The Hot 76ers and an NBA Chemistry Breakdown With Doc Rivers, Plus the Mailbag and NFL Picks With Joe House

This episode is brought to you by my old friend Amtrak. Being a sports fan can take you pretty far, even across state lines for game day. But with Amtrak, the trip can be part of the fun. Skip the driving, settle into your own seat, connect with other fans, and arrive ready for the action. The Amtrak Northeast Regional and the Acela connect major cities across the Northeast Corridor, making the journey part of the experience. I have taken this train many, many times. Visit Amtrak.com slash Spotify to plan your next trip. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we put up a new Rewatchables. On Monday, we did All the Right Moves. And on this Monday, we're doing Air Force One. It's on Netflix, so you have time to watch it. Super fun podcast. Meet Chris and Sean for that one. Coming up on this podcast, Doc Rivers, my old friend. He's not coaching anymore. He's going to be on this podcast a lot more. He came over and we talked a lot of basketball stuff and I made him tell an OJ Simpson story. And it's all really good. You'll have a good time. After that, Joe House came on, did a couple of mailbag questions and tried to figure out, I think it's week nine, Ringer 107 picks and how I can snap out of this skit of either going two and three or three and two. I'm just in two and three and three and two hell. I've officially become, I don't know who's a team that is 500 just year after year. I'm not. I'm not a team. Who is that team? The Carolina Panthers? No, they're not. They're not good enough to be. Maybe I'm the team big buggers. I don't know whoever I am. I want to step out of it. How's that? I'll be doing picks talking football. So that is all next. We'll take a break. My friends from Pearl Jam and then Doc Rivers. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm. Every football player brings something different to the field. Maybe they have a cannon arm, speed, power. Maybe they have their own podcast. That being said, no two players. Are exactly alike. And the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ All right, Thursday afternoon, Doc Rivers is here. He's not coaching this season. Fresh from Max and Helen's. Fresh from Max and Helen's and you got the waffle. I got the waffle. Super happy. It's amazing. I'm surprised you're not just like in like a diabetic coma right now from the waffle. I have a lot of energy. The waffle is like a top five thing to eat in L.A. It's a dessert. I'm glad you had it. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. It really is. Basketball has been going on now for two weeks and two days. Interesting. I have a lot to discuss with you. I like it. But we got to start here, though. So you're not coaching again, you don't think? Oh, no. No. You're looking at me. Well, you told me this three years ago. No, I didn't really mean that then, but now for sure. No, really, I love where I'm at in life. I like where you're at in life. Yeah, I'm going to Maui next week. I just came back from Portugal. I'm going. I'm going to New Zealand in four weeks. You're popping on here a bunch of times. You got NBC. You're going to do some games. I have NBC. I get to do games with Austin. I get to do games with Scal, with Grand Hill, with Tracy. I mean, all the guys I've coached. Right. I'm basically doing games with. Not Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons isn't going to be involved. Yeah, no. We won't be doing a Ben Simmons game. But so you like it? You're glad to have the mic in front of you again? I like the mic. I like that. I spaced out enough that I can enjoy life, too. So I get all of everything I want. And you're in the sweet spot right now because you just coached against all of these guys. You have a wealth of information. Yeah, I have great information. And, you know, I have great feel. I've been around it long enough. But knowing all the coaches, too. I'm getting so many calls from coaches. Right. I'm not going to give the name, but I was talking to a coach last night. He literally has never called me in his life. And we're talking. Yeah. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, now we're talking. He's like, what? Well, you were the opponent. Right. So now you're like the guru Yoda guy. I don't know that. But it's interesting how many you would think. You know, some questions are about ATOs and what I was looking for. But you know what? Most of the questions are it's about chemistry and, you know, about do you like this fit? It's really interesting. I should write a book on that, you know, because it's interesting. We've talked about that a bunch. And you were saying about that, the two-way contracts have screwed this up a little bit. You know, the Celtics have Conley at the end of the bench, right? And then Paul George, who's 36, who's super happy at his point in life. And those are the vets you can tell. I'm telling you, Bill, it's like the secret sauce right now. You look at last year in the finals, the Knicks chose to have veterans at the end of the bench. The Spurs, I can't think of the big center. Well, they had Kelly Olenek. They had, who's the other one? The African center. I can't think of his name. Oh, Biambo. Yeah. It was great. Like, he was the guy that would always talk to Wim Biambo. And I get the young movement, too. But when you're trying to win, you know, I always felt like you need a box in. Like, you need the front stars, the young guys, and the guys who are eager to play for more than just winning, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Then you need the back stars, the back older guys. So there's no way you box them in. Yeah. You box them in about winning. I've always felt that that was very powerful. But what a lot of teams are doing, the back end are young guys who have done that playing. They don't care. They want to work on their own games. They're frustrated. They're going back and forth to G League. G League and back. And they're frustrated because these guys, people don't understand. These guys have all been stars somewhere. Yeah. You don't get to the NBA without having been a star somewhere and not playing or playing in the G League. And they're looking at the guys right in front of them. I should be playing in front of him because everything's a competition. Yeah. That's not healthy. When you're trying to win something. Well, so let's do some chemistry stuff first. Let's go. Because I went to Miami and the Clippers last night. Yeah. Miami's playing tonight. Yeah. And, you know, I should force myself to go to more games, but I get lazy as I get out. They're all on the TVs. It's so nice. It's just so much easier to watch seven games at once. But you just pick up so much. So one of the things I always look for, and I know you love this too. What's going on on dead balls? Yes. Are guys interacting? Are guys looking at each other? Are guys? Are guys touching? Are they high-fiving? It sounds like weird, right? But Duncan would always come over. No, the touching thing. He'd put his arm around everybody. Garnett would do the same. Bill, the year we won it, I think I've told you this before. Harvard did that study with touching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we had the most touches in the league, meaning just people grabbing, holding. Fist pump. The Lakers were three that year. Yeah. And the bottom five were the bottom five teams in the NBA. Right. So, like, chemistry matters and touching matters. Being connected matters. And the eye contact. You know, always, I could tell, like, if guys are talking, especially the number one and two players, if they never acknowledge each other, if they talk but not really, they talk away. Like, he's there, he's talking this way. They're not connected. And it takes time sometimes to get there. Early on, it may not be ready yet. But I've seen teams. You could make the case of the Knicks last year. Brunson and Carl Anthony and the rest, they were not connected. No. Yeah, and you could see it. And then it came together. It came together. And once it was connected, you can never unconnect it. Well, that's why. So, Miami's early. Giannis just got there. It was just five ships passing in the night for two plus hours. And they're not talking. During dead balls, they're just going in different spots. Spolstra is kind of the one talking. Bobby Portis is trying to get people going. Yeah, Bobby's being Bobby. Coming in and out, right? But for the most part, just seemed like a disconnected team. Fourth quarter, they give it to Giannis. They just have him start going downhill. Yeah. Trying to hit the basket to get back in the game. Clay hits the big three. They all go nuts. But I left the game. I went with my friend Mike Tolan, who I think you know. Yeah, I know him. And we were just kind of like, man, weird vibe with this team. But it's early. It's early, but. It's early, but. You know, Giannis is, you have to learn how to play with Giannis. It's unusual that you have a player that's not like a great shooter, but still a great scorer. Yeah. There's certain type of things. That have to happen. The spacing has to always be right. And you feel like you're in a way as a player with Giannis, if you're in the wrong space. Right. You can feel that last night. And he feels like you're in a way. Yeah. If you don't have the right spacing. And so you can see they're still working on that a lot. You know, I don't know if the right prescription, and I felt this in Milwaukee, Giannis with the ball in his hands too much. Isn't that as good as Giannis? You know what they did last night? They didn't do that for the first three quarters. Yeah. Yes. And they fall way behind. Yeah. Last quarter, they flip it. And now they play like that. And then the other thing they did, they had him in the corner sometimes. Yeah. And bam at the top. But then they would flip them. But then sometimes they would try to get them involved from the corner. It would be like this late post-up. Yeah. The dunker. Oh, you have space. We'll push up over there. I think Giannis, when he doesn't have the ball, is always hard. You have to figure out where to put him. We have to guard him. Well, that's why I love him as a roller. Yeah. You know, He doesn't love rolling, but when he does, Think what, when they won it, and he had that last, the last game, he was amazing. So, but if you toss that, yeah, you toss that game out, the games they won is when Drew had the ball or Chris Middleton had the ball. Right. Yonzo was the picker and the roller. You look at the first two games in that series, he had the ball all the time. So it's a fine line that you have to walk with him. Now, open court, you can throw it to him and let him go, but you got to have your space in right. He will, I think what they've already found, he's an extraordinary passer. That surprised me. Yeah, I noticed that last night. When I took the job in Milwaukee. Wow, he's got a great vision in that way. All right. But with the ball at times, he doesn't have great feel. You know, he's an interesting guy to coach and to play with. But if you get it right, he can change your team. And it's hard to get it right. It doesn't seem like the athleticism is where it was at his peak either. That was the other thing. No, it's not. Because I remember like the year. The year after they won, they played the Celtics. Middleton was hurt. And it was basically like Giannis against this really good young Celtics team. And he was so fucking scary. Yeah. That whole series. He was overpowering them. I don't feel like he overpowers them quite the same way anymore. He doesn't overpower as much. He can sometimes going downhill. He's not the defender that he used to be. He's that noticeable last night. I felt like towards the end, people were attacking him off. They were trying to get him to switch on him. Because weak side off the ball, he's fantastic. Right. And he's. You can attack him on the ball. And I think that's what teams are doing now to him. That happened to LeBron too over the years. Yeah. Still great on the side. But teams that actually go at him no more. You know, my last couple of years coaching, if LeBron was in an action, I wanted to go at LeBron as opposed to letting him. He has such. LeBron's IQ is genius level. Right. So. Well, he's the old guy in the pickup game. Figuring out where his spots are. I always tell people my last couple of years, I couldn't even move. Yeah. I play well. My brain. Yeah. I just, well, he's going to do this. You know, you kind of can figure it out. And that's where LeBron's at now. Yeah. With still being a hell of an athlete. Well, I wonder. I like LeBron's role right now. Love it. Well, so that's a good chemistry team. So my, but you know, obviously there's a lot of personalities and egos. Yeah. You're throwing a team together like that. Jalen's in there. And from what I've seen so far, there seems like a lot of joy. It seems like they've all accepted it's Maxie's team. And LeBron. You know, we're watching these guys. You don't know what's really going on, but LeBron seems super happy. It's the happiest I've seen him in a long time. Yeah, in a long time, right? I don't think he was ever that happy in LA. No. Like this happiness. I'm not saying he wasn't happy in LA, but this is true happiness. I think he's kind of, you know, I don't know if it was Bill Russell or one of them guys was talking about young players playing with old players. It's like the young players kind of, the old players kind of pull the young players along the right way. But the young players push the older players to play better and harder, you know? And you feel a little better than that. And I've got to say, and I've told you this before, Tyrese Maxie is, if you describe personalities, and I like doing this as weather patterns. Yeah. And I do it all the time. I've done it this week twice with other coaches. They call me about a guy, and I'll say he's very sunny. Right. You know, like when he walks in a room, do you bring sunshine? Everyone listening right now knows there's a person, every time they see them, they get happier. Yeah. They also have a person, every time he walks in a room, there's a cloud behind him. And Maxie's one of these guys that he can fit on any team. I was telling Grant Hill, if he's not on the Olympic team, you're crazy. Right. Because he's just going to do good. Even if he's not playing, he's just, he smiles. He's happy. He's competitive. And he's a phenomenal basketball player. Um, but you look at their team. Okay. At the five top three center in the NBA. Top four. Yeah. Top five when he's healthy. Okay. I don't trust him being healthy. If you look at Maxie at point top five. Yeah. Top four or five. You look at Brown at the three. One of the better forwards in the league. Top three. So we're talking about, and we haven't mentioned LeBron. Yeah. In that. And LeBron or whatever he is, top five, you know, a four right now. And then, uh. And then BJ, one of the best young athletes. You know, the top five defender at the two spot right now. So when you look at that makeup, but I still think, and I've said this before, anybody can go out and get the stars. Yeah. It's the other guys. And I think that's where they hit the home run. I mean, obviously getting LeBron. The Simons thing enraged me. Simons. But for nothing. He was 13 million for two years. Yeah. Cardwell Pope. And Dean Wade. Dean Wade. Cardwell Pope. Cardwell Pope was terrible last year. Yeah. But he's perfect for this team. They brought him back. Yeah. And because he's winning, he's playing a role to win. Guys like Cardwell Pope late in their career, they can't play on a bad team. It just doesn't fit. They're trying to play right for other guys. Now he's in the perfect role. I love Simons. Simons was great on the Celtics. And what's cool about him is he's not consistent, but he can win you a half. Yeah. Like every four games. Or every five games. He could just lead. He looks better too. Like he looks like this year he's accepted his role even more. Yeah. Like, so they got, I mean, right now, they're the best team in the NBA. They're going to be hard to beat. Interesting. You know? Well, they've certainly, the end of games last five, six minutes, they're getting stops. Yeah. And Maxie can get by and get shots wherever he wants. Joel can get foul. Yeah. Joel still has that 15 footer he can make whenever. He still can shoot the ball. Yeah. He isos you. You can't switch a small on him. And then LeBron just gets his stuff. You know what LeBron is? He's just going to get 20 to 30. 23 points. LeBron is who I would love them to have been like early in his career, even though he had the score. He was too good. Yeah. But I've always looked at like, he's the second, he's the closest to Magic Johnson. Right. To ever have played like as far as being big and able to facilitate LeBron's vision is still underrated. Yeah. Like he, he's not a great, good passer. He's a, he's a great passer and he sees it early. It's the Swiss army knife thing. And I think that reminds, like magic could have gone just kind of anywhere in Central Europe. And that's what LeBron is doing now. Yeah. You know, and it's perfect for him. You notice they're playing him at center. He can play anywhere. LeBron, you know. He's kind of like, I like this. I can, let me, please add this to my resume that I played center on a 55 win team a little bit. Well, Bill, you've seen LeBron on the street. Yeah. And I, and I say that because people, this summer I'm at Riviera golfing and LeBron and Draymond Green and Rich Paul are there and you know, I went over to talk to him. Yeah. I mean, I've been, I've coached against him his whole career, you know, every time you see him in golf gear or street clothes, you're like, no, it looks like a freak. This guy is the biggest human being on earth. And then when you look at his weight, he weighs more than Carl Malone. Carl Malone was the biggest thing in the NBA at the power forward. LeBron weighs more than him. He's faster than him. It's just an incredible athlete. He really is. Cause you always think about like tight ends in football are huge guys. Right? Like Gronkowski is huge. Small. And yeah, LeBron would be four inches taller and 30 pounds bigger than every tight end. Gronk came in the locker room when I was coaching the Clippers and he's standing next, he stood next to Blake. Right. I mean, Blake made him look small. That's another one we did. We did a pod two weeks ago. Just a huge guy. He's 6'9". Even as a retired guy, it's like, just like, you're kind of like, oh shit, I forgot you're 6'9". He's gotten a little smaller, but he's still humongous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with what you said about the Lakers that I never, maybe the only time was the COVID season, which they ended up winning when he was, he still had his fastball Davis was there. Yeah. I always felt there was a Kobe piece to, to him in LA where it was just clear. This is such a Kobe town and he, they were just never going to fall for him in the same way. And he goes to Philly. Yeah. Everyone in Philly is like, we love having you. This is unbelievable. This is our guy. Thank you. I think it'd have been different if it hadn't been COVID. Like COVID actually hurt his love in LA. No question. Like they want to, they want a title and you can say what you want about the COVID title. It was different. Yeah. There's no doubt about that. Uh, but they would have been one of the best teams if there had not been COVID. And uh, well the three teams were your team, the bucks and the Lakers, one of those three teams were going to win. Yeah. In normal circumstances. Yeah. And so when you, it hurt him because they wanted, it was almost like people denied the title. There was no parade. Yeah. It's unfair to him because he didn't have his day in LA and then he came out of COVID and they made the trade. Then they got turned into a bad team. So what people saw with LeBron is the year before COVID in LA, they were awful. Yeah. The year of COVID, they were great. No one saw them. Yeah. And then after COVID they were bad again. Yeah. So for the most part, the Lakers fans never saw a great basketball team and then the thing became this disruptor. Yeah. I'm still that. That deal still, it's every time I think about it. You were coaching when that happened. So you got, you just got a text that that happened and you were like, wait, what was the trade? Yeah. You know, I was in Milwaukee in my apartment and our PR guy texted and I told you this, I literally said that would be crazy if that happened for real. Yeah. That's what I text back. I text that back because I didn't see it. Yeah. And he said, doc, no, this is real. This was the trade. This is the trade. And I was like, no way. Like it was a, no way. Yeah. I think there's going to be a book in 10 years that explains something. It has to be more than what any of us know. Well, now it worked out great for everybody because. No, it worked out great for the Lakers. Well, but it also, Dallas ends up with Flagg. They get Flagg, who I love. Now, you could argue maybe you didn't need all the pain to go from Luka to Flagg. That's the point I'm making. At least they got Flagg out of it. Flagg's one of my favorite young players because he's about the right stuff. He's a lot like Maxie to me, just about the right stuff. But my gosh, Luka is the best scorer in the NBA in the last whatever amount of years. Yeah, where would you put him against James? Because it's a little similar with the heliocentric. He's different. They are different, even though they both hold the ball forever. And even in Luka's heyday in Dallas, people never talked about it. But, you know, they killed James Harden for having the ball. But Luka actually had the ball more in his hands. And no one ever said that. It was really interesting. But it is different. They're similar in the way they hold the ball. It feels like Luka does this action quicker than James. They both are extraordinary passers. The only difference is, and I've always said this, and James actually disagreed with me, and I still believe it. When James wants to just be a point guard, I think, even though it takes away from some of his scoring, I think, overall, he's a better player. And it makes him even more dangerous. He was like one of those actors that couldn't decide whether he should do comedies or dramas. Yeah, that's about right. Just kind of bouncing back and forth. And he was so good at it. And it's hard for a guy to hear that, knowing that, wait a minute, I led the league in scoring. Right. I scored 36 a game on my point guard. Now you're telling me to be a point guard. In our team, I thought, yeah, you're still going to score 25 because he just scores anyway. So with Luka, I agree with you. I think he's a better scorer than James. Yeah. He has the ball a lot, but it's also like it makes sense, especially if you have the team they have. And his stats are basically, he's like 38 a game right now. 38-8, Nate. Yeah. But the way their offense is rolling, that actually seems like it's conceivable that's where he's going to end up. Oh, I don't think he'll be far off. He has the ball. He shoots the ball a lot right now. Is 40 conceivable to you? I mean, that's, because they've been playing on shitty schedules so far. They play the Clippers twice, the Kings. It's not because the weight of the league, eventually someone will do something this year that throws them off for five or six games where he has to figure it out. He will. I don't know if 38 is conceivable to me. I don't either. It's like one where you're hurt. You get 13 points because your knee hurts. The number to me for him is 36. 36, 35. But if he stays at 38, it's just absolutely amazing. MJ did 37. And right now, but MJ did it at 52%. Kobe, 35 was his peak. What separates MJ from everyone else is when you throw the field goal percentage in. Right. Also, we were both there, and you were there actually playing against him. Yeah. There's been nothing like that. Never. I feel like he, especially if we had all this stuff now, and people get mad. The newer generation of fans, get mad because they're like, we don't want to hear this. Talk to the old guys. I'm just telling you. I love the new guys overall. It would have been 45 a game for him with the rules. I love the new guys. I am not. I'm an old guy that celebrates the young players. Yeah. But MJ was, there's nothing, there's never been a player like MJ in the NBA in history. He had everything. Yeah. A lot of the guys had a lot of things. MJ had everything. And the best thing he had was the mind. He was just a tough SOB. Um, just mean as a snake on the floor, believe the game should be played a certain way and took offense when it wasn't. Right. Uh, if you did something dirty, like the little trick I used to do by hitting guys, elbows with my fingernails, he lost his mind. One game against me. It's the game where we're grabbing each other's, uh, shirt because I finally got called for it. And I complained about it when he came at you. Yeah. I, I finally got called. I did it three times and then, you know, it makes you take a bad shot. Yeah. Uh, and it's hard to see. It's, it's really a clever move. A lot of players do try to do it. Um, I got away three times in a row. He like hit the side of the backboard, hit the corner of the rim. And then they finally called and I was like, what? And it, it, it like, and raised him that I was trying to act like I didn't do it. And that's when he came up and grabbed, like grabbed his shirt. Cause I had to have to keep acting. I couldn't, I couldn't say, well, I actually did it, you know, at that point. So that's what I loved about him, but you know, what's crazy that there's so many crazy stats with MJ, but the last three years they won the title. That's the craziest stat. They never lost. What was it? Three games in a row ever. Yeah. But more importantly, he played every game. He played 82 games and all the playoff games, all the games. Yeah. It's his energy was incredible. The thing that, that, so I've always said that Utah game, the game, the last game where he made the shot, but the, the entire game is the great. Greatest game. I think anyone's ever played just because he had to play it exactly that way with the pace and pick his spots. Pippen's like a shell of himself. So I've talked about that before. And the closest I've ever seen was LeBron in game seven against, uh, the Celtics in 2018, same thing, but all 48, man, six. Oh, game seven, the Cleveland game seven in Boston, 2018. Yeah. Well, game is game six. Miami was, well, that was, that was against you. Yeah. Yeah. That was just, he would, he went nuts. Yeah. Yeah. The game seven, 2018, he was like, I have to play off 48 minutes. How am I going to do this? That's right. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. How am I going to came to the pace of this? And that, those are the only two guys ever I've seen with the capability of doing that. Yeah. You know what Michael didn't get credit for was the steal. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, no one talks about him alone, but he snapped back from the baseline and stole the ball. I mean, that was, that wasn't a call play. That was an instinct. That's, that was phenomenal. Pretty. You look at that talent back then. It's pretty rough. Oof. The guys that are in those finals games and the point total, like one of those games, I think the jazz had like 55 points. Yeah. That is one thing about now we have, there's just the craziest amount of talent I've ever seen in my life. I think this is the most talent in a long time. I don't know if it's. Like the rookies that came in this year? This is the best rookie class. Holy shit. I was talking to Lawrence Frank last night because I can talk to him, you know, and Was he asking if he knew where he could find some alcohol? Yeah, I know. You know, if you know Lawrence, Lawrence has more energy, you, you know, can you imagine him right now? Just not being able to be involved. I can't imagine. I, I text him all the time and I, I say Lawrence, he calls back in a minute now, but yeah, it's like he, he needs something to do cuz Lawrence is a basketball fanatic. You know, it's not fun. It's watching that Clippers team. They're not very good right now. No, uh, I only saw one, they don't have scoring. They only have one guy who can beat you off the dribble girl. And you need, you need like five to be good. Yeah. At least guys that can, uh, attack closeouts, like you don't actually have to be a great off the dribble guy, but you have to have, if you have a shot and a counter move to put on the floor versus closeouts, you're pretty good. Uh, Ingram, they really need him back whenever he comes back, they need him back desperately because now at least you have two guys you have to focus on right now. They just have no offense. So Miami started playing defense near the end. Yeah. And. You know, where it's like 24 second shot clock violations, fall away three pointers with one second left. You start Hachimor hit the backboard on the three. Yeah. It was like, oh, we're doing this now. Yeah. Strews came in and made a shot. I mean, it's good to see him back, but they just need more scoring. I worry about that Wagler pick. Now I need to see him more. I don't, I don't have an opinion one way or the other. It worries me that he can't go by anybody. Yeah. I think he, um, is one of those good players. He can shoot the ball. He can really see the floor. But I think he's one of those players. You put them on a good team. He's really, really good. Like really good. There's a Halliburton kind of pace. Yeah. Yeah. But how about to go? Yeah. How about to go by people? Yeah. He didn't have the speed. So what he does is like. Halliburton should be the MVP of the league. Cause every time he leaves. That his team. Oh yeah. That team completely falls apart. I've never seen that before. Like every team in the NBA can lose their best player for a couple of games. They play all right. Yeah. But when Halliburton doesn't play, they don't win. It's, it's a different basketball. Basketball team. It's unbelievable. Now they do have other injuries. So Wagler. It's where I, I want to see him more. Cause he likes having, he likes contact. He likes having guys on his side. Yeah. And kind of playing off them, but he doesn't go by people. Acuff goes by people. Yeah. Acuff is, I mean, he's, he's real now. And he's just on the wrong team. He's a TBD. Some of his shots. And right now. I think he's thinking. I can. I'll shoot. I mean, I really believe that's how he's playing. He takes some shots where if they cut to the coach, the coach would just be like. Oh boy. He can pass the ball too. He's a hell of a passer as well. Wag, what I, what I worry about with him right now is you're right. He likes getting guys, but in college, he was the strongest guy. Right. He's the weakest guy now. And the pros, he's the weakest guy. And so that's why I have faith in that. He's going to be a better player. Cause he's going to get stronger. Yeah. Right now. He's just not. I wish they had taken Burris. I like Burris, but. He's good. He's good. Yaxo's been great. Boozer. Peterson's the one that I think. people are starting to panic about a little bit a little bit but I'm still high on Peterson yeah he's just too skilled uh Boozer I gotta tell you uh Bill I I watched Boozer closely in the last four or five college games and I wasn't that impressed interesting um and now I love him I love him if you watch uh I watched the New Orleans game he didn't play great he just does he's a winner like every he's always in the right place he does the right things he has no flash to his game and so you mistake that sometimes with being slow and he's not yeah he shoots the hell out of the ball rebounds the hell out of the ball he picks when he picks should pick he rose when he should roll he's in the right spot um he's been taught well like he is a straight up winner it's a good way to put it I always call those guys additive guys yeah they're just like additive guys yeah they're just like additive guys yeah they're just like additive guys yes and there's nothing everybody likes playing with them people like coaching them even if they have a bad game they're still doing like four or five things changes demeanor yeah like he would be a dream guy to coach yeah and I really put you put him on any team yeah the team's gonna be a better team even a bad team they're gonna be a better team interesting I talked about this on my Tuesday pod it's interesting Utah didn't take him yeah because it fit he feels like the most Danny guy to me he really does I actually and he and his dad played there and it's Danny loves athletes yeah and I think that's probably what swayed him like when he got seduced by JR yeah yeah he loves that exactly he loves athletes so yeah because they I talked about Tuesday there's this alternate universe where they have Kessler and Boozer together and instead they have Peterson and Triple J who never plays yeah I don't know what the deal with Kessler like I love Kessler uh I just didn't want to pay him I don't know yeah I just I just I don't know I think they like the trade they got all these picks back but it's like cool you just gave up a center everybody want but I don't know I thought that was a great trade for them but I think Kessler's a type of guy that can play in any era and and and can help your team I mean listen a rim protector is a rim protector yeah and and around the basket around the basket he's deflecting he rebounds the ball I mean it's the Lakers are not a very good defensive team yeah uh but without him they would go down historically as the worst defensive team in the history of the game he's he bells them out well my guy Tybalt's finally getting yeah he's finally one more chance he's actually playing well I'm happy for him I didn't think he loved the game enough I just thought he you know kind of was this flower wasn't life or death for him yeah he just wouldn't but I honestly right now watching him play it's like he's he's kind of realized I was almost out of the league yeah and it's funny a lot of those guys just they get out of the league um right he kind of he's a smart kid and he kind of realized you know what I gotta get to cooking here and he's driving the ball he's attacking his confidence he's a hell of a defender gambles too much you know yeah he always led the league in fouls from reaching and stuff like that but man he's solid if I was ever a GM maybe there's still time I'm a big you have to have one elite skill guy I don't care what it is yeah but if I don't know what your elite skill is I can't I can't I'm not buying you and at least with him it's like this guy's really tough to score against he at least has that he's an NBA defender yeah he's hard to pick he keeps coming uh his rear contests like um you know the game where if you go back when we're in Philly we played Golden State and it was it was the next game Steph broke the record yeah and you know me as a coach and I love Steph I mean he's a he's in the family yeah yeah but literally I was literally saying in the family I do not want him to break the record tonight and you go back and look at that game it was all Matisse uh he guarded please yeah he guarded the hell out of him you know because Steph takes those shots and here comes Matisse from behind you know with those long arms he recovers yeah you know and so yeah he's he can really defend speaking of Steph we talk about chemistry yeah Golden State if you watch I remember texting her after the first or second game I was like oh my god I'm gonna go to Golden State I'm gonna go to Golden State I'm gonna go to Golden State oh my god what are we gonna do about our guy I'm more confident now I'm I've done a 180 yeah Yaxo is kind of Yaxo Yaxo was like plugging in yeah there was no electricity it's amazing it's like he's he's kind of giving him like real energy you know guess what because he's he can actually create offense he can play and he can play he can guard and play different positions yeah exactly what they needed they they couldn't have drafted a better miracle person like it's a perfect fit here's my concern with Steph all right he's 39 yeah and I keep hearing people even you've said it uh we talked about this you know so they got Yaxo they have all these picks you know their plan is in a year or two it's like in a year or two in a year or two Steph will be on the PGA tour right before he'll be playing basketball you really think yeah I don't think he plays more than two or three years you know so this is year I think I would say three seasons right but uh I don't think he'd want to be in the Olympic team again I don't know I think he should be how do we not have him on the Olympic let me say this if Steph retires next year when the Olympics come they should still put him on it exactly he's gotta be on that he's always gonna make shots yeah um but I do I'm so concerned by that like okay let's say in a year and a half they finally get the right team now Steph's 40 I just don't want him wasted so this is more of a concern like but what are you saying that you want them to trade everything to make be good this year next year only if they because that's how I feel only if they can get the right thing I'm rooting against the Wizards but yes I'm hoping they trade all these draft capital because at the end of the day once Steph leaves all this draft capital doesn't mean as much because you're not going to get a Steph so you're not going to be as good you're going to Golden State's going to go through a dry period uh let's right now I don't know I would argue the league is open enough with the OKC injuries and San Antonio's young and yeah so I've been rooting against Washington um which one of my best friends Joe has but I want I want them to get to the Davis yeah I think it'd be perfect and I and Davis is a classic can you just be paid year to year guy yeah he would be perfect don't give him two years three years a great passer great shooter yeah uh and and the league is willing to deal like there's guys out there yeah uh you know Steph or Steve though he's not gonna take a bad guy you know yeah and that's to his credit if I could do my coaching career over again I would have fought more for that like you know I took a lot of Danny and I we we were gamblers well Mikhail was like that too yeah we we were some next players like I played with guys like that yeah yeah we we we can fix that's exactly right but when you look back on that you're like no they're they change a little but they are an example of it working out like in your career were you at a guy who was like kind of on the precipice house was not known as a great team guy kind of kind of a wild card turned out to be a great team guy yeah and he turned out to be phenomenal yeah with our basketball team so he would be a a good example uh of it's probably a couple more that I'm missing yeah yeah Mikhail was famous for that he had a stretch of Minnesota where he was just going problem after problem yeah with that attitude of like I don't know the worst thing that happened to me was in Boston especially even in Orlando I had success like the first year I had some names I had coaches you can't tell and we had a very uh I wasn't coached here we had and now all of a sudden you're the coach that can handle these guys no no no reputation no I'm not nobody can handle nobody can handle these guys but and and you can handle one maybe have two three and four on your team you're in trouble so do you think there's it's conceivable that Golden State could be like a team that can handle these guys yeah I think it's conceivable that Golden State could be like a top five team in the west with one trade with one trade yeah yeah that's how I feel yeah but it's gotta be the right one and I don't know me Anthony Davis obviously but uh Washington and where it's I don't know how much Washington you've watched because AJ's good right away like he's got it Washington's in a tough spot because it's like so you double down on that or what do you do I don't know there I I would AJ is great right um uh he has it if I'm trying to win in parts but yeah uh boy they're in a tough spot because what you can't do anymore you can't have bad contracts well they just gave out the Trey one they yeah triple downed on Trey yeah who can't shoot no but I think he can oh you mean Trey uh Trey Young yeah yeah yeah yeah well he's a shooter who then the shots don't go in no well he's a shooter can the shots go in for you to take better shots they go in right you know right I mean Paul Pearson I had that big argument in my first year I had that big argument in my first year I had that big argument in my first year and I said he said I'm a great shooter I said well not with the shots you're taking that with this percentage I said so either you're taking shitty shots yeah or um you're not a good shooter it's one of the two wait so when you caught Paul this is a good this is a good like to bring this to the current league now like guys who are in bad situations for a couple years and their habits can kind of stick sometimes if it's not too late and I think there's a couple guys like that now I think I still like I might be the only one who still likes Sabonis yeah because I know he's too expensive. You're higher on some bones than I've ever been. Yeah, yeah. I still feel like in the right stitch, but he's been on so many bad Kings teams that I think everybody's just quit on him now completely. Yeah, I do think. It's just like there's a world where he could be good somewhere. He's a hell of a player. I've just, I don't know what he does, if you can win in the defense. But I can tell you one thing. He would be, he is not happy with the losing. And of all the players, like, this is killing him. Yeah. And I don't care where he goes. He'd be better fit. Like, he wants out. He didn't have to say it. I'm saying it, you know. Right. It's just, you know, we haven't heard from him since he left Indiana. Like, he's been. Yeah, they had the one light the beam season. Yeah, yeah. And that was a good season. They basically lost the round one. And then they lose Mike Brown. Like, I mean, just, they finally win. Think of the logic. They finally win. Mike Brown turns them around. Give them, you got to give them credit for that. And then they just, in one year, he's gone. And you can't say that Mike Brown was a bad coach because he just won the NBA title. And he turned that team around. You know, Mike Brown's also taking the Cleveland deep. I mean, so he's won a lot. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures, Wild Horse 9, John Malkovich, and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Starring the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner, Martin McDonough, writer-director of The Banshees, Amina Sharon, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s. Filmed on location on Easter Island, Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents, Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey, and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Now playing only in theaters. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor. Core Power Protein shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle, available in 26 and 42-gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more. It's time for a new segment. It's called Greatest Plays of All Time. It's brought to you by State Farm. We've witnessed some legendary plays throughout football history. Truly legendary plays. Plays that can never be recreated. They're designed for that precise moment on the field. The same reason why State Farm helps personalize coverage because you need a plan designed to suit your unique situation. I talked about some iconic plays from history the last time. My favorite play of this season so far, 2026 NFL, was actually against my favorite team, the New England Patriots. We had the Bears. I thought, we were going to get a stop. Caleb had huge pressure in his face. There were hands up, and he zipped a line drive over the outstretched fingers of the defensive lineman to the one spot. I think it was a dunesay who had to catch it like this because if he had thrown it straight to him, it would have been tipped. And it was just the perfect quarterback play. It was everything you would ever want from the best guy on your team. And plays like that are a big reason why I think the Bears are a legitimate Super Bowl favorite. But I think that was, the play that stood out to me over everything else I've seen this season. When it comes to coverage, you need a game plan that fits your unique situation. Kind of like how Caleb was unique to make that play. State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. If you could coach any team right now, just that it would be fun to text you about during the season, it would be New Orleans for me. I don't know how you coach that. I don't know how you coach that team. Like just how anyone would. I still like them. And you liked them before the season. You were like, that team has a lot of talent. I like them. And I was like, that team's a mess. They're a mess. But I still like them. I mean, last, the other night, so I'm doing that on NBC. Oh, and they blew the nine point lead with a minute left. Yeah. And so it was, it's like the NFL version of the red zone. Yeah. And we clip over to the New Orleans game. New Orleans up nine with like. It was like 70 seconds left. Yeah. Yeah. And I, when they say it, I said, man, this game's not over. And Scal started laughing. He's like, what are you talking about? So I'm telling you. Yeah. They just do crazy stuff right now. Yeah. And you can see it. Turnover. They, they had one possession where they just dribble the clock out. Waste of possession. They showed a picture of poor Jamal. You can see him like about to implode. Yeah. And then they came out with a great play. Score tied the end. And I, I would bet my life. That ball was supposed to go right to a pocket pass to Zion and Murphy keeps the ball right. You know, he wanted to be the hero. He wanted to take the shot and like, I'm thinking Zion going downhill at an angle is unguardable and they had it. Yeah. And they just didn't make the play. So they've lost three games that they've taken. They, they figured out how to take a win away. Yeah. The Denver one was the worst one. Yeah. They had a win and they literally took it out and said, we'll lose. So either that's going to turn around and they're going to get hot. It's so early or it's going to go the other way and it's going to go really bad. It's I've seen fears look like the worst part in the league. Yeah. And then you see him on a different end. It's like, wow, fierce. Well, he lives up to his name. He has no fear when you play like that's all he plays for the good or bad of it. You kind of need one of those on your team. He reminds me of those guys from like the late seventies, like all those, all those little point guards that were just like, had no fear at all. He doesn't. I mean, he's tough. Uh, you know, he has to learn how to actually be a point guard at times. Portland is the opposite. We're also a super weird team, but they've actually figured out kind of what their identity is. He's got everybody going downhill. I'll be, it looks even better than it did last year. Dame is back. Dame's been great. Talked on the podcast since Dame became Dame again. Yeah. He's been great. I've talked to him probably three or four times. He said, what happened? What's your take on. He's just happy. Yeah. He's happy to be at home. Uh, and you know, like Dame, you gotta give him credit. Um, he, and he taught, he told me this, he's like, man, we, we made it clear whose team it was early. Uh, and he said that, and that was coming from Dame and jaw. Like they, they gave, they gave the other kid, you know, it's your game. You're talking about Danny. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure it out around you. Uh, Dave's just at a great place in his life right now. He really is. Like when you coached him, he was like shell of himself. Damn. Yeah. He's straight out of nowhere. He's getting divorced, getting divorced, trying to figure out how to film in the office. It really wasn't ever welcoming the way he should have been, in my opinion. Uh, you talk about by players or by the city, by everything. Yeah. You know, um, and he really, you know, he was, he had a lot going on in Portland. So he, he was traded. You couldn't have traded them for him at a worse time. Yeah. Uh, the biggest thing with that trade is, um, like you just can't trade drew. Yeah. I always thought once I got there, uh, it's a man. If, if drew had have been there with day and you're honest, that team would have been so much. You can't trade drew without putting on condition that they can't then trade him to Boston. You're talking about a backfire. Like that was unbelievable. I don't know if you're allowed to put conditions in trades, but that should have been more, but I will say I would have put the odds. I don't know. Five to one that Dame would look like Dame again. I don't know. I just had the insight. After that, Injury in his age? I have some inside information. So you would have taken the bet? I would have taken that bet. Just little guards at that age? Especially what he was going to do. Like, he's going to not lose his shot. He still has that dangerous, like, little. Like, Dame is super athletic, but he's never played that way. He's played at Gears. Yeah. And so he can do that in his sleep. That's how I looked at that. Unbelievable, it turns out. They get him for, it was like, 13, 14. They just pay him last year. They don't care. They're going to suck anyway. Yeah, and he's still getting paid. And then, yeah. And now they have him at this. Well, he's still getting paid from Milwaukee. I know. Yeah. Was it 22 a year? Yeah, so he's doing great. He's a happy man. I didn't like that. We argued about that when you did that. Yeah, well. That was a desperation trade. Yeah, I'm going to have a no comment on that one. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that was. Take the no comment. Not only was it a no comment, it didn't turn out good either. No. It just didn't turn out well. It did not. I actually don't mind the gamble. You have a guy. But you know now, like, you just should have traded Giannis that summer. They just weren't ready to do it. They weren't ready to do it. No, I don't think Giannis helped in that either, though. Yeah. In John's defense, I thought Giannis kept yo-yoing, you know? Yeah. I think when I look back on that whole situation, Giannis wanted out, but he was a buck. And he didn't want to be the guy. He didn't want to be the bad guy. He didn't want to mess with the legacy. He wanted John and Wes and those guys. your personality. and your energy um you gotta sit with your team you gotta talk with your team and i thought you can't just be like you and your brother yeah that enabled him to not do it and it was easier for him to not do it uh you know when they had drew uh and brooke and chris middleton they had a lot of leaders having your brother around was fine but once they all left and it was just lebron it i mean just uh yannis yannis needed to just give himself to the team not to anyone else so i i i think it's great for him there i think it would be worse because now he has someone he wouldn't he wouldn't engage yeah with these guys and for them to take that next step they're still not there you can see it yeah they have to learn how to engage with each other do you think that's different for non-american players to be a leader of a nba team of rich adults um not with actions no like your actions luca yeah they all love luca like um he gets along great tim duncan was a non-american kind of you know tim duncan was an alien yeah he was but he played on one leg for the last half of his career average and he gave himself to the team so no uh you know joker does too in his own way so no i i think it's uh there's sometimes a language disparity yeah right you know in greek as crazy as it sounds you know he when he was on the bus with his brother they start talking and i didn't even like that i was like i don't know what you're saying right you know so it sounds like you know every time we've ever talked about yannis sounds like you loved him i like now it's a lot you just loved him as a dude i liked him you love coaching him yeah but you're also like a whiff frustrated with something yeah he's um he's it's not easy yeah it's not easy plays at this crazy downhill pace um he's really a and he's really a difficult guy i was telling someone this he he has this great passing ability but he doesn't necessarily have the super iq at the same time it's really a strange thing and he really has one way downhill force force for like every play he wants to force it and there's times he didn't wish he did one thing i wish he learned how to execute better yeah he's one of those guys that you get a lot of them from the u.s um au guys that have never needed to execute because they can do it on their own right where but that doesn't help the team and like i think and i told me yannis this the thing he needs to still learn is the value of execution how important it is when you're in practice and then shoot arounds to lock in on execution uh and and now he has a coach who is as good as there is in execution well it's hard when you've been able to your athletic ability is so dominant exactly that that can carry it yeah but that's good for him yeah and what a lot of players don't know yeah i don't need that i can do that yeah you can't but for the team that work you have to learn how to execute i thought it was interesting last night he was out of bounds he was the passer you know and he made a great pass i mean the guy was so damn open how about how do you not i know tyloo was probably in the huddle being like hey here's the one thing i don't want to give up is an open clay thompson corner three to right where the guys can we please not do this i literally have a memory of people's end of the game yeah and and and that was one of spoh's favorite plays like um the double pick yeah and and so the clippers were switching everything the problem with the way they ran that is your back is to the pick yeah so you're gonna you're gonna get nipped off the only thing that the clippers made a mistake is the guy guarding the ball you got to take the baseline in a way the when i'm at the end of a game side out of bounds that ball has to go that way it was a young kid you could see him he actually opened up yannis almost he threw a bounce pass right like his arm should have been standing there that pass should have never been allowed put him there just put him in the corner yeah yeah just have him standing where it worked out yes but now you got three seconds left i'm betting everything it's going to play he's got a clear now you can see everything yeah yannis can see everything anyway he's big so chemistry cleveland now you had that game when you were doing the game on monday and i hate talking about chemistry when i'm not actually there you even talked about being there to being on tv but from afar and i said it i said it at a halftime they asked me what's uh cleveland's adjustment and i said joy how about some joy like they just i don't know i've seen only two games uh and unfortunately they're both oklahoma right but they don't they don't seem to be like vibing i don't even know what the word is bill there's from afar it just feels like there's something that uh like the donovan james thing um and i think i i don't think i'd ever say this but i think it's a good thing i think it's a good thing um and i think i i don't think i'd ever say this but i think it's a good thing i think it's a good thing this james doesn't have the longest hands enough like he never like the other night the first oklahoma game i said james is not involved as much right um it looks that's how it felt you got a lot of mouse to feed yeah they need to spend money on peyton watson yeah he's good when he has the ball that was my fear with them i still went over on their that was like 49 wins yeah i how is everybody gonna be happy with this watson was phenomenal when yogich was out because he had the ball in his hands that exactly time and is is watson like this is where like when you are putting a team together and i and like i love watson as a player but on the calves he's not gonna have the ball he's gonna be reduced to a catch and shoot player a lot you must want to see him on a team like brooklyn yeah where he can play where he can get downhill uh and then go grab a great shooter and put him on cleveland because you got james and and and uh donovan there's not gonna be a lot more ball handling then you got to run your mobile player every once in a while yeah you know who mobley is mobley's a damn good basketball player yeah um i think we keep waiting for him to be this great score uh mobley reminds me a little bit of scotty pippen in in a very positive way uh the problem is no one wants to hear it like it's not enough scotty and phil jackson said this one scotty was dang good at so many things he can never just be a score he just is good at too much and i feel that way about mobley like mobley is good with passing great defender you know trying to make him a score is a mistake to me you know just let him play yeah it's like when you used to have to run the one post-up play for pert yeah get out the way early what did it happen in the game well you're jump hook yeah we had two rules never throw run the first play for kg because he would break the glass because he was so fired up right he would not make the head buddy in the basket yeah i learned that one early and tips and i used to die laughing about it like we know who not to run the first play for i remember my those first couple south of games my dad would we would talk after and he'd be like kg's just insane yeah like i didn't realize he was so crazy i didn't either bill i felt like i didn't believe it yeah like when kg came i thought the world of him yeah but the only thing i wasn't buying was his energy i was like there's no way okay how does he keep that up every game that can't be true and then in rome after three practices you're like oh this is real and it and it's still real when you're around like that now he is no who which player now would be that's a great talk about like that i think that player exists well i know who it could be who i don't know uh wilson the rookie oh you like him i love him i told you about how he fouled hugo from behind yeah i'm 40 with 50 seconds left just hard fouled i love this kid now he may have given the greatest rookie interview in sports history yeah you know when he hadn't played at all he played first summer league game they asked him was was he happy to be back and he says happy man i got a coach fired like to say that as a rookie yeah about hubert davis is who he's talking about because because he got hurt he got hurt and they hit you know they tanked the rest of the season to have that awareness i'm like man this kid is built differently um he he can do everything compare him to t-mac your first orlando year now t-mac was obviously 30 points a game yeah t-mac had played three years in the league though but yeah he to me he looks like a slightly taller t-mac would be his yeah i've been asked a bunch to compare him and i think it's closer to kg than t-mac interesting in some ways you know that's where you look at errors what if kg had played in this era he'd been a three-point shooter easy he would have been a five oh well that's why i think with mobley i still feel like there's another piece of his career where he's just a center because i don't think what we think of centers now i think the biggest advantage for him would be to be the five well he actually plays the five one of the things i think kenny does a good job of doing is that when you look at the game they don't play again until the third quarter uh i would just never want to play them together yeah i know there's good advanced metrics there I just don't like it. I would want more firepower. Because you've got to fight it. You've got to decide who you are. If you're going to play both of those guys, then you need to be a great defensive team. Or you have to be the best rebounding team in the league. Exactly. If you can play one of those guys, you can be a great offensive team. And if I've got James and Donovan, I'm going to go the offensive route. You've still got to play defense because you can't win a title doing one. The last, what, 30 years, you've had to be in the top 10 in both, in the top five and one. So you've got to do both. He's on my trade list. Yeah. Just because I think that team… Allen? No, I think Mobley. Because… I think if they traded one, it would be Allen. I'm not reporting that. I'm just saying, like, that's a guy if I'm another team. Oh, yeah. And I'm making a list of, like, who do you think we could get? Actually, either one of their babes can help teams. The problem with Allen is they extended him. Yeah. I don't want to pay a center 30 a year. The problem with all these guys is when you make a trade, the numbers, you can't make a bad trade anymore, Bill. It ruins your team. Well, that's the Allen thing. Yeah. What's the right team? We don't think he's a top five center. He's right there. He's above average. He's not as good as Joel. He's not a top… I don't think he's a top five center. Yeah, okay. I don't want to pay any center that's not Jokic, Embiid, whoever, more than $25 million a year. You can't pay anyone anymore. The days of you being the second best player, and so the days of he's not a max player, but he's in a max player situation are gone. If you're not a max player, you're just not a max player. Is that Chet? Because I feel like Chet's right on that fringe of you might be making too much money. He's so young. He's going to hurt three times in five years. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about his injuries. You know? And then Franz? Franz is over 40. Same thing. Franz can't shoot. Yeah, the Magic, that's another team when you look at chemistry. Yeah, I don't like that. I don't like how they fit right now. They have these injuries, too. I mean, they're injured every year. Yeah, why is that? So, I don't know. You're in Orlando. It's nice and happy in Orlando. Sun's out. There's golf courses. Yeah, it is nice. It is nice. My whole theory with this injury stuff is, and I believe it, and I've said it, for three years now, four years, if you don't play basketball, you're going to get injured. Period. And I'm not changing from that. So, you're talking about the training camps aren't long enough? Nothing's enough. Yeah. There's no practice. There's no practice time, Bill. Like, before the year, when you get your schedule, the coaches map out the whole season. Oh, man, this is going to be a great practice day. In the middle of the season, we have two days off. You get to that day, you schedule, you schedule all your stuff, you're excited. And then about an hour before practice, the science guys come in. All right, he's out, he's out, he's out. He can run. Where are the science guys? Where do they come out of, a van? Yeah, that's what it feels like. Where do they come from? Yeah, your whole team. You know, you have some. He can run, but no contact. He can do contact for 20 minutes, but no one-on-one physical contact. And you're sitting there like. So, this wasn't happening with Cliff Levingston, and Antoine Carr? No. Can you imagine Mike Fratello? You know, the greatest, the greatest Mike Fratello. Someone asked me about Mike Fratello. I said, my favorite Mike Fratello story is, he had heard about strength coaches. Yeah. This is my first eight years. There was no strength coaches until I got traded. One assistant coach, no strength coach. Willis Reed, and Brendan Sir, Ronnie Rothstein. Yeah. You know, so Mike decides, for a training camp, going into a camp, he's going to get a strength coach. And I'm like, okay. So, the first day, the guy has these jump ropes out. And we jump and rope. And then, he wants us to lay on the floor. All of a sudden, the whistle blows. Mike Fratello says, hey, get the F out of here. That was it. That was it. Strength coach fire? It lasted literally 40 seconds, 40 minutes. I mean, 20 minutes, and the guy was gone. I never saw him again. Yeah. Death of the strength coach. Because he could see us laying on the floor. You know, the guy's got. You're getting sleepy. We're like, this is. And strength coaches are important. Don't get me wrong. But that was funny. It's just now, they do all this loading stuff. All this stuff. But they don't play basketball. And you can't mock basketball. You can't. You got to play it. So, I had a whole thing I did on Tuesday about the schedule. Because Kurt Goldsberry, for us, wrote a really good piece about how the league's getting younger. It's getting younger. And the old guys and just the shelf life of players, it's now starting younger and it's really ending younger. It's because of the two-way, though. That's why it's getting younger. We talked about that. There's a two-way. It's easier to have a guy making $810,000 versus $4 million. And you can bring down to the G League. It's so much easier to run your team financially that way. It's not necessarily good for your team if you're trying to win. It's not good for a coach. Yeah. Because you have all these young guys you got to take care of. But we were talking about. Different things with the schedule and how much I think basketball is harder. Our friend, Eddie Johnson, furious. I went on their show yesterday. Furious at me. Thinks it's got to stay 82 games. It was just as hard when we played in the 80s. Yeah, I don't buy all that stuff. It was just as hard. Travel was even harder. So, you had travel was harder. The eating habits were terrible. All that stuff. We flew commercial. And the biggest thing that was harder was the floors. No one talks about that. Our floors, it was laid on cement. Yeah. The floors are like springboards now. So, a lot of things that are better. I think the training was harder, which was better. Yeah, because like Bill Fitch would have these famous practices where he'd run these guys three days. I played for Pat Riley. Yeah. Okay, like when I got traded to the Knicks, I was at UCLA. But you got hurt playing for Pat Riley. I did. Well, the second year. But when I got traded to the Knicks, I remember Magic, Byron, and James. We were at UCLA. We were at UCLA playing pickup games. Think about it. That's what we did all summer. And they were laughing. It's like, oh, you're done. You are done. Your legs are done. That's what happened to James Worthy. His career was done in 12 years. Yeah, because Magic Rouse was at the extreme of it at that point. Like a drill sergeant. And they were right. Like, those practices were. We practiced every day. All right. So, what's the middle ground of this? Because I agree with you. I think the middle ground is a little bit longer preseason. Yeah. Not games. Practice. Let them play. Let them scrimmage. Let them play more basketball. And if you're going to have these practices, you can't have a bunch of guys in white coats over there telling you they can't play. They have to play more basketball. The second part is the scheduling. I think we've hurt ourselves by doing every other game. Every other day. Again, there's no practice times. Let's add a couple more back-to-backs. And that's crazy. This is great. A pro back-to-back? Yeah. I've never heard this. Unbelievable argument. But home-and-home back-to-backs. Okay. Try to add more home-and-home back-to-backs. And the reason you're doing that is because now. Because now you can practice in the office. You're giving more off-time. So, you're saying like when you played Monday. Like the Celtics played Monday in Houston. And then Wednesday at home. Yeah. No. So, you can't practice. You're flying back. You're not practicing Tuesday. Now it's just game-game. It's just game-game. And you go a month in some of the schedule. There's every other day. Yeah. It's just. There's nothing. There's no recovery. There's no practice. So, the league thinks they're helping the players. And I think it's. For the day off. I think it's backfiring. I think if you added a back-to-back. A home-and-home. If you can do that somehow. Figure out how to add a couple home-and-home back-to-backs. Because that's. That one team's. And then. The team that's coming in on the second game is not playing a back-to-back. You are. But you're home-and-home. So, it's no advantage either way. I like this. So, you would stay at 82? I would. And I just think you can be done. I just. Well, you like money, though. You'd want to make the most money if you're playing and coaching. Right. If you go back to when all these guys came in the league. All this, you know, load management. Just go back and look. Injuries didn't go down. Right. They've gone up. Yeah. So, why? Because then that. The guys aren't playing enough basketball. Do you like my sneaker theory? The low tops are actually. Maybe not. Is that a good idea? Well, I was a pro low top guy. Okay. Yeah. So, that's. But you did tear your ACL. I tore my ACL. I sprained my ankle all the time. Yeah. I just didn't like high tops. And I was forced to wear them. I wore them half of my career. I couldn't stand them. I used to think, this little piece of leather is not going to stop me from spraining my ankle. I hated high tops. Yeah. Yeah. And when you got older, Bill, you needed every little bit of leather off of you. Right. Right. You needed every. That was too heavy. Yeah. I don't know. I've heard the shoe thing, too. A bunch. People say the arch isn't high enough anymore. It's too much pressure. I mean, I have Chuck Taylors on. Right. No, I didn't play in Chuck Taylors, but they're flat. You know. I don't know the whole show. I'm not smart enough to know that. I just know if you're going to be good at something and you want to be better at it, you got to do it. You can't mock it. So, you think if we went to 70 games and you had more time to practice between games. It would be awesome. It wouldn't hurt to. You don't think that would make the league better, though? Yeah. It may. It may. I'm not against that. I just think you could still do 82. and do it well, too. Would you do it where it's 82, but nobody's allowed to play more than 70? Oh, you mean players? Max amount of games you can play is 70, but the season's 82. No, I would either do a 70-game schedule, but then guys got to play 70. Okay. You know, I just think we're missing. I think where I think the players struggle now is execution, learning how to play together. Yeah. And that's because how can they? Well, and then the rosters are changing so much every year. Rosters change every year. Look at that Milwaukee team. Those guys are thrown together this year. Guys don't play long enough. Yeah. Don't practice enough. Yeah, I think we would see a better brand of basketball if they had more time on the floor working on it. End of the game plays would be amazing. Defenses would be great. I think every coach would sign up for that. All right. Since you're going to be on a lot this year, I have a couple. Quick games for you. Just either ors. Maxi or Cade. You could have one or the other for the next five years. Well, it's unfair because I love Maxi. I know. I just love the kid. Now, if I took the love of Maxi, Cade's just bigger. I'm always going with size. I think that's the right answer. Yeah. And yet, I'm so impressed with Maxi. I love how he just gets his. I was talking to Tolan about this last night. He just gets his. He gets his stats. He'll have eight points in the fourth quarter, but he'll go on those Maxi runs, and he'll get 12 points in two minutes. I agree. And Bill, you're right. He didn't get them where. I'm not saying he's chasing them. I'm just saying he ends up with the stats. He doesn't get them where they ever look like he's trying to get them. Maxi is. Maxi doesn't know what he has in the game. That's what I love about him. Right. You don't see him doing that. If you asked him how many points he had, he would. I don't know. Yeah. Like, I love guys like that. I love guys. I love guys where I think they have, like, 15 points and they have 29. Yeah. Those are the smooth. You're like, you have 29? Those are the smooth guys. I'm at this game. There's a lot of guys, some really good players like that. Who would you keep out of Paolo versus Franz? Paolo. Probably. Yeah, I just. Talking to someone about that, and yeah, probably, because I like the way Franz plays better than the way Paolo plays. Right. Because he's a downhill, quick decision player. I do think Pablo is just more skilled. You know, he can do more things, and. Paolo's the right answer. Yeah, and if you needed a. He has a. I always look at, like, who can close the game better. Would you keep both? No. No. I wouldn't either. I think. I said that last year. This summer, I was shocked they didn't do anything. You know? I just thought that they would move one. And you know what's so funny? It doesn't mean that one's not a good player. It's just players don't fit sometimes. And you're trying to build a great team. And to me, it's a team that doesn't fit. Now, here's the only problem. How do we know? They haven't played together much. Right. One of them's always hurt. Yeah, it'd be nice for them to have a 20-game run together and see what they actually could do. They just have never done that. The Chicago Bears. Come on, now. It's. You know, someone just made a comment. Chicago's a Bears town. And that's not taken away from any team. The Cubs. It's a Bears town that had a decade-and-a-half-long Michael Jordan cameo. Yeah, but still was a Bears town. Right. In 85? Yeah. Come on. Like. They are a joy to watch. Right? And this is what I would say. Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson's a phenomenal coach. We should mention you've been a Bears fan your whole life. My whole life, yeah. From Chicago. This is straight emotional heart. Yeah. But I will say this. Caleb, I wasn't sure about. And I was sure about his talent. I wasn't sure about his leadership. It was like one of those NBA young guys where you're like, is this guy having it or not? And I think his relationship with the gym, his relationship with the coach, I think he's aware that at USC, they felt like he was an individualist. Always talked about I, I, I, myself, myself, myself. Stood out individually. Always did things to bring attention to himself. And I think he's been made aware of that. And he's actually trying to do something about that. You know when I first noticed that? When they signed Bajan to the extension like a year plus ago? And Ben Johnson just went out of his way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to talk about what an awesome teammate he is. Yeah. A leader. Yeah. And this is what you need at this position. And it felt like he was co-talking to Caleb. Like, this guy, the way he behaves, I want you to do it. But he never said Caleb's name. You can see it. Like, even Caleb catches himself now. He actually, after they beat Seattle, which was a beautiful game. It really was. He started, he was saying, man, one thing I like. And in mid-sentence. Caught himself. He started saying we. Yeah. And I was like, oh. He's aware of it. He's trying. And I think his teammates feel that. They feel like this dude is really trying to be with us. I didn't tell you this, but after they beat the Pats, and I was in Boston, I just went on and I bet them they'll win the Super Bowl. I hope you're right. And now they're like the most popular Super Bowl pick. The odds have dropped. They're like 8-1 now. But, you know, they won. And it was like, oh, the Pats. And Drake threw this dumb pick. And I was like, we played well. Yeah. Like, we played really well in that game. They beat us. Yeah. That really. They've won some impressive games. Yeah. And then they kicked Seattle's ass, too. This is a crazy statement. They have to learn how to beat the Packers. Right. I'm telling you. Like, last year. It's like a baggage rival. We won two miracle games. But if you look at both of those games, the Packers outplayed us throughout. Now, this year, Caleb was hurt. But they just. They went up and down the field on us like no other. That's the last demon to me. The Bears have to figure out a way of just beating the Packers. Head-to-head, straight-up, both teams played their best. Right now, they haven't done that. Well, he got Dennis Allen's kind of his tips. Yeah. Because when they played us, and they had these eight. They're doing the Flores thing. They got all the guys up. Some guys are coming in. And I don't know. I thought it was hard. Now, they got Simmons. Simmons is huge. Because they do like playing a lot of one-on-one. Right. So, now they can have four-man rush. Yes. Yes. Then they can also do the Blitz thing. And they get Swift back, too. Like, so, it's funny. They're adding to their defense. Yeah. You know, one, from injury, guys getting healthy. And two, come on, that trade. I mean, that's. Yeah, you give up two firsts, but they're the end of the first round. You have an absolutely loaded juggernaut team. The thing I hate about this whole draft capital first, well, you're not getting them for free. So, you traded a 26-round pick, a first round and a second round, for the third-best defense. Like, yeah. Right. It's even. You're not. No matter if you. If you kept those picks or not, you're not getting better than what you got. Well, you're also getting a guy that's never been to a Super Bowl. No. Who's one of a beloved teammate. Yeah. And a loved guy. It's a little Reggie White Packers-ish. Just like a whiff. And a good chemistry guy. Yeah. Because he loved them. You know, he loved them in Tennessee. I wish you luck with the Bears. I am rooting for you. You had a nice little White Sox run, too. White Sox was the most fun baseball team. Can I say this about the Brewers, by the way? The most well-coached, together, team, they were, like, fundamentals. Like, forget all these analytic numbers. They played baseball, like, the old-fashioned way. They granted you. They were down in half the games in the playoffs, and they won. And you thought they were still going to win. You actually knew. It was impressive. It was impressive. I wanted to do, because you're coming on a lot this year. Yeah. We'll end every podcast with a Doc story that hopefully. Hopefully, we'll get cut out as a YouTube clip, and people will be like, holy shit, I can't believe that story. Yeah. I think you have to tell the O.J. Simpson story. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, the relationship part. I mean, there's a couple different stories. Yeah, I have a bunch of them. I don't know which one you want to tell. Well, I knew. But I think you have to tell the O.J. story, because you're. So, you come to play for the Clippers. I come to play in the Clippers. You have the most interesting year of all time when you're on the Clipper. We had the riots. And you become friends with all these celebrities. All these guys. Including O.J. Simpson. Including O.J. Simpson. O.J. and I, Marcus Allen, Al Collins, we would go to the Brentwood Market over there. I don't know what it's called now, but we had lunch all the time. Like, I had. I bet I had 20 lunches with him on game days. You know, he loved lunch at 12. That's when I had lunch, right after shoot around. And we would have lunch. And then my ex-father-in-law, we were at dinner at the Ivy. And O.J. and Al Collins walk in. They join us. And to my. You know, after the whole murder thing, my father-in-law, until his dying days, that was still, like, one of his greatest stories. Oh, that he got to meet these guys. That I had dinner with O.J. and Al Collins. But this was pre-everything. This was pre-murder. And then, no, but no. Then the murder, and he's still. My father-in-law's still alive. Right. So he's still. Still defending him. I know Al. I know Al. I know Al. He's a great guy. And then the craziest one, and David Robinson, Vinny down there, girl, uh And I'm missing somebody. Avery Johnson. We were at dinner on Montana Avenue. This is when OJ was in prison. And Al Collins is in the restaurant and he walks over to the table to say hi. I saw him. I didn't even know what to do. And do I go say hi? Yeah, because you had like 30 lunches and dinners with him, right? Yeah, but it's kind of. Yeah, what do you do? I haven't seen him since. So anyway, he comes over to say hi. And he said, hey, I'd love you to talk to OJ. And I'm like, what? And I said, no, I'm good. And I was telling you guys, I walk away from that. And we were talking about it in the car. Could you talk to OJ? Did he have a phone? Did he have a cell phone? Could I talk to him? So you think he had a cell phone? I do. I think he had access to talk to people. And Al Collins wanted you to just call the juice. Yeah. Be like, hey, it's Doc. Yeah, just check it in. And I was like, nah, I'm good. I'm not doing that. But it was really strange. So Brentwood, Countrymeyer, it's you, Al Cowling, OJ. Yeah. And who's the fourth? And Marcus Allen. Not as much. But Marcus joined three or four times. Because him and OJ at that time were very close. Right. And it's crazy. All of a sudden, all this OJ stuff. I mean, Larry's story is hilarious. Right. The day of. The day of. One of the murders, he saw him at Riviera, you know, and, you know, it's not a joke, but you can joke. And he said, I should have asked him to play another 18. Right. None of this would have happened. You know, so, yeah, it's crazy. Speaking of Larry, we'll end on this. Did it get resolved at the club that Larry just left after nine holes? No. What was the fallout from that? It's still a fallout. Is ESPN going to cover it? Like, how does this play out? I think there should be some conversation, live conversation about that. Yeah. He believes he did the right thing. So, it's a foursome ahead. Two foursomes we play every Saturday and Sunday. One foursomes ahead, one's behind. He's in the foursome behind. Doesn't like how he's playing. But the problem is there's a bet. Yeah. There's always a bet. The two best balls are the group. If one guy jumps out. It screws up the bet. And Larry was having a horrendous round, which we all do in golf. Right. And Larry thought his round was worse than anybody else's, is the way I looked at it. Yeah. And he said, "All right, I'm done." And I wasn't there, thank God, that day, because I got all the texts. And there were guys, they were pissed. Like, "You can't quit. You messed up the bet." And so, the group in front got upset and said, "Bet's off." So, we need to start a judge show with a judge where golf grievances come in and the judge decides on the golf grievance. If you did a golf grievance show, you would be here for hours. There's so many. There's so many things that happens on a course with grown men arguing. It's unbelievable. I love it. Well, he's tried to capture some of it on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He really did. He had multiple storylines. Yeah, maybe too well sometimes. All right, Doc, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. See you in a couple of weeks. I think we covered everything. Yeah, good start to the league, though. Good start. Really good start. Good to have you back in my podcast life. Well, we didn't talk about Oklahoma, which is sad. Oh, we didn't? No, that's. Well, you know my take. I think they're going to be fine. The Jalen Williams thing sucks. They're going to replace the. The minutes for every. I'm not counting them out yet. I'm not counting them out. They're going to be right there. You know why? If they get to three minutes in a game, they're winning. They got the best closure in the NBA. And the three-guard lineup that they kind of have to play now, it's still pretty hard to defend. But they are not as good defensively. You can't lose those guys and trade Lou Doerr and think you're going to be a better team. Well, they obviously traded Lou Doerr because they didn't feel like he was Lou Doerr anymore. Well, he can make shots. You know, he's such a liability on offense. He hurt them last year. Yeah, he hurt them. So, they lose on defense, obviously. Yeah. But I do think offensively, they can patch it together until April. They get two of the guys back. And McCain gets to play the role he wants to play anyway. Right. Because as they said in Philly, he's shooting it. By the way, we didn't talk about Wemby having 52-28. Greatest stat line. Whatever. Whatever. The Wilt storyline. It's a Wilt Chamberlain stat line. Did you watch that game? I watched the second. The second half. Come on. Flag was psyched out. I zipped through it when I got home from the Cooper game. Did you see when he blocked one flag? When he had to block three guys in a row? Yeah. And the first one, Flag, that was a floater. Right. From the elbow. Wemby came from under the basket. And you could see Flag, like, shaking his head. Like, you know, like when you get hit and you're trying to get the caught one. He was basically, how the hell? When you coached against Wemby, did you have to, like, tell your guys? Like, hey, this now doesn't work? No, you don't have to tell them. They just know. They're instinctively scared. There's no other player in the league, no other player in the league, that there's an awareness of where he's at than Wemby. Yeah. I mean, he had guys, I don't know who it was. One of our guards pump faked a three-point shot. Wow. Tells you. So you played against Manute and Mark Eaton were probably the closest to this. Yeah. But Mark Eaton was two inches shorter. Yeah. Manute was interesting. More like Wemby. Yeah. In fact, there were so many times where I could see Manute at the free-throw line. I have whoever beat. Yeah. But you know he's behind you. But I didn't think he can get to it. Yeah. I thought I was fast enough. And somehow, bam. And you were always shocked. Like, how did he get that? That's what's going on with Wemby. I feel like if we had advanced metrics in the late 80s, Manute would have played 35 minutes a game. Oh, my gosh. I think they would have realized what an absolute asset he was. He was so disruptive. I couldn't wait until he went to the bench. Yeah. I just don't think people knew because it was so odd to watch. All you know as a player, you did not enjoy playing against Washington. You didn't want to play against him. You knew it was going to be. Especially me. I wasn't a great shooter. So I needed to drive. Right. I thought he was pretty good. Yeah. So you would say Wemby versus Luka for MVP. That's right now. But who would you lean toward? Because if Luka is going to go 38 a game the rest of the year. I just think we discount defense too much. I agree with what Wemby said. And the fear of somebody. Last year. Yeah. Like he was. Wemby was top three MVP last year offensively. Yeah. And no one counted the defense part. I think the voters dismissed the defense too much. I thought about it. I just didn't feel like he played enough. Yeah, he didn't. He didn't. The right guy won. The right guy won. I don't think we've heard the last of Joker. I'm telling you. I'm worried. I'm worried. I tried to reverse jinx it on Tuesday. I talked about how I felt like Apex Joker was finally gone. Because he's not making threes anymore. No. In the last year and a half now, he's struggled from the 3.9. And I worry about him. They're an interesting team. They're not playing well. But what's weird is Murray is playing great. Yeah. I wouldn't want to play them in the playoffs. I mean, they almost beat Oklahoma game seven. They're not going to beat anybody if he's not making threes anymore. No, he needs to get back. I just think people play five feet off of him. He's a freak. But him shooting threes changes the game. That's why Wimby is so good. As good as Wimby is. And one thing I'll say that they've added. He's added. The shot he missed against the Knicks was the right shot. You remember they ran the pick and roll. They threw it to him on the elbow. That was just bread and butter. He just missed it. He ain't missing that. Right now. I forgot to ask you during the chemistry combo. Starting the three guards together seems to be so clearly we don't want to make any of these guys mad. Yeah, probably. But they get along. It's probably the right thing to do, too. They have unbelievable chemistry. So I disagree. I would not start the three guys together. And I wonder when Tobias comes back. Who would you bring off? I would bring Fox off the bench. Oh, you can't. Fox has to start, to me. I think Fox is way better than we remember. It's hard to knock out of last year's. So who do I? Yeah, if you start Fox, who do you sit? Or do you leave it alone? I can't sit Castle. So now I have to make Harper my sixth man. But they clearly did this because they didn't want him to be a sixth man. Yeah, I think he absolutely wanted to start. What I thought it would have been a problem he had, and I don't. I think that team is pretty well together. You know what I would do if I was running San Antonio? I would do like a two-hour. I would take McHale, all the great sixth men, and just give it to Harper and be like, look, it's here, too. Well, I've tried that. I've shown that. It doesn't work? It does with some. You know, like I had Jamal and Lou Williams. They wanted to come off. Can't you just do the, hey, it's who finishes the game that matters? Lou Williams got pissed when you went to start him. Yeah. You know, he was great. Right. But it is tough when you. And really, like, one of Red's genius things was he realized it's not the best five players should start. Right. It's whoever's finishing. Yeah, he needs one of the top three players to come off the bench. Yeah. You know, and that worked. It's just in this generation. That's kind of what the Celtics do with Pritchard. That's exactly right. He's their fourth best player, but he comes off the bench. Comes off the bench. And they, you know, it's what Indiana in the slow version do with McConnell. Yeah. When you come in, they play a whole different way. I don't like starting the three guards. I don't mind it. You know, we'll see when Tobias comes back and gets right. 32% from three for them this year. Yeah. Which I don't like either. They lost last year because they're not a great shooting team. That's their only Achilles heel is they're shooting. If they can make threes, you're not beating the San Antonio Spurs. But you go back in the playoffs, they didn't shoot the ball well. And if they don't shoot the ball well, they can't win. Well, this was great. We talked about all the teams. We talked about OJ. We talked about the Bears. And Larry quitting after nine holes. Yes, we got good stories there. I'll see you in a couple weeks. Thanks for coming on. This was fun. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. If you're building an all-star breakfast lineup, you need a few key players. A sausage McMuffin with egg? Sure. Crispy hash browns? Absolutely. A small coffee to wash it all down? No question. And right now, you can get all three for just five bucks. That's a pretty stacked breakfast roster. Get a sausage McMuffin with egg plus hash browns and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower. Than meal pricing. Prices may be higher for delivery. Somewhere out there is a Chevy truck. And the person who drives it, well, that's a Chevy person. You probably know one. Your buddy. Your sister. Ones who always show up. They're the first to rise, the last to leave. They always have that little extra something. And maybe you've got it too. Chevrolet. Together let's drive. Visit chevy.com slash trucks to explore the lineup. All right, Joe House is here. It's Thursday. He had some oral surgery on Monday. Thank God that that was the word. Yes, I did have oral surgery. You're healthy and happy. I did. Mostly healthy. Yes, yes. This is the worst gambling weekend of the year for football with all the terrible quarterbacks. I just can't believe how much crap is happening. Including we're doing this before. Thursday's game with Baltimore's third stringer playing on a Thursday night game against Jacksonville. But you go through. We have Carson Wentz. Gardner Minshew has a job now. Why not? Justin Herbert's still playing. Yeah. You go through and it's we have Drew Locke is in our lives now. And he might even be coming up and ringer 107 for me. Should there Sanders will be playing this weekend? Speaking of speaking of guys that might show up and Joe Milton. And Joe Milton, among many favorites. It's gotten to the point where J.J. McCarthy is not even one of the seven shakiest quarterbacks in the league, and now we believe in J.J. McCarthy. Not an eyebrow raiser in any way, shape, or form. I have some mailbag questions before we get to our picks. Okay. This is from Brian Godish. He theorizes that Gardner Minshew is the McRib of NFL quarterbacks. here's his case nobody knows exactly when he or the sandwich returns when they return people get over rationally excited does that include Joe House absolutely you're kidding me the McRibby announcement is always like you know almost as good as you know the announcement my kid was my wife was pregnant with my kid close to that weirdly passionate fan base Joe House belongs to that available league wide nationwide every year. And after two weeks, you remember why Minshew and the sandwich was only available for a limited time. Well, you only need it for a limited time. It's a two weeker. It's like, Oh, I really like Minshew, but you don't want to be going back every Wednesday for the McRib and maybe not Minshew either. I like that. The McRib. That's a good one. The McRib. Very good. I remember being in Washington, D.C. once watching Minshew light somebody up with you. Oh, I thought you were going to say watching me eat a McRib or two or three. Well, I've definitely watched you eat a McRib or two in your day. Pete in Falls Church wants to know if we've ever thought of releasing an edited version of the podcast for those of us who listen with kids in the car. He says it shouldn't be too difficult now with AI tools. He's a big fan, but recently had to explain to my wife where my four-year-old learned the phrase, eat a big fat dick, and it didn't go over well. That segment stinks up on you. I have no regrets about eat a big fat dick. And I do understand the sentiment that he's sharing. I was much more worried that we were talking about pre-cum and him having his four-year-old explain that to his wife. Colin in Portland, Oregon said, Hey, Bill and house, I'd like to submit the Seahawks offensive coordinator for this week's eat a fat dick award. How many more times do we need to watch two terrible run plays and a third down pass sailing over JSN's head immediately followed by the camera painting to this guy. It looks like he prefers a monster energy drink over a third down conversion. That's Kubiak's replacement. I don't even know who it is. I think it's Danny Kelly. No, it's not. I'm Flory. His name is Flory. It's like a hockey name. I will say it's unfortunate when you have a circumstance where the successor can't live up to the standard set by his predecessor. I mean, he won the effing Super Bowl. And on top of that, he doesn't look the part. I mean, you know, I'm not out here to judge, but I did used to make fun of Matt Nagy quite a bit, showing up on the sidelines looking like a hobo. Uh, so I feel like it's fair enough. I'm not quitting. I'm not quitting the Seahawks yet. Yeah. Pete Donahue in Homewood, Alabama writes, am I the only one that feels uncomfortable watching Monday night football with Aikman and Buck? It feels like I'm at a couple's dinner at a nice restaurant with another couple that everyone knows is getting divorced and they can barely hide their disgust for one another. Dinner conversation doesn't flow. Lots of eye rolls. They're only staying together for the kids. They're dragging down the evening. is ESPN really going to do this to us through the rest of the football season, through the super bowl? I feel completely the opposite. I love it. I agree more. I love it. I want them to stay together and just be mutual hatred. Troy, that's the thing where it's like bucks setting up and Troy's just like, yeah, you're exactly right, Joe. It's an extra reason to watch. I'm, I'm there for the drama. I mean, And it's super intriguing. That's a great point, Trey. People just listening can't see what you're doing. I'm just doing it for the weird social video. He looks like somebody's in his earpiece giving him the worst news possible about the stock market that day and telling Troy that his crypto account got wiped out. I love it. I don't want them to break up. Me either. Keep them together. Well, I mean, they're going to break up through, you know, natural causes at the end of the season. But we, I mean, the drama is phenomenal. I mean, all the way through the Super Bowl, it's going to be tremendous. I love it. Shiro in South Side of Chicago was upset that I disparaged. I didn't disparage. I talked about the peanut punch last week. Uh-huh. And I talked about how, you know, we named it after Charles Peanut Tillman. And I was like, yeah, it's like when we named Tommy John surgery after Tommy John. Like, good player, not great. I heard from a few Bears fans who were furious. He did make the Pro Bowl twice. I did not know this. Career interceptions and forced fumbles among defensive backs. Charles Woodson, 83, career. Charles Tillman, 82. Ed Reed, 75. My word. That's the top three. That's a ratified effing error. 44 forced fumbles, most ever by a DB. This is Shiro telling me. And he's saying, I'm not arguing Peanut was Dion or Daryl Rivas, but when your statistical neighbors are Charles Woodson and Ed Reed, you're a hell of a lot more than a guy with a gimmick. I completely agree. I apologize profusely. Peanut Tillman was really good. I should have mentioned that better. He did make two Pro Bowls, and it's a bad job by me. I mean, I'm surprised Shiro didn't invite you to eat a big fat dick. I think he was basically saying that. Okay. Doug writes in, he said, Sal and I were talking about Herbert had the deer in the headlights look. And he said, I was disappointed you and Sal both missed the opportunity to say beer in the headlights. Since his career has never been the same since he started dating Madison Beer. I'd like to popularize this right now, the beer in the headlights look. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. I'm there. I'm there for it. Rich and Josh from Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Together. Rich and Josh wrote in together. People want us to come to Australia and do podcasts. Say when I can't, I can't tell you how quickly I would jump on the effing airplane for it. It couldn't be further away from us. They want to know if we have anointed Yaxel a jizz room all-star yet. And they don't know what happened to the jizz room all-stars after we debuted that team with Caleb Wilson and then kind of let the concept go after that. And I think Yaxel is already in the Jizz Room All-Star team. Well, the only issue is he's kind of every other game. He's not every single game lighting it on fire. I mean, I can tell you this because I lost some prop bets on Yaxel when he went on a tear. I can't remember what game last week. Well, it was a modest I played modest totals for him to exceed them and he didn't even have double digit points. the game that I bet on him. Maybe you should just watch basketball for the sport itself instead of betting on the individual success of the players. Maybe you should eat a big fat dick. Austin L from New York. So we have no jizz room all-stars by the way. There's nobody you would add. Well, let's really, you know, because Ty Jerome is in line right now in the nightclub waiting to get in those floaters. What a revelation. Let's like, let's do it properly. And I'm not just spur of the moment in response to an email. Let's sit down and do it. So next week you want to next week and we'll announce our first month NBA jizz room all-stars. Okay. Phenomenal. That's fine. Long time fan says, if you're the jets, why aren't you thinking about trading two of your, cause they're going to three top 10 first round picks. Why not trade two of them for Herbert? There's no QB with this town, the draft class. And he says, how is this not on every talk show and sports podcast right now? Honestly, I don't think Herbert's were two first round picks from what we've seen. He's been the worst quarterback in the league. Now he's also had the worst offensive line in the league, but he could think I've watched a lot of chargers, partly because they're always one of the only three games on in the late games. And I, and I feel like I've bet against them. I've just had best of it. The picks that he's throwing a lot of the times, aren't the offensive, the blinds fault. They're just terrible, awful throws. They're they're rookie one last week. We sound, I talked about it Sunday night, or he's just throwing it right to a linebacker. That's waiting for it. I would, I just wouldn't trade for him with the contract and what we're watching. I would be really scared. They're clean pocket. They're clean pocket picks. Like he leads the league in interceptions. And if you go back and look at the circumstances under which he's throwing the picks, they're terrible. He's not seeing the, the D backs. He's not seeing the linebacker. Yes. And the idea of that guy going to the jets. Is this a, is this, is this a bit, is that a joke? Yeah, that sounds like a Nathan. We don't know who the head coach is going to be when the head coach arrives and whoever the new offensive coordinator is, then maybe with the offensive weapons, there's a good argument to be made. Like as soon as next season, we kind of made the argument this season that the jets were looking at, like they could be a seven ish. Win team. They're not going to be because that head coach is going to cost them. He already has. I mean, he's already cost them four games. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say two. Yeah. But at least three, it might even be four, but it's at least three. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, as soon when they get a head coach and have some, some proper, you know, a order of operation in that place, they, they could be interesting. And that would be the time that you might consider doing something quarterback wise, you know, the head coach isn't going to be Bob Chesney because he's staying. He's staying at UCLA. And I'd like to invite the USC fan base that goes on message boards. Oh, don't do it. As well as Penn state and Michigan and everybody else don't do it to go eat a fat one because all they were doing was trying to, trying to antagonize the UCLA fan base and make everybody think the coach is leaving. And he's not, he's staying and you guys can all eat a big fat one. It's great. College football is the best. I love it. I'm still like, I'm still captivated by the rankings every week. They're the dumbest things. This is the dumbest system anyone's ever had. You just move up when people above you lose. And I've brought this up to people and they've said like, well, what else? What other system? This is stupid. So you, so is now five, but as soon as they lose, they get to drop 10 points. And we just do this. Like they'll probably be 13 or 14 if they lose. Of course. So my, my thing, I think they should change it. I don't think anybody should be ranked one through 12. And I just think it should be like, you go into the club of the top 12 teams and they just announced the teams in alphabetical order. There's no ranking. There's no way to move up or down. And you're just in the club. And we vote on that club every week. And then we don't have to pretend that UCLA with a third string quarterback is the fifth best team in the country. Cause it's absurd. They're not. And I've loved watching them and they're eight. No. And it's been really fun. They are not one of the five best teams in college football. First of all, it's hilarious for you to jump. I've been to college football and have ideas for fixing 57. So yeah, I'm right here, baby. The most corrupt institution. This is really saying something, but by far the most corrupt institution in the United States of America during our lifetimes, which I mean, that's really, we've lived through some stuff, but college football over our lifetime boxing. I mean the, the sheer exploitation of the kids over the, the, the period of time, like, you know, all getting up to the point now, finally where the kids started being compensated, but the gross, you know, misalignment of, of incentives and interest, these coaches making multiple, the highest paid state employee in the state of X is the college football coach. What the fuck are you talking? Anyway, setting all of that aside. I love the moment that we're at with college football. Cause it's absolute unadulterated, pure chaos. None of it makes any sense. Anybody that pays attention for 10 seconds, like what a joke this is. But when the playoffs come, the games are super fun. Good game. Goddamn good games. I love betting on them. It's phenomenal. What a great product. Let's ask Trey Aikman what he thinks. Little visual gag for people that watch the pod. They're out there. They're watching the pod. You're going to love this one. This one conspiracy bill got this email from listener Brenneman from Boston. And had to put the iPad down and do a lap around the house. He was so excited. First of all, I love anytime I get an email that says this email is for conspiracy bill. He's activated at all times. Great start. Did the warriors actually make a genius move signing Porzingis knowing he wouldn't play. And at the worst, they could not pay him. And also use his salary as a zombie trade piece that can be combined with other trades. And he's like, over the course of the season, did they know this whole time that there was no way he was going to actually play conspiracy bill would like to weigh in here. Okay. I mean, I'm listening. They don't seem upset that he's basically not been going to the facilities and that they don't know what the deal is with him. Steve Kerr is basically like, yeah, I don't want to talk about it. Nobody's nobody's basically going like if, if Mitchell Robinson was doing this for the Celtics, everybody, everybody would be like, what the fuck is going on? Right. Where's Mitchell Robinson? We just paid him $15 million. And I guarantee Joe Mazzola would be like, yeah, I don't know where he is. The warriors all seem good with this conspiracy bill signs off on this. I think they knew he was probably, it was like 25% chance. Maybe he plays again, 75% chance. He flakes out either way. It's a salary cap spot. I actually believe maybe they, maybe this was intentional. I still don't understand. Conspiracy bill believes that not Bill Simmons. So the concept is that they signed him to the extension because the 20 million bucks, when you pair it with another reasonably priced player, when you pair it with say Draymond green, who makes say 27 million a day and say you combine 27 and 20 and now you can get any max player. Yeah. Okay. Huh? Interesting. Hmm. I mean, the owner does think that they did at one point in time say that they were light years ahead. Who am I to argue? Are you going to root for Draymond green when he's on the wizards? I root for the wizards. You can see this. I'm repping the district. You see this, this cool hat I have on district D Y for the bounce up baby. I got to see a person personal last night. Yeah. Can you give us the scouting report? You got to see AJ in person. They got their asses kicked by Atlanta, but give us your AJ scouting report. Amazing. Great seats. Kudos to the organization. Thank you for all of the hospitality. Amazing for me and my family. Um, he is so physically strong. He is strong. He's got big shoulder strong and he can get to the hoop. Now last night was one of those rookie hazing nights where the referees as a group show up and say, we're not giving you anything at the rim. You can go to the rim as many times as you want. We're not giving you any of the fouls. I mean, it's part of what drives me bananas with the NBA, um, reffing. I'm not doing a referee like bitching session. I understand the order of things. The rookies, you know, you have to kind of earn the respect or whatever, but when guys go to the hole and, and there is contact at the hole and the offensive player is disadvantaged, it's a foul. It's always been a foul. Um, just give them those. Don't, you don't have to give them the ones where that are out at the free throw line. But I, I mean, he, he is a physical specimen and he's fast and he's long. And as he continues to, to, to get more comfortable, it's going to be a, a, a absolute thrill to watch. I love it. So in person, how big did he seem like LeBron size? No, he's not as big as LeBron. No, no, but I'm saying like the height wise, did he feel like he had like the, he's in that range. Yeah. Wise for sure. It's like skinny LeBron, like early, mid two thousands LeBron body mid two thousand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How did you feel about, he's fast. Yeah. How about the swagger? What was the, I'm saying all of it, all of the swagger. How about like the interacting with teammates? They love him. The team loves, each other. Wonderful team dynamic, uh, Uh, Anthony Gill is kind of like the, the player's coach on the bench. He's up greeting every single player as they come off the court, telling them good job or giving some encouragement, telling them something about, so they, there's the vibes are immaculate. Um, this is a team that's going to hang around 500 until they decide it's time to go ahead and trade, um, Anthony Davis. And I'd be fine with that if it was sooner rather than later, they're, um, abysmal at shooting the three. Um, and I don't trade him today. I don't know if, if they can, you know, what, what's going to improve the three point shooting. Um, but if you can't trade them right now, there was a, they were the Hawks just shot the, the, you know, went like 20 of 45 or something. You went to an amazing Dyson Daniels game. I mean, he, the Hawks are legit and, and Jalen Johnson didn't play the Hawks were missing their best player. It didn't matter. They can score from every one of the one through five positions. They all are, are, are comfortable. That's an organized operation. I think the Hawks, you know, don't sleep on the Hawks. Can I do a wind horse really quick, please? Why would the Hawks play their best game of the season without Jalen Johnson? No, no, no. They caught a Washington team. Could you still finding it? I, you know, could you put trade, trade, trade young in the torture chamber? Corey Kispert took Trey young to the hole, like seven straight times. It wasn't that many, but felt that way. You don't think Trey Jalen Johnson could be the centerpiece of a trade to get them an even better guy than Jalen Johnson. He's so good. Yeah, I know. Who's better than him that they would get? You're talking about a top 15 player. I know. That's what I'm talking about. You're talking about a top. I don't know. I'm just trying to start. I'm going to see if the Fox Reddit will aggregate me. Eddie from LA wants to know, wow, this is a great question. Good questions this week. Is Will Hardy the first ever? He was a problem coach in NBA history. Will Hardy was a problem. Look at this ATO. We've heard how great Will Hardy is for years. Now the tanking jazz, we're simply holding him back from being among the best coaches in the league. Well, now he has a real team trying to win and they suck. Maybe he's a good coach, bad team guy. Wait, I don't know what that means. Good coach, bad team. He's a good team. Good coach for a bad team. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's like a 27 and 55 team. You're like, man, Will Hardy is bringing the most out of him. He's doing such a good job. I mean, the real reasons they, they have, uh, they're one in seven and not good is cause Jaron Jackson got hurt. Who would have guessed? Triple J's out. And, uh, and Nerkich got hurt. Cause God forbid you lose Nerkich. Those are the two reasons they're saying, well, they didn't have any size. This is another thing that I want to give Washington credit for, you know, who plays and who has a great, like effing brain in his head and who, um, the everybody likes, you should see these chats he was having with the refs. Deandre Aiton is a 9 million effing dollars. Washington spent was a great trade to the whole goddamn league. And Washington is the team that acquired him another tremendous asset. If, if, if some team, like the stupid, uh, jazz, like just looking around, he Aiton is, is, is, I mean, I don't want to overdo it, but no, the real addition, a real valuable addition. I talked about this on Tuesday with Goldsberry, just a terrible trade by Poinca. The whole league needs a backup center. Like Philly, this Philly season might hinge on whether they can get one in time before the Embiid injury. Right. Yeah. But you look all around. The league, it's really hard to find anybody that has two guys, you know, that can come in and actually defend the room. I think, I feel like Atlanta needs a center, but they gave away Aiton for two second round picks and Hardy who doesn't play. Right. And by the way, you know who needs a backup center? The Lakers. They could use Deandre Aiton. I love that you're rooting for and defending a team that includes Trey Young and Deandre Aiton. You're gleefully talking about that. And what Washington three first round picks, one of, when I'm only a handful of teams, Scott and Salt Lake, the quick one from Scott and Salt Lake city. He said, uh, Sunday's post game pod, but Sal, we're talking about Aaron Glenn and the history of shitty jets coaches, Netflix, closed captioning, identified rich coat tight as rich coat check. Is this in the hall of fame or Mount Rushmore for closed caption interpretations that actually make more sense than the real name? Rich coat check. Why didn't we think of that in the mid nineties when he was running teams into the ground? Could have caught him rich coach. That's a great, that's a very, did you guys mention Gase for what? For the, for the string of terrible jets coaches, he should be mentioned. I mean, there's been a bunch of them. I, the only reason I'm thinking of it, speaking of names and the way that, uh, didn't you guys have, um, a mass, a serial killer, a mass murderer nickname for Gase? I feel like you did. I think we called him John Wayne Gase. Maybe it's something like that. That's it. I think that I think, which is appropriate. Um, two more emails, Mitch and Indy sent an incredibly long email about how depressed he is as an Indy Annapolis Colts fan and, uh, and how they're tanking now, but they don't have a first round pick and how it's the process, except if Joel Embiid was going to the jets. That's where he is. But he, he said, Carly's Carly or say Gordon's on the sideline, taking detailed notes during all this. And he wonders if this is basically the shining where she's just writing over and over again in a book, like all work and no play makes this owner a dull girl or something like, and it's just, the notebook is just filled with the same sentence over and over again, which I fucking loved. And every time they, every time they show her now, I'm going to think of that. So, so far. We've had her compared to the super bad Dick book with Jonah Hill and the shining right in the same sentence over and over again. That's Carly's notebook. So far. Yeah, I do. I do want to pose this question. Yeah. How much would you pay for the notebook? What would you pay end of the year for the notebook? Yes. Like charity auction. Yes. Yes. Well, I think the better question is what would it go for in an auction with somebody trying to find the answer? It's a great question that I liked that, that phraseology better, you know what I heard? There's apparently, um, apparently Jim Irsay was, had a documentary being filmed about him that, um, is never going to come out now, but they spend like years and years with him. And apparently it's amazing. And we're never going to find out about it. Why, why, why won't it come out? Is it not flattering? Cause I think he died and then the family doesn't want it to come out. Oh, um, last question from Steve in Minneapolis. It's about Joe house. Right here. Joe house has developed a frustrating habit of stopping himself right before saying something interesting, controversial, or bitingly funny, fearing he might experience some type of online blowback or negative response. This happened a few time on the few times in the October 29th podcast, he stopped himself from disparaging the NHL. He turtles anytime the WNBA is mentioned. That's different. And he had a horrific no-sell on your OJ Simpson joke, and it goes far beyond the most recent episode of this pod. I've observed them falling into this habit over the last few months, quote, I'm not going to say anything said with a wolfish grin has become common practice for Joe house. The worst part is the audience knows house has the goods and he's more than capable of being cutting edge and hilarious. I am suggesting his dad is named Dick house. I am suggesting you refer to him as Dick T's house until he stops doing this. Give me the goods. We need to encourage him to let it rip. Love the pod. And I love house. That's from Steven Minneapolis, but they put a lot of thought into that. I feel like I do. Are you holding back house? I don't feel like I am. I feel like, you know, I mean the, the, the evidence kind of, the record speaks for itself. That's how I feel. But we literally have a segment this year between you and I called eat a fat dick. I know. What am I holding back? Tell Steve from Minneapolis is my third, third rail. I don't remember not saying anything bad about the NHL. Why wouldn't I say something bad about the NHL? What the fuck do I care about that league? They just made up extra games. You know what? Fuck it. They, they should just go year round. Nobody would like people have fun going to hockey games. The players would never, the players would never complain. They're like the season's 135 games. They'd be like, all right, fine. All right, boys, listen up. I'll play with the torn labrum. Uh, I will say, I think it's been the league's best. I don't know whether my algorithm is finding it better or whatever's going on, but it's been the best year ever for social media highlights with the NHL. There's been better fights than ever. There's been better, like really hard, crazy checks and people getting pissed. And McDavid looks like he's on cocaine at all times in these games. Now he's going 140 miles an hour. It is stupefying how good he is this year. I need, I need. that algorithm. Send me something so that I get clicked in because I'm not getting enough. I'm getting a fight here and there, but not enough. What am I looking at? What should I go to? I said this before. I think the fights are, I think they're getting too good at fighting. Oh, so it's scary. I want to go on our What Chaos podcast. I haven't gone, I haven't crashed the What Chaos podcast yet, which is excellent. But I really want to dive into this with those guys. I feel like these guys train now to hockey fight and they all have like styles. Like when we were growing up, these guys were just like, you know, they're, they're just like losing their mind. Yeah. Like they're just mad at each other. I don't know. Something over the last 20 years or so, like we can come up with examples of guys that are absolutely professional fighters. Domi, Brashear, like you can come up with the guys that were the, they made their bread and butter. You know, I still felt like it was a little more organic than what I'm watching now. What I'm watching now is like disciplined. I grab your shirt here and I get you here. But then I. Do this and I go and I go down. People are throwing uppercuts now. I want to hear. Okay, let's, let's get on what, what chaos. I really want, yeah, I really want the What Chaos guys to break this down once and for all. Cause I feel like the level of fighting is just better and somebody is going to get seriously hurt soon would be my fear, but maybe I'm just old. All right. Did we cover everything? So you feel like you're the same guy? Other than the, the, the WNBA, the third rail. Yeah. Having uncontrolled eosinophilic esophagitis or EOE can mean you're stuck in many ways, I mean, I'm not sure if you're the same guy. like cutting your food into tiny pieces or stuck chewing food for a long time. Dupixentupilumab, a prescription medicine for patients one year and older weighing at least 33 pounds can help with that. It's a breakthrough treatment that can reduce inflammation in the esophagus and improve swallowing. How about this? Dupixent is not a steroid. It proactively treats EOE so you can get ahead of it. Severe allergic reactions, including skin reactions, can occur. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or wheezing or swelling of your face, mouth, tongue, or throat. Tell your doctor of new or worsening joint aches and pain or a parasitic infection or asthma. Don't change or stop other treatments without talking to your doctor. Feeling stuck with eoe start treating with dupixent talk to your gastroenterologist or allergist today about dupixent learn more at dupixent.com or call 1-844-DUPIXENT this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense there's no place like chrome check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus today's ring 107 brought to you by fanduel make this your most rewarding season ever download the fanduel app to check out our 107 picks and boosted teaser every week this season two weeks ago somebody called me the pits the billsberg steelers or the steelers or whatever It's very good. Because I have 2-3, 3-2, 2-3, 3-2, 2-3, 3-2. You just have to finish one or two games above 500. I read that email after week six. And since then, I've gone 2-3 and 3-2. Every single week, I've gone 2-3 and 3-2. And it's now week nine, which means apparently I'm going to go 2-3. We have less games to work with this week. I did not like the slate. Only one less game. It's 15 games. There's only two teams online. Well, plus we lost the Thursday game. Plus there's a bunch of games I'm not going near. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I get your point. We're tied, by the way. You and I, dead even. I had the smallest list possible. I know we're going to agree on one game. I'm positive. You get to go first this week, but I know we're going to have the same team on one of these. I have a feeling we might have the same tees. Okay, you'd be surprised. I'm prepared for anything with the other ones, but you go first. Who do you have this week, Joe House? I'm going to go ahead and lay the nine and a half points with the San Francisco 49ers. That was my first game on the board. That was the one I knew we would both have. Yeah, they are at home against the Vegas Raiders. Oh, you're doing the Niners. Yeah, I'm doing the Niners. Oh, I thought you were doing another nine and a half. Okay, so we don't have the same. No, I'm laying the nine and a half. Part of this, the handicap includes Mike Evans being back. It includes Debo being back. It includes the idea that this defense is getting healthier with the possible return of Bosa. But a couple of things I like situationally, Hurdy covers big numbers. I think he is 8-0 straight up and maybe like 6-2 against the spread, 7 or more. But situationally, Raiders coming from a game that they went all the way out, all out against that Jets, East Coast, back here now to San Francisco. Oh, you're giving us the travel? I thought that didn't matter anymore. It definitely matters. In football, it matters. So I looked at this. Isn't the big case that the Raiders are good against other bad teams and as soon as they play a good team, they could just get their asses kicked? Not only that, they have one of the worst defenses in the league by several of the measures going up against the most explosive offense in the league with Shanahan and extra time. It's the coming off the buy thing, especially for me with San Francisco. And the way that San Francisco is capable of handling its business, anything less than 10 to me feels fine, and I'm going to go ahead and lay it. I'm obviously going to have them in a three-team 10-point tease this week. There's no question whatsoever. I did not have them in this. One of the things with the Raiders that's interesting, and I only know this because he's on two of my three fantasy teams, Ashton Gentry just be coming basically a third down back. Cause he's, I'm trying to find, there was a great thing I saw. I can't find it. Um, he's by, you know, they have those stats about yards added to whatever you're rushing. You're rushing attempts would have been where people are like, Oh, he'd be plus 24 for yards that he's got beyond what he was expected to get. I forget what the stats called and Ashton Gentry was minus one Oh nine or something for this year he's lost like a hundred more yard i whatever it was rushing over expected is that yeah yeah one of those all right yeah i just mangled that the good news is people won't be dicks about it um but yeah ashton jetty was the worst anyway uh so you have mike washington probably with most of the carries nobody can name a running back in their team and the only thing with the Raiders that you get worried about is the cheap touchdown near the end. But the Niners have been really good at just extending leads and then just finishing games. Putting the clamps on. I have them in a three-teamer. Okay. My first pick. I don't love it. I don't love that I'm doing this. I think it's a great pick. I can't believe how high this line is. The Jets are nine and a half. Yeah. In KC. Yep. And it's just too high. It just is. I don't love the Jets. I don't really want to bet on the Jets, but the Jets are pretty healthy now. I don't know if I assume Garrett Wilson's playing. He got the concussion last week, but for the most part, pretty healthy. They've lost by three points, seven points, 11 points, seven points, three points, and three points. Yes. Their games are close. They have a lot of talent. When you watch the Jets, you don't understand why they're not better. I know they have, you know, one of the worst coaching situations in the league. They're 23rd in DBOA, which surprised me. I felt like that would be better. Casey's eighth. Casey lost 23 two weeks ago to Seattle, 28 and 24 to Denver. Still have the same offensive line issues. Mahomes still has the same concerns about what's going on with his deep ball stuff. They still have wide receiver stuff. Teams have started to figure out if we can just take Kenneth Walker out of this game, we're good to go. Kelsey's looking creaky. I don't think the Chiefs defense is that good. I think the Jets could actually win this game. I don't think they will, but I actually think they could. But the nine and a half just seems too high. I don't feel like the Chiefs should be favored by seven over anybody that's at least frisky. And then you have Geno in there at the end of the game. I think people are going to be throwing the Chiefs in the three-team 10-point teases. This is the one that would make me nervous. And I just don't know how good the Chiefs are. really, I watched them very closely the last two weeks, and I don't know if they're that good. Jets plus nine and a half. They went up against, you know, two of the best five defenses in the league, so it's not that big of a surprise that they didn't look, you know, great. I am only not playing this game because I'm waiting for it to get to 10, which is out in the market. A lot of 10s out in the market. I thought about waiting to see if I could get at 10 on Sunday, but nine and a half is minus one 22. Uh, okay. That's fine. But, um, yeah, the thesis is right. You're making the right point. I think this goes the other way though. That's why I want to grab it at nine and a half, which is a stupid number. Cause you, you know, nine, nine and a half teams don't win by that. But I was worried it was going to go down the other way and drop to like seven and a half on Sunday. So I'm grabbing it now. I just think that line's too high. I don't get it. Yeah. I don't, uh, have any argument with you. And in general and by the way Aaron Glenn not exactly oh it's like So Sal in Tennessee, you know, he's there long-term at least beyond he's at least coaching their next season, right? It's always not going anywhere. Yeah. Where I look at Aaron Glenn or stiking on the Colts. Those guys are basically coaching for their jobs. Now they are. This is an audition for whatever comes next. And FYI, if I'm the jets, I know this is insane. I, I, I accept that this is insane. Yeah. And I think we've already crossed them off in the South bill and South Sunday night cross off. If I'm the jets and I'm two and six, I'm, I'm in, why not us mode in the, in the facilities? Like why not us? We're two and six, but we play Kansas city home Buffalo, but then at chargers at Miami, we have an ad Arizona left. Okay. We have a home Minnesota week 18 at Buffalo game might mean anything. Like, why can't we get to. We have an eight, nine wins. Who knows? Maybe they'll get to the seven that we thought at the beginning of the season. Right. Um, other aspects of, of why this particular game, just in general, my homes as a, as a favorite of seven or more, hasn't been great. He's under 500 against the spread. And there's this weird little stretch that the chiefs have been on coming off of these games against this version of Denver. They're oh, and five against the spread the week after playing Denver. Um, so over the, cause they've been these knockdown drag out, you know, physical, physical games with the way that this Denver defense has been lately. One other thing I like about this game, two of the worst special teams by DVO in the league so far, which always is a wild card, like with a high line, it's just something stupid will happen. The jets last year had a really good special teams. I don't know what happened, right? But they have, they got Mitchell going, they have Cooper back, you know, they, if Wilson plays, they have three legitimate receivers. I don't know. I don't know. The chiefs have had some injuries. I don't know. I, I just thought that line was too high. All right. Your next pair. I thought for a minute that I might be swearing this team off after their performance on, on Monday night, they really disappointed me on Monday night against the Chicago bears. I understood the idea of why the bears were live as underdogs in Seattle. Um, and I said, you know, I can't do it anymore with Sam Darnold. Well, guess what? I don't have to do it anymore with Sam Darnold, not this week. It's true. Lock at home. Seattle. Is laying eight and a half against the Arizona Cardinals. Uh, and this is the line went crazy. It was like in the twelves and went all the way down to under nine because of the substitution of, of lock for Donald. I don't understand it at all. It should have stayed the same. Of course it should have. Have we been watching this team all season long? And by the way, these two teams played in, in week two and Seattle kicked their ass. Uh, Andrew Locke was the quarterback. quarterback he was 19 for 27 for 235 yards they ran the ball 40 times seattle did uh drew lock had three touchdowns mike mcdonald is five and oh straight up and against the spread against arizona and arizona just you know had that great dramatic overtime victory in dallas now they have to travel to seattle yeah this is seattle season this they cannot lose anymore you know they have like maybe one or two more games they can possibly lose and make the playoffs because the whole afc north nfc north looks like it's going to make the playoffs i love this situation i love the idea of minshu going up against mike mcdonald with mike mcdonald having a full week to prepare for him and and and that defense feeling like they left a lot to be desired against uh the bears the bears had long drives they marched the ball these long they were on the possession drives yeah the bears are are in another class i'm going to go ahead and lay it with seattle minus eight and a half i'm happy to do it i fully support it and it leads to my second bet which is a tease which i was delighted by yes it is the seahawks and the bears i am putting together and i'm going to make the case for each seahawks down to under three to two and a half thanks to the drew lock gift i'm with you this is this is it like there's no room for error we have eight playoff teams in the nfc it's it's seahawks rams and basically two of the nfc north teams battling for that last spot right because you figure bears vikings are going to be in there unless the vikings completely crater so now you have packers lions seahawks rams all in a death match just to be the seventh seed yep and you can't lose this game you have minshu who's fooled everybody and they're forgetting all these other times minshu has been a star i love minshu used to make a ton of jokes about him yeah he's the mcrib he's not going into seattle and doing that and i also feel like the bears are really good so instead of looking at it going oh man what's wrong with the seahawks it's like the bears are good the bears know who they are they do everything well on both sides of the ball right now and seattle had darnold who was hurt early in that game it turns out and played all the way through it right they have a running back situation they're trying to figure out they don't really have a second receiver they had a couple injuries on defense um and now this is a all right let's go they're gonna win by i would say they're gonna win by three or more so they're the first part of nts i agree with that they're gonna i think they're gonna win by 10 right because i'm laying the eight and a half god damn it i like it well and then price now they have for a full week with charbonnet and yes yes we'll see if shaheed shaheed on the injured list or is there a chance he plays this week i can't remember i think he might be on the injured list um so i'm putting that with the bears um i'm putting that with the bears yeah the bears are playing tampa bay it's minus six and a half so basically they have to win by a point they win this they have to win look bears coming off a dramatic emotional monday night win everybody's all excited about them they had i think like almost half of the super bowl bets this week they keep track of the super bowl futures i have them at 14 to 1 from two weeks ago they're now eight to one everybody's on it yeah all the signs are there for oh oh and that oh oh they're down 10 nothing i but i just think they're really good and i actually i'm going the other way i think they're about to go on a fucking ride oh okay yeah um i just think that i what they did to the pats was impressive they have a bye week coming up which i love it's like let's fucking take care of business baker mayfield who had zero past completions last week um let's just get through this and then we come out of the buy and we have home new orleans at detroit home jacksonville at miami as the next four i don't think they're at buffalo in week 15 i think that's the next time i'm worried about them i think they win all those other games interesting jacksonville will be interesting i'm rooting for it i wanted that to be interesting i want them to be in chicago a little cold for our guy trevor could could be for sure you count on that i'm all in on the bears i think that i think it's just an awesome team and when i look at the bucks who i think the bucks are a team i would have backed them a couple different situations because how good their defense has been they got the running game going they have the irving gainwell combo a book is supposed to be back but i just baker mayfield in chicago when we don't know if he can throw a football and with all the dumb turnovers he always has anyway like he's gonna give them two turnovers so i'm taking the bears i think caleb's i'm not gonna go that far in terms of baker giving them two but i will say this the two things that that kept me off i really looked hard on them and i think they're gonna be good i think they're gonna be a little hard at the idea of playing the bucks because it feels like we're top of market with the bears now and i actually i and it's a sunday night game collinsworth and it's the third straight primetime game for the bears and it doesn't happen a ton but when it does you know the the record against the spreads under 500 um in the third game the uh only the reason that i paused is because the tampa bay buccaneer run game against what this bears defense might look like is that he's a run stopper and he was a god damn home wrecker and i was like oh my god if they can do this and and it was his pass rush that that that collapsed what seattle was trying to do he's a run stopper right like i don't that that gave me pause and then the great unknowns surrounding baker so the only way to to get invested in this i'd like the idea of your of the teas that you're doing i did not have the bears and the teas but i like that that play seahawks bears all right your time for your third pick um i regret this say it right up front uh acknowledging how uh you know vulnerable this that this this is not well thought out and i did it last week when i played the stupid ass patriots who were up eight i mean all they had to do no they were up 11 and all they had to do was give up the stupid field goal and they would have covered yeah the db screwed up got the touchdown give up the effing touchdown i knew i was you know fucked right in the face thank you for that patriots and the patriots sleepwalk you know they had the 10 game rest coming into miami doesn't matter not completely ill-prepared the whole first half i tried to talk you out of it you did i know and i'm saying we have no starting receivers and we and we're on like our fifth and sixth guards well it didn't matter watch the second half oh all of a sudden well they moved the ball right down the effing field and anyway i'll stop i'll stop with the belly aching and i'll stop with the belly aching I'm doing the exact same thing this week. I'm playing the goddamn New York Giants. giants laying points going into Philadelphia. Do you know how stupid that is? Do you know how dumb the last time the giants won in Philadelphia was over a decade ago? I think it was 2013. The last time the giants were favored going into Philadelphia was like the, you know, before the 2010s. Um, and you know, the, the, this, this giants team, you're, you're really having to invest a lot in what we saw out of Jay. This is me investing in JJ McCarthy. Did the, did the one, one game in one quarter of JJ McCarthy, does that make the case? Well, the here's the thing I think it does. I know that I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm going to go ahead and lay it with the giants. What I saw out of them in terms of their organizational, uh, stability, this is a discipline. And it was, it was kind of a radical, uh, eye opener that Houston game. They took so much advantage of the lack of discipline of, of, um, that Houston defense, especially, you know, again and again, they were running these delayed stunt blitz things and the giants had an answer for it every time. And JJ McCarthy was fucking poised against that. And I think this Eagles team is quietly quitting. It is, you know, I think this whole Joe Milton thing, I don't, I think if they were, if they intended to try and Mount some kind of like, this is how we're going to save the season. We're going to take a run at the division. We would have seen it last week. Washington was there for the taking. I assure you trying to roll over you're on your back with your feet and legs up the whole, the whole first half. The, the, the full Washington menu was on full display. Yeah. Uh, you know, pre-snap penalties. We got them. Uh, this field goal from 50 yards. We're right there. Like, you know, questionable play call out of the offensive coordinator. Yes, sir. We were giving you the whole menu and the Eagles still rolled right the fuck over, especially in the second half. And the reason that the defense, the defense, the last three games has given up, you know, like 30 something, 25, you know, 28, all of these numbers North of 25 points, because they're on the goddamn field, the whole game, because all that the Eagles are doing is going three and out a point that you made. How many games ago, three games ago, say on the head, everybody he's on the pitch count, you know, like he he's a decoy. He's not out there to go run the ball 25 times. Um, so I'm laying it. I know how stupid it is. Well, it's not as stupid as you think. Cause that was my next pick. You didn't interrupt me. Oh, you did. You could have made, I know you have some points to make as well. Joe Milton's starting for Philadelphia. Let's start with there. Um, I, I haven't seen a single Eagles receiver that I would want to start for one minute on my fantasy team. Lemon is aptly named. Um, here's my big thing. I agree with you. I think the Eagles, the tip, the fork in the road was last Sunday night and they told us what they wanted to be, which was a team that's going to suck. I saw CR a couple of days ago. Oh, ask them how many more wins, how many more wins he thought the Eagles had in them this year. And he thought either one or two was his answer. The most rational Philly fan that we know. Yeah. Here's my big thing with this. So this is, oh man, Eagles at home. Who's going to this game. You know, who's going to go to this game. Giants fans taking the fucking train because they're going to go to this game. And they're going to go to this game because this is their one chance. JJ Harbaugh Malik neighbors. Who's been one of the best receivers in the league now for four weeks and let's go. And I feel like there's going to be a lot of giants fans at this game. You know, what, um, really proves this up. How many Knicks fans showed up in the Philly building the last two seasons that Nick fans took over the, what used to be called the spectrum, whatever the name is of the place they play basketball now completely took it over. And I guess he doesn't want to go to this game. Eagles fans. What's fun about going to this game. Oh, we're starting Joe Milton. We're going to lose to the giants. I'm not fucking going to put my tickets on a ticket site, but I think there's going to be giants fans there. I think they're going to try to just run the ball. Let the Eagles screw up Joe Milton who played one good game in his life that cost us the first pick in the 2024 draft for the Patriots. Uh, other than that has just not been anything remotely approaching NFL quarterback, not to mention. They're offensive lines way worse. There's no skill guys, the giants, to me, this line's going to go up and I think this ends at four and a half and I'm grabbing it at minus three right now. Wow. I'm surprised that we were both in agreement on the giants. I think this is going to be a super depressing game. I know, I know the Eagles fans don't want them to win anymore. It's not like they have a chance to do anything. They'd rather see them lose. And there's going to be a bunch of giants fans there. Incredible timing for the city of Philadelphia to have the Sixers at eight and one and that city completely on fire for the Sixers. Like fuck it. Let's, let's, let's make the Eagles like completely lost season. So we get the high draft picks and we're in position, you know, for the retooling that we need. And, and yeah, I, I, so the, I was with Mike Tone at the Clipper game last night, diehard Philly fan. He's he's thinks there's no chance that anything happens with this team. And they, you know, some of the contracts they gave out, some of the guys they lost, some of the injuries they've had. It's like not. Anticipating the lane Johnson, you know, that, that he might just exit stage right. At some point during the season, all this stuff, it's a bad season. They have some draft picks, but they might even make a trade before Sunday, right? Like you might have giants minus three, which we've locked in now and something might happen. All right. Your last pick. You have a tease. I have a tease still. Yes. My tease is, uh, Detroit minus one. I'm going to tease them from seven down to one. I came close to going ahead and laying the points with Detroit on the road in Miami. Miami is like that. I think you think Miami is capable of winning outright. See, here's the thing. Um, the way that Detroit established the run against Minnesota last week, when they played a kind of bully ball that we didn't really know that they were capable of, but they still have that phenomenal offensive line and the adjustment by Campbell at halftime, they were golf was getting killed. He was getting like, like Minnesota was super alive to win that game. The only thing about this, this, this situation. That scares me a little bit is Detroit coming off of back-to-back green Bay and Minnesota. And then, you know, those are super important division games. And then going on the road down to Miami, is it going to be hot? Like what's the story? That's why I wouldn't lay the seven laying one Detroit cannot seed any ground. They have to win these winnable games at their kind of bad defense that now no longer has Jack Campbell. They're missing guys. Well, good luck to Jack Campbell. Yeah. Knock on wood for that day. He's not playing. I know. I know branches are in a concussion protocol. One of there's a cornerback. That's a, I, I get it. I get it. It's still Miami. I did watch the new England Patriots go right down the fucking field every time they needed to throw in Miami, which they didn't have the receivers, but they said, fuck it and did it anyway. Detroit. And, and I'm, I think golf is, is, is just as good as Drake Bay. I'll say this about Miami after watching them a couple of times. In the last few weeks, including that entire Patriot game, they do play hard and seem like they give a shit. Cause you had these bad, like the chargers are the opposite, right? The chargers go down by eight and they're just like, they're like looking at their watch. Oh shit. There's an hour left. Miami like gave a shit. Like Miami was going for that win. And I, I, to me, the lines are a stay away, but I understand. I get it. That's why I'm teasing it down to one. I'm going to go back to the first and a half. I might've played the Panthers plus three. I love the situation. I'm going up against this Denver team that continues to scrape wins out of its butthole at the end. But they're the most important thing with Denver is those wins come when they are at home. They don't get those butthole wins when they're on the road and the Panthers are a much better team. I also love the idea of the Panthers with the extended rest after the humiliation on Thursday night football, although they did battle back in that game. Um, they fired the defensive coordinator. They changed their defensive scheme and there's no way to really plan for that for Denver with the 37th out of 42nd ranked quarterback in the NFL, uh, Bo Nix, the, the abomination that is Bo Nix. So I like, I would have played the Panthers minus three. The threes are gone. The market's two and a half, but I have, I like the idea of teasing it up to eight and a half for the Panthers. So they still have some D back stuff, the Panthers. Sure. Um, love to see Bo. Bo Nix throw on their receivers are bad luck. Right. And you figure at home. Yeah. I don't mind having Carolina at home. They also went against Tampa when they got their ass kicked a couple of weeks ago and it seemed like a bad loss, but Tampa's defense just might actually be good. Then they had to play on a Thursday. They fired the DC. I looked at it too. I, I took a, if it was three, I, I would have taken it for the contest, I think, but the two and a half scared me off. Yeah. So I just pushed it up to eight and a half. I'm comfortable with it. Rules is that I don't want to take a, an NFC South team in a tease for ringer one Oh seven. Fair, fine rule. I almost took, go ahead. But I am going to take an NFC South team for my last pick. Are you, go ahead. God damn it. It was 50-50 for me. I know who you're going to take. Go ahead. It's a chance to bet against Shadar Sanders. I know, I know. I got to do it. I know. I got to do it. And the Browns have been, everyone's running on them and the Saints have no running game to speak of. But I actually would rather bet on the team that can't run the ball against the team that's not proven they can stop the run. They get, so this is a leap of faith because Banks is coming back at left tackle, hopefully. Yes. This was a top 10 draft pick for them a couple of years ago. Got hurt, hurt his ankle five weeks ago. The offensive line fell apart the moment he went out. He's humongous for them. He's been practicing. I'm going to assume he's playing. Yep. That makes me feel good. I like that they're home. The line is, this is the lowest value you can take the Saints at home against a bad team. And the Browns are a bad team. Coming off the bye. Browns on the road versus the Browns at home. That's right. This feels like a classic, terrible Browns game. And I wish it was two and a half. I think it's like their third road game in four weeks or something like that for the Browns. The Shador thing is what's most compelling. Isn't the rookie wide receiver going to try and play Tyson? Isn't Jordan Tyson? He's practicing. I've had him on two fantasy teams just on the IR basically for two months, hoping. But yeah, if he comes back, now who knows? But I like this spot for Shuck. I came super close. There was coin flip for me between the Giants laying the three on the road or the Saints at home minus three. I love the case for the Saints. I did come close to it. I might put him in. Here's another thing. Yeah, I mean, you could put it in on Sunday. Here's another thing I really liked about this bet. I'm looking at the standings right now. Cleveland's still five and three. Uh-huh. Is Cleveland really going to go six and three? Like from what you've seen, does that make any sense at all? The six and three Cleveland Browns? This is a thing that's going to happen? If Deshaun Watson was playing quarterback, I would not dismiss that out of hand. Right, I agree. Yeah. So they go at New Orleans this week and then home Houston week 10 and then a bye week. Okay. Sounds like five and five to me. Sounds like five and five to me too. And then New Orleans, because the NFC South is a quagmire and the most fucked up place on the earth. They win this game, they go three and five. Atlanta loses to Cincinnati and Spain, they go three and six. Tampa loses to Chicago, they're three and six. That's right. And then Carolina, you have beating Denver, but let's say they lose, they're three and five. And all of these teams would have three wins if New Orleans beats the Cleveland. And that sounds perfect. After nine weeks, we'd have 12 wins in the NFC South split evenly. A couple of people have been sending me, Cousin Sal is right on now for his seven and 10 prediction. It's incredible. So if we were in week nine with everybody with three wins, we were dead set for that seven and 10. We are cooking, baby. Yeah. I'd love to know what the parlay was of if you went for the other three teams to lose and New Orleans to win. So we would have the three, the three-win Bukkake, three-win NFC South Bukkake. That's what would happen. Okay. You can bet it this week. So you're a ringer 107 picks. We both have the Giants minus three. You have the 49ers minus nine and a half to lay it on the Raiders. You have the Seahawks minus eight and a half to lay it on the Cardinals. And you have a little bit of a tease. Detroit down to minus one against Miami in Miami, which makes me nervous for you. And then Carolina plus eight and a half against Denver. I have the Jets plus nine and a half in Kansas City. I think that line's two points too high. I have the Saints and Tyler Shuck minus three against Shadur Sanders. And then last but not least, a little tease with the Seahawks. A little get back with Drew Locke under three. Who are they playing? I had it written down. Against the Cardinals. And then the Bears just to beat Tampa. Just beat them by one. And we're good with that. That is our ringer 107. It was brought to you by FanDuel. Download the app now to find all your 107 picks. Make this your most rewarding season ever. FanDuel player game. Odds subject to change. House, we'll see you on Ringer Wise, guys, tomorrow. Yeah, let's go. Bunch of winners. Good luck. Good luck with the Wizards. I'm sorry that guy wrote that mean email about you. Well, it seemed like it was from a place of love. That's the way I prefer to look at it. And I'll try and come up with some more cutting edge stuff for him as soon as I can talk again. All right. And be on deck because I honestly don't know how many more Sundays Sal's going to make here. Oh, I'm always on deck. I'm always rooting for the Cousins. Just always start warm up in the bullpen around two o'clock on a Sunday. All right. Thanks, Sal. See you in a week. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Doc. Thanks to House. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo. Thanks to Chris and Jack at Spotify. I'm going to be back on Sunday night right after the Sunday night football game with the Oxy Cousin, Cousin Sal. And enjoy the weekend. Don't forget to watch Air Force One because that's the next Rewatchables. And I will see you live on Netflix on Sunday night. I don't have a few years with them. On the wayside on the first side of the road. Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and president DC or Wyoming. Give them a problem call 1-800-GAMBLE or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts. Or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-770-7867. We're stuck chewing food for a long time. Dupixent Dupilumab, a prescription medicine for patients one year and older weighing at least 33 pounds can help with that. How about this? 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