Verne Lundquist, Kirk Goldsberry In Studio, Nuggets In Trouble And A Good Old Fashioned NBA/NFL Hypothetical

This episode features a comprehensive analysis of current NBA playoffs, a detailed breakdown of the Denver Nuggets' struggles, and an engaging NBA/NFL hypothetical discussion.

1. The Denver Nuggets are facing significant challenges in their defensive game, impacting their playoff performance.
2. Nikola Jokic, despite being a top NBA player, is experiencing difficulties that are reminiscent of past criticisms.
3. The episode provides a deep dive into NBA playoff strategies and team dynamics, especially focusing on player matchups and coaching strategies.
4. Verne Lundquist’s interview offers valuable historical perspectives on sports broadcasting and memorable sports moments.
5. The hosts' engaging and humorous commentary adds depth and entertainment to the sports analysis.

1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with a lively introduction, setting the stage for the discussions on NBA playoffs and the special guests featured. Dan Katz: "Welcome to another episode where sports meets witty banter."

2. Nuggets' Troubles

Detailed analysis of the Denver Nuggets' current struggles in the playoffs, focusing on defensive woes and key player performances. Kirk Goldsberry: "The Nuggets need to rethink their strategy around Jokic if they're to survive this series."

3. Interview with Verne Lundquist

An engaging interview with Verne Lundquist, discussing his experiences and memorable moments in sports broadcasting. Verne Lundquist: "Every game tells its own unique story, and that's what's thrilling about this job."

4. NBA/NFL Hypothetical

A hypothetical discussion comparing NBA and NFL players' abilities to switch sports, sparking debates and laughs. PFT Commenter: "Imagine a linebacker trying to hit a three-pointer!"

1. For basketball enthusiasts looking to understand game dynamics, focus on player matchups and defensive strategies discussed in the episode.
2. Aspiring sports broadcasters can gain insights from Verne Lundquist’s career anecdotes to enhance their storytelling skills.
3. NBA fans can engage more deeply with the playoffs by analyzing team strategies and player performance as highlighted.
4. For general sports fans, the episode’s mix of humor and analysis provides a more enjoyable way to consume sports content.
5. Adopting a critical perspective on sports narratives can enrich your viewing experience, as demonstrated by the hosts.

The Nuggets are in deep deep waters with an awesome Wolves team (00:00:00-00:08:27). The Thunder are back to playing basketball and look awesome (00:08:27-00:12:12). Cocky Hank is in rare form and we talk Celtics bloodbath and the Knicks/Pacers end of game debacle (00:12:12-00:22:19). Igor Shesterkin saves 54 shots and we dive into our favorite dumb Hypothetical how many guys in the NFL could play in the NBA and vica versa (00:22:19-00:44:15). Hot Seat/Cool Throne including Josh Hart's injury potentially making him incredible at threes and Scottie Scheffler's still pregnant wife (00:44:15-01:04:37). Verne Lundquist joins the show to talk about his Hall of Fame career, his favorite calls, the Kick 6, and being Mr Steal Your Girl (01:04:37-01:48:21). Kirk Goldsberry joins the show on the day his new book launches (go buy it on amazon) to talk NBA playoffs, Wolves Defense, the super young Thunder and how the Celtics should cake walk to the Finals (01:48:21-02:24:05). We finish the show with listener submitted Pardon Your Takes (02:24:05-02:39:58).

You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

People

Verne Lundquist, Kirk Goldsberry, Dan Katz, PFT Commenter

Companies

NBA, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Verne Lundquist, Kirk Goldsberry

Content Warnings:

None

Dan Katz

Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon music. Hey, what's going on there, pal?

Mike Portnoy

We saw you at the hockey game on. Do I know you guys? I'm Ryan Whitney. I got a drink named after me. Not a big deal.

Kirk Goldsberry

Pink Whitney. That's what I thought. See you, fellas. I invented the thing, you pigeon. Pink Whitney.

Dan Katz

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We have the legend, Verne Lundquist. Great interview with Verne, talking about his entire career. And then we have Kirk Goldsberry in studio breaking down the NBA playoffs. We're going to talk about the NBA playoffs. The Nuggets are in deep shit.

Knicks, pacers, game one. The Thunder have finally played a basketball game again. And Hank, Cocky Hank, is on his way. We're going to do some hot seat cool throne. We're going to do part in your take.

Great show. And it's all brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. Did you ever play the over under game with your friends? You know, think I can eat that slice of pizza in under 30 seconds? Or I know.

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Dan Katz

And then a lot of soft work to be done. No place to hang out or washing and then I can't name all on the south oh no, we gonna rock down to Electric Avenue and then we'll take it higher oh we gonna rock down to electric. It's pardon my take presented by Marshall Sports.

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Today is Wednesday, May 8, and the Denver Nuggets are in some deep, deep shit. Pft. Yeah, they looked really bad. They looked terrible offensively. They look bad defensively.

Mike Portnoy

The Minnesota Timberwolves looked awesome defensively, which had a lot to do with. It's not all in the Nuggets, but they, they looked out of sorts. I had a thought, and I'm not exactly like a film breakdown guy when it comes to basketball. I don't know if you know that about me or not, but it seems like every time teams play the Nuggets, they play the Nuggets game and they try to match up against Jokic in a way that the Timberwolves didn't even attempt to do last night because they had their hand forced with Rudy Gobert being out for having sex nine months ago. So by stretching him out and by Jokic didn't.

I don't know what he was doing. He looked like he was just in no man's land defensively for most of the game. Like, caught halfway between where he's used to being and where he should be, and they just ate his lunch. Yeah, no, I mean, the Nuggets are, the Nuggets are in trouble. I mean, you're right.

Dan Katz

Jokic, like, he gets stuck in these pick and rolls. He's been swiping at stuff. He's, he's looked for all the things that people criticize Yokic for before his championship run. It feels like they're coming back right now. I still think he's an incredible player, one of the best players in the NBA.

I'm not ready to bury him right now. But the Wolves feel like they have the Nuggets number and it's intensity, defensive intensity, and Anthony Edwards just being a superstar in the making. And like you said, no, Rudy Gobert and their defensive, like, they just have, the Wolves just have so many dudes that are so big and they're just so, they're, their arms are everywhere. They're, they're defending the entire court. They're picking up Jokic, uh, like, you know, brings the ball up a bunch.

They're picking him up at half court, bothering him there. And it does. It's an interesting subplot because the guy who helped build the Nuggets, Tim Connolly, is the GM for the Wolves. And it feels like the wolves are created to beat the nuggets, and that's what they're doing. And then you also have the factor of Jamal Murray just having an absolute meltdown, throwing a heat pack on the floor.

People were very upset. I personally can't get that upset about it because I, and this is a flaw of mine, and it's, it's probably a flaw of how I parent as well. If no one gets hurt, I don't really do any punishments. Like, if there's not a, if there's not an injury, I'm like, all right, keep playing. It's fine.

I get it. It was probably should have done that. It's a crazy move, but some people being like, someone could have died out there from that heat pack. It felt like a lot, the heat culture gone wrong. And when he threw it out there, it looked like he was throwing it at the ref that I saw.

Mike Portnoy

Did you see the zoomed in camera angle? Yeah. Have like a Zapruder style film of it that zooms in on him. He's like, behind the basket. He looks like he's trying to hit the ref.

I'm willing to give this a pass because that's hilarious. If it had hit the ref, that would have been very funny. He probably, he probably would have been suspended for maybe two games if that had happened. Instead, they give him a hundred thousand dollars. Fine.

Same that Rudy Gobert got for doing the money sign to the refs. But it looked like, I don't think he was trying to throw it on the court. He was trying to hit the ref because he's pissed at the ref. And it just slid out onto the court. And then everyone was like, oh, weird.

There's a heat pack on the court. And then you had a subset of people being like, this is the most dangerous thing that I've ever seen a player do. Exactly. It felt a little aggressive. Jamal Murray did the, the money sign as well.

Dan Katz

Oh, yeah, that, yeah, he did the money sign about the refs as well. So he, he was having an all time meltdown performance where it's like, this is the interesting part because it is all credit to the wolves. Like, the way they're put there. Six and, oh, in the playoffs, they are playing like incredible team basketball. They, as Kat told us, they're a big 15 and it feels that way when they're playing.

But the interesting, like, subplot of all this is. I think I use subplot twice. Sorry, I apologize. It's late. The interesting moment I'm waiting for, for Friday night is this is the first time the Nuggets feel like they're really, really tested.

Because if you remember last year, they, you know, beat the, the Wolves in five. They beat the suns in six. They swept the Lakers. They beat the heat in five. They have controlled the playoffs in the.

For the last year and a half, you know, obviously beating the Lakers in five now. Like, what do you got? What do you. Are you guys, do you have the championship medal? Because now the pressure is on.

You just lost two games at home. You had a total meltdown. Jokic does not look good. And the Wolves are just better right now. Like, that's just what it is.

They are the better team all around. Yes. It's not, it's not really close. They've got two coaches, too. Their coaches is sitting down with his torn knee and they have another coach managing like the in game shit going on for them.

Mike Portnoy

They're just, they're getting outdone in every facet of basketball right now. The games aren't close. I disagree that they haven't been tested, though. They were tested in this playoffs. They were just tested in the first half of every game.

Dan Katz

Yeah. And also, Lakers almost beat them. Well, no, this is. This is now a great change to the narrative. Like, how shitty are the Los Angeles Lakers?

So shitty. If they were getting beat by these nuggets, they shouldn't have even been in the playoffs. So, so shitty. And it was. I'm happy we did that entire week of being like, well, the Lakers just had a really bad matchup with nuggets.

No, the west. And we can go. We can stay in the west. The west is just young and deep because the thunder, who hadn't played a game in forever, came out like, giddy likes it. Yeah, they.

They came out giddy. I always feel so bad Jake didn't like that one. No, I didn't like that one. I always feel so bad for guys when they just, like, sag off them much, that they're just like, go ahead, shoot. No problem.

Yeah, we'll let you shoot. Like, that's such an embarrassing thing. If I were Josh giddy, I would just. I would try to just never be at the three point line because, you know they're just going to let you shoot and you're going to miss and it's going to suck. But the thunder there, I mean, I want to see wolves Thunder at this point.

Like, it's two young teams that are so exciting. Hank's shaking his head because he thinks the Celts can beat both those teams very easily. Hank, you should listen to the Kirk Goldsberry interview because I might have said something that you'd be interested in also. You should. Hank should actually start rooting for the Nuggets.

Mike Portnoy

No, he's what I would do. If he doesn't think the wolves are a tough matchup for the Celtics. They're a tough matchup, but I'd rather face the wolves or the Thunder or the Mavericks and the Nuggets still. Okay. Max disagrees.

Dan Katz

Yeah, but anyway, the thunder. Max doesn't know. I'm just talking about the Kirk Goldsberry interview. Yeah, yeah. Wait till you get to it, Hank.

The thunder are so young and so much fun, and it feels like. Like Sga was incredible in the first half. And then you get to the fourth quarter, it's like, oh, we got another really young dude in Jalen Williams who's just going to torch you. And Lou Dort's everywhere. It's just like we said this a couple of weeks ago, but if you're a Thunder fan, I.

It's thunder or Wolves fan. It has to be the, like, coolest, funnest experience right now to watch your organic, homegrown team be super young and just dominating everyone. Why you shaking your head? Don't shake your head, because he's talking. About the west tank.

We're talking about. Your team's not that young, Hank. You're kind of young, but this is like a new age. Jason Tim's 19 years old age of. Thunder every single year.

Mike Portnoy

Hey, this is. This is you. You had your moment, like, four years ago with the Celtics team, where you had fun on that, and they're fun. Yeah. Let them.

Let other people have fun. It's not always about you. It's anything for the right. You shook your head. You knew what you did.

Dan Katz

You shook your head. I know. We'll get to Cocky Hank. We'll get to Cocky Hank. You have it.

You had a great game one. But listen, we invited Cocky Hank back, so we have to embrace the fact that we're just complimenting the thunder. And he's shaking his head like, yeah, you know what? Take him. Listen, if you can't handle him at a subdued, like, game by game Hank, then you don't deserve him.

At Cocky Hank. I wanted. We got a cocky Hank. I fucking love how much I fucking hate Hank right now. It's awesome.

Yeah. This is what we wanted. It really is. So I'm glad you're back, you piece of shit. Yeah.

I'm not mad, but, yeah, the thunder, I. The Mavs will. This will be a series. But the fact that the thunder came out on, you know, all this off, all this rest and played that well, I mean, they're just. They're fun.

Chet Holmgren's fun to watch. They got just guys that are fun to watch, and they're all young. They scream after every play, too. A lot of emotion. A lot of.

Mike Portnoy

And the t shirts. My God, the t shirts tonight in Oklahoma City, it looked like a college stadium. It looked like when. When, like Tennessee does the checkerboard in the stands. Some people wear one color.

Like, there were. It was a perfect row of blue t shirts, and then a perfect row. Was it. Was it orange, or was it white tonight? I forget, but it was.

It was perfectly done. I didn't see single t shirt out of place. They're the best at it. Okay, Hank. Cocky Hank.

Dan Katz

Time. He was correct in, or he's on pace for his triple dip digits. Prediction bloodbath or point differential in this series. The Celtics won by 25. You probably kind of wish they had maybe gone by like 35.

So you get a little ahead of the pace. Yeah, I mean, they got up so, by so much. They took out the. The starters, you know, with a lot of time left. But 25 is good.

Hank Lockwood

We're on pace. We're on pace. This is a joke for you? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, said going in, they might drop one game. You know, cavs will have a historic shooting night, beat him at home or something, but this should be a four one, if not 40.

Dan Katz

When. When did you know this one was over? They didn't. They came out slow. Honestly, they didn't shoot great in the first quarter.

Hank Lockwood

I was a little bit worried. I told you guys, I loved. I love the Celtics. Spread out the Celtics first half, and the first quarter, I think, was tied late in the first quarter, but, you know, they turn it on second half. Second quarter.

Derek White couldn't miss. Jalen Brown couldn't miss. Probably, like, halfway through the second quarter. That's. That's the scary part, is, like, Jalen Brown and Derek White were incredible.

Dan Katz

Jason Tatum was not that great tonight, at least shooting, and they still. Yeah, right, I know, but I mean, he. I don't think he hit a three, and he wasn't, like, being super aggressive, but, like, I'm not saying he played bad. I'm saying that they. They 25 pieced him when Jason Tatum wasn't, like, on his a game, which.

Is that a fair assessment, Luke? Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, he was. He was facilitating. This is also.

This is also not a copy. Yeah, yeah. This is part of a great. A great superstar player, you know, does what it takes to win. He sees that his other guys are having a good night, and he just helps facilitate.

It. Did feel like. It did feel like the most casual bloodbath of all time. Yeah. And.

Pft. This is. This is the part I forgot about. Cocky Hank. If you.

If you say that, like, Jason Tatum, he didn't hit a three. He was over five from three. If you just state that, Hank will be like, well, fuck you. Yeah, yeah. He'll be like, what are you trying to say?

Mike Portnoy

And. And we're saying what big cat said was, Jason Tatum didn't have his best night. I think we can all agree that's a fact, right? No, not Derek, but Derek White was really good. And Derek winning, a plus 18 point differential, like, yeah, that's a great night for Jason Tatum.

Think about it this way, Hank. Like, a couple years ago, Derek White, he's improved so much in the last, like, two years. Three years of his game. Right. And he's very good.

It's undeniable that Derek White is a great player right now. Sorry. He's a. He's a great player. He's a.

Dan Katz

He's. Is he a great player? Is he a very good player? Finals MVP plus 4000 if you want to get a long shot in early. That's kind of disrespectful to Jason Tatum that you're not betting on Jason.

Oh, he was over five from three. Pft. That's a good point, big cat. Yeah. But I guess Hank's not a real fan.

Mike Portnoy

But the thing is, like, like value. They're. They're all playing well. So I, with Al Horford and for, for Christophs Przingas, didn't seem like it mattered that much. Plus, you got an extra dub that we'll get to in a little bit where you not only defeated the heat, you may have just exploded heat culture because of J butt and Pat Riley going back and forth.

So you're just. You're vanquishing all your foes right now. You must be feeling really good. You're like thanos, and I think that that movie ends really well for thanos. Mm hmm.

Hank Lockwood

I think the first one, there's, like, part two is two parts, right? The first one, he. Yeah, Hank does. He. He did.

Dan Katz

Hank and I were driving up to Wrigley last night, and I was like, who's going to, who's going to play with Christophs out? And he's like, Horford, but it's going to really. Luke Cornette is going to be an x factor. Hank knows ball. He was a beast on the boards.

Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was the x factor. It was very, very easy for you. And I look forward to many more easy games like this last NBA game. We got to talk about the Knicks Pacers game one.

I feel bad for Pacers fans. Now the Knicks are. I mean, Josh Hart had a billion rebounds. Dante Devoncenzo hit all the big shots. Jalen Brunson still is just playing out of his mind, so it's not taking away from the Knicks.

The last two minutes did suck, though, because it was just too much refs. And not even if you're like, hey, I'm not saying the Knicks shouldn't have won. I'm just saying there was too much refs. The. The screen call that they.

They called the legal screen, which I guess technically was wrong, but it happens every game like that. If you take that screen out of the NBA, bam has to retire tomorrow because that's. That's literally all he does is do that screen. He's got very long legs and they get in your way. Yeah, yeah.

And. And so it sucks at the end, and it sucks that the pacers, like, they were. I think it was what. They had a chance. They were down what, one.

And then next thing you know, without even a possession happening, they were. Because it was like Jalen Brunson foul before the inbound free throw, then another Jalen Brunson. So, like, it was game over. It sucked. And my biggest problem with this game is if you're going to have reviews that take these games so long and we review everything and it's like mind numbing.

How the fuck can't you review a kickball? Because that was actually the thing the Pacers should be most upset about was that wasn't a kickball on E. Smith. He hit it with his hand and you just can't review it. And that was.

That led to Dante Devon Chenzo's three. That was the moment that I can live with the screen, because technically it was an illegal screen. The fucking kickball, that wasn't a kickball. You should be able to review it. Well, it wasn't just that they.

Mike Portnoy

They can't review the kickball. It was that the kickball call took away a fast break. Probably would have been two points at that point. It was a tie game. So not only was it the three that resulted right afterwards, but it denied the paces the opportunity to take what seemed like it probably would have been a pretty easy lead for them to.

Dan Katz

Take at the time. So the fact that it was called in the first place and then not being able to, I don't know how they come up with these rules. I'm sure that's probably one that they'll look at in the offseason. Be like, yeah, you should be able to review if it hit off his foot or not. I don't know, but that it did stink.

Mike Portnoy

The moving screen call gave us all PTSD flashbacks of the Yukon and Iowa semifinal game in women's college basketball, although that was a more egregious screen than the one in the game last night, the nick spacers one. And I think that there should be a rule. Basketball. If there's. If there's an illegal screen and you flop while you're going into the illegal screen, you should be able to get away with the illegal screen.

Dan Katz

Yeah, I agree. If. Take it like a man and deal it with your inconvenience, and then they'll call it. But if you flop and you act like a fish out there, then they're like, you know what? You cheated too.

Yeah, it's all through it. Fight through all screens. Yeah, I just. When it comes to like instant replay, I. I'm an all or nothing guy.

I'm cool. If they said tomorrow there's no instant replay and we're just gonna go with whatever the refs say and the games will move faster and it will be smoother. I'm all for that. The minute that you start reviewing it, you gotta review everything and get it right. Like you just do.

Cuz that was such a stupid thing that they couldn't review. Oh, I'm not, I'm not in favor of reviewing everything. I'm. Because I don't. I think that it's a slippery slope to like, getting refs out of the game entirely.

Mike Portnoy

And I like having refs. Can you imagine if there was one night where they just said absolutely no instant replay, how, how mad people would get at refs? It would be like, these refs stink. I'm just like, don't do reviews for the majority of the game. Do reviews for the last three minutes.

Dan Katz

I don't care. Do every review for the last three minutes. Get it right. If you're going to have reviews, just get it right. And then just have a play that you can't review.

That was clearly wrong. It makes no sense to me. So I don't know. And then, then the, the Knicks lost Mitchell Robinson for, I think, the rest of the playoffs. They have no one.

Like they, they don't play a bench. And they're just, it's all tibs. Like, just, we're going to fucking grind this. And you guys are. Get ready to learn 48, buddy.

Because that's every guy now. So they said eight weeks. Eight weeks. They said they're going to reevaluate in six to eight weeks. I looked at a calendar that appears to be the entire NBA playoffs.

It's also really mean to do that because then everyone gets just reply, they're not. There isn't going to be eight weeks from now. Like, he doesn't deserve that. Mitchell Robinson is fun to watch, but yeah, I mean, they're, they don't, they don't play that. Mitchell Robinson played twelve minutes last night off the bench.

Deuce McBride played eleven. That's kind of it. And now you lose one of them, so I don't know what the fuck they're going to do. Yeah, I mean, that, that could be a knock against Tibbs that, like, he doesn't play a lot of guys, even during the regular season, so he doesn't have anybody that's ready to step up in case somebody gets hurt. These guys are ready to go, though.

In fact, the fact that they're like, I think that Tibbs is the one coach. He just walks in. He's like, you guys are all playing 48 tonight. Like, yeah, we've been waiting for this. Max, are there any Villanova players that do not currently play in the NBA that could be picked up by the Knicks?

Where's Chris Jenkins? Chris Jenkins is on the Villanova staff. Love Chris Jenkins. Probably not in NBA game shape right now. Scotty Reynolds.

Scotty Reynolds could easily lace him up and put him out there. Easily. Haven't seen him in years. But there's. I mean, there's always something about that guy.

He's a gamer. Yeah, Ryan, Archie Diackino was on the team. I like that you're taking this experiment very seriously.

Hank Lockwood

Connor Gillespie, him and TJ McConnell speaks on the nuggets. Con Gillespie's on the Nuggets. He's going to be a good player in the NBA. That's a promise. That's.

Mike Portnoy

That's an absolute promise. Okay. This experiment. I'm done with this experiment. It's a promise.

Dan Katz

Hockey real quick. 54 saves is a fucking shitload of saves. Shasturkin on the Rangers tonight, double overtime, 54 saves. We have our standing on our head guy. It's just Durkin.

Mike Portnoy

He's a. He's a beast. Don't. Shut the fuck up, Hank. You stop.

Yeah, you stop it. Hank, listen, all right? Congratulations. I tweeted this out. I saw Hank liked it.

It was not meant to be liked by you. Congratulations to both your Boston Celtics and your Boston Bruins on winning championships this year. What a magical spring this is for you. I'm very happy. I would just like to say that I did.

Hank Lockwood

I did place a pretty big future on the Bruins and the Celtics to win both eastern conferences parlayed. And when that hits, I will buy you a pair of headphones that you can lean back in your chair.

I promise to you. Yeah. The story behind these headphones is I went to a real hot streak of buying headphones in airports before flights that didn't fit my phone. And so I've got these, and I'm like, fuck it, I'm going to use them somewhere. So now I just have them dangling off the side.

Mike Portnoy

I appreciate that, Hank. You're such a generous guy. That's huge, Hank. That's huge of you, but, yeah. Are we allowed to say Shister can played well?

Dan Katz

Yeah. I mean, he's also got. I think that's like, maybe the best hockey name going. Like I do that. The fans chanting Igor.

Hank Lockwood

Igor. It's just a. It's just a great. Igor is just a great hockey name. Yeah.

Dan Katz

And we had. And, Hank, your, your bruins did win game one. It's convincingly. Yeah. Against all.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah. And there's a game going on right now. Oh, here. Here's a fun game that we can. Yeah.

Eric Sollenberger

Memes. Memes didn't show up to this, but he mushed Mister pair so hard. Oh, so hard. Can tell you guys something that I'm currently worried about. And it's a, it's kind of a personal thing, but it's hockey related.

Mike Portnoy

I've gotten two random DM's from people in the last 24 hours that have told me that today, Wednesday, a veteran's gonna retire. Oh, man. And I'm worried about that, and I'm sad. Okay. Can I make you feel better?

Well, also, I got DM from somebody that's saying that he always dreams the future and that two nights ago he dreamed I was gonna die. So I'm just. I'm on a real. I'm on a cold streak with the predictions right now. Okay.

I hope I die before a vetch can retire. How about that? All right, I got you. I'm going to. I'm going to try to make you feel better.

Dan Katz

The Blackhawks got the number two pick tonight in the lottery. The Sharks got number one. So they're going to get celebrity, I'm pretty sure. And this is all based off of our colleague chiefs tweets, who is a Blackhawks expert. He.

I'm pretty sure that there's a russian guy they're going to draft with the second pick. Maybe he's just the Nexo vetchkin. Did that make you feel better, that you would get. Yeah. How does he feel about Putin?

I don't know. Big Putin guy. That not help. Speaker one. NHL needs a big putin.

Yeah. I. I don't know. It's going to be. That's going to be a big time, like, end of an era because I think unquestionably he's the best athlete in the history of DC sports.

Mike Portnoy

It's like him. Darrell Green, probably. That's probably Gilbert's legendary. But anyways, that's just a personal thing I'm dealing with. We can talk about teams that are actually good now and still in the playoffs, but, yeah, Hanks Bruins are awesome.

Congratulations, Hank, on making the Easter Conference finals and winning the Eastern Conference finals in both sports. Yeah, he's muted. Good. I like this. Great point, Hank.

Money and buy a microphone that would fuck. It's fun. You know, when you're. When you have these. These sessions when it's every night.

Hank Lockwood

Playoffs. It's fun to kind of switch from underdog to favorite. Like.

Hockey is going to be tough. Hockey. It's tough to get an inch in the playoffs. As annoying as you are. I so much, so much love this more than.

Dan Katz

Than what you were last week. This is great. This is podcasting, boys. This feels like old school PMT. Just keep winning.

Mike Portnoy

I just imagine Hank, like, waking up on every alternate day. It's like it's us against the world. And then the next day wakes up, he's like, fuck all these little pip squeaks. We're dominant. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Last two things I had one, football is back because we had the official 1st. 1st sign of football being back when Schefter tweeted out the announcement of when the schedules are being announced. Best feeling ever. That's the sign. That's like the first leaf turning in the fall.

Schefter has told us that there will be an announcement coming up. Yeah, but they haven't. They haven't even said when it's gonna be, right? No. So next Wednesday.

Mike Portnoy

It's next Wednesday. We have an exact. Because usually, usually there's like a pre announcement where they say the NFL is getting ready to announce when the schedule will be released. So it's like an announcement for the announcement? For the announcement.

But yeah, I'm very, very excited because then you get to print it out, you get to look at it and you get to count. Every team is gonna win eleven games next year. It's the best day. Yeah. And then the last thing we should.

Dan Katz

We do real quick, we probably have to. Austin Rivers went on McAfee show and started the debate that I think we have probably every, like two years. He said there's 30 guys in the NBA right now that could play on an NFL roster and none that could play from the NFL on an NBA roster. I love these debates. They're my favorite.

Uh, I think we can all agree before we even dive into this that really we should be focusing on the fact that everyone on the NBA roster, NFL roster, could play for the US men's national team and win us a World cup. But these debates rock because we can't really ever figure it out. But everyone's going to spend an entire afternoon debating it. I I'm very clear on, on my take, but I want to hear your guys take first, uh, and where it goes. All right, so my big problem with this debate is that he didn't bring this up in July.

Mike Portnoy

This is the exact content that we need in July. You're way too early. The NBA playoffs are going on right now. But my take is. Well, of course Austin Rivers would think that guys in the NFL can't play in the NBA because Austin Rivers can't even play in the NBA.

Dan Katz

Correct. And that's his sport. So I understand where he's coming from on that. I think that NFL players, there's probably no NFL players that could play in the NBA. There's been one guy, was it Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy, and then he went on to have a very long career playing in the NBA?

Mike Portnoy

That was the one guy that's ever done it, and he was, like, a very unique case. Do I need to remind people that people forget that Antonio Gates played college basketball, that Jimmy Graham played college basketball? These guys played college basketball. There's a skillset that translates to the NFL from football. Most of them probably wouldn't want to get hit.

Anthony Davis would probably break his neck putting on a helmet. But for the most part, you could find some of the bigger guys, more athletic guys, and they could play at least receiver or tight end. I don't, I don't know if there's 30 of them. I actually. I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be saying my.

I want to hear what Jim Harbaugh has to say about this. Yeah, I'm sure he's got an awesome answer. Ready to go? Yeah. What were you going to say, Hank?

Hank Lockwood

There would be way more NFL players that could play NBA than reverse. You're insane. If we do this. Crazy. So if we did this.

Dan Katz

So the parameters. Because the, the argument changes, and people in the NFL. Hold on. Shift it around. But if you do, if the argument is simply, you have to play in, you have to make a roster tomorrow.

So not like, oh, I get a year to get prepped. There's no way 30 guys from the NBA could make a roster in the NFL tomorrow. I think maybe one or two could make a roster, and I'm talking, like, special teams, whatever, like that. I'm not saying they're, like, a super impactful guy. There's zero guys on the NFL roster right now.

Roster. That's. That's a semantical argument because it's way easier to get a short term contract for NFL team. When NBA, like, there's only twelve spots.

Eric Sollenberger

15. No, but Hank, when we're talking about, by the way, if we're going to include special teams, I mean, I whimby blocking kicks. Just line up and Weimbee and Chet right down the middle. Hank, you think that. All right, so what do you want to do?

Dan Katz

What do you do want to. The timeframe you want to do? Three months max. Jordan Milata got drafted without ever playing. It down of football.

Thank you. Antonio Gates played college basketball, not college football. Yeah, it's green. Play college football. Okay, what's that supposed to prove?

But have you ever heard of someone in the NBA getting drafted without ever playing, like, picking up a basketball before? It happens in football, like, like every. Other year, you hear about someone dropping. Okay, Ben Simmons. A great point, Hank.

Ben Simmons can't shoot when he got the league rayon. Rondo can't shoot. Ben Simmons can't shoot in an NBA game. We've watched Ben Simmons every single summer in an empty gym. Not miss.

That's how good NBA players are. They're on a different level in terms of, like, they, they. You could get every guy on an NBA roster, put him in an open gym. They will not miss. They go to a game, they're shooting 40%, 30%.

Ben Simmons, whatever. Worse. You put an NFL guy in an open gym, you think he's missing. He's missing. He doesn't have the same skill.

There's skills. Athleticism is like a wash. NFL guys are getting upset because they're like, what, you don't think NFL guys are some of the best athletes in the world? I think NFL guys could probably play more sports than NBA guys in terms of just like, I've seen NBA guys try to throw a baseball, NFL guys. It feels like a lot of NFL guys have played a lot of different sports.

NBA. The height, the, the skill level with dribbling and shooting is on a completely different level that you can't just be like, oh, yeah, this guy's tall. Oh, Devontae Adams is really awesome. He could play. I feel like it's not even close.

Mike Portnoy

Let's think about the difference, though, between NFL and NBA players, right? Maybe the, the best NFL basketball player that I know of right now, big dude. Miles Garrett. You know how tall he is? He's six four.

Eric Sollenberger

Correct. Okay. He's six four. He would be, he would be like a smaller guard. NBA Steph Curry, six 4.

Dan Katz

Miles Garrett would also foul out in five minutes if he played in an NBA game. And that's not because Miles Garrett isn't an insane freak of an athlete. He is. It's because these guys, like, the, their movement, their steps, the way they, the pump fakes, like, all those things that come into an NBA game. Miles Garrett would just like Chet Holt.

Someone's like, oh, he would. He'd be able to lock down Chet Holmgren. Chad Holmgren would put 30 on him, and he would be fouled out in a second. Now, the. A better question is, are there any NBA players that you think could play defense in the NFL?

Mike Portnoy

Like, be able to tackle and do all that shit? Marcus, smart. Maybe. I could see. I could sweet the Westbrook.

I could see Westbrook as, like, safety, maybe as a safety. And he's like the water boy, where he, he just imagines the quarterback saying Westbrook to him before every play, and then he goes fucking nuts. I. The. I mean, Tyrese Max, he has NFL speed.

Dan Katz

He does. Like, I I think that the argument gets lost because people think that it's like, a knock on NFL players is not. NFL players are insane. And I, again, I think the Austin Rivers comment makes no sense because I do not think 30 guys could go and want to take those hits and, like, have to deal with the toughness that takes to be in the NFL. It's just the NBA.

I I feel like I don't know if you guys like watching an NBA player just play basketball with no one around. You just see, you're like, this is just so different than everything else. It's just so we got a guy in our, in our office, Mark Titus, who is like, he doesn't miss shooting, and he's, you know what I mean? Like, and he didn't play at Ohio State. He played.

I shouldn't say that, but he. There's so many levels to this, Hank. I can't believe you. You think that. That the NBA players, like, I can't.

I'm actually shocked by your take. I mean, I was trying to do some. Some. Just statistical analysis with mine based off of the numbers game, but the numbers. Game aren't even in your favor.

It's harder to make the NBA than. It is the NFL, but there's way more. It's what, again, I want to get. I don't get roster shamed here. 52 on the active roster, but that's the revert.

Your arguments reversed that you could make an NBA player. There's more chance to make a roster. Make a couple spots. Yeah, I guess I didn't really think about the reversal. I think you were just.

Mike Portnoy

I think you were just trying to argue. I, like. That's what I think. Yeah.

Hank Lockwood

I'm gonna have to think about it a little more, but I do. I just also feel like there's so many. So many guys in the NBA, or, like, you point out the size thing, there's too many. Like, there's too many tall people in the NBA that agreed would not be able to play NFL. Yeah, there's a ton of people in the NBA that would be over.

Dan Katz

That's what we're saying. What are you gonna do? We're saying, we're saying it's very hard to do either one. But if you had to say which one could have a better chance, it's definitely the NBA translating to the NFL, without a doubt. Name one player in the NFL that you think could play in the NBA.

Hank Lockwood

I saw some Drake may high school highlights. Oh, Cooper Degene could do it. Everyone says the high school highlights. You know, how far being a really good high school basketball player, someone who, like DeAndre Hopkins played basketball at Clemson. There was someone else who retweeted, Coleman was like, yeah.

Dan Katz

He was not. He couldn't. I don't know if he wanted to, like, pursue basketball in mission State, but, like, being a good basketball player at Michigan State doesn't mean you're an NBA roster guy. There's still, like, a level to that, Hank. Yes.

Mike Portnoy

That's the face Hank makes when he knows that he's wrong. But he won't say I'm wrong. No. I mean, you made some good arguments. I'm not gonna.

Hank Lockwood

I'm not gonna admit defeat, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna do some more research and come back to you on Thursday. Okay. Okay. I.

Dan Katz

More research. I just want one player. I want to know one player that you think you do it. It's also. It's like, it's one of those.

Yeah. Like, like Stephen Shea tweeted, mike Evans dunk. I would have to see Lamar Jackson's jumper, but, like, he's six. He's like, six two. Mike there is athletic as fuck and fast.

Mike Evans dunking handles and a shot. But I'll say this, Hank. Mike Evans said that he loved basketball and, like, was considering. He says that he could. He thought he could play in the NBA.

Mike Evans wasn't a top 100 recruit in high school. Like, that's. He's already. The odds are completely stacked against him.

Mike Portnoy

I think Jamis could do it. He can do anything. And again, I want it very clear. Austin Rivers is an idiot. I do not think there is 30 guys in the NBA who could play in the NFL tomorrow.

Dan Katz

I think there's, like, one or two. There's zero in the NFL. Play in the NBA tomorrow. That's the whole point. Also, you, the.

Do you know who. You know who I thought of right away? Because, remember, the avalanche just won. Congrats to the Avs getting game. One member, Joseph Fourier, the Lions tight end who was six, 7250, and he played like two years for the Lions, and all he did was goal line package, and he would just stand there and he would catch a touchdown.

Like, I think his. I think his rookie year, he had 18 catches, and seven of them were touchdowns. You. You do. Like, if Giannis was in goal line package and you just split him out wide and you just threw him a jump ball, how does he not.

How is that not a touchdown every time? Yeah, so I'm saying, like. Like, Wimby, just in terms of putting him on an island and being like, here, I'm going to throw the ball as high as I can, and no one's going to just put whimby back there on Hail Mary's, right. You would never get scored on. On a long pass like that.

Mike Portnoy

The size is a real issue because you have to be insanely skilled to play in the NBA. If you're undersized, if you're, like, less than six four, I would say you have to have just out of this world, next level skills compared to even the greatest basketball players that are currently in the NBA to. To make it happen with a career. So I. I don't think it's even, like, a remotely closed conversation.

There's probably. I would say there's maybe. Maybe ten. I could see there being ten guys in the NBA that if you gave them a year to train and if they loved it, the other question is, like, would they like playing football? No, they might just.

They might just be like, this sucks. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Joe Burrow won a high school championship as a freshman, division two Southeast district player of the year, senior year, four year varsity letterman. Great court vision.

Hank Lockwood

He would definitely have. Okay, when was the last time he played ball? Well, I mean, he focused on football, but it's like, if he focused all that energy on basketball, I'm sure he's. Saying, like, bro, NBA players, if they focused on. On football, there's probably, like, a handful of them that just by their size and athleticism, could find a spot.

All you have to do is run. Okay, here. Here's. Here's Hank here's, here's part of the argument. If you took the measurables of, like, NBA players and you had them, like, do all of the combine drills, NFL, there would be a lot of NFL scouts would be like, kind of like what Max was saying.

Dan Katz

Like, oh, that guy's got the raw athleticism. He's a project. We take him. If you take all the NFL players and put them in the NBA combine, you'd have to eliminate almost 70% of them just based on height immediately. Probably more than that.

Mike Portnoy

Probably more than 70%. And then you'd watch them shoot, and you'd probably get rid of another, like, 95% of them. And then you have Joe Burrow. And then Joe. I'll give you Joe Burrow just because we love Joe Burrow.

Dan Katz

But Hank, I would like you to do some more research and maybe look it up. I did, like, everyone just falling for the trap where they were like, Antonio Gates, it's like, yeah, he played basketball at Kent State. He was so far away from the NBA, and he's a hall of fame tight end. That's. That's the exact opposite argument that you should be making.

Right, right. Wait, they were doing the Antonio Gates as an example. That proves the point of why an NFL player could. Yes. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

Okay, that's, that's, that's really bad logic. Even for the Internet. I'm impressed. It was really bad logic. They were like, oh, Antonio Gates could hoop.

Dan Katz

It's like, no, dude, he was, he played basketball to his maximum ability and then was like, oh, shit, I'll be a tight end and be a hall of famer. Yeah, yeah. It's the best ever. I do. I.

You're right. Do we need this to happen? Probably not the best ever. One of the best ever for that era. We needed this in July.

But, uh, this, this would be the. Perfect, like, all star, MLB all star game week conversation to have. Yeah. So we'll, we'll do it again. But, yeah, sound off in the comments.

Tell us why we're wrong. This is, these are my favorite hypotheticals because we would never find it out. Um, and also now, hockey player. A hockey player could play in the NBA. Dude, I loved, I love the hockey players.

Hockey guys chiming in. It was like one out of every 20 tweets being like, try to put any of these guys on skates. Wouldn't be able to do it. No. Yeah.

Uh, also, you just, everyone should know that Will Compton is the one who's pushing this hard and his brain doesn't really work. Will Compton saying that NFL players could play. Yeah, he was saying they could dominate. Well, Compton did a very smart thing. He changed the argument.

He changed the debate completely to who would do better, an entire NBA team of NFL players or an entire NFL team of NBA players? So basically saying, imagine if we had all the NBA players try to block TJ Watt, and then it's just obvious, like, okay, that makes no sense. I think both teams would get smoked. If you had all players play against the best NBA team. They would get fucking 50 pieced.

Mike Portnoy

I want Will to dive deeper into this wormhole and to do an NBA team of all the best white NFL players against an NBA team of all the best black NFL players. And which one would win? Roster breakdown time. He'll get there. He'll get there.

Dan Katz

All right, we're going to kick it to ourselves. We got two interviews. Kirk Goldsberry, Verne Lundquist. We also have hot sea cool throne and pardon your take on back in studio. Before we kick it to ourselves, though, quick word, everyone.

Probably more Pll, guys. The tragedy in Mexico. Calum Robinson, his brother and his friend. Really, really, really sad story. There is a Gofundme for the families.

I think we can probably pin it to the videos. So if you. You know, if you're a lacrosse guy, really, really sad. And, you know, we. We love the PlL, and so anything that you want to give, we appreciate it.

And, Hank, you had anything with that? Yeah, we'll share all the links. Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. They were just on a surf trip. Carter, the other guy, the friend of the Robinson's, he was about to get married, so there's some go funds.

Hank Lockwood

Go fund these for the brother, one for Carter. We'll. We'll share all the links, and I'm sure everything. Everything is appreciated. Just a very, very sad story.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, yeah. Donate if you can feel like it. It's. It's terrible. They were just.

They're trying to have fun, and I don't. I think they're still investigating what happened, but it sounds like they caught the people that did it, which is. I guess that's good news, because they're off the streets there. But, yeah, it's. It's.

It's heartbreaking. Their families over in Australia right now, obviously, just in a. Can't be in a good place right now. So if you can help them out, that'd be appreciated. Yeah, we'll donate to.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Okay, let's kick it back to ourselves in studio. Okay. Hot sea cool throne is brought to you by our friends at Coors Light. Hot seat cool throne is presented by Coors Light.

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Oh, we should talk about Jimmy J Butt. Old J butt. Old J butt heat culture. Absolute shambles. Pat Riley did a press conference at the end of the season, asked about Jimmy Butler trolling when he wasn't playing, and he said, if you're not in the court playing, you should keep your mouth shut.

Kind of agree with that. I don't disagree with Pat Riley saying that because you're going up against the Celtics and for a guy that's not playing, to be like, yeah, you know, we expect to beat him every time and to be, like, talking that shit and then not having to be the one that backs it up, I I think Pat Riley is probably correct about this. I don't know. I mean, Jay but is pretty hard headed himself. But he might just be like, yeah, you know what?

Mike Portnoy

Pat's right. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm way off on that. I'm going to disagree.

Dan Katz

I think Jay but will probably because there's also the contract thing going on right now where I think Jay Bud is got two years left, extension time. Is he bigger than heat culture? Also, I saw a tweet from. It's. It's from one of those, like, NBA Central.

Hank Lockwood

Like, not a hundred percent legitimate. Make sure. NBA central. No, it's. But it's.

Dan Katz

Remember when I thought dream on Central, a ball sack jewelry mean the dunk. Central is the ad. So. Okay. It said that the 76 ers are the favorites to land Jimmy Butler in a potential trade.

Oh, that's interesting. So can you imagine how good the Sixers would be if they had Jimmy Butler on them and Embiid, man, that would be a great team, actually, that's the one sliding doors moment. Tyrese Maxi wasn't on that team. Yeah, it would be a different team. Jay but had been on the Jay.

Mike Portnoy

But if he was on the Sixers the last, what, four years, I think they get a title. So. Yeah. Yeah, probably so. Jay Butt has two years.

Dan Katz

The second year is a player option with the Heat. So I. He's definitely in that zone of, I'm ready for an extension. I'm about to be 35. I would like to get paid a lot more money.

He gets paid a lot of money, but that's how it works. The NBA. And then Pat Riley has to decide whether he is too big for heat culture. I just. It has to suck.

I feel like Jimmy Butler is such a shit talker, which motivates him and makes him be a great player. But there has to be a small part of you that's like, when I shit talk and I'm not playing, and then I watch my boys get their asses kicked. That's got to suck. But it might. Jimmy Butler might be the one guy who's like, now still shit talk.

Mike Portnoy

He'll shit talk his team for not. For not having the balls to go out there and back up his words. Yeah. I also love Pat Riley. Just anytime he gets behind a microphone to roast people.

Pat Riley is a cool guy. Yeah. He's probably the coolest old guy in America right now. Well, he also. He's like a mob boss.

Dan Katz

Yeah, he's a mob boss. And whatever they decide to do with Jimmy Butler, like, the heat somehow have just. Other than a couple years since they drafted D Wade, have never really been bad, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah, they just always. They always find a way to get new guys that are really good and fit heat culture.

So maybe it's just the time has passed. Heat culture. With Jimmy Butler no longer a good. Marriage, I saw a clip from Shaq's podcast where he said, when he was on the heat, I think, like, Jason Williams was late for a practice. Pat Riley told him to get the fuck out.

Hank Lockwood

And then Shaq, like, spoke up for him, was like, no, no. Like, it's. It's cool. Like, you know, he's just a minute late. He told Shaq to get the fuck out.

And then one of the guys in the locker room that's close to Pat Riley was like, yeah, you know, here's the U Haul address. You're gonna be getting boxes soon enough. And then he did. They got a call later the afternoon, like, you were getting ready releasing you, trading or whatever. And he was so mad, he tried to show back up to the facility and Pat Riley, you had 35 cops there, like, and they're like, yeah, we're told you can't come in.

Dan Katz

That's what I'm saying. Like, he. Pat Riley news. He knows he culture and he knows when it's expired. I think the.

Yeah. For the heat in the last. It feels like 20 years. Their. Their floor has been better than you expect them to be.

Correct. That's as bad as it gets in Miami. And three titles. What, five or how many? No, they show four or five.

Mike Portnoy

Seven trips every year. Seven trips to the NBA title. Yeah, they did finals. They did choke. Well, they turned off the air conditioning in San Antonio.

Dan Katz

Yeah, but I mean, they've. They've been very. They've been a very well run organization under Pat Riley. I would say so. So I will side with.

If the divorce happens, I'll probably side with Pat Riley just based on the fact that he's proven time and time again he can make the heat. Good. The worst decision they've made, the only bad decision that I can think of is that they retired Jordan's number. Yeah. Total cut move.

Total cut. Big time cock move. Total cock move. All right. Your cool throne.

Cool throws. The Met gala. Yeah, met Gala. Do we know what goes on at the Met gala? We've been trying to figure this every year.

Mike Portnoy

Seven years, I think. Yeah, no, they just talk about what. Happened outside the Met gala. There's just rich people show up in. There's some theme.

Dan Katz

What was the theme this year? Sleeping beauty. Sleeping beauty. Oh, no. Garden of time.

Garden of time. Oh, that explains Ben Simmons briefcase that had the giant clock on it. That look. I thought he was carrying a bomb in there. Yeah, cool clock.

Mike Portnoy

You want to bring it to school, Ahmed? Yeah. The Met gal is weird. I don't who your guys favorite looks. I like dead Sheeran.

He looked like he was in dumb and dumber a little bit. I like the guy who was wearing just an umbrella. That's something I would like to wear. I like you just. You couldn't even see the person underneath it.

Dan Katz

That's kind of a fact. The woman that wore sand. No, I did not see the woman that wore sand. How do you wear sandwiches? I don't know, but she did.

Hank Lockwood

She'd get carried up the stairs cuz she like, couldn't. By the way, loved Lizzo live. Lizzo was serving looks last night? Yeah. Did you see her?

Mike Portnoy

She looked like a paper bag. She did. She was in Star wars. Like, I wanted to tip her out. I wanted her out, and she looked like a Star wars.

If you tipped her out and porter over, I would think that there'd be some sort of, like, cheap gas station liquor that would come out of her. Can I say an idea that people cannot steal because it's a great idea that someone tweeted at me that we're gonna do. Yes. So, legally, no one's allowed to steal this. Who's listening right now?

Dan Katz

This is from Millie goats. He tweeted me last night, I think, and I talked to Dave about it. I think we're going to do a bet gala at some point this year where we invite some famous people, and we just bet every single game on the board and we dress up. That'd be pretty good, right? Good idea.

Hank Lockwood

We should come up with a theme overs, I think. Just betting, gambling on sports. Yeah. Uh, let's see the fried food. That'd be good.

Dan Katz

Yeah, it's good theme. Everyone dresses up blue and fry. Blue. Good. You.

You'd be good at this. Yeah. I'll be a chair. I need to see that. Is this the lady that dressed up as sand?

That doesn't look like. That's not sand. That's the hottest sand I've ever seen. Yeah, I would. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

If that's sand, then all the skin on my dick is gone. Mmm. That's some good sand. Great sand. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Okay. Good hot sea. Cool throne, Hank. Thanks. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah. Hank's really good at taking her hot seat. Cool thrones. I did have the Met gal as well. Yeah.

I think Hank just sits down. He thinks. I don't think he thinks about what he should say for hot seat. Cool throwing. I think he sits down and ponders, what do you think big cat and pft will say?

Dan Katz

Correct. And then that's what he comes up with. Correct. So my hot seat is going to be Gisele. Gisele was not happy with the roast, nor was Aaron Hernandez's wife.

That was a wild quote by Aaron Hernandez's wife. I, like, I feel bad for her in the fact that her life, you know, the. The father of her children and her fiance turned out to be a serial killer and then killed himself in prison. Probably not the easiest last few years for her, but her reasoning of my daughter someday has to watch these jokes, and the hero that she thought her dad was is gonna be, like, pierced. I feel like the murder part would probably be the part where, like, that he wasn't a good.

Just a quick Google search. I'll take care of it. The jokes really weren't the problem. I think it's the murder that probably, like, one day she's gonna be like, oh, he wasn't a great guy. Yes.

Mike Portnoy

She said, it's sad. I'm trying to raise my children in such a cruel world. He murdered. Murder, probably four people. Yeah, that's.

That's pretty cruel. That is cruel. And also, she's kind of making the implication that she's really the only one that's harmed by these jokes. Correct. Like, in the entire world.

Dan Katz

Correct. It's just her. And she's like, that sucks for me. I'm sure it does suck for her to have to hear people. But also, if you're her, why would you tune into the Tom Brady?

Hank Lockwood

Yeah. Also, that feels like you're opting into specifically hearing jokes about your dead husband. And the people I feel bad about the most would be the loved ones of the people who are murdered who have to hear the jokes. Yeah. That would probably be the front of the line.

Dan Katz

Line of like, oh, that's got to suck. Yeah. You know what sucked for OJ Simpson's children was Norm MacDonald. That was probably when they figured it out. That was the worst time.

Mike Portnoy

But, yeah, Giselle's not. She's not happy either. Also, she should been. She should have been the last person. Should have been there.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Great. Who? Giselle. If Giselle had roasted Tom Brady, it would have been great.

Obviously would have been awkward, but would have not been great. No. Yes, it would have. I don't think she would have gone, because she just would have just told the truth to him. Yeah.

Tell the truth. And that would have been great. But she. She avoided a major shot when Burton Tom did the whole, like, breakdown of what a bad guy Tom Brady is. And they said they started talking about her.

Mike Portnoy

They didn't address the fact that she's, like, a six foot two, stunning german model whose family immigrated to South America in the middle of the century. Mm hmm. They really. She does. She avoided a major shot with that one.

Dan Katz

Imagine if she had just come. Just walked out and been like, Tommy never made me came or come. No, they would've been better. Boom, roasted. If she said it that way.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, came, Tommy never made me came. You never made me came. Boom, roasted. See ya. That would have been great.

Dan Katz

Yeah. I can't make you come and myself. Come, by the way, from the fallout of the Tom Brady Rose. I like that. The.

It does feel like Tom Brady was being serious when he said, no more craft jokes. Yes. Yeah. People thought that was maybe fake, but the fact that there was never another craft joke made it seem real, which. Even more respect to Tom, because he just let all the other jokes fly.

Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think Nikki Glaser went on. Howard Stern said the only things that were off limits were kraft and.

And Tom's kids, which I'm fine with that. Like, that's. Well, maybe not the craft part, but the kids. Totally fine with that. The craft part, I feel like he should have.

You can make fun of Robert Kraft. Yeah, you can. That's punching up. You can make fun of the hand job. She even said in her reason why that she didn't make fun of him because he is so old and powerful.

Yeah. It's like, those are exactly who you got to make fun you should be making fun of. Correct, correct. I like the people that are saying Tom. Tom Brady, like, saved comedy.

Will Compton. By letting people. By letting people do that. I saw some other people. Okay.

Yeah. Oh, till. Yeah. Taylor Luan. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

And will Compton both agreed we can save comedy. You can say the word gay again. It's okay. Comedy. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Yeah, I. That was a great roast. It was great roast. It was very funny. And I'm happy that Belichick never shook Robert Kraft's hand.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, same. Yeah. My cool throne is Boeing. Boeing's on the cool throne because another whistleblower died. So this makes two.

This makes two. In the last, like, six months, this guy, he got some sort of a bacterial infection that it progressed within, like, two weeks, and he died. And so it's like, two out of the 60 or two out of the 50 that have come forward against Boeing are now dead. So, one by one. Did he testify or get to testify?

I don't know what the schedule was like for his testifying, but he was in the process of being a whistleblower. I think we just need to rebrand whistleblowing. Yeah. Cause right now, you hear whistleblow, and you're like, ref. It feels.

Dan Katz

Yeah, it feels like Boeing. There's something. Definitely something going on. Yeah. I would say so.

For the last, like, five years, I'm not suicidal. Neither am I. The planes have been crashing. Mm hmm. I did see one guy say.

He just tweeted. He's like, hey, Boeing. He added Boeing. He's like my book. He's been talking a lot of shit about you guys.

Yeah. Like that. Yeah. Boeing. Boeing is the new Hillary.

Yeah. This is just a heads up. All right. My hot seat is Scotty Scheffler, because the PGA Championship is next week, and he still doesn't have a baby. Interesting.

I. We've. We've discussed as many the baby things. That was not Scotty Sheffer's fault. It was the media's fault for basically forcing him to say he would leave, even though his wife was not even close to being due.

But doesn't it apply for PGA Championship now? Like, not playing in this week's Wells Fargo? Right. I'll be calling on PGA Tour live. Okay.

Mike Portnoy

But signature event. Right? So. But isn't that. Aren't we getting close?

Dan Katz

We're a week and a half away, and there's no baby. It'd be funny if you said, yeah, you know what? The Masters is one thing, but if she goes into labor during the PGA Championship, I can't leave. That tournament's too important. It's way too important, especially after winning the Masters.

He's got a. Yeah. Now he has to. He has to show up to that. Yeah.

Some. Some eggplant parm. I heard Whitney say that. Some thai food. That's what does it.

Mike Portnoy

Eggplant parm. Yeah. Step off a curb. That could do it. Yeah.

Max said uneven surfaces. Yeah. What if I just have sex again? Could just do that. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Then you might have twins. Yeah. That's how twins are me. It works all right in my cool throne. A story that.

I don't know why it's not talked about more Josh Hart and injuries, because this is a tweet from April 7 from the reporter Fred Katz from New York. He does athletic. He said, josh Hart said when he took a half court heave to end the second quarter, this is early April, he felt his wrist click, and it almost clicked back into place. Said he went to Brunson at the half and told him, I can shoot threes. Now, this is basically the plot from rookie of the year.

Mike Portnoy

Rookie of the year, exactly. And Josh Hart has been shooting a lot better from three, and he's been scoring a lot more. Is Josh Hart just, like, did one injury to his wrist make him a superstar? I think it's funny that Josh Hart was so bad at shooting threes that he got injured and it improved his shot, actually. Yeah.

Maybe. Maybe Caitlin Clark could learn a lot from Josh Hart. Maybe fall off her bike at one point and fix her mechanics. So, Josh Hart is a career. 31% or 34% three point shooter or.

Dan Katz

No. Sorry, I'm reading. That's. That's his field goal percentage. Either way, in these playoffs, he's a career.

He's, like, in the thirties. In his. In these playoffs, he's shooting 43% from three. Mm hmm. That's crazy.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, it's nuts. His wrist clicked and he's now can score. Maybe it's also Tibbs just playing him every single minute of every single game, which I love. He's finally gotten good enough at basketball where he can shoot a three, but. It, like, why isn't this being talked about more?

Dan Katz

He, Josh Hart is now just a lethal three point shooter because his wrist clicked. He's got to make sure his wrist doesn't re click. Yeah, that would be bad, but it's also making me just think about injuring myself until I get good at things. Right. You never know.

Mike Portnoy

Every injury you have might be a blessing in disguise. We should just start breaking our wrists, Hank. Maybe if you slit your Achilles Tendon, you'll be able to dunk. You might as well try. If you get desperate, we'll do it for you.

Hank Lockwood

Yeah, we're till, like, November, and then I'll start doing the crack science shit. Crack science, I like that. Just start injuring yourself with a scotty scheffler thing. That reminded me of Charlotte, the pregnant stingray. Yep, allegedly.

Mike Portnoy

I just looked her up. Bitch still ain't giving birth. She was never pregnant. And now people are catching on. Now the youths are on.

Hank Lockwood

Finally. Now tick tock is all over this shit. Finally. You got all the kids out there question this bitch. Remember we were questioning a long time ago?

Dan Katz

Yeah. So credit to us, Jake, your hot seat, cool throne. My hot seats myself. I'm gonna take accountability here. Oh, yeah, big time.

Mike Portnoy

We talked about it earlier in the show. We talked about the game, but there was a baby bump that I did not alert you guys on. Yep. Brandon Carlo of the Boston Bruins had a baby, flew down to South Florida and scored a goal. Yeah.

Hank Lockwood

Against your hometown team. Yeah. Disappointed in myself. Listen, Jake, don't beat yourself up. It's not like he had, like, crazy odds to score a goal, 13 to one.

Dan Katz

Jesus Christ. And it's not like everyone then tweeted us after being like, did you guys bet it? Did you guys bet it? Did you guys bet it? So it's at least that didn't happen.

Mike Portnoy

It felt personal, Jake. Well, now a good time to get redemption and tell you that Rudy Gobert just had a baby. Okay, so should we score? Should we go score goals or. Goal?

Dan Katz

Yeah, no, that was a huge, huge miss. Could have. Really. Is that winner? So I'll pay you guys back.

Mike Portnoy

Thank you. Yeah. How? I don't know. Yeah, no, you can't I need $13,000.

Dan Katz

You can't. You're never going to be able to pay me back for that one. Yeah, that one was a butterfly effect. All losses for the next month are kind of on you. Great.

Yeah. My cool throne is. Moms, this is a PSA. Get your mom's Mother's Day this Sunday. Yes.

Mike Portnoy

So just a reminder for literally all the awls. We have some stuff in the barstool store. Just make sure you don't show up empty handed. Sunday. It kind of sucks that Mother's Day is the same weekend that we changed the clocks.

Dan Katz

That's the only thing that's. Yeah, because they get one less hour of Mother's Day. Yeah. It's too bad, moms. One less hour of sleep.

Yep. So really, it should be the opposite. It. Yeah, it should. We should do.

We should move the clocks back for Mother's Day when said we're moving them. Forward and Father's Day. Yeah. What do you think, Hank? This sucks, right?

Yeah. I genuinely. Yep. That's why they did the met gala with the whole time thing. That was actually.

He was paid by big clocks. Yeah. How did he get the invite? That's a good question. I don't know.

Mike Portnoy

Is it the. A list of a listers? I think if he just. He had a lot of time. Yeah.

Dan Katz

He's a lot of time. Mm hmm. It's not like he's playing basketball. He's got a lot of time. And he probably, that's probably something you have to agree to months ago.

And he's like, oh, mid, you know, May. No problem. Yeah. Got no problem being there. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

No prior commitments that I can foresee. Okay, so Mother's Day. Make sure you get your mother's something. Get. Get him a free subscription to.

Dan Katz

Pardon my take. No, we'll make it. We'll make a graphic. We'll put out a graphic maybe on Friday's show. One free subscription to all mothers.

Mike Portnoy

Because I. We love moms so much on this show. I love mom. I love moms. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Okay. Good job. Hot seat. Cool. Thrown, everyone?

Uh, let's get to some interviews. We have Vern Lundquist and Kurt Goldsberry. Pft. Before we do to go to Vern Lundquist. Let's go.

Mike Portnoy

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Pmc 20 for 20% off your order at participating locations. And now here's Vern Lundquist.

Dan Katz

Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest, an absolute legend of the game. It is Verne Lundquist. He is the voice of many of our favorite memories in sports. Verne, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. And the first question I had, maybe the toughest question, you just retired.

Can we get you out of retirement? Because we don't want to lose Vern Lundquist. And you calling some of the greatest moments of our lives. I think it's a little late to call King's ex, especially because CB's was so kind and all of my colleagues were at Augusta two weeks ago. It was a lavish goodbye, which was deeply appreciated by me.

Eric Sollenberger

But I've told a couple of other folks, I'm 83 years old, I have a mild case of COPD, I have a mild case of type two diabetes. I have sleep apnea and I cannot remember what I had for breakfast. So other than that, I have no issues whatsoever. We could get over those. Listen, if they just do, if they just have a Verne Lundquist opt in broadcast, I would opt in every single time.

Dan Katz

It's like, hey, he might, he might not, he might not call it perfectly, but it doesn't matter. We just want to hear your voice. Well, I appreciate that, guys, but I'm going to, I'm going to sidle off into retirement. My wife and I have been married 42 years. We celebrated our first anniversary in Augusta in 1983 and we celebrated our 42nd there two weeks ago.

Eric Sollenberger

So not only for me, but also for my wife, Nancy. It's a very, very, very special place. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you made it more special for everybody else that's been watching it.

Mike Portnoy

I don't know if chicken or the egg situation, but maybe all those. All those great moments happen on 16 because Verne was there in his little tree stand looking down, and you cut. You made all that happen. But did you ever think that, uh, that the. The very last thing that we would see at Augusta is, uh, a picture of Tiger woods shaking hand with a tree and people saying, tiger bidding farewell to the goat, Verne Lundquist, and it's just a tree with a hand sticking out of it.

Eric Sollenberger

Well, there's another view of that, maybe. And, and I understand that that, uh, Tiger was on Jimmy Fallon's show last week. I'm not sure when it was, but I've seen video of it, and there was great sport made of the fact that he, he seemed. I was behind a tree. And there is another.

There is another shot of Tiger and me, guys, I had three goals going into what I knew was going to be my last one. I wanted to meet Scotty Scheffler. I'd never met him. I did that. I wanted to say goodbye to Tiger.

I was able to do that. And I also wanted to say. And then to thank Tiger and, and to say goodbye to Jack. And I was able to do all three. So mission accomplished, as the old television show used to say.

Dan Katz

Yeah, I mean, so it's talking about the master specifically. Obviously, the golfers hit the shots. But do you. I know you're a humble guy, but have you had a moment where you could step back and be like, my call of some of these iconic moments, specifically the tiger chip in? Like, that's what elevates a sports moment to something that I.

Your, your voice is just, like, bouncing in my brain when I think about that shot. And, and have you had a moment where you're like, that's pretty cool that I am so intertwined with some iconic. Iconic sports moments? Yes. Believe me.

Eric Sollenberger

And I think as a broadcaster, first of all, I get it if you're a sports commentator or broadcaster or announcer or whatever term you want to use. Yes. Down, distance, fact. Who has the ball, what's the pitch count? That's all important.

But essentially, we make our living as storytellers. And I think your purpose in doing this is to give the viewer or the listener a reason to care about the outcome. And you do that by narratives, and you do that by telling stories, anecdotal information, both good and bad, positive and negative, about the people involved, the teams involved, or the management involved. And that's what draws people into the broadcast. And I think if you can humanize the people who are appearing on.

In front then you've accomplished your job. And more often than not, I've been blessed. First of all, you go to a sporting event, and I've done it now for 61 years. I started here in Austin, which is my hometown, and.

But you hope that something memorable breaks out, and then you pray to the heavens that you're capable of adding commentary that is purposeful and suitable for the topic. And I've been blessed in that sense because I've been lucky enough to have those moments break out and then to find the adequate words. More often than not. Yeah, you've done a great job of that. I've also been impressed over the years when you know when to let a moment breathe, when to not talk over something important that's happening.

Mike Portnoy

If you want to give the people a sense of the atmosphere and the stadium on the course, wherever, wherever you happen to be calling it, is that something that you made a conscious effort to do, where you could just understand and feel when, hey, maybe it's time for me to take a step back and let the moment speak for itself. I had three mentors, the oldest of whom I doubt you guys have been made aware of. He was the voice of the Green Bay packers. His name was Ray Scott and he passed away 25 years ago. I guess I was lucky enough to get to know Ray.

Eric Sollenberger

He was, he called, he was one of the announcers on the first one or two Super Bowls. But here, when Bart star and, and Boyd Dowler were the stars of the packers back in the sixties, and here was a typical Ray Scott call. Star Dowler, touchdown. Well, hell, they can see what's going on. You don't need a whole lot more than that for that moment.

The other was the late Frank gliber, who's long forgotten, and that is a pitiable shame. Frank was a friend and a mentor of mine. We lost him at the age of 51. He died of a heart attack while jogging, ironically. But he was a master of all trades.

And he said to me once, Vern, if they ever ask you to do anything, they being network sports, and I've worked for ABC, CB's and TNT for a short time, if they ever ask you to do anything, say yes and then watch videotape of other guys who've done it, whom you think do it well and borrow liberally. And so I've done that. And then the third was Pat Sumrall. Pat was, I was lucky enough to work with Pat for 25 years. He was the best I've ever seen.

In counterpunching, he, you know, he made magic with John Madden for so many years. And Pat's assurance in his own craft allowed John to wander all over the place. Right. And the guy in the truck, Bob Stenner, producer. Sandy, having a senior moment here.

Sandy Grossman, his director, they would. John was the great, greatest one I've ever seen. Mastering minutiae. And he could make something out of nothing. But Pat always had the perfect counterpunch to bring, you know, its third mate, something.

John, get back to the business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Pat was a minimalist, too. So those three guys I tried to emulate over the course of my career. Yeah.

Dan Katz

All right, I got a dumb question for you. You have an all time great big game voice and it might be a chicken and egg thing, but I do think your voice is phenomenal. And when you listen to a Verne Lundquist game, it feels like a big game. When did you know in your life that you had that voice? Was there a moment where like, oh, I got something special here.

Yeah. I'm a genetic product. My dad, the lutheran minister and he died 25 years ago. But, but, but my dad had a great voice and fortunately I was born in the midwest, in Duluth, Minnesota. We lived there for two years, then we moved while he was a senior.

Eric Sollenberger

I was born when he was a student pastor. And then he enrolled in the lutheran school of theology in Rock Island, Illinois. And that my first memories were there. But I'm the oldest of five and his first church was in Everett, Washington. We then moved to Austin, Texas, when I was twelve.

And then my dad and mom moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where they both passed away. But I'm the oldest of five and I'm the only one of the five who didn't get that young Texas accent. I mean, my brother, it takes him two minutes to say yes, sir. I mean, God can be drawn out. And, and fortunately, I've got a Midwest accent, which I think is desirable as sports commentary.

You don't want to offend the middle of a country and you don't want to dry attention. You know, you don't want to sound like you came from Boston or Brooklyn either, or be super cool and pretend like you came from LA. Yeah. So. But, but I'm the genetic beneficiary and the laugh is the same thing.

He had this huge laugh and I, I've inherited that sometimes it's. I laugh at inappropriate moments. But that's, that's okay. It's who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Portnoy

Is there, is there any moment? Because I, we, we broadcast for a living. We do this show, and sometimes five minutes after we're done, we're done. I might be getting in my car. I'm like, oh, I should have said this, and I remember it.

Is there. Is there any call that you've had where you're leaving the stadium and you think to yourself, I wish I had changed that just a little bit and said this instead of that? Well, I've made mistakes, and those are the ones you regret. I mean, I'll never forget. I was doing a Buffalo Bills broadcast, and they had a number 86 and a number 89.

Eric Sollenberger

And when they were going from the television commentary booth, they were going right to left, so I could see the eight, but I couldn't see the six or the nine. And I had the wrong number. And it was like an 80 yard touchdown pass. And I felt like an absolute fool when they took a close up of the guy and I had the wrong call. Jake Reed was one of them who was involved.

But when. When you. And when I was doing the SEC for all those years, so help me God, I'd make mistakes of identification. And that's when you feel dreadful. Yeah.

And you're not doing the job for which you were hired. And we all make them. It's live. It's a live telecast. Yeah, but you want to be prepared and, God, you feel awful when that happens.

Just awful. It stays with a couple of days. Well, I would say that you. You've had a lot more iconic moments, and one of them being in the SEC, the kick six. So after that happens, how.

Dan Katz

How long were you, like, buzzing off of that? Because it was such an incredible moment and your call was so perfect for it. We. I mean, you must have been on cloud nine having a moment like that happen in front of you. Yeah, I was.

Eric Sollenberger

I was. Two weeks before that, we had done Auburn in Georgia and. And Auburn, and my partner was Gary Danielson, and Auburn had a lead, and. No, Georgia had the lead, and Auburn had a fourth down and 18 at their own 25 yard line. And the quarterback, guy named Nick Marshall, throw the.

Through the ultimate Hail Mary. And the two Georgia guys went up, and instead of going, it was fourth and 18, for crying out loud, knocked the ball down. But they both tried to intercept it. They tipped. They bumped into each other, tipped it.

It went forward. A wide receiver named Ricardo Lewis reached behind him, grabbed it in for the touchdown. So we get on camera at the end of the game, and Gary says, it's the greatest finishing college football you have ever seen. You will never, ever, ever see anything like that? Two weeks.

Dan Katz

Two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. We had Chris Davis with the miskick and Jerry, we, you know, they, the Auburn guys made a substitution during a long time now. And we all thought it was, first of all, Matt Austin was a referee. He's a good friend.

Eric Sollenberger

We, we bonded over that game, as a matter of fact. And Matt is the guy who, they took him seven minutes to determine if you remember this in 2013. So eleven years ago, if TJ Yeldon's foot had come down with time out or time remaining, and it took him seven minutes, and they were asking the truck to synchronize this main game coverage with the end zone and get them. And it took seven minutes. And then Matt Austin came on, please put 1 second back on the clock.

And they did. Well, we all thought that Nick was irritated, to put it mildly, with his senior place kicker. So they put this red shirt freshman kid on the field for 57 yard field goal, and he hit a pretty good kick. He really did. But Chris Davis grabbed it and got a block, got another block.

And all of a sudden about the 50 yard line, I thought, holy cow, he's, there's nobody in front of him. Yeah. And then. When he got to about when he got to the end zone, I looked back and I said, there are no flags. And then that moment comes through your body and you think, dear God, don't let there be any flag.

Dan Katz

Right, right. Because. Yeah, yeah. Because we're watching at home and we're thinking, you always think on a big play like that, you're like, all right, give it a beat because you never know. You're looking for that.

Alabama fans are probably like, there has to be a flag here. You're just staring at the bottom line of their tv for 30 seconds after that, plays over, hoping that yellow icon. But you added that. That line adds to the moment so much. Yeah.

Eric Sollenberger

Well, and Gary, we only showed three replays. I was stunned. Our director was Steve Milton, who still does college football and he does all of our golf. And Steve's one of the most brilliant directors everywhere, ever. And then Gary and I laid out during the replay for a minute and 21 seconds, which is an attorney fear if you're a talking dog.

And the late Don Drysdale gave me that nickname 50 years ago. One quick at the end of the day, just face the fact. You and me ain't nothing but talking dogs. That's great. So wait, so after it happened, did you tell Gary Danielson, you're like, hey, remember two weeks ago when you said you'll never see anything like this.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Oh, yeah. But he had the great line. He had the great line because in the analysis of the replay, he said, well, no wonder they couldn't tackle him. They had their field goal protection team on the field.

Eric Sollenberger

Those are nothing but fat guys. Yeah. It's a fabric. So, mate. Yeah, it really was.

Dan Katz

Yeah. What's the most fun name to say in sports? Oh, I've got one.

Eric Sollenberger

And I don't mean to make fun of the guy, but inevitably, that mentioning he played for LSU and I collect names. I mean, I'm a big aficionado of why people are named what they are. Barkavius mingo. Yeah, that's a fun one to say. That's a great one.

It just rolls off to the Barkebius mingo. And he was, I think he was a linebacker 20 years ago at LSU. But that was, that was one of my favorites. Yeah, he was. So.

Dan Katz

So speaking of names, when did you, so your, your first name is Merton. When did you decide to make the switch? Thank you for bringing that up. Well, Vern is, so I, again, it might just be because we've known you for so long watching, but when, when was that switch made? It was a great switch by you.

I want to say that right now. Fantastic. My full name is Merton Laverne Lundquist junior. The junior is important. Yep.

Eric Sollenberger

My siblings, David, Dan, Tom, Sharon. What the hell? So your parents, your parents just took a shot? They're like, hey, there's our first kid. Let's just take a shot here.

My dad went by Merton. They tagged me with Laverne. So I went through high school, college, and as a man of unclear purpose, I had no idea what. I've got a degree in sociology and a minor in history from Texas Lutheran University. Graduated in 62.

I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I thought, well, I grew up in a minister's home and with a sociology degree, a liberal arts background, I think I'll try this. So I decided to enroll for one year at the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock island. And six weeks in, I knew it was not for me and I, you know, but I swore to myself, you're going to make it through one year. So I do have 18 hours of credit at the Lutheran School of Theology in Rock island, including 6 hours of Greek, which has not been particularly beneficial in this career. But along the way I got a radio job as a nighttime disc jockey across the Mississippi river in Davenport, Iowa at WOC radio, which stands, by the way for world of chiropractic.

And the guy who hired me was the program director, was a guy named Bob Gifford. And we did the interview and he said, I like your work. I want to put you on from nine to midnight, but there's no way in God's green earth you're going on my radio station as Laverne. So the compromise was to drop the l and the a off. And, and I've been Verne since I was 23 years old, so.

60 years now. Yeah. But to this day, Nancy and I are blessed. We have a home, a condo here in Austin, but we, our full time home is in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And if someone calls and they ask for Laverne, Nance will pick up the phone.

She said, honey, it's someone from either from Austin High or Texas. Lizard. Yeah. Because that's how they knew me. Yeah.

Dan Katz

That's funny. You brought up your wife. We have to ask you to tell the story of how you two met. Yeah. Mister Steele, your girl.

Mike Portnoy

So we've heard about it, but we'd like you to tell the story. We want to hear it from Vern. Well, okay.

Eric Sollenberger

We met in 1980 in Dallas. I was recently divorced. Nancy had been divorced about seven, eight years, I think, at that point. And I'll give you the full story because we got a little bit of time. Yeah.

So, as a recently divorced, and I lived in what is called the mid cities, I was working at the ABC affiliate in Dallas and doing the six and ten, and I also had the cowboy job at the time, and I lived 23 miles from downtown Dallas. And I didn't want to go home. I was lonely. So I went to this upscale discotheque that dates it. This would have been a week before Nancy and I met, so early March of 1980, and a young man, I walked in and had a scotch and water sitting at the bar, and a young kid came over.

He said, mister Lundquist, I don't mean to be presumptuous, but what are you doing in here? And I said, what are you talking about? He said, look out there on the dance floor. Do you see anybody your age? And I said, good point by you.

Where, where would you suggest I go? He said, about a mile and a half down Greenville Avenue, there's an upscale bar called Arthur's. It's attached to a steakhouse. I think you might find people your age. I was 40 at the time.

And you might find people more of your generation. So the next week, I got off the 10:00 news, and I thought, well, I'll take that kid's advice. So I walked into this upscale, it was an upscale bar. And I was just coat and tie, because I just come from work. And Nancy, who became my wife, was sitting at the, at the bar with her date, a blind date.

I didn't know that at the time. Who was the Coors beer distributor in Dallas and Fort Worth? All this I found out later. So he recognized me from local television. It's a phenomenon.

And he said, well, there's Vern. Let's invite him over for a drink. So he did, and I joined him. And I looked down at Nancy, and she had the prettiest smile of anybody I've ever seen in my life. She still does.

And so this Raymond, he said, I know you recently divorced. I don't want take proprietorship over your life, but I don't want you hanging around single sports. He said, I got a school teacher. This is a Tuesday night. Can you make time between the six and ten?

And. Yeah, because all I do is update scores and rewrite some copy. Okay, let's go to dinner. And I've got a date that the school teacher lined up. He looked at Nancy and he said, what are you doing Thursday night?

She said, nothing. He said, okay, we're going to double date. Four of us. And we picked out a restaurant. And so in the meantime, I kept looking at her, thinking, gosh, he's beautiful.

And he finally had to take care of business. So he went to the men's room and I asked her to dance. And I had. I had five minutes at most. I knew.

So. So we're out in the dance war. And I said, how involved are you with Raymond? She said, first date? It's a blind date.

And I said, well, good, then forget what he's talking about for Thursday night. What are you doing Saturday night? And that she is, she said, I think I'm doing whatever you're doing. So good. Incredible.

Mister Steele, we had our first date on March 22, 1980. And because we had been both married before, we took our time. We did. We waited a couple years and got married in 82. And she's charming.

Dan Katz

Yeah. She was impressed with your dancing. Yeah. Wait, so did you go on the double date or. No, did you.

Did you cancel the double date? No, I know. I called and canceled. You know, I said, I'm really. We got late, late breaking scores here, right?

Oh, that's. I mean, listen, if you're, if you're the. The course distributor, and you lose out on your date to Verne Lundquist, there's worse. There's worse fates out there. There's another part to that, honest to God.

Eric Sollenberger

So. And there was a third guy there who was Raymond Willey's stockbroker, a fellow named Paul Bass. And so Nancy had given me her telephone number, and I, you know, I had nothing to write it down with, so I can. I still remember it. She said, just imagine a dial tone.

361-9189 and so I'm thinking three six. So now I'm driving a company issued red Chevrolet. And I was a heavy smoker back in those days. And there were cigarette burns all over the no, God. And Raymond pulls up in a silver Rolls Royce.

And I thought, the competition has suddenly gotten stiffer than I thought it was going to be.

But that was a Thursday night. And on Friday I kept calling. She was. She did radio, television commercials in Dallas. She was quite successful for a number of years, but she had a sideline job as a receptionist in between auditions at a place called the company.

And I kept calling. I called her. And Nancy's had another audition. I called at noon. I called at 02:00 I called at four.

And I said, at 05:00 I know she's there. So they said, okay. She just walked in. They put me through. Nancy got on the phone and said.

I said, well, why have you not taken my phone call? She said, listen, I don't want to come between you and your friend. I said, who is my friend? She said, raymond. I said, I just met him.

I don't know Raymond, Willie. Oh, okay. Well, in that case, we'll go out for a date. Oh, I love that. We have a friend, Paul Bissonnette, that could, he could take some tips from you about how to handle a situation like that.

Dan Katz

Oh, that's such a great story. Yeah, that's such a great story in terms of. So we talked about the kick six, obviously, tiger's chip. Did you, in your life, was that something that you would say, like generally, and you had that, or was it a spur of the moment for that ship speaker two? It was absolutely spur of the moment.

Eric Sollenberger

You got to be reacting. You got to be react. You've got to. You two rules. You cannot predetermine what you're going to say.

And there are guys who have done that. No names, but there are guys, and you can tell they force it in. Oh, my God. But you just got to react to the moment. So I said what I did, because in my life, I'd never seen anything like that.

And I assume people at home hadn't seen anything like that. And that's what I said, why I said what I did. There's a little bit of background about the way that shot would cover, and I'd love to share it with you because I want this fella. Yeah. To get full credit.

The front of a production truck has the producer to the far left, there are three seats. Producer, far left. He's editorial comment. He's the guy with whom we communicate. Director in the middle, in this case, it was Steve Milton and Steve.

And then to his right is the technical director. So. And Steve's looking at a monitor. Back then, there were 54 monitors in front of me. And he's the guy who says, and this is not hypothetical, this is actual.

The guy next to me, the camera guy, was a guy named Bob wish me from Philadelphia. He's retired now, and he was camera ten. So when Tiger lined up with the chip shot, first of all, Lanny Watkins was in the tower, and Tiger's fellow competitor at the time, playing partner now with Chris DeMarco. And Chris was 20ft below the hole. And so I asked Lanny what he thought, and Lanny said, he's going to be lucky if he can keep his inside DeMarco's ball.

It was that severe slope down, and so that was the background. Now Steve Milton says, camera ten. Ready ten, take ten. And Norm Patterson, the technical director, then pushes a button. That's camera ten.

That's what you see in your living room. So, ready ten, take ten. He takes ten. That's wish me. And Tiger hits the chip and bob zooms in and has a perfect, perfect shot of the ball and stays in focus the whole way.

Now, it starts down, and when it gets near the lip of the cup, Steve said, ready six, take six. Well, six is over here. He's got a flanker shot. He's got a shot of tiger for reaction here to here. Well, Norm Patterson followed his instincts and he.

He intuitively did not take six. He stayed with ten. And because he made that decision, we all saw the ball drop. Had he followed the director's command, really? Not that.

Not an advice had he fought, is it? You would have seen the reaction shot, tiger. You would have. We'd have played it back. But if you think about it, it changes everything.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Everything about how we remember that shot. Yeah. And then. Now, here's the sad part of it, Norm.

Eric Sollenberger

That was in April, of course, in zero five, the following January, they were. Our first event of the year was San Diego. In San Diego. And Norm was out jogging and dropped out of a heart attack at 41 years of age. And he was from Cincinnati.

Steve Milton went back to Cincinnati to eulogize Norm, and he told that story so that Norm's family and friends would know that it was his norm's decision that created what we all remember about Tiger ship shot. Yeah. You know, that was, what, oh, 519 years ago. Holy cow. But I mean, it's, it's a great story because it shows just how much goes into having these moments that for us as the viewers, they just go across seamlessly and they happen, and you're like, oh, my God, this just happened.

Dan Katz

It's incredible. And every decision that comes in, all the pieces that, that go together for a puzzle to make a perfect moment. I mean, first of all, no one would, no one would manufacture something they're gonna say, but you just gotta react right to what's going on. You really. It's a reactionary business, so.

Eric Sollenberger

So to speak. Yeah, yeah. And you've seen so much sports, like you said, I think I saw a clip of you covering the, the Texas Rangers in their first season back in spring training. Had some bell bottoms on, you had a nice flow going, looking good. Like a disco shirt.

Mike Portnoy

It was, it really was. There's no shame in the Internet. No, no. It's. It's forever.

Eric Sollenberger

So you've seen that clip. Holy cow. And you've seen so much sports throughout the years. I just, I'd like to hear from your perspective, what is, what's changed so much? Like, what are the most important changes, either for the better or for the worse, in terms of college, professional sports that you've seen since the 1970s to this day, where they're, you know, multi billion dollar industries.

Mike Portnoy

What's changed over the years? Well, the two biggest changes, both of which help drive Nick Saban into retirement, are transfer, portal and nil. You know, I mean, these kids now, how much you're going to pay me or if you don't pay me, if you don't guarantee I'm starting and pay me, I'm transferred, I'm going to central Michigan. And Nick, I don't know that. I think Nick has now said, oh, yeah, that drove me nuts.

Eric Sollenberger

I'm pretty good friends with him. You do that many Alabama games over the years, and we became, I would say we were friends. I know we are. And then, then if you having said that, then you worry about, does that impede on any prejudicial comments you might make? I hope not.

I think I'm a better broadcaster than that. Yeah. But I worry about that. Yeah. Because I admire him, and I know Nick.

Nick is one of my favorites. And. And I used to. I used to jump up and down. He'd get on the local reporters at those press conferences and just belittle him.

And I thought, Nick, you're better than that. And unfortunately, in many cases, he wasn't that high. Yeah. He had a handler assistant, Sid, who's now at Arkansas state athletic director. But I asked the Sid, I said, oh, to Nick, I said, nick, you know, they're just trying to do a job.

Yes, sometimes they ask stupid questions, but they're young. And the Sid said, well, he belittles. Them because they deserve it. And I thought, nah. You know, I haven't talked to Nick since he retired, by the way.

I thought he was a superstar during the draft. Yeah, he was fantastic. He was fantastic. All right, so, vern, I got a couple last questions. One is the.

Dan Katz

So you had these iconic calls. So many. I mean, Christian Laetner shot, like, doesn't he? You know what I mean? Like, that's.

That's one of. That's probably a top 3 march madness moment. But what is the call that you maybe isn't the most memorable in terms of the significance in the sports? But you're like, that was a call I absolutely nailed. I would say two of them.

Eric Sollenberger

Oh, I did a talk show after the Leitner shop once with a guy named Steak Shapiro in Atlanta.

He said, are you really proud of that Leitner call? And I said, no, I'm not. I just channeled my inner Marv Albert, you know? Yeah, I went in. I went, yes.

Not exactly evocative and brilliant commentary, but again, it was a reaction. I get asked a lot about that because I've been so lucky over the years.

And, I mean, how do you separate Jack in 86 and Tiger in zero five? And how lucky am I to have those two guys associated with my resume? You just. I mean, that's rarefied air, and I know that. And as I said at Augusta two weeks ago, I got to say goodbye to Jack and Tiger and meet Scotty.

So mission accomplished on all three counts. But Jack. Jack is six months older than I am, a factory of which I never let him forget whenever I can bring it up. But we did have a moment, Jack and Barbara, Nancy and me, on Tuesday at the weekend Augusta. We bumped into the two of them on the sidewalk outside the trophy room at the clubhouse, and Jack said, let's have a little fun.

It was his idea. And. And so someone had a cell phone camera and Jack said, on the count of 3321. And then we simultaneously punched the air and yelled, yes, sir. That was going to the grave with me.

I mean, that was so, you know, tiger shaking hands with the tree and Jack yelling, yes, sir. Simultaneously with me. That all of that made that week. Oh, and the other part of it is, I've had two really serious back surgeries, one in 17 and one in 19. I have degenerative scoliosis.

So for the last three or four years, I had done the 16th and the 6th from the content center. We would call it a compound, but they want to call it the content center, so that's what it is. But I was in a room and calling it off the monitor. But I swore to my boss, Sean McManus, and to our producer, in this case, seller shy, I want to be on the course for the last Saturday and Sunday. So they accommodated that.

The main tower, it was 20 steps behind the green. Too much with a guy with a bad back. But there was a flanker tower, and that's where I was. It was only six steps up, and it was crowded up. There was myself and Tracy Levine, a wonderful lady who is my statistician slash spotter and the camera guy.

But I got up there, and it was just like, such a relief, emotional relief for me to finish out 40 years in a tower at the 16th hole. Yeah.

Yeah. And then Jim was more than gracious, you know, in his saying goodbye. Yeah, we talked about those two iconic calls. I'll give you another one. Who the hell is happy Gilmore?

Dan Katz

Love that one. The gift that keeps on giving. Yeah. Yes. Okay, so there's a background story there that that movie is now released in 1996.

Eric Sollenberger

I shot all the scenes in which I was involved in one day in Vancouver, British Columbia. They had shot all the outdoor scenes, all the golf scenes with. At Worcester, north of Vancouver. But for the scenes where I was involved, they had rented a vacant hospital building, and Adam Sandler was there. And so the morning of the shoot, we're gathered at 07:00 a.m.

And there's this good looking guy in the periphery of the circle. The director of the movie is the guy, Dennis Dugan, who played the PGA commission. So he was an actor and a director, and he said, I got an idea. Let's do it. Let's have an inside joke.

And he looked at this tall, good looking guy. His name was Jack Jaraputo. He said, jack, go over to the hair and makeup, get a blue blazer and a red tie or whatever it was. And I want you to sit next to Verne for every scene. And it's just a psych gag.

You're not allowed to say a word because you do not belong to the Screen Actors Guild. So that's Jack sitting next to me, just nodding. And it's. To him, I say, who the hell is Happy Gilmore? And he was Adam Sandler's roommate at New York University's film school, and he's.

Now, if you watch these Sandler movies, he's the executive producer of same. Yeah, but. And I've got a picture back in Colorado. My. That whole group, Sandler and Jack and Den Stewart and the shaggy haired Caddy.

I don't think shooter McGavin is in. I don't remember, but it's damn movie ever, ever made. But wildly popular. Yeah, wildly. A great.

Dan Katz

A great, great movie. All right, so I have one last question. There's been so much fun. Last question. Rowback question.

Rhoback.com promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase. Qzips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Not to be fanboys for a second, but is there any way. My last question.

Is there any way you can say, welcome to part of my take? Yes, sir. That would be great for us. We just. I just will play it for our personal files or maybe.

Welcome to part of my take. This is Verne Lundquist. Yes, sir. Welcome to. Pardon my take.

Eric Sollenberger

I'm Vern Lundquist. Yes, sir. That's good. That's it. That's perfect.

Mike Portnoy

Can we get you to say, who the hell is Henry Lockwood?

Dan Katz

That's our producer. He's. He's a golfer. He's terrible.

Eric Sollenberger

I could get in the golf cart with him. Then I was not any good, either. I could talk about it, but I couldn't do it. Yeah. Who the hell is Henry Lawson?

Dan Katz

Verne, thank you so much. This has been so much, so great for us. We really are so appreciative of your time and best of luck in retirement, but also maybe come out of retirement. Yeah. Yeah, you never know.

Eric Sollenberger

Yeah, you never know, do you? Yeah, let's. Let's leave it open. Okay, guys? All right.

Dan Katz

Thanks so much. All right, see ya.

Mike Portnoy

Vern Lundquist was brought to you by our great friends over at visible. Switch to visible, the wireless company with nothing to hide. Get one line wireless with unlimited 5g data, powered by Verizon. Just $25 a month, every month, taxes and fees included. One line wireless, just dollar 25 a month, taxes and fees included.

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And switch to visible rate with service on the visible plan. For additional terms and network management practices, see visible.com switch now@visible.com. And now here's Kirk Goldsberry. And now for something completely different. Okay, we now welcome on our very good friend.

Dan Katz

It is Kirk Goldsberry in studio, and it is also the day that his new book is out, Hoop Atlas mapping the remarkable transformation of the modern NBA. You can buy it on Amazon today. You can buy it on Amazon tomorrow. Yeah, buy it on Amazon for the rest of time. Probably.

Probably. It's 23% off today in honor of Michael Jordan. Okay, so if you like Michael Jordan or books there, ready to go. So it's also perfect that you're here in this specific moment in the NBA playoffs because it feels like the pendulum, pendulum has swung all the way back around and Yokic sucks again. I thought you were going to say defense matters ago.

Mike Portnoy

Well, no, it's getting your take on Jokic from a couple of years ago saying that he, he lacks some, some traits to defensively that you'd like to have. I don't actually think he sucks. No, everyone knows that's true. But you did. You did have that piece that got Michael Malone very upset.

Dan Katz

And now we're watching the Nuggets struggle mightily, both offensively but defensively as well, where Jokic just flailing around. They're putting him in Jamal Murray and pick and roll and just, I think I saw they had a pick and roll in game one where they were averaging two, two points per every pick and roll against those two, which is. That's insane. Yeah, they're shredding them. And I think the Lakers scored 57 points per game in the paint alone in that series.

Kirk Goldsberry

That was a little bit of a red flag. And I went on with our friend Ryan Rosillo and was like, yeah, the reason Minnesota might do this is they're young and athletic and aggressive and ferocious. And, you know, Nikola Kic is the best offensive center in the world, and it's not close, but compared to some of the other elite big men, he is not a great rim protector and not as athletic as some of those other guys. And, you know, we've seen that exposed. Last year, they, they pieced it together well enough to win hand up, as you guys like to say.

I was wrong but if there's a weakness in this dude's bag, it's on that end of the floor and Minnesota has exposed it. But the biggest point of this, this game from game one is Denver scored 80 points. Yeah. I mean, Minnesota's defense has been and out of this world's good and they just have, it's a credit to their roster building. It feels like every single guy, maybe outside of Mike Conley, is just bigger than everyone else.

It reminds me and I, you guys like when I put things in NFL terms, that this is the 2000 Ravens through these first six. I like that. Murderer. I like that. Huh?

Dan Katz

Who's killed a guy? Stay tuned. Stay tuned. But, you know, they scored 80 points last night and if you would have told me three weeks ago the Denver Nuggets were going to score 80 points in a playoff game, I would said, oh, did Jokic and Murray both get hurt? Because that number is just something from the 1980s or nineties in the NBA.

Kirk Goldsberry

And you know, the other crazy thing about that 80 point night, big cat, is Rudy Gobert didn't play. Right? Yeah. Right. And so they're, they're, they're not just a one man defensive juggernaut.

The whole team is absolutely loving playing defense and they're shutting down this team that won it all last year. Year. It's crazy. Yeah, it is. The first half was, was especially atrocious last night, watching the Nuggets just struggle.

Mike Portnoy

It seems like. How many steals did they have? Double eleven steals in the game. Yeah. And they doubled them up, I think, in steals and blocks and they're just like, they're, they're maniacal.

Kirk Goldsberry

They're like grinning ear to ear as they're playing defense. And it's especially in the context of this season, pft, where offense, offense, offense, offense. What's happening right now is Minnesota is emerging as the favorite to win this tournament by being the best defense we've seen in years. And awesome. If you like hoops, it's awesome to watch these guys just lock up some of the best players in the world.

Mike Portnoy

So how much of that is coaching and how much is the individual defensive efforts? Both. And one of the stats I got last night sort of reveals that is, you know, I think the average separation for Denver's three pointers last night was, was, was 5ft. And that sounds like a lot, but that's, that's, that's the smallest margin they've had all year in that metric. In other words, Minnesota's defenders were in the right places and contesting shots at a level that the Denver Nuggets shooters haven't sort of experienced all year, they're in the right place.

Kirk Goldsberry

So credit to Chris Finch for schemes. And then the roster is just full of those dudes that are dogs. They got the dog in them. They, they're in the right place. But then they also want to fight and, and close out on those shots.

And they're just athletic and long. So it's a perfect storm. Yeah. And Anthony Edwards has been the story of these playoffs. His leap because he was good before, but the leap he's taking right now, I mean, you statistically are looking at it like it's clear that he has made that leap and he's playing differently and better, more efficiently than he was the last couple of years.

Dan Katz

He also just, I just love watching him play because he just, you can tell he just wants to beat the fuck out of everyone he plays against. And that, you know, that's not a stats thing. But his, his leadership, I think is his signature skill. Cause he's like, everybody loves him on the team. You can tell the team has adopted his Persona more than Carl Anthony Towns or Rudy Gobert, who, let's face it, don't have that reputation and that sort of infectious kick ass mentality.

Kirk Goldsberry

And then smiling when he's doing that's Jade McDaniels. Now it's Alexander Walker. It's Kyle Anderson. Like the whole team has followed in his lead. And what the most impressive about that is.

Here's a dumb stat. The dude's 22 years old. I know this is like people compared to Michael or Kobe or whatever. 22 years old. I know you had the stat where it was a list of four guys who scored over 35 points at 22 or younger.

Dan Katz

Yeah. So that was Lou Alcinder. Who, that was his name back then. Before he became Kareem. It was a guy named Kobe Bryant.

Kirk Goldsberry

And then it was a guy named LeBron James. Were the only other three guys that had scored 35 plus. And then the other thing I think was three times in a row. But the other thing, big cat, is his field goal percentage. His shooting efficiency numbers are incredible too.

He's 660 percent, 50% every. That's the difference. Like last year he would. If you look at the stats or the, or the year before, like he had the stats, but the efficiency is what has gone. And he even said it, he did a great interview where he was like, the hardest thing I had to do was just work on my shot.

Dan Katz

And I would take 3000 shots a day in the summer and like, now you're seeing what. What has happened to my game? And you go back to his draft year. Right. And the intel was, does this guy like basketball?

Kirk Goldsberry

Is he competitive? Crazy to. It's like the exact opposite. It goes to show you what a pseudoscience some of this NBA draft stuff is. But a lot of the intel around this guy was completely wrong.

It couldn't have been more incorrect. Yeah. That one shot to the fade away he had where he was double teamed on. On Monday night, that was where I was like, okay, these MJ comparisons, like, they're starting to, like, I see what people are saying. Hit the shrug right after that.

Dan Katz

Well, yeah. And he also said he didn't want to be compared to him, and then he hit the shrug. Yeah, it was interesting. It's so much fun to watch. It was a good shrug, though.

Mike Portnoy

He, like, nailed it. I get bummed out when it's a non Anthony Edwards night. Oh, I'm like, where's Anthony Edwards? I want to watch Anthony Edwards, american basketball. He's the hero that american basketball needs.

Kirk Goldsberry

I know you like this thing I had earlier in the season about, like, are these foreign guys stealing our jobs because the all NBA team is all foreign players and we haven't won an. MVP in, what, like, seven years? Yeah. And I was saying that, like, you can really chart out with Jokic, Don Chie, who's canadian now, Wembanyama and Giannis, a path to 2030, where we go a full decade without an MVP. Now, Anthony Edwards, this last two weeks has said something to say to that.

Mike Portnoy

I like to build the wall, Anthony. Yeah. Let's make this a USA argument. Pay for that. Yeah.

Dan Katz

He's also. I can't wait for the Olympics because, like, it's always fun. We. We're going to. We should win the.

The gold. But one of the things about watching the Olympics is watching all these guys interact and having a moment where it's like, it's Anthony Edwards kind of league now. Like, LeBron's older, Kevin Durant's older. Like, will that show up where it's like, no, he's the dude now. Yeah.

Kirk Goldsberry

Team USA basketball, which I got to work for in 2016, was one of my favorite experiences, but the 2012 team had sort of this vibe, too. Big cat, where Kevin Durant was a baby coming out of the University of Texas. No big deal, but on a team. Won a lot of championships. Kobe and LeBron and Chris Paul.

I forget everybody was on, but it was incredible. And he was. He was the 22 year old, 21 year old, you can look it up. But he was the leading scorer in that tournament, right? And it was like, oh, my God, like Kevin Durant.

And I think that's like, what it's setting up for for Anthony this summer is like, oh, my God, this is the best player in american speaker zero. I mean, it's the dream team in 92. I know MJ had already won titles, but like, the passing of like, oh, it's magic and birds on this team. They're older, they're about to retire. It's like these young guys are here.

And he already just destroyed Kevin. And, you know, Devin Booker, who is the competing for the starting spot on that team in the backcourt that's obviously going to ant man now. It's, it's just one of the things that makes the NBA playoffs so good is this kind of thing. And to be honest, this is the best sort of emergence of a superstar in this postseason tournament we've seen in a very long time. Him and Jalen Brunson.

Dan Katz

Cause I. We had the argument before the playoffs. Like, I'm very particular with the phrase superstar. I think it's a list of like five to seven guys, and Anthony Edwards and Jalen Brunson weren't on that list yet because they hadn't done it for enough years. But these playoffs are exactly where a superstar starts.

Like, they are now on the path to superstardom in the league. Yeah. I didn't know you were such a gatekeeper. Well, I just think it's, you know, we had a good steven che here. I.

He was like, I. He listed his superstars. It was literally just every all star. So Jalen Brunson's not a superstar. He's on his way.

I think you do it. I think you have to do it for multiple years and you have to be like, this is one of the five to seven best basketball players in the world. Okay. That. Those are fair criteria.

Kirk Goldsberry

I think Jalen Brunson is. Dude, talk about a hand up moment. For a lot of us, it's like, oh, the Knicks signed Jalen Brunson. They overpaid him. Yeah, they got laughed at.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, I laughed at them. It's just like the Anthony Edwards draft intel. If you go back to that transaction, people are like, oh, whatever. And who, who would have thought? The Mavs.

Kirk Goldsberry

Now, think about it from the Mavs perspective. Like, oh, my God, what, did you just give up? You weren't willing to pay this guy and now he's like, running Madison Square Garden in the spring and, yeah, he's. On the way to superstardom now. Like, I fully.

Dan Katz

That's how quickly it can change. It's easier to get there when you're in New York City too. Right? You're helping the Knicks to the conference finals. Potentially.

But it's also the way that Jalen and Anthony Edwards are doing it where it's like 35, 40 points a game, carrying their teams. That's superstardom. Speaker zero. Yeah. And the shots that he made in game one against Indiana down the stretch were definitely big boy shots.

Kirk Goldsberry

Like, I love the way he plays. I mean, undersized guys. We just love it. The 2ft in the paint, it almost looks like a college basketball player. And Jay Wright deserves a lot of credit, I joke, for making the Knicks so good with Dante DeVincenzo and Josh Hart, who's also just this phenomenal sort of emergent players do.

Dan Katz

We were going to ask you this. We talked about it on our hot sequel throne. But do you know the story about Josh Hart, like, hurting his wrist in early April and he. His wrist clicked and he told Jalen Brunson he can shoot threes now. And he actually can shoot threes now.

I don't know what your stats. You got to find some stats on that. Maybe go back. Yeah. Five minutes, April 7, and he said that he could shoot threes now.

He is shooting threes at a way better clip than he ever has in his career. Sounds like potential nerd nugget material. Yeah. I don't know where he is. Crazy, though.

Kirk Goldsberry

April 7 because. Yeah. Nick Nurse and when I was on the show a couple weeks ago, we're talking about how Nick Nurse was leaving this dude open on purpose. I was talking to one of the bulls assistants last night and like, yeah, we just used to leave Josh Hart. Oh, more.

Dan Katz

His wrist click. Wrist click. So it's like, that's the new money ball. Yeah. Just damaging your players wrists and then they're able to shoot the ball.

Well, yeah, man, you gotta fight. We need a stack. Somebody Ballmer needs a mallet. I'll send it. Right?

Kirk Goldsberry

Russell Westbrook's. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He needs to put. He needs to put Russell Westbrook's hand in a guillotine and then shut it and then sew it back on. Then he'll be good again.

Dan Katz

Yeah, that's, that's. I'm going to send you it right now. And you can. We'll get a new graphic that you can put together his shooting percentage since that happened. We'll do it.

Kirk Goldsberry

We'll do it for the, for the, for the social. But I think you're right. You know, they're saying, like, this Tommy John surgery in baseball. These guys come back with their UCL, and I know Blake is got a UCL injury going on. Two of them.

Is he doing, like, the vlog? Is he throwing way to baseball? Yeah, we had him throwing a curveball way too early. Yeah. I called him Blake up.

Mike Portnoy

Degrom. Yeah. Yeah. 85. Yeah.

Bark, pryor. There's all sorts of nicknames being thrown around about him, but. So I want to get back to the Nuggets real quick. Jamal Murray, he has had kind of an up and down playoff so far. We've been talking about him a lot because he's made some huge shots, especially in that series against the Lakers, that kind of glossed over some of the other stuff that he's been doing.

I think he's injured. He seems to be not himself. Can we look at what he did last year compared directly to how he's played this year and see, like, a mark drop off in his production? Yeah. In word, jump shots.

Kirk Goldsberry

I mean, he was an absolute killer last year on the perimeter of making his jump shots, and he is now one of the coldest jump shooters in these playoffs and, and with a few big exceptions in the Lakers series. But, yeah, like, he has been just not himself. He was just making all of those big shots last, last year, like you said. And I think he's obviously frustrated. And one of the things we don't do well enough in basketball, and I think football discourse as well, is like, you know, what makes scoring hard is really good defense.

And we already talked about Minnesota's defense. And when you have Jaden McDaniels and Alexander Walker in your face, just, it's. It's harder to, you know, when Ed Reed is back there playing defense, suddenly your passing game isn't as good as it is normally. And I think Minnesota is the exact wrong team to try to sort of get warm up against right now. And so Jamal Murray is.

He's definitely hurt. He's not himself. He's cold. And the Lakers, pretty good defense, too. So it's just a perfect storm, in my opinion.

Dan Katz

Yeah. And also out in the west, and we can just talk about this quickly. The Suns, we watched the suns, and we said, the Suns, they really suck. The Suns are shitty. Can you tell us why they suck and why they're shitty?

Mike Portnoy

Like, get. Get nerdy with it, because it's the. Eyeball test for us. We're like, oh, this team just sucks. Yeah.

Kirk Goldsberry

I'll give you two big indicators that I like to look at. One, they had the worst defense in the playoffs against, you know, a team that it is really good, but you can't be the worst defense in the playoffs in advance. And I think specifically, they don't protect the rim and rebound very well, which are not very glamorous, but really important jobs on defense. And then they don't threaten the paint on offense. They love to settle for two point jump shots and even three point jump shots, but they're with Booker, Beal and Katie, obviously, great jump shooters, but they don't space the court in part because they don't threaten the rim.

And a lot of the best teams with, even with like Rudy Gobert, Anthony Edwards, these guys can get dunks and layups. And when you don't do that, it's a lot easier to play defense against the team that you don't really have to worry about attacking. The paint job shooting. All right. In the west, it feels like, it feels like we haven't seen the thunder.

Dan Katz

And so you said, you said, pussy's pussies. They're pussies. What's that? The sound went out on my. Okay, yeah, the thunder.

We haven't seen him play in forever. Thunder Matt fans are mad that we haven't talked about them. They made quick work at the Pelic pelicans, and it was also weird scheduling because it was off nights for us. I love watching the Thunder play because they have another, like, young nucleus that is so much fun. So we're taping this right before the Mavs.

Thunder, tell us what you think is going to happen in this series and why the Thunder could potentially win it all. Like, I mean, we just have. We haven't seen him play in forever. It's crazy. They're so young.

Kirk Goldsberry

The craziest stat from the first round might be this one. They had one person over 25 years old, years old score in their first round series, and it was Ken Rich Williams. He scored two points. Wow. So what I'm saying is, beat them now because they might even go to the finals this year.

But this team is built for the rest of this decade and beyond. They are young and I think they are deep and they are built for long term success. But speaking of this year's opponent with the Dallas Mavericks, I think this series is pretty close to a coin flip for me. I'll give the edge to the Thunder just because they have home court, and that's a really tough place to play somebody. When I was at the spurs, we went up there and we'll get our butts kicked a lot and that crowd is nuts.

Dan Katz

Lead the, lead the league in putting on the shirts. They have a huge t shirt. Yeah, they do. T shirt culture there. Huge.

Kirk Goldsberry

But it feels like a college basketball gym. In all seriousness, it's like, wow, this is a really loud environment and so that's a hard place to win. Obviously, Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving can both win a playoff game on the road if they need to. But the Thunder, great defense, great depth, and it all starts with SGA, who is the most active, rim attacking. He can score in all three levels, but he's a playmaking guard who's just perfect to start an offensive possession with.

And he's, you know, the most drive happy guard in the NBA. And the Mavericks are really interesting because they were one of the worst defenses in the first half of the NBA. They made some major transactions at the deadline and then became one of the statistically best defenses. So it's sort of this doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde at the end of the season they look like they could win it all, but it's. I'm still not sold that their defense is legit, as it looked like.

Mike Portnoy

And we've talked a lot about the west. There definitely there's an imbalance still in basketball. When we talked to you a couple of weeks ago, I asked you to look into why the west has just been dominant over the east for it feels like 30 years. Is there a reason anytime a league divides itself in half, it is setting itself up for imbalance, like this arbitrary division, whether it's the American League and the National League, the AFC and the NFC, and you separate your teams and you say, our playoffs are going to be divided in half based on this arbitrary division. But the small market teams I did look into this, PFT have just been the best.

Kirk Goldsberry

They they, to compete with the Lakers, they had to get smart in the moneyball era, right? So moneyball comes out in 2003. The spurs are winning with smarts, the Nuggets, the Thunder, the Jazz, the Timberwolves. Now, if we're going to beat the Lakers and the warriors, we have to be the smartest teams, almost like the rays in baseball. But they're smarter with international players, they're smarter with analytics, they're smarter with sports science.

There's just a disproportionate amount of those genius teams in the small markets, in the Western Conference. Interesting. Genius teams. Genius teams in the west that's my new book. And so the, the Lakers are not, they're not a genius team.

Mike Portnoy

They're just the Lakers. The Lakers can make a phone call to anybody in free agency any year they want, and just, there's three ways to build a basketball team, traditionally, trade, draft and free agency. And the Lakers have sort of disproportionate access to that free agency lever. Yeah. You know, and you talk about San Antonio or Oklahoma City, but you guys.

Just cheat in the draft. We cheat in the draft, which is sure, but we're not getting LeBron James to take his talents to San Antonio in free agency. We're not getting Kawhi Leonard to come to us in free agency. He might depart as he did, but. So a lot of these small market teams have had to build from the ground up in a more sustainable way, and it turns out that might be a better way to build a basketball team.

Dan Katz

We've talked about a theme of these playoffs is it feels like maybe the super team era is kind of fading away where it's like, you see these teams, the Thunder, the Wolves, these homegrown teams, now they've made trades, but those were trades with assets they already had or they were able to get even. The Celtics, I know people were like, what are you talking about? Christops and Derek White's like, well, they were smart with who they traded for and how they maneuvered everything. It does feel like we're getting back to this, this, like more organic team building, and I love it. I think it's better for the NBA.

Kirk Goldsberry

Yeah, I think the super team era sort of starts, whether me, maybe you cover the Celtics with KG and that, but I think it really starts with the decision right to 2010 where these guys, mostly american players, team up in big american cities like Los Angeles or Miami or whatever. But yeah, those teams are out and the old guys are kind of out. Stefan is out. Kevin Durant is out. LeBron James is out.

And who's left? It's. It's Anthony Edwards and this Minnesota team that is very deep. It's the thunder that are very deep, Luka Doncic and the Mavs. So I think that is a fair take and I hope it's better basketball cooler, and if the small markets are able to compete, it's better for the league, too.

Dan Katz

Do you have advanced analytics on Lou Dort and his defense? Yeah, of course. I mean, he's an absolute maniac. Pest. He's a pest.

Kirk Goldsberry

He's built like a brick house and he is long and he, the biggest thing is. Does he have that dog in him? And he's got that french canadian dog. Yeah, like that. Do you have.

Mike Portnoy

Do you have any metrics that say whether or not a player has a dog in them? You didn't prepare me for that. Yeah, you should. That's a formula you should come up with. Maybe for next year.

Dan Katz

Okay. It's like, where you reach dog stat. We can help you. Yeah, yeah. It's not just, like, scoring or technical fouls.

Stats. That's one of them. There's a lot of those. Lock goes into dog. Throw the ball into the stands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. That's a lot of dog. Run to the locker room and tweet about your podcast right after the game. That's dog.

Kirk Goldsberry

Um, yeah, but I think, like, steals and blocks are like the traditional wands, but, yeah. Do you show up on defense and going back to these Timberwolves who are taking the NBA by storm, they all got that dog in them. So we'll start there and we'll do a deep dive, but let's introduce that dog in them stat. I think clapping in another player's face after a turnover, that's a big time dog move. That's a dog move.

Mike Portnoy

I would also add clapping another player's face when they miss a foul shot. Yeah, dog. What about, like, Philipowski? Like, tripping or kicking? He was here today.

Dan Katz

We talked. I talked to him briefly. That dog stuff or. No. You know, he's got a bill.

Guys, Duke guys don't have dog in them. They got to get. They got to earn it. They usually do a weird haircut or some type of tattoo in the NBA, and then they get it. Yeah.

Mike Portnoy

We don't speak ill of Philipowski because he was so close to death, and it's a miracle that he came back. So I don't want to. It's like talking shit about tomorrow, Hamlin. Yeah, do that. I think about those guys all the time.

Kirk Goldsberry

Time together. Yeah. Prayers for Kyle. The league could have changed forever. We could have probably ended basketball.

It was scary. Yeah. Okay, so with the one team we didn't mention or the series we didn't mention, is Celtics and Cavs cocky? Hank is all the way back. We've.

Dan Katz

We've coaxed it back out of him. He was scared of the Heat. The Celtics are far and away better than everyone in the east. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, I call it.

Kirk Goldsberry

You know, there's the G League. I call the Eastern Conference the E League. So cocky. Hank should be cocky, in part because the, the draw, as we would say in March madness. They have the easy bracket.

Dan Katz

Yeah. And no disrespect to the Pacers or, or the Knicks or certainly the Cavaliers, but you look at the four remaining teams in the west. Big cat. Come on. Yeah, they could all win the championship.

Kirk Goldsberry

And I just don't say, I don't think that about the Indiana Indianapolis Pacers, Indiana Pacers or the Cleveland Cavaliers. So the Celtics have been the best team all year. They deserve it. Part of that might be because they've had an easier schedule. Uh, but part of that is because they're a great freaking basketball team and they are as deep as it gets.

And, yeah, they're going to get to the finals, in my opinion. I think the Cavs could steal one or two games, as we saw. Even the Miami Heat could steal one with that three point shooting. But what, what about specifically christaps? Because he's out several, no, minimum of several games.

Dan Katz

What does that change, though, for their team? You'd imagine Al Horford's going to play more. Yeah. Might see some Luke Cornette, but what, like, does that affect their ceiling drastically when Christops is not playing? Yeah, 100%.

Kirk Goldsberry

It's one piece. They have to take off the chessboard out of the rotations. And what he's really good at is spacing the floor on offense. He can stand 28ft out and shoot threes. Bring that opposing big out.

You know, if Jared Allen's able to play or Evan Mobley essentially taking them out. Now, Al Horford can do that a little bit, too, but they don't know if Al Horford can play 40 minutes. So really losing that depth in the front court is a meaningful thing. And if they were playing a Western Conference opponent, it might be a fatal flaw. Right.

So I think their easier draw plays in here, and I expect them to win even without christophs. But I laugh because the minimum of several games as an analytical thinkers, like, what does that even mean? No idea. More than one? Should they actually.

Mike Portnoy

Should they lose some games on purpose? Oh, give him more time to get back. I like how you're thinking. Yeah, they do have the set. They.

Dan Katz

The NBA does have a set start date for the NBA Finals, so they could just, like, there's, there's only. If there's all sweeps from there, we're gonna have to take a break. Yes, we hit the pause, but they have the NBA Finals dates set in stone. I don't like that. Yeah.

Kirk Goldsberry

Usually starts on a Thursday in early June, and then game two is on a Sunday? Well, they've been doing this thing where they're trying out every day of the week now. Oh, really? Yeah. We have member.

Dan Katz

Last year there was like a Friday game, a Wednesday game. They're doing that again. Yeah, I guess that never occurred to me. Yeah, they're trying. I hope they find luck.

Mike Portnoy

I stand by my take. I still think they should intentionally lose some games to the Cavs. Really? I think. How many thinking?

I think two. I would just hurt their rest. No, they should lose two games. In all seriousness, Donovan Mitchell is a one of those dudes who could just go out and win a game. Yeah, he'll steal a game.

Kirk Goldsberry

He could definitely steal game. And you know Boston, if it's tight, like, one of their weaknesses is this late game execution. And if Cleveland can get healthy, I think they can. They can make this a series. But ultimately, I think the Celtics are just too much, too deep, even without Christops.

Dan Katz

What about the analytics on. On Cleveland? Like, I don't love when they play both their centers. It feels weird and awkward, and it feels like they're a better team when Jared Allen or Evan Mobley is out by themselves. I don't know if you did the research, but I've seen that exact thing.

Yeah. When. When one of them is out, they seem to have a better net rating, better definition, defensive efficiency. You know, last year, when both of them were playing at a very high level, they had one of the best defenses in the league. But this year, you saw that actually, and the numbers backed it up.

Kirk Goldsberry

Is, is this Jared Allen, Evan Mobley thing really good? Because it's two non shooters. And one of the things that my first book, Sprawl Ball, was really about was like, can you even have two non shooters on the court at any given time anymore? And Cleveland was trying to do that with both. Jared Allen from Austin, Texas, no big deal.

But also, Evan Mobley just doesn't stretch the floor very well at this point. Yeah. So if we fast forward to the finals. Cavs verse or excuse. Excuse me.

Mike Portnoy

Celtics versus. Doesn't matter out of the west. How do the Celtics match up against the Timberwolves? Oklahoma City, maybe the Nuggets, if they can come back, or, you know, maybe we'll throw the Mavs in there, too. Like, is it.

Should they be the favorites to win over? And who should Hank be rooting for? Cause he's rooting hard for, for one. Like, he was nervous about the Nuggets now. He, not.

He should be rooting for the Nuggets. Now, but he's not nervous about the wolves. He's like, I think we match up better. Yeah. I would be terrified of the Wolves based on what I've seen, 60.

Kirk Goldsberry

And they just dispatched Kevin Durant and Devin Booker like it was nothing and now have made Nicole Jokic, who many were saying is the best player in the world, three weeks ago and two weeks ago, and I was one of them, they've made him look very mortal. As cocky as Hank is, that's the team that should make him the least cocky, in my opinion. I think they would do better against Dallas, which is a little uneven in some parts. And Boston deserves credit because their roster is so deep. I mean, Derek White is having a great playoffs, drew holiday, and obviously Jalen and Jason Al Horford, they're just so deep.

They have shooting Sam Houser like they, I don't know, statistically speaking, on the betting market right now, they have the easiest path to the final, so they have the best odds to win the champions. But once we're there, whoever comes out of the west, assuming they're healthy, is going to be battle tested in a way that the Celtics simply won't be. And I will be very tempted to take them, particularly if it's Minnesota, the way they're playing. Yeah. I mean, knowing how the coach of the Celtics operates, they should lose some games, that he should intentionally go to a game seven, feel like he's getting choked out, see if they can respond to adversity.

Mike Portnoy

That way, when they get to the finals, they're like, yeah, we've. We've had. We've had our battles. Yeah, Minnesota six and o, they've played Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Nikola Jamal Murray, and Boston is what? Four and one?

Dan Katz

Yeah. And they played a heat team that was, you know, without Jimmy Butler and also banged up in other ways. So Cocky Hank deserves to be back. And I think you guys have done a good job prefacing this until the finals. Yeah, Cocky Hank is not going to like, too.

I haven't told them this. I haven't said it out loud. Wolves fans are probably going to be upset at me, but I did take the Wolves nine to one before the Nuggets series. I was like, I. I feel like this is going to be a tough matchup for the Nuggets.

And now Hank's gonna. I haven't told him that he's not gonna listen to this part, so we'll just save it and we won't even. I won't even tell him till we get there, but, yeah, nine to one, they're already down to like three to one. Dude. They show up June, whatever it is that Thursday, and they're twelve and.

Kirk Goldsberry

Oh, and they've just swept the Western Conference playoffs. Cocky Hank is gonna be, he's gonna be sweating. He's gonna be shitting his sweaty Hank. I think, I think he won't. Yeah, he won't even know.

Dan Katz

I'll wait. I think, I think he's gonna start. Wait, say nine to one. Yeah, he, he, I text him last night. Are you worried about the wolves?

He's like, no, I think we should match up better. Do you think illegals should suspend Jamal Murray for throwing a challenge flag or a heat pack or whatever? Who is he throwing it at? Maybe that's, you know, his throws haven't been very accurate this post. Yeah, we don't know.

Mike Portnoy

He might've been trying to throw it to, to the trainer. I was saying that, like, like college football, he should have, like the targeting rule. He should have just started his suspension in the second half. He should have just sat out the second half and been like, see time served. I'd like that.

Dan Katz

Yeah. It's always interesting when a guy like, gets the targeting call right at the beginning of the second half. Right. That's the best time to get it right at the end of the first half. I would think at the, at the end of the first half, if you're winning.

Yeah, yeah. And that's fine. Yeah, but he. Yeah, he should have just started serving it, so. All right, let's talk about your book real quick.

Hoop atlas mapping the remarkable transformation the modern NBA. Everyone buy it. It is a great book. He get you smarter about basketball? Lot of pictures.

Great Father's day book. Yeah, a lot of great Mother's Day. Mother's Day. Father's Day. Will it shipping time for Mother's Day?

Kirk Goldsberry

Yes, it will. I promise you. You have my guarantee. Love that. So what is in this book?

Dan Katz

This book. So it's about the evolution of the NBA since Jordan. So the first chapter is about how Michael really made jump shooting cool and made perimeter play cool, and that set up the revolution that has sort of taken place in the NBA since the 1990s and really opened up the sport for players like Kobe and Stefan to take jump shooting even higher levels. But long story short, big cat, it's about the evolution of the modern NBA and the superstars that changed something or invented something that really you can see when we're watching these games today that what you wouldn't have seen when we were watching Michael in the early nineties. I like these books.

Mike Portnoy

I like the maps that you put out. I like these books. They've got a lot of pictures, a lot of maps inside the books. Are you concerned that you're going to have to rewrite the entire book in two years when Wimby just destroys everything? You've studied basketball and math your entire life, and then Wimby is now in the NBA and you have to throw all of it in the trash.

Kirk Goldsberry

Well, you guys will appreciate that. One of the hard things about writing a sports book in the 2020s is the discourse moved so fast. And in the summer of 2023, when I'm really writing a lot of this, this book, the Wemby hype is, is out of control. And, you know, the last chapter is about the evolution of the big man. And Jokic Yokich is the, is the centerpiece of that chapter.

But I did get a little bit of Wemby in there, and I hedged a little bit. And if I have one regret, I was like, no, this guy's the future of the big man. If I had been able to write this last week, he is the perfect extension of that last chapter because one of the big things PFD is he represents the return of the big man. But they're bigger and badder than ever in terms of their skill set. And I do think that's the next big thing in the NBA, is seven foot dudes that can dribble past and shoot just like six foot dudes.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Volume 2.0. You'll have to release, like, a collector's edition paperback. Will have an essay just on Wemby. I'm guessing he'll probably win a love letter.

Kirk Goldsberry

A love letter. Can you tell us just how good is, Wendy, in terms of, like, breaking everything that you've ever studied defensively? It's like having, you know, Wilt Chamberlain in the, in the, in the gym. Like, he is so much bigger and longer than all these other guys and some of the plays he's made this year, I always start the Wemby conversation with defense. Like, if you have, there were some crazy stats.

The spurs, and I love them, have been one of the worst defenses in the NBA over the last five years since, since they really started tanking, let's say. And when Wemby was on the court in the second half of the year, they were top five defense, and it was just insane because they had no business being there. He comes off the court, they're essentially the worst defense in the league. He is defensive efficiency in a can, and he will be for the rest of his career. If you have this guy on defense, you're going to have a top five defense in the league.

If you surround him with people like Minnesota has surrounded, go bear with. You can have the best defense in the league. So. And then offensively, he can obviously do things that nobody his size has ever been able will do. It's crazy.

Dan Katz

He's so much fun to watch. All right, I have one last question. Roback question. Rho bhck.com promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase.

Cusips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. So, in your book, do you have one guy that changed the NBA that we wouldn't assume did? Bruce Bowen. Oh, you know, the rise of the corner three, chapter three, is, I think, one of my favorite chapters. And like it or not, the corner three is now one in ten shots in the NBA.

Kirk Goldsberry

The term corner three, big cat. You know, when you're at Wisconsin, we weren't even using that term. No. And now we say it like 30 times a night in NBA broadcast. And Bruce Bowen and the 2003 spurs really represents the birth of that movement.

When they beat the three Pete Lakers in the finals, Bruce Bowen's corner threes were a huge reason why. And so I think Popovich, Tim Duncan, that whole team deserves credit. But Bowen is the focal point. And really inventing that three and D archetype that Jaden McDaniels represents right now. Or Alexander Walker in Minnesota.

Dan Katz

What about Bruce Bowen kicking someone in the face? That in there, he's got all time speaker two. He's got that dog in him, I think. Yeah, he kicked Wally Zerbiak in the face. If you remember, it was.

It kind of looked like Antonio Brown returning the kick. He just was like, I can't get to the close out. Let me just try kicking him in the face. A lot of people don't know this. Tyrese Halliburton actually put Bruce Bowen in a time machine to go back and do that after Wally Zerbiah had the worst Tyrese Halliburton take of all time, calling a fake all star.

Kirk Goldsberry

Yeah, but, you know, I think, yeah, Bruce Bowen was. Was a pretty aggressive defender and pretty handsy, and some people might even say. Dirty tripping a little bit. Steve Nash would probably agree with that. Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think that's fair. But ultimately, Bruce Bowen is one of the people. And then his teammates, manojinobli with the euro step is another one. Oh, yeah. And being will to catch bats.

That's right. Which you should never do. Yeah, no, he had to get rabies shots. Yeah, don't touch a grounded bat. Yeah, they tell you that to get rabies shots in?

I think the stomach. Isn't that what happens? Yeah, yeah, you have to get the whole panel of them. Fauci's just creaming his jeans. He's like, yeah, give him another shot.

Doing my own research on that. It was a bat that they give him another one. All right, well, everyone should go buy the book. Thank you, Kirk. You're the best.

Dan Katz

We love having you on. Good luck at the sphere, as well. Yeah, yeah. Good luck. I'll stay on the lower level just to be safe.

Yeah, you got to let me know. You got to give me the scouting report, because I'm going, like, a month after you. You know I will be texting you. Yes, absolutely. But, yeah, you're the best.

We love having you on. Thank you, guys. Enjoy the rest of the playoffs. Thanks, Kirk. Quality sleep is essential.

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Okay, let's wrap up the show. We got. Pardon your take, Hank. Yeah, you got some for us? Or also follow Mister Perry's hot in hockey.

Mike Portnoy

Mister pairs great. He's. He is a hockey turtle through and through. Gotta get some ice for him. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Okay. Also, Mister Pear has memes stressed constantly. Means just what? It's very funny watching memes interact with Mister Pear because it's like. Like having a new child.

He'll just walk over and just be like, oh, yep, he's sleeping, and he's up. He's still sleeping. He's constantly worried that he's being fed too much or too little. Yeah. And needs his exercise.

And he's pooping in his own water. Is that good? I I guess turtles do it. Memes is a turtle expert now. Memes?

Yeah. Apparently, they do it all the time. Okay, that's cool. I found a thread on it. They're like, my little idiot does it, too.

Mike Portnoy

Is that in tortoise for him. That one was on Reddit. Good. Okay, memes, we got to get you like a little backpack or something that you can take Mister Pear to the, like the bar, like a see through. One like the cats have.

Dan Katz

Yeah, like a front, like almost like a lanyard that has Mister pear just hanging out. Just like a chain. We should get him a leash. Yeah. Or like a baby.

Mike Portnoy

Like the thing you put the baby in. Bjorn really does think it's his baby. Yeah. Yeah, I just put on my chest. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Okay. Hey, PMT. Hey. Hey. This is a take I've been sitting on for a couple years.

Hank Lockwood

I'm convinced if James Bradbury was wearing white gloves in the eagles last Super bowl, that call is never made, and the Eagles are Super bowl champs. Appreciate you guys. I mean, Jules has told us this many times that he would get yelled at for wearing gloves that were, you know, you could see someone holding and when he would wear the red gloves and, and Bill Belichick would get mad at him. Or was it the white gloves? I think it was.

Mike Portnoy

It depended on what the opponent was wearing. Yeah. Like if they, if your opponent's wearing a white uniform, white gloves, I think are okay. If they're wearing a dark uniform, white gloves. No.

Dan Katz

Yeah. You want to match it as closely as possible to get away with cheating. It does, it does feel like a big advantage if you are a defensive back. If you're an offensive lineman, why wouldn't you just wear the glove color of the other team's uniform? It's like Mark Slayth used to love wearing the burgundy or the gold pants in DC because he could piss himself nobody would ever see.

Yeah. When he got to Denver, the white pants, the yellow shows up. So you think that basically everything could be different if James Bradbury had just picked different gloves that day, what a. Night that would have been. Damn, that's brutal.

But guess what? The Eagles are lifting weights, so they're reloaded. Strong, Jalen. So strong. So strong.

Eagles are good. Are they? Is he the guy? Yeah. Jalen, I saw an interesting, that's a good question.

Mike Portnoy

I think we should talk about it at some point. Yeah, well, he was injured last year. Yeah. Our friend Nick Wright had a pretty good rant about Howie Roseman, which made me be like, oh, interesting. That's all Nick Wright does is just try and do the opposite of what everyone else is thinking so everyone can have that reaction.

Dan Katz

But what did he say? So he basically was like, howie Roseman does a really good job of drafting off of the experts mock drafts. So every time the Eagles have a draft, everyone's like, holy shit. A plus. They got a guy that we mocked for the first round, in the second round.

He was also doing it for, like, the last three years, which. How are you supposed to know if those. If those are good or bad picks yet? Honestly, if I was a GM, that's probably. Yeah, it's definitely what I would.

Mike Portnoy

I would just fire my scouting department and say, I'm gonna make a compilation of. Let everybody else do the work for me. It all started when he. When he drafted Rager over Justin Jefferson, and then he never, and then he never didn't take the consensus guy again. I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

Dan Katz

I'm saying it's interesting. You know what you're doing? I'm saying it's interesting. Can I not say something's interesting? Caleb Williams was the consensus pick from Mox.

That's interesting. Yeah. Caleb Williams. Because Stephen Shay said that they should. Maybe Albert Breer just put out an entire piece about Caleb Williams and the Bears wooing him, and it was just porn.

Just like, checked all the boxes. Checked all the boxes. Great teammate, great dude. Called him Steph. Steph Curry.

Like, experience watching him throw the football. Oh. What? Yeah. I don't know what that means.

It means Steph Curry's awesome to watch basketball, play basketball. So it's like that. Awesome to watch, play football. Got it. Yeah.

Trick shots. We're doing trick shots this year. Ben Simmons used to do some pretty cool stuff, too. Okay. Not really, though, because he, like, very cool passes.

Yeah. But he couldn't really. That's a really important part of him. That's a really important part. It is impressive how good he was without being able to shoot.

Shooting was. He is. We've said this on the show before, but he was the. He's the best basketball player of all time. If there was no such thing as a rim.

Yeah. It'd be like if I was really, really excited about a quarterback who could only run, I would never do that or could pass, which Ben Simmons. No, no, no. You're missing. No, no, no.

Shooting is the most important part of basketball. Without a doubt. Shooting, putting the ball in the basket, is the most important part of basketball. I think it's the dribbling. If you can't put the ball in the basket, you won't.

You won't win games. Rebounding to Sixers. Yeah. No, but if you. If you make every shot, then there's no such thing as a rebound.

True shooting, I would say, is number one. Putting the ball inside the basket. Tip offs. All right, part of my take. But if James Dolan wasn't the owner of the Knicks, we would have been five times or more NBA champions by now.

Hank Lockwood

Do you agree? And if so, what owner, what owner slash individual would be best to run a mega franchise like the New York Knicks? Oh, my God. This is so Knicks fans win one series, and they're already ready to give themselves five titles. They mean, like, historically, they would be five time champions.

Mike Portnoy

How many titles do the Knicks. I think he's saying if they were actually had a good owner, like, like a Mark Cuban, that was actually able to get players and cared about the team enough to, like, you know, get the best players. But Mark Cuban is one. One. Yeah.

He doesn't, he's not like a dynasty guy. Yeah. New York, um, the best owners, like. Think about all the. Think about all the free agents that the Knicks just haven't got.

I honestly think that if Donald Trump owned a sports team, it would rock. Yeah. I think it would be the best. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely better owners than then James.

Dan Katz

There's a lot of better owners than James Owen, but I don't know, if you put in the best owner, they, the Knicks automatically have five titles. Who is the best owner in sports? Stan Kronke. Yeah. Is it Mark Cuban, a free agent owner?

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, he is probably some sort of non compete. Oh, no, we got rid of non competes. He could probably own them. Best owner. I don't know who's the best owner?

Robert Kraft. Yeah. Who's the best owner? I mean, the steelers, I guess their owners, the Rooney family, doing it for so long. He.

Hank Lockwood

Khan. Tony Khan. Yeah. Definitely up. Good owner.

Dan Katz

Best owner. Josh Harris. I mean, the warriors owners, like, I feel like the best owners are the owners that just buy the team. They're like, money's not a problem, and we're just gonna hire the smartest people we can find and then not touch act and then not touch it. Green Bay packers.

Mike Portnoy

Best owner. Hands off. Hands off owners. Yep. Okay.

Dan Katz

Five titles. I feel like that's a lot. If the entire city of New York had a collective ownership of the New York Knicks, that would be awesome. Yeah, that would be great. They'd actually be.

Mike Portnoy

I think they'd be worse than James Dolan. Yeah. What? It's crazier than the Knicks having five titles. Yeah.

Hank Lockwood

I mean, it's. Yeah. Florida would have won the football national championship in 2001 had 911 not happened and the Tennessee game got rid. Rescheduled interest. Oh, let's, let's take that.

Mike Portnoy

I mean, let's think about, let's look up the Florida schedule in 2001. Um, okay. Wasn't that the Miami team that was like the greatest football team of all time? Yeah, but is that the year they lost to Ohio State? No, the year after is when they lost Ohio state.

Okay. That was the Miami team that was one of the best teams of all time. So, yeah, I feel like maybe not, but I like this take just because it's good to just sit there and just tell people that. Just be like, hey, ok. So you would have won it all.

I'm looking at 2001 football schedule right now for Miami. The game that was delayed September 22 at Kentucky. They won 44 to ten. Florida. Yeah, Florida beat Kentucky 44 to ten.

Hank Lockwood

When did they play Tennessee? December 1. Much later in the season. September 15. Right.

Mike Portnoy

Oh, so that's the one that got moved. Yeah. Okay. And let's. They defeated him in week 13, 34 32.

Eric Sollenberger

All right. Now again, Miami did not lose a game that year, so that feels pretty important. The only loss Florida had. No, they lost that Auburn. Ah, that's tough.

Mike Portnoy

But they finished number three, so maybe the way that season broke, they could have snuck in at number two with one loss. Okay, I'm looking at Tennessee's early season schedule that year. See how they were at the start of the year. They, they beat Arkansas 13 to 3, September 8. Not great.

Not that impressive of a win. It feels like Tennessee wasn't playing their best ball. And then after 911, Tennessee beat LSU, number 1426 to 18. So the argument they would have gotten in over Nebraska, who had one loss into the BC's national title. I still think Miami would have won that game.

They might have. Yeah. But they, I mean, can you imagine a Miami against Florida would have been great. It would have been awesome. Either way, I like this take because it just, it's something you can just sit down and just be like, yeah, we could have won it all if.

It wasn't for Osama bin Laden. And Miami did, did kind of paste Nebraska. I hope this guy is old enough that he was mad about that in real time because that means he's like 50. Yeah. Which is just very funny.

Hank Lockwood

Like, it's better than if he was like, you know, just a Florida fan. That's like looking up the stats and, and, you know, if he actually remembers 2001 season and he was mad in real time. I respect that take. Yeah, I respect that take as well. Oregon also was very good that year.

Dan Katz

Only had one loss. Do you think there's Colorado in their bowl game? Which. Colorado was also good. Yeah.

I'm gonna say I believe them. They could have been to the national title. They would have lost to Miami. Do you think that there's any Tennessee fans out there or just fans of college football, that during the moment in 2001 when they announced that they were delaying all the games, they're like, this is bullshit. Clay Travis.

Yeah. College football. Yeah. Yeah. We need college football.

Mike Portnoy

We need college football will help us heal. I feel like every fan has, like. One moment, though, that they go, like, way back in time and be like. We would have won it all if this wasn't. Oh, for sure.

That didn't happen. Villanova would have won the national championship in 2005 if there wasn't the biggest phantom travel call of all time on Alan. Right. Justin justice Winslow touched it in the national title game against Wisconsin. That's a fact.

Kirk Goldsberry

Fact. Yeah. I like this take. I think Ninja wrote this one. Punters should be better.

Hank Lockwood

You're one of 32 people in the world that do this for a job. I don't understand how they don't drop it within five yard line every single time. Yeah, it's ninja. One shank punch should lead to immediate termination. Also, more fat punters.

Objectively better for the game. Agreed. I agree with that. I. I kind of agree with this take.

Dan Katz

Like, kickers in general should just be better. Cause that's their only job. Well, they are the best that they've ever been. Yeah. But they should even be better than that.

Mike Portnoy

They will be better at some point. I agree with this take for punters especially. What always weirds me out is when there's a good punter in college, and then he goes to the NFL and he sucks. Yeah. It's literally the same job.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Different ball. Yeah, slightly, but still, like, I feel like if you're a great college punter, there's no excuse to not be a great NFL punter. Punter should be better. I also think that, like, golfers should be better at putting.

Mike Portnoy

Yeah, just put in the hole. Just that that's something like, if you're a professional golfer, you should just never miss a putt. Anything 1010ft and in should never be missed, ever. But that's just me. I wouldn't miss it if I were a professional golfer.

You know, the best punter of all time is low key. Big Ben. He's a pretty good punter. Yeah, the pooch punts were. Yeah, electric.

Dan Katz

You did have good pooch punts. What other sports do. Should players be better? Foul shots. Foul shots, definitely open threes.

Yeah. Every open three should be made all the time. Make those. Yeah. I feel like kicks.

Penalty kicks. Tennis players should never double fault. I agree. Tennis players, never. Tennis players.

Outfielders should never miss a ball. Yeah. Hockey players just shoot more, you'll score more goals. Yeah, that's a fact. Also, don't let any soft ones.

Mike Portnoy

Can't let a soft one. Never let a soft one in. What do you think, Hank? I mean, baseball and hockey are tough. Free throws is definitely.

Hank Lockwood

Everyone should. Every NBA player should be 80% better than free throws. Soccer players should also never understand why tall people are bad at free throws. That's never made sense to me. Yeah, you're shooting like, down to soccer players should also be better at scoring goals.

Dan Katz

Yeah. Just in general. Like I always, when I'm watching a game, like kick it from 30ft out, that should go in every time. A football player should never miss a tackle. In fact, they should take pride in their tackling.

Yeah. Agreed. Wrap up. Agreed. Okay.

Is that it? Good. Pardon your takes like that. All right, let's do numbers. Max, you ever gotten this?

Nope. 820, pft. Have you ever gotten this? 46. Not yet.

370, 218, please tune in to the. Wells Fargo Championship on PGA Tour live this week. Max Homo will be playing. Fuck yeah.

Mike Portnoy

99 pound 21.

Dan Katz

Next. What'd you say? You never gotten this? Yeah, Pft also said that he's never gotten this. No, I said I haven't gotten it yet.

Yep. Tell the whole story, Max.

Hank Lockwood

Oh. 26. Oh, my God. No, you weren't that close. From my angle.

Dan Katz

I'm far away. I thought I hit it. Nah, you didn't though. You weren't that. So did Hank.

Hank thought he hit it. I hit it too. No, he thought I hit it with 46. No one thought you hit it. No one thought you were.

Well, no one saw Hank hit it either. Fuck face. 26 is way closer to 46 20. How? Explain, cuz it's got the six and a two.

Hank Lockwood

If you look, you know, from the blocked angel, kind of looks like a four. Yeah, there's a zero inside of a 26. Inside of a six. That's a good point. Yeah.

Dan Katz

Oh, there's no. Yes, there is a small little. Who is closer? Hank. Hank.

Hank was way closer. Yeah.

Over. Yeah. Then I won. It's pretty simple. I won again.

All you got to do is pick the right number. Max, it's not that hard. Yeah, PFD. It's not that hard. PFT is going to.

He's just PFD. It's not that hard. Why are you talking to me? I didn't think I won this one. All right, I'm not so pressed about let's do another one that I'm imagining numbers coming up.

Mike Portnoy

Our first double in a while. Max is so mad he's counting. This counts. We'll do another one. Numbers.

Dan Katz

I'm gonna stick with 846-320-7299 pug 21.

Mike Portnoy

The cat's boxing out the machine. No one can see the number.

Dan Katz

Oh, 79. I thought it was 99. I was so close. Hug is a dynasty. Oh, no.

79. So close. Love you guys.

Me take me out, I begun I won't say but I be so telling them what is up say after me it's the better to be safe than sorry it's the better to be safe for some take on me, take me on I.