry pft i didn't mean to i seriously didn't want to inflict damage on you but like when that referee said look if you do it again we're giving just give them the touchdown yeah
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Like what you're saying is Adam Silver should have that. Yes. You know, like they're all celebrating. He just steps in. I'm sorry. I'm just going to use my powers here.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
Yeah, that seems fair. It wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for the Wizards to get Cooper flagged. That would kind of be cool. The nation's capital hasn't had a good team in like decades.
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But it'll probably be Charlotte.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
I love that rule. If there's four of us at the table, and you two show up, and you're offering to pay, I say thank you. Keep on walking.
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NBA Playoffs With Brian Windhorst, Actor Josh Duhamel, The Bulls Lost Twice In The Play In, Lee Corso Retires Plus Fyre Fest
And look, that's fine for other people. For me, five. Five. Six if it's somebody's boyfriend or girlfriend. I don't want to leave them out.
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28%?
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We'll pretend that we know what's happened in the next two days, but we don't know what's happened. For all I know, Joss scored 56 tonight.
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Joss rescued his reputation tonight and pushed the Warriors to the thunder. And what I'm trying to do here is sound smart if something like that happens.
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Yes.
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Yes. And you told, what time did you get up? Did you get up? I get up at like 3.41 a.m. when I'm here. When I'm doing Get Up, not every day.
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I love doing get up. Yeah. It's such a fun show to do. I'm not just saying that. I swear. I love working with Greenberg. I love working with their show. I don't want to do it 20 times a month, but it's playoffs, you know, so whatever, but it is hard to like tonight. It's going to be a struggle step for this. Like I'll be struggling in the fourth quarter.
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I don't drink coffee. I don't drink coffee. So it's a problem.
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I get up.
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No. Well, it's a good question. See, this is here in the business. So I do put on self-makeup. The makeup artists come about 6 a.m. because there starts your show starting around then. But I put on some powder at like 4, 45. Yeah.
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Amazing.
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Well, like the thing is like too much information. Like after I take a shower, I get like a red face. So I've got to, I got to do it. I got to put on the powder. So I've got like a little compact with me.
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No. So like I'm here in LA. We have a studio. I go into the studio. Oh, you go in? Yeah. Oh. I walk. I mean, it's short distance from the hotel. Right, hotel to the thing.
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But during the playoffs, I'll be doing it from my hotel room a lot. I choose hotel rooms... I choose hotels in the playoffs based on when I can do a good morning TV setup. Like, I know this is going to sound strange, but there was a hotel in Dallas last year that I picked because I did it in the Western Conference Finals and I came back to the finals that I knew they had high chairs in the lobby.
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And I swiped, I came, I went to the bartender and said, hey, can I borrow one of these chairs? Because, you know, you got to sit on a high chair. And he was like, hey, you're Brian Windhorst. He didn't know who it was.
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And I dragged it into a bar chair into the elevator. I took it upstairs.
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Because you need to sit on a high chair. It doesn't look good when you're scrunched up. So you don't have that in a hotel room. And I did it in Minneapolis too. I borrowed chairs and take them to my room. Like when I'm on the road in the playoffs doing get up and first take in the morning.
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Like sometimes I'm at the arenas where they have setups, but on nights, on days when I don't, and I'm in a hotel, that's what I do. But when I'm in LA, we have a studio I do.
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So the Dan Hurley thing had just gone down. He came out here to the Lakers and got a new contract. It was after one of the games in Boston. Oh. Had to have been like game two. Okay. And Zach and I are on the court and Gino is, um, Gino walks past. Cause you know, what you're doing on the court, it's just live. Like we're constantly grabbing people who are walking by.
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Gino walks by, says hello to us. We're recording. Okay. And I, he had just signed a new contract and I made this joke. I was like, Hey, congrats on your new contract. I was a little worried they might not retain you.
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make a joke. He goes, yeah, I should have, somebody, there was a job open. Oh, it was a Cleveland job. He goes, yeah, I should have pretended like I was going to go to the Cavs. I could have got more money. Like only half joking. And I mean, maybe he was fully joking. I don't know, but it was like, or maybe he wasn't joking at all. It was an amazing moment.
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Like, oh my God, I think he just took like a soft shot at Dan Hurley or maybe a hard shot. I don't know. And then like, Two minutes later, Cedric Maxwell walks by. And he's always good for talking shit about the Lakers. And I think Boston got up 2-0. And I prompted him to talk some trash, which he did, which is always great.
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This is now like multiple finals in a row where I've gotten Max to do this. It's almost like a trope. He knows. Zach and I are sitting there with microphones. They all know what's going on. And so he makes some sort of passing comment, making fun of the Lakers or James Worthy. And he keeps on walking. And he walks... Because, you know, there's wires on the ground. He walks...
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through the wires and he pulls it and the recorder goes flying onto the court, explodes open, things that... When you lose everything. We lost everything.
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Yeah, I mean, and you know, Zach, like... Oh. Zach doesn't do the second take. He was ready to like... He's ready to walk. He's like, we're just not going to do it tonight. I go, no, Zach. It's game two of the finals. We need to do it. So, yeah, that happened.
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By the way, thank you for letting me have the Larry Bird cup. I did. Well, you're a guest. I wasn't sure I should take it.
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I know.
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It gets milked everywhere across the country where I go.
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Right.
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I was angry because the finals were over. He, you know, he fouled out of this game and the finals were over. And I thought it could have been a good series. Yeah. And the reason that I was having that visceral reaction was because I'd seen him do it before. It was an international play. Two other times in his career, he got disqualified from essentially an elimination.
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It was an elimination game, which that was an elimination game. It happened when he was on the Slovenian national team. One time he fouled out because he Got a technical foul, which in international competition counts as a personal foul. Right. And he fouled out on a technical, like in the European, in the Euro Cup, the Euro Basket, they call it. They were their defending champs.
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One of the great moments of his career, by the way, was winning Euro Basket with Slovenia. Slovenia, it's laughable that they could win. Not laughable. It's impressive.
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They won the European Championship in the late teens. And then when they were defending their title, he got ejected from the game. They got eliminated. It was ridiculous. And then in the World Cup in the Philippines in 23, so a year earlier, he got thrown out of the quarterfinals. Now, they probably would have lost the game, but in the middle of the game,
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He was angry at the officials and he went over to half court. This is in Manila, Philippines. I know nobody watched it. It was in the middle of the night. And he is cursing out the secretary general of FIBA. Like, the free throws are going on. He comes down and curses out the Secretary General in Spanish. I know because I was talking to people who were sitting next to Secretary General.
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Who knows what he was saying. But can you imagine, like, in a game... Like, because you know where Adam Silver sits. Secretary General was sitting kind of in the same spot, like, midway up the deck. Yeah. Can you imagine, like, going over and cursing out Adam Silver because... Scott Foster had just called a foul. Like, it's ridiculous.
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And by the way, the idea that they would not want Luka Doncic and Sloveni advancing, it's a preposterous conspiracy. And then a few minutes later, got a second technical and got thrown out of the game. And I'm like, Luca, what are you doing? The only chance Slovenia has is if you're great. How are you getting thrown out of these elimination games?
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So I didn't, I was, that was at least the third time that I know of, and I don't know his whole career, that he had allowed himself to be basically getting disqualified because the sixth foul was a preposterous foul. It was a ridiculous foul and his behavior the whole game was ridiculous. And so I was angry that I'd seen him for the third time, the second time in person in less than a year,
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disqualified from an elimination game where he totally undercut his team.
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Yes. And I was criticizing him, obviously, but the reason I was angry was because he's so much better than that.
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And that's what I was saying. I was like, that's not winning. Winning is what the Celtics are doing. This is what you're doing is losing. This is a losing mentality. And so...
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Well, the people in Dallas did not agree with me because it was not the most fun next two days.
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An off day and then game four was... And then Luka came back and played great in game four.
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Like played defense, like was focused. And people were like, oh, he proved you wrong. And I was like, no.
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It was upsetting because he could have played that way the whole time. And you know what's funny about this? I will say, I don't remember what day. There's one day off in between games three and game four. It's the only time there's one day off in the finals. And so there was one day off in between. And then there was the whole pregame for game four.
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I was in the arena for many hours the next two days. And all kinds of Mavericks people were there. Front office people, coaching staff, executives, what have you. Nobody said anything. Nobody said.
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Well, I don't, I mean, I'm not saying it was in there. I'm not saying they had to. I'm just saying, like, I was prepared.
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And Jason Kidd said some stuff in the press conference. Like, he was, like, defending Luca, which he should. But, like, no, I was available. Like, if, like, trust me, I get, when I say something that pisses people off, not every day, but, you know, people will reach out to me, like, you were wrong about this.
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I mean, at the time, I didn't think like, I wasn't like noticing, boy, no one's saying anything to me. I was like, well, they're down 3-0 and the series is over.
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Well, I will say this. I've been talking to the guys who cover the Mavericks. He's had ongoing feuds with individual fans for years. Dallas fans? No, no. On the road. Because he got into it with a guy in Oklahoma City two weeks ago. Apparently, that's not the first time those guys have gotten into it. Or if not, it was somebody nearby.
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Actually, I don't have a problem with him getting into it with fans. I would rather him go back and forth with a fan or the opposing player as opposed to getting back into it with the refs. Because when he gets back and forth with the refs, he hurts his team.
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Right. Well, that play, like he was incorrectly ejected from that game in Oklahoma City. Nobody would question that he was obviously he was talking to the fan.
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But the ref, I believe it was J.T. Orr, had there was not even contact on that play. He scored on the interior. There was no contact. There was nothing for him to really complain about. But the ref has heard him for years. And did you see what he did? He wound up and gave him the baseball umpire, get out of here. This is what happens with Draymond, too.
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He's a really good guy.
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I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with him at Team USA.
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I spent three weeks covering him in China in 19. We weren't as close in the 2021. When I say we weren't as close, I'm talking about we couldn't get as close in Tokyo. But still, he was, by the way, it was awesome with the Tokyo team. I kind of feel like people didn't watch that Olympics. Yeah. It was just off and everything. Nobody ever talks about that Olympics.
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Durant was absolutely freaking brilliant.
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Tatum was arguably their second best player.
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He still can't. He still can't. He's got plenty of time. We're going to be here in LA in three years, four years, whatever.
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He is a perfect international player. And he was that in that Olympics, they were in big trouble against Australia in the semifinals. Yeah. Australia had been building toward that game for a decade. You know, Their guys, you know, Patty Mills and Joe Ingles and who am I forgetting? I mean, the Golden Generation, they won the bronze. They ended up getting their first ever medal.
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They were ahead by 12 or 14 in the third quarter, which international basketball is like 25 because the games are shorter. And Popovich goes to a triangle and two. which they had practiced, like, for, like, barely part of one practice.
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Australia, like, staggers for, like, three possessions. They've never seen the Americans do this before. Durant hits, like, three threes. Tatum misses a shot. I can't remember who else, but Durant turned it. Yeah. Because Durant was untouchable. You know, Durant was coming off the Achilles. and played because he loves Team USA so much. It was such a wholesome moment.
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They come back and beat Australia. It's a great comeback. Nobody ever remembers it. If they had lost, people would remember it forever. And then they played a really competitive game with France in the title game where Tatum, I think, played really well. Drew Holiday was huge defending in the semifinals and finals.
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Yes.
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The Serbians are fascinating. The way they play. Bogi Bogdanovic... is like, when you, the same way with Patty Mills. You watch Patty Mills, now he's past his prime, but Patty Mills, if you squinted, you thought he was Steve Nash.
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The way he plays for Team Australia, in 2019 in China, which was the World Cup in China, they ended up finishing out of the medals there, but he played a couple of games where you're like, why isn't this guy Hall of Famer.
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Well, Spain won in 2019. The Americans had a terrible team. Tatum was on that team. He was leading them.
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He sprained his ankle in a game against Turkey that they win in overtime. And again, I'm in Shanghai on a Saturday night. It's the middle of the night in America. No one cares. And Ersan Ilyasova is kicking our ass, right? And Tatum is saving the day. They end up going to overtime, and Tatum sprains his ankle in overtime, and he's cooked the rest of the way. And we end up in seventh. Oof. Seventh.
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But anyway, in that game, Ricky Rubio... So now you've got to remember the Ricky Rubio story.
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Rubio... was Boy Wonder for Spain. Age 17 playing against the U.S. in 08. Exactly. Comes to Beijing. They've made documentaries about this game. Rubio is trash. He was trash in the game. He was miserable in this arena. Now, we are now 11 years later. Rubio has gone through his career. He's had a middling career. He's had his moments. 2019, he is playing in the same arena.
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They are playing against Argentina in the final. Luis Scola turns the clock back, somehow gets Argentinians to the final. Rubio is amazing. Dancing on air. Marc Gasol has just won the title with Toronto. A few months later, he wins the gold medal. The Spanish get this world championship. They're celebrating. Rubio is amazing. Rubio is named MVP.
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His mother has just died of breast cancer a few months before. He comes over. We televised the game at ESPN. Again, no one had watched this because why are you watching in the middle of, or, you know, maybe it's at, you know, it was in the afternoon. I might have been watching. It was at 2 a.m., whatever. And Rubio is having the greatest moment of his career.
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He's won the MVP for Spain in the arena. And I ask him, I do the post-game interview because I'm doing the sideline interview. he Rubio does like seven interviews, like because he's, you know, all the world feeds, he does, you know, France and whatever. And I asked him about his mother and he starts crying. No one ever saw this. It's the greatest. I'll never do.
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I don't do Southern interviews, but I will never, I could do a hundred of them and never do a better interview. Rubio is in tears having this amazing moment. And the average NBA fan, you could even be a Rubio fan and you don't know about this moment where he wins and And subsequently, basically, he quits basketball because of mental health stuff.
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He got drafted instead of Steph Curry and then he didn't come over right away and he tore his ACL.
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So he has this moment. That's what I get in international basketball. You have these moments. Bogie Bogdanovich is in a feud with his coach. This guy, if you saw, what's the Netflix series? They had him on there. He's this old, hard, mean SOB. And he and Bogdanovich got into it during the 2023 World Cup. Jokic didn't play. I don't know why Jokic didn't play.
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I can speculate as to why Jokic didn't play. Whatever. Jokic doesn't play. And it's really hard to qualify for the Olympics. It's really hard because you got to go through all this qualifying, you know, and the Serbians are, I'm like, well, Jokic isn't playing, Serbia ain't qualifying. Because you've got to be the top two European finishers at the World Cup to qualify.
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I'm like, they ain't qualifying. Well, Bogdanovic, after getting benched by this coach, has this incredible run in the knockout rounds, carries Serbia to the championship. And yeah, they lose, but they qualify for the Olympics. And I'm going... Again, nobody cares about this, but I'm sitting there going, well, this is a bad break for the United States. Serbia disqualified for the Olympics.
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And now Jokic will see them in Paris. And I was worried. And by the way, he really cares. I was worried about Team USA losing to Serbia in August of 23 when the Serbians qualified. And then they set up the schedule so that Serbia got three looks at the U.S. They played them in Dubai.
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for an exhibition game which again nobody cares but they got a look at them then they played them in the pool play then they got them in the knockout rounds and Pesic and Jokic and all those dudes played it to set up the United States to go after them. They didn't care what the score was in the pool play game. They set it up to go... They were thinking about it for months.
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The draw that got Serbia into the USA's pool was like in February. They started thinking in February about that night in August when they could get them in the semifinal. They didn't know it would be the semifinal, but they knew they would see them. And they set the whole thing up. And they took money, extra money, to go to Abu Dhabi and play I'm telling you, all building up to that moment.
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And the average fan, USA fan, doesn't care. I don't blame them. I'm just telling you, all that drama is going into it. And Steve Kerr, And Sean Ford, like the general manager of USA Basketball, like they're thinking about it for months. Like as Steve Kerr is coaching the Warriors last year, he's like, I know, but I got to worry about Serbia. And Jeff Van Gundy is like consulting with the Celtics.
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Jeff Van Gundy, because he's on the USA staff, he's thinking about Serbia. Serbia, Serbia, Serbia.
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Of course, which the French were actually in the middle of imploding and then they rallied back.
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Steve doesn't give a shit. Here's the thing. I keep saying this. People don't listen to me. It's fine. I don't care. International basketball is so vastly different.
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The difference between 40 and 48 minutes, I cannot underline how big of a difference it is. It is so different.
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Right. And so the other thing is the NBA mindset is if you get down 15, it doesn't matter. Yeah, you can always come back. You can't play that well.
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It's the inverse of the NBA. So here's the thing. In the NBA, like there's this inherent bias that everybody wants the Lakers and the Celtics to do well. And whether or not that's true or not.
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Of course, nothing ever goes the Celtics way, you're right.
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In the international game, they want the U.S. to lose.
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Like when the U.S. loses, the FIBA officials are over there giving each other high fives under the table. They want the U.S. to lose because they want it to be more of a global game.
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So here's my recommendation, and I know that people are probably turning off the pod because we're talking about international basketball.
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So the next World Cup is in 2027. I will give you all the money in my wallet because you obviously need it. All the money in my wallet if you can tell me where the World Cup is being played in 2027. I'll give you seven guesses. You're not going to take that and be boring, but you have any idea where the World Cup is being played?
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You're close.
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Okay.
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I don't want to. It'll be in August.
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I've gone to Abu Dhabi the last two summers with Team USA and absolutely loved it. And I know that it's... You're a big Abu Dhabi guy. I love Abu Dhabi. And, you know, the NBA is getting closer to there. And His Excellency, Muhammad Al Mubarak, is the head of the chairman. I call him the chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism. He is... Possible podcast for you? Podcast partner?
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I would love to have him on a podcast. He'd be great on a podcast. He knows the NBA.
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Well, you'd get along with... Well, he hates the Celtics. Oh, I wouldn't like that. But he went to school at Northeastern. And he told me this great story. By the way, his brother... is Khaldun al-Mubarak, who runs the city football group, Man City, runs Man City. That's his brother. His brother's a couple years older than him. He was going to school in Boston.
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I'm not sure if it was the Northeastern or something else. He comes to visit his brother. He's 16 years old. They go to a Celtics game. This is like the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. They go to a Celtics game. And he's a big Lakers fan. Because why wouldn't he be? Because, you know, he lives in Abu Dhabi. Why wouldn't he be a Lakers fan? So they go to the 2010 finals?
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He's going to a finals game, Lakers-Celtics. He's wearing a Laker jersey. He doesn't know any better. He doesn't understand.
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He's going to a finals game in Boston. And he comes up and he and his brother sit down. And right next to him are this husband and wife in their 70s. They've got like, you know, the husband's wearing like this old Larry Bird jersey that's probably had since 82. And the wife is all dressed up and they're all dressed out and they're all ready. And he goes down and says, oh, hey, how are you?
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He thinks it's charming. And the woman looks over at him and flips him off. It's like, welcome to Boston. So he goes to school in Boston. Anyway, he knows the NBA extremely well. He would love to be heavily invested in the NBA. I've spent quite a bit of time with him. I like him a lot. I know that there's challenges when you're doing business in the Middle East or whatever.
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I don't pretend to know. I'm not trying to cast aspersions. The global windy. It's even more impressive than some of my connections. For example, he would make comments. He was talking about a certain Lakers player. I don't want to put his business out there. He was talking about a certain Lakers player who's no longer on the team.
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And he says the reason his teammates don't like him is because he doesn't play defense. That's why they don't like him. This is the kind of commentary he's giving. He watches it games in the morning when he's like on the treadmill, he's watching Laker games. Like when I first met him, he was traditionally dressed, but then he, you know, sits down, he was wearing George. So he's super into it.
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Um, last year, uh, When the U.S. went to Abu Dhabi to play, he came and addressed the team on the first day of practice. And he very begrudgingly congratulated Tatum, Drew Holiday, and who was the third Celtic? Derek White. He's like, congratulations on the title.
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You know, if they allowed him to buy it, he would have bought it. But they don't allow the sovereign wealth funds to... Did you think it would get to $6 billion? No. Also, the team's not sold yet.
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No, I did not think they would get to $6 billion. And with Bruce Bach all the way through said, I'm going to get my price. I'm going to get my deal, which enables him to stay.
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Well, his price too.
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They got more than six.
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From what I understand, and the deal's not official or whatever, but from what I understand, they're buying 51% this year at six. And they're buying the other 49% at like seven. And so the price is actually a little bit higher than they're saying.
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Well, I would just say this about the Celtics. I think Sportico reported this. I haven't heard this, but Sportico is good at their business. I think they probably got it because the Celtics' financials got out there because they had to show them to people. They had bidders. The Celtics made $450 million last year. That was their revenue, which is great.
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Probably, I don't have the whole league, but definitely top five, maybe top three.
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I feel comfortable saying it was the largest revenue season in the history of the Celtics franchise.
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Their payroll next year is $450 million.
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Okay, I'm just saying. Yeah. Fine. I'm just saying, though, that like, why did the Grusbach family want to sell now? Because they know that their payroll is equal to their revenue.
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Hey, listen, I don't know. I'm not in their family. I don't know.
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Well, he's not selling it. He gets to run it for three more years.
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Okay.
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I am not claiming to have inside information, but you think that the fact that they are going to spend as much money on payroll as they take in next year. In other words, they're facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. You think that had nothing to do with it.
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Okay.
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So let me ask you this. If you win again, does that mean you keep the roster together or you can start?
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Right. Well, I would hold on to Tatum and Brown as long as possible.
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I agree. A Durant trade is going to be complicated because I don't know what Kevin wants and I've learned my lesson not to guess what Kevin wants. If he wants to go to a contender, that contender is going to have a high payroll. Probably. You know, those trades are hard. The Suns are in the second apron.
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I wrote a story about the Suns published this week. I mentioned in there, with the help of Bobby Marks, Devin Booker is eligible for a two-year extension this year for $150 million. I'm going to say that again. He's eligible for an extension for two years and $150 million. That's $75 million a year.
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Okay. So we're projecting the cap out there, but the cap is going to go.
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We didn't have a good year. But forget about that. My point is, is that the max contracts are headed towards $75 million a year. Not in 2035. I'm talking about if Devin gets the max this summer, which quite frankly, I don't know how they're going to get away with not paying him. Because if you don't pay him, then what sort of message are you sending?
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Well, that's true. Devin's 28, though. He's not 34. Yeah.
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And I don't think the union realizes that. I think the Clippers are ahead of the, the Clippers were targeted. Perfect. The Clippers figured this out first. Number one, when they negotiated with Kawhi, he didn't get the max. He got close to the max. This was, in my view, this was going to be the new normal. The idea that these guys mid-career, oh, it's time for a contract extension.
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You want the max? Here you go. they're going to get extended, but they're not going to get, they're not just going to be assumption. You're not going to, how many max, how many guys right now are making the max contract? Now I'm not talking about their max because this is a thing the agents play and we help them with it in the media.
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I'm not looking to, but like a player's max is the most he can get versus the actual max. How many guys right now in the league are making the quote unquote max? There's dozens. Three years from now, I think there's going to be a third of that amount.
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I think in a situation with Jalen Brunson, there's teams that are going to... I think he's still signed for less than he could have got. The teams are going to... They're going to give him... They're going to get hundreds of millions, but they're not going to all of us just get the max. You're not going to get, okay, mid-career all-star player. You're not getting 35% of that.
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That would be a good thing is to put in a little canister, you know, for the future. When is the next no trade clause? Well, I know LeBron will get it when he opts out and re-ops this year with the Lakers. But when is the next new no trade clause coming?
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Yeah, I think he will.
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Yeah. Why would he? He would just opt in if he has to get it.
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Bill, I had a flip phone. He had a flip phone. Like, it was laughable. The iPhone was... When he came in the league, we were four years away from Twitter. We were three, four years away from the iPhone. Like...
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Yes. When he came into the league, I remember my first trade deadline covering the Cavs. This is how trade deadline day went. I went to practice to shoot around or it was practice. I did my post-practice interview. I went to lunch. I was at lunch eating a sandwich. My cell phone rings. Hello, Jim Paxson, the gentleman of the Cavs. Hey, Hey, I just want to let you know, we traded for Flip Murray.
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Oh, really? What'd you trade for him? 2004 second round pick. Oh, Kelly, why'd you trade for him? Well, he's going to help us with scoring off the bench. Okay. All right, I'll see you tomorrow. But keep eating my lunch. You know, two hours later, went home. Then I wrote my story that published in the newspaper in the morning. None of this shit.
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Minute by minute, trying to find out, like, who was getting traded.
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I think those were better days. The general manager called and was like, hey, we made a trade. Oh, really? You know, like, that's how you found out about trades. When the Cavs traded for Shaquille O'Neal, and that was not in 2000, that was not 1997. That was, like, actually, like, that was in the Twitter era. That was, like, 2009, 2010, I think 2009. Danny Ferry just called me up.
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He's like, yeah, we traded for Shaquille O'Neal. Oh, okay. What'd you get? Well, you could be Ben Wallace in the first round. That's how it happened. You weren't like waiting, you know, on top of it, you know.
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And in 2009, Twitter was around, but people weren't paying attention as a news feed.
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So it like, you know, like Twitter was like, there was two years.
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Yes. That was LeBron. That was LeBron. That was, I was happening in LeBron's career. Like that's how it was, was, and now look at, you know, it's pretty nuts.
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My first big Twitter thing was the LeBron free agent meetings. Because nowadays, free agent meetings, first off, by July 1st, they're all done. Nobody goes on free agent meeting tours anymore. Secondly, they do it all in secret. It's people's houses and stuff.
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Or a year.
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Right. Have you met him? This is Bob. Listen, I saw Joel Embiid and Paul George on the countdown set during the finals last year. Right. That was an amazing moment. It was an amazing moment. And, you know, Joel gave him the side eye. I mean, like, it's a little bit manufactured. Obviously, Joel and Paul George had communicated before that meeting.
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Well, anyway, the day of the free agent meetings was three days. You know, they were having them at this office building in Cleveland. And the teams were just walking into the lobby. And I was just sitting in the lobby. I was just tweeting it. Jim Dolan just came in. Pat Riley is waiting outside the elevator. I remember the Clippers got there. The heat ran really late.
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And there was no place for the Clippers to wait. And Neil O'Shea and Andy Roser just were standing there in the hallway. And just walking back and forth, waiting for Pat Riley and Eric Spolster and Mickey Harrison to finish. And I was just live tweeting it. I was just live tweeting it. I was like, well, Mikhail Prokhorov just left, but Jay-Z is staying back.
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He must be having a special meeting with LeBron. I was just tweeting what I saw. And nowadays, you'd never get that. But I think I had 14,000 Twitter followers at the beginning of that. And three days later, I had like 32,000, which blew my mind.
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But that was like an actual event where like, I was just like, just nobody was saying, wasn't like Mickey Harrison was saying, yep, we got it done. I was just tweeting when I was sitting there watching. I was just standing in the elevator lobby. I was sitting in the elevator lobby watching.
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That was amazing.
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When Shams tweeted. I had no idea it was coming. I did not know. Most of the time, you know when stuff's coming. Like we do. You can't always... Sometimes you know something's going to happen and you're just waiting. In our case, it's almost always Shams. Shams knows it. He's got the story written. He's got the tweet and the drafts and he's waiting. That happened this week with Mike Budenholzer.
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I don't know that for sure. No, I'm just saying. Without pulling the curtain back too much, Shams had the Mike Buttenholzer story written before he was actually fired. Yeah. Because Shams is on top of it.
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Well, that's a different, that was a different thing. But the Luca thing came out of absolute nowhere.
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I know you and I are on different sides of this. I think it was a small number. It's bigger than the purported number, like whatever they said. But, you know, I think it was a small number.
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So the only thing is, the only thing I'll say is, I wondered if Anthony Davis was wearing thin in LA because he had done that interview where he's like, get me a center. He 100% was. Okay. So when I saw that, like a lot of people, I actually listened. There were two Lakers podcasts that I listened to afterwards.
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Where the people, because the Lakers had had a game that night, I think in New York.
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I don't want to give this away because it's not my story to tell. So I'll just tell half of it. One of my ESPN. So the Lakers were in New York.
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And one of my ESPN colleagues ran into JJ Redick in New York that day. And they knew JJ. And obviously, hey, JJ, what's up? He's like, hey, I got to go. I got to go on a walk. I got to clear my head about something. And he excused himself and kept going. And so... JJ knew and like went out for like a walk.
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Yes. The coaches knew before Shams tweeted it. Yes, of course. Yeah.
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Get the fuck out of here. You've been talking about the trade kicker. Yes, that is suspicious. Suspicious?
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What's your standard for knowing in advance? Because according to Palenka, they negotiated for a month.
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I think Rich and LeBron knew, but it wasn't too far or too far. Like, I believe them.
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The trade could have happened, but I agree. That's a flaw in my thinking. I agree. And I asked Rich about that.
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Like, really? We really think they're not doing that? What you are saying makes sense, but they were focused on keeping this quiet.
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I think they did keep it quiet, but at some point, they think the trade's gonna happen. But again, what's your standard? Is your standard that they knew one hour early or that they knew three days early? Because I think they knew maybe one hour early. Is that advanced notice?
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I don't believe that.
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Okay.
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But that is what, they were trying to do it. The reason that got out, I'll tell you, I mean like.
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Well, that's the thing. The Suns can't execute. They're so hamstrung with their thing. They can't execute. There was a, there was a, I won't go into, there was a third team involved and the third team was negotiating a, With the Warriors. Well, this has been reported, right? Was it in Miami? Yeah. So Miami is negotiating with the Warriors on Jimmy Butler. They're trading proposals.
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And then all of a sudden, the Warriors change a proposal. And the Heat noticed that one of the assets being offered was owned by the Suns. Now, I'm not saying that Miami leaked it because Miami doesn't leak anything, but the talks with other teams, that's how it got out.
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Of course.
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Of course, which is one of the reasons why the Heat are so good because the Heat speak with one voice. It's Andy Ellsberg. You deal with the Heat, you deal with Andy Ellsberg. Obviously, at some point, especially this type of trade, maybe Mickey Harrison or Andy Pat Riley. But when you negotiate with the Heat, you negotiate with one person.
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You negotiate with the other team, sometimes it's three or four. But they were trying to keep it quiet because when you don't keep it quiet is when things fall apart and that's what happened there. I think they kept it quiet. I really do. And maybe when now they tell us I look like a fool,
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Well, I loved listening to these two, there were two, maybe there's even more. The Lakers had a game that night in New York. They won. The Laker fan pods are, or analysis pods, whatever you want to call them, are recording after the game. They're looking over the Knicks. And I loved it. I listened to them learn it live. Oh, interesting. I mean, I was listening live. I was listening back to it.
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You know?
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And they're like, that kind of, that kind of be crazy, wouldn't it? Like, all right. And that third quarter tonight, they did a real good job in the pick and roll. ESPN just tweeted it. It's almost like a movie. And they're like, oh my god! And I love that. It was one of my favorite...
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I love it when you see, I remember when this became a thing on SportsCenter, like last decade, when people would videotape themselves watching the end of sporting events.
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One of the World Cups. The one I remember was, do you remember the Alabama-Auburn game where they returned the field goal? Yeah. The short field goal was too short and you returned it 108 yards. Yeah. one of the great things I ever saw on SportsCenter was the Auburn and Alabama fans, the Alabama fans thinking they're about to win it. And they're horrified.
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And the Auburn fans thinking they're about to lose it. And there was like all this stuff. And then like seeing like the Cavs fans in 2016 watching the end of, a lot of people videotape themselves watching the end of game seven. Amazing. I just, I have great memories of that. This was what that was like. You could watch it.
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So anyway, the shock of it was one of the reasons why it was such an amazing story.
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I believed it in the real time because I didn't know it was coming.
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Was that I thought I was in the back of my head. I was like, I wonder if AD is, is greasing the skids on, you know, on his time in LA. Like I, like it was not something I thought was going to happen at this.
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Like, I think the issue might've been that he was talking to Shams about it and not talking to Polanka about it. I think that's where the issue may have been. Like what he was asking for was not unreasonable.
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The venue, which he asked for it, I think. But I don't think that they were like, let's get rid of AD. I think that.
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This is what Bob. So like, you know, when you were doing countdown, you would talk with magic and you would just, I was never there, but you would describe these amazing conversation with magic during the games.
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you know, I've gotten to do countdown about a dozen times this year. I've gotten to do it by half of those with Bob Myers.
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Yes. And you know, I covered all these warriors calves series and just the way Bob and I, the way Bob talks about the league, like, I'll bet he gets a job offer every day. Like, the way he views the league, like, and a part of it is because he's so successful and comfortable and he doesn't have to worry about like, you know, part of it is the space he's in.
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Listening to Bob talk about the league privately, you can see why every owner would want to hire him. Because the way, and what he does on TV I think is great. I don't think actually he gets, of course I'm biased, he's my teammate. The way he talks about the league, the way he talked last week about, I can't remember, it was some front office challenge. Oh, it was Michael Malone firing.
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He talked about that whole thing. What he was saying was literally worth... hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting money, like if he had consulted with the team. But anyway, he feels the same way I do. I feel good that I'm on the same side as him, which is he can get to a spot where he sees why they traded Luka.
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He doesn't agree with it, and nor do I, but he can see why, he can see how the Mavericks got to it. They didn't want to pay him the 300 million, whatever. They have more information about Luka than anybody. He can even get himself to the spot where they said, we want Anthony Davis. That's going to be our guy. And so can I. I can get to a spot.
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Again, I wouldn't do it, but I can see how I can... Him as the centerpiece of a Luka trade. I can see how Anthony Davis is a guy they wanted. Like, this is what we're going to do. And even those two steps are big steps. A lot of people, and I think probably about every Dallas fan, couldn't make the two steps that I just made. But I've been around the league. I can see it.
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The return is what I can't square. That's where I stop. I stop right there because here's the thing. Reeves has one of the best value contracts in the league.
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I just voted for him for most improved. I had a real problem for most improved. Oh, it came so close. I had a, look, the most improved. What did you do for your three? Reeves. Reeves won?
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reeves won oh man i zuba i think i had zubach no uh i had denny avia i looked at him but his numbers were basically the same house left him last year in washington he was a great one of the reasons why joe cronin got extended in portland was because of that was how good of a trade that was i did uh i did daniels i mean i thought daniels was a no-brainer totally i'm a big he plays internationally you know i did brown on denver
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I put Kamara on my all-defensive team. Yeah. All of those are good. I'm not going to try to... It's a bleep show.
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Look, again, Team USA, I fell in love with him in the summer of 23. Why didn't you tell San Antonio?
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A lot of issues here. Because Steve Kerr is such a wonderful guy, Steve Kerr let the media, for that summer in 23, we were sort of embedded with the team. Me and Joe Varden of The Athletic, we were the only people really traveling with them. We went on the team bus when they went to the Grand Mosque. We flew on the team plane. Tim Reynolds from the AP was also there, those three of us. And...
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I was riding the bus with the players, I think to the airport or somewhere, and the players were questioning Austin about the contract.
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Yeah, yeah. And he's like, well, I mean, this is all off the record.
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The Spurs really seriously looked at it. The Lakers were given a gift when the Spurs didn't offer him the offer sheet. They were given a gift. And they were able to get him on a deal. Now, what Austin got was he got a player option after year three. Because the Lakers were not incentivized to give that to him. There was no offer.
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I will say that he got the player option. So after next year, he can opt out. And if he didn't get that and he was under this contract for two more years, so like it was a victory for him and his agent that, you know, because when you're a restricted free agent, you're screwed.
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So he got the player option without a good, if he got an offer sheet, but he didn't get an offer sheet.
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And he guaranteed himself tens of millions of dollars. And so he's set for life. His family is taken care of. And he's got a player option after year three. He did okay. But the players on the team were like talking to him about it. Like, yeah, man. Because he was great for Team USA. I realize nobody watched it. I understand that. And defensively, he was taken advantage of late in the rounds.
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Teams targeted him.
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There's no way you were part of Team USA. I actually almost didn't vote for him for most improved because in my mind, he'd already improved.
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He's year three.
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You can't give a guy on a max contract most improved. No offense to Cade. Or year four, whatever it is. Cade was on my all NBA team. So, yes. So, the... If Austin Reeves was making $37 million, the Mavericks could look at you and say, well, look, we can't have Kyrie and AD and Austin Reeves all making $40 million because we can't do that. If that was the case, I would get it.
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Like, okay, you can't do the trade. he's making like $14 million. And next year he's making like $15 million. Like it's one of the top five value, well, top 10 value contracts in the league.
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Yes. So that's my... In my mind, they should have gotten... Reeves, and the other first-round pick, and the pick swap. They should have gotten all of them. And I know what's been said. What's been said is that when Jeannie Buss heard about this, she said, we're not trading. And I'm sure Rob Plinka didn't want to trade them either. I'm not saying Rob wanted to.
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The excuse... that comes out is that, no, Jeannie Buss said, Austin Reeves is not being traded. And I'm like, okay. Then hang up the phone. We're trading you Luka Doncic. You give us what we want.
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Right.
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So I just... I disagree with the trade because as critical as I've been of Luca, I recognize he's a top 10 player, top five player, top three, whatever you want to say. Like you dream of having a player like that. He's an imperfect player, but I can close my eyes and I can see him holding the Larry O'Brien trophy in one hand and holding the Bill Russell trophy in the other. I see it.
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I can see it multiple times. I would not trade a player like that.
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At least not age 25.
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You should feel that way.
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One of the great lines... You remember when they had the press conference and Palenka was wearing that leather jacket? Yeah.
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yeah at the press conference yeah um i was texting with a high-ranking executive from their team and he was watching at the same time i go hey what do you think at this point the jacket you know because it was not it was not normal press conference wear no he looked like a john wick villain or something and he goes after that trade he could wear a speedo and it was just like right it was like yeah like um
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Well, that's what I think his, I mean, his agent, Bill Duffy is one of the great agents of the last 40 years. He's a hall of famer. I don't know if he's actually in the hall. I don't know if they put agents in the hall.
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I think with Bill Duffy, I shouldn't maybe share everything, but Bill's thing was they traded you to the Lakers. So Luka is, as you can see from the tears, it's like they traded you to the Lakers. Right. So let's take a step back and evaluate that you were traded to the Lakers. And I think Luka is coming around on that. We'll find out this summer because he's got to sign the extension.
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But isn't this great for LeBron?
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LeBron was in his headspace, was in a completely different place.
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They won game three to go to one.
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I've said this and it's kind of laughable, but League Pass wasn't as much of a thing. We couldn't watch it on our phones. But in 2010, when I moved to Miami, obviously Dwyane Wade was already on his way to being a Hall of Famer. He had already been a Finals MVP.
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But until I watched him play 82 games or whatever he played, 75 games, night in and night out covering the Heat, I didn't appreciate how freaking good he was. Like 25 games into that season, as you know, the Heat, that was very dramatic. I remember thinking, my God, is he good? And I know that's kind of weird to say, but like I had such an appreciation for how good he was.
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That's right. That's one of the reasons why LeBron left. I mean, there was a number of reasons why he left, but he was looking over at Dwayne and he was like, I don't, you know.
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One of my most vivid memories of my 22-year career covering the NBA was the locker room after Game 5 of the 2014 Finals. The Spurs- crushed him, fought 4-1. Kawhi was great. The ball's moving. Danny Green doesn't miss for days.
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In Miami. Yeah. I'm in the locker room in whatever they called this, AT&T Center, whatever they called it. And Battier retires, which we weren't surprised about. Ray Allen basically retires. That one, we were caught off guard.
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I thought he had one more at least.
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And he was like, yeah, I think I might be done. And we were like, whoa, Bosch is like genuinely relieved, like not upset, like, like almost like I've unburdened myself. Haslam... First off, half the team is about to retire. They don't all know it. Rashard Lewis doesn't know what he's done, but he's done. A year later, half the team wasn't in the league. And I'll never forget that.
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It was like they were happy it was over. It was such a finality. It was almost like senior year.
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Exactly. And so... When you look... Like, LeBron's looking around that room. You know, half the guys are about to retire. You know, Wade is, like, wheezing. Like, they spent the whole year... Tim Grover, who was, you know, Jordan's guy. Tim Grover spent the whole season in Miami working on Dwayne Wade to get him...
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taped together to get him to the playoffs now he ended up playing a couple more years obviously but like they spent the whole year just trying to keep him together for the playoffs LeBron is seeing all that and he's just like I thought he maybe would have come back for maybe one more year just to see I remember everyone got mad at me because on TV Cleveland won the lottery and I think which was I think before the game
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It wasn't a good lottery, obviously. It was the Wiggins lottery. It wasn't like they had done.
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So post-game. Uh, I, I can close my eyes and see the locker LeBron sits at. It was, you know, um, I, so when I think about cows win the lottery, he's like, yeah, pretty amazing. Huh? Like it was a little back and forth after that game. Like, um, cause they'd won two years in a row and like three out of four or something like that. Cause they won the Kyrie, uh,
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Kyrie, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins.
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Of course it's outrageous. We need rules. Of course it's outrageous. How is this a thing that's allowed? Yes, of course it's outrageous.
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Having said that, there were like eight teams tanking at the end of this year, something like that.
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I would have preferred that it didn't happen.
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But I kind of feel like everybody who knows what's going on knew, but everybody who didn't know will forget. So like I, I actually felt like it might have, my concern was that it would damage me with players because he's so influential with players. Yeah. That hasn't been the case so far. I've had more players come up and,
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not that all of them are, but I've had more support from players, current and former, than I thought I would get from them.
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in all honesty, I don't know because I haven't talked to him. I actually haven't seen him since. Um, McAfee, I've done McAfee a dozen, I don't know, eight, seven, eight times. McAfee would put up this photo of where he superimposed me as one of his high school teammates. He always used that photo. McAfee's show has all these tropes. That is a trope. He's put that photo up a number of times.
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I don't know what LeBron was thinking, but I kind of think when he saw that photo go up, he thought that was weird. Well, maybe he thinks I'm weird. Maybe, maybe he does. Let's put it this way. There's probably 15 things LeBron could be angry at me about, like that I've said or written over the years that he could legitimately be like, that was wrong. That was unfair.
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You don't know what you're talking about. Like, and he could have hit me with any of those. I've been like, you're right. Shouldn't have done that. I was out of line. Um, but what he accused me of was not one of them. So, but I kind of, I almost kind of think he saw the photo and he thought that was weird. And that's what he was reacting to as if I made the photo or something.
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This is three years in a row for you. I don't know about that. You don't think so? I think people in media who knew were behind me. I don't know about America.
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No, I don't. It was fine. I,
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Well, I think it's okay for media to be held accountable.
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Yeah, that's fine. But, you know, like, I don't think there's an understanding of the job. You know, there's not, there's not, there's not, that's one thing that's kind of being lost.
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I was really annoyed about. Couldn't handle the swings, but. I told him that I was annoyed about it and I am annoyed about it and he should get it back.
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I wish I had had the guts to vote for Dort. I said I was seriously thinking about it. I just didn't have the guts. But...
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Um, here's the thing about a media voting for awards were the best, bad, bad, where the, of all the bad options were the best, bad option. So like, and this is not speculation, um, They let the fans into the All-Star voting. Yeah. And the fans are like trying to vote Zaza Pachulia.
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And like, you know, with all due respect to LaMelo Ball, he's a great player, but he had no business being a starter in the All-Star game this year.
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Fans put him in. So the players and the media had to check on that. The players... First off, they vote for All-Star, and half of them don't take it seriously. You can see the votes, and like, Bub Carrington's getting votes, while they respect the Bub. The Players Awards, you remember that lasted for like two or three years? That was a disaster.
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Of course. One of the most amazing awards every year is the Executive of the Year Award.
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The other executives vote for it. It's like the pettiest award ever. Like there's bias and pettiness. And like, if you go back and historically look at some of these vote totals, you can't trust.
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Can you imagine? So the players don't trust the owners. The owners don't trust the players. The players can't be trusted to pick the other players. The fans can't be trusted at all. So is the media perfect? Hell no. But we're the best of the options.
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I know. And my colleagues don't like that their votes are public.
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Okay. So hold us accountable.
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Well, that is something that could happen.
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Yes, I definitely think that happens. And I think especially with the teams that you have to cover...
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And it's like, Hey dude, this is one thing that I do. And I did that this year, Evan Mobley and Jaron Jackson were, are both guys who, if they make all MBA, get the bonus. Um, Mobley is already in his contract. Jackson is eligible for the super max, doesn't have it, but he's eligible. So I have a rule that if you're close, I put you on, I did this with Jalen Brown, um, two years ago.
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Jalen Brown had earned it. He was second team.
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He earned it. That's a bad example.
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I put Jaren Jackson on. I put him on.
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And I'm not going to argue that with you. I'm just saying I have this rule that if it's close, I give it to him.
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I know.
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I always love talking to you.
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Can I just say real quick?
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I don't know if it's still available on the web.
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Anywhere. You and I, when you did your book of basketball to, what did you call it? When you did the podcast. Oh, the podcast. Yeah, it's on YouTube. It's on YouTube? We did LeBron's The Shot, right? We did the game seven.
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It's the most fun I've ever had doing a podcast. Oh, that's nice. And is probably the best, some of the best content I've ever done. We did it. We did it at the studio at the Rainer. Yeah, pre-COVID. Pre-COVID. I remember like coming across it like during COVID, like in, you know, in the darkest of times and listening to it. So if you are a LeBron fan or a Kyrie fan, you should go find that.
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I mean, all of you did a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Because now it's, you know, half a decade old or longer. But like, I just want to say.
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I loved it. Okay. All right.