The Pacers Force Game 7, Boban Marjanović, Illinois Head Coach Bret Bielema, The Lakers Sold For 10 Billion + Fyre Fest Of The Week
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On today's part of my take, we have maybe the craziest twofer that we've ever had. We have Boban and Brett Bielema in studio. Boban over Zoom, Brett Bielema in studio. Both incredible interviews. We're going to talk about Game 7. We got a Game 7 Sunday night. The NBA season lasts one extra game because the Pacers came out with authority. Uh,

We also are going to talk a little Stanley Cup cleanup with all the celebrations that rock. Connor McDavid maybe wanting to leave Edmonton.

We have Firefest of the Week, and then we'll send you into the weekend into a Game 7. It's brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. This is your last chance to bet on the NBA until next season, and DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, is pulling out all the stops to make this a Finals to Remember. One team will be crowned champ, and the other will be lost to history. Who you got winning it all? Put your hoops expertise to the test.

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The crown is yours.

Minimum minus 500 odds required. Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG.co slash audio. Okay, let's go. My name's W.R.N. Mike, and my name's T.

Welcome to part of my take presented by DraftKings. Don't miss your last chance to bet on the NBA this season. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Use code TAKE. That's code TAKE for new customers to get $300 in bonus bets. If your bet wins when you bet $5 only on DraftKings, the crown is yours. Today is Friday, June 20th, and PFT, the two best words.

Words in sports. Game 7, we're there because the Indiana Pacers absolutely dominated the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday night in Game 6. This is the first Game 7 in the NBA Finals we will have in the last nine years. Last one was the Warriors-Cavs, the 3-1 comeback.

It is also just the fifth NBA Finals Game 7 we're going to have in the last 30 years. So we did it. A series that everyone thought was going to be boring, that thought was going to be a blowout. We are getting our first Game 7 in almost a decade, and it's because the Indiana Pacers do not quit, and this team is just flat-out fun.

Yeah, I thought that it was going to go seven. I had no idea how. I thought that the Pacers were going to figure out some way to do it, and they did it by just making the Thunder defense look pedestrian and by making their offense look like dog shit. And I don't know if game seven is going to be competitive because we've had a few competitive games, but it feels to me like this is –

I don't want to be disappointed by game seven. I'm excited that we have a game seven. The Pacers were great tonight. It just felt tonight like there was no chance that we're going to lose from the pregame when Pascal Siakam levitated into a different plane, when he was communing with, with ancient spirits, whatever he was doing with his eyes rolled back in his head, looking like he was plugged into the matrix. It was, it felt like it was game over from the opening tip. Yeah, it was, it was, uh,

I mean, it was pretty much wire to wire. The Thunder were, you know, the first half or the first quarter, and then the Pacers started to pull away. The second quarter, the Pacers were incredible. The craziest thing, this was the most Pacers game possible, and I say that...

Obviously Tyrese Halliburton has been injured and he played tonight, which was great to see. But when I say it's the most Pacers game possible, it's a team. They are such a team where they were up 30 going into the fourth quarter. They won this game by 17 points and it was obviously more than 17. There was a lot of scrubs in the final quarter.

The leading scorer was Obi Toppin with 20 points. No one was over 20 points. That's a full team basketball. They had every guy contribute. T.J. McConnell might be the best basketball player ever. In terms of just the minutes he provides, it's crazy watching him. They even said it on the broadcast because it's like, how are you at this point in this series if you're the Oklahoma City Thunder and T.J. McConnell comes into the game? How do you not...

realize that he is going to steal the pass when you inbound the ball. If you do a lazy inbound pass after a bucket, TJ McConnell will be there. TJ McConnell's getting rebounds over Hartenstein. He's on the floor. He's going to the basket. He's just instant energy, and he and Obi Toppin together, like that was what happened in that second quarter was the two of them basically won this game in those moments, and then it was just too much of a hill for the Thunder to overcome.

I always hate it when announcers say, like, this guy wants it more. Or if a coach says, you guys got to want it more, you don't want it enough, because it's never really true because everybody wants to win. But it is true with T.J. McConnell. He does actually, in fact, want it more. Yeah. He wants it 110% as much as anybody. And, dude, he's fun to watch. And this Pacers team, it's like they are Hoosiers. It's like we're watching Hoosiers.

in real life, in the NBA, I expect Dennis Hopper to come stumbling out onto the court and puke everywhere. It's so much fun to watch when they're clicking. They're a great basketball team. When they get the ball moving, that dunk that Siakam had where it was legitimately like two great assists on the same play. It was a hockey assist and then a great no-look.

there was just no stopping him. I did like Rick Carlisle's move too in the fourth quarter when I think the Thunder cut it to like 24 points. Carlisle takes a timeout and he's like pissed off. He's like, we're not letting this happen because I've seen this happen. We've done it to other teams before.

we're only up 24 now. Lock the fuck in. Yeah, and Rick Carlisle also, another great move, which just doesn't really happen in sports. Tyrese Halliburton was obviously questionable for this game. He had an MRI. He's got a calf injury. And

like two hours before the game rick carl i was like yeah we tested him he's playing and and the reporter was like why would you give that away he's like dude we're we're in game six like we're like we're not gonna win this game because we we didn't tell him tyrese halberton was playing until tip-off like we gotta go just play and win this game and by the way the the tj mcconnell stat that's crazy uh to the wanting it more because it is a cliche it's stupid but i he

He does play with such an insane amount of energy that I think it just fucks up everyone on the court. He's 6'1". In the first half, he was leading the Indiana Pacers in rebounds with five. He finished the game with 12 points, nine rebounds, six assists, and four steals. Think about that. And that was 24 minutes of gameplay.

It's just been, and they're just a team. Like the whole team, Siakam is still like, he's just steady Eddie. Like every night he's just awesome. And it's just an OB tie. Like I just love watching the Pacers play basketball. And I know that this game seven is going to be a dog fight because you do always have like the team that needed it more. And the Thunder thought they could kind of just like show up and the Pacers would quit. But that's just, these Pacers are not quitting. They're not a quit team.

I'm calling it tonight. This is a legacy game, game seven for Thunder and Thunder Princess. Yeah. This is what it's all about. I want to, you have to have the best chest paint that you can possibly get. I want to see here's, here's my metric.

The Larry O'Brien trophy has to be on Thunder's chest. Has to. Or on his belly. Has to. You have to have the trophy there. Has to. By the way, are you sure you're going to want to do a legacy game for them? Because actually tonight was already a legacy game for the Thunder. No, this is for Thunder. Yeah, I know. I know it's for Thunder, but...

The Thunder actually lost their legacy game, so it's kind of actually over. Before the game, Skip Bayless said the Thunder need to win convincingly tonight for legacy for some of the historical respect it deserves and isn't getting. So what happens when you lose a legacy game in game six and then still have to play game seven?

You don't have anything to play for. They got nothing left. You'd almost rather lose this game seven. Yeah. Because if the Thunder win this game seven, then they're going to have to answer questions for the rest of their lives about how they tarnished their legacy with this NBA championship. Yeah, I would agree. And listen, SGA was bad tonight. He was turning the ball over.

He had eight turnovers. It felt like the Pacers, the adjustment they made was instead of outside of TJ McConnell who is just playing...

at all times on all parts of the court. Like, they kind of lulled the – they're like, hey, we're not going to pressure you full court, but the minute you get across half court, like, we're going to be in every passing lane. It felt like the Pacers' energy on defense was the difference in this game where they were in – they were disrupting everything. They were basically – they thundered the thunder. They did what the thunder had been doing to other teams tonight to the thunder, and the thunder, like, they just –

They were so bad offensively in even that third quarter where it's like we're watching it and Max had his free bet, shout out DraftKings, and we were trying to get the Thunder back in the game and it was –

So like the Thunder defense started to wake up. The Thunder couldn't hit an open shot. They could not hit a shot. They had moments where they were like, I think the first four minutes of the third quarter, it was like 0 for 11 combined by both teams. They just could not climb back in. That was the moment where the Pacers maybe weren't playing their best and then they got their footing again and it was over.

They had their lowest point total through three quarters of the entire season, the Thunder did. So they picked a bad time to have an all-time stinker performance for that team. I do think that they're going to win game seven, but I'm hoping for a great game. I want to see like a game seven that lives up to the words game seven. Yeah. Because you said it, game seven, best two words in sports. I would disagree. I would say Jameis Winston, but it's certainly up there. The words are great.

But we haven't seen a great game seven in an NBA finals in a long time. We deserve it as a nation. We haven't seen one in a long time. There hasn't been one in nine years.

Yeah, and that was actually a great game the last time that it did happen. But I want to see a great game seven. And credit to the NBA. You've pushed off Mount Rushmore season for as long as you possibly can. This is as late as it could go. So I know Zach's chomping at the bit to get involved, to get in the arena. Yeah, he is. Max, what were you going to say? I want to hear Max's rant real quick because he was very mad at the Thunder.

I mean, the Pacers did everything they could to allow the Thunder to get back in that game to start the second half, and they just had no plan. They came out in the second half with zero. They were already on to game seven at halftime. It did feel that way. This entire NBA playoffs, teams have been coming back down 20 in every round, and they just came out and were completely

place in to go to game seven. The Pacers couldn't make a shot for the first five minutes of the second half, and the Thunder did nothing. That's why... SGA didn't even shoot the ball. Yeah, that's why I said Obi Toppin and T.J. McConnell won this game, because that was that second quarter. It was just like, all right, I guess we'll just go to game seven now. Like, it's over. But yeah, it was... They had that chance. They were...

The Pacers weren't shooting well. All they had to do was knock down a couple shots, put a little game pressure on them, maybe get it tight. And no, they just didn't. You're right. I do think they were kind of on to game seven. Chet Holmgren, not the guy. Yeah, I mean, they did. Not the guy. Not a guy. Can I just say something about Chet? I just would like for him to stop falling down at all times. And he doesn't actually fall down. He just looks like he's about to fall down. Like when he's going forward, dribbling, his body looks like it's about to fall down.

Yeah, he's got the long limbs and they flail out and it's like Bugs Bunny with a cloud of dust underneath his feet. You think he's going to hit the deck. He's not the most –

Not the most coordinated individual, but I think you'll get there. Right now, he's like a baby deer that's walking on ice for the first time. But then he makes plays like that. It was maybe two minutes into the game that post-movie had on Siakam that was just like, holy shit. Like, that's why you think he's going to be great, and he definitely could be great. But yeah, he's...

They're going to need him. They're going to need him. They're going to need J-Dub. They're going to need SGA to be the MVP. That's the big thing because like eight turnovers. Oof. Oof. Yeah. Yeah. If you're Chet, you've got like two choices with which direction you're going to go with your look. Either you're going to grow the hair out, grow the beard out, become like Bill Walton light, or you're going to try to swag it up.

and get the nice tight fade. You're going to get the nice facial hair dress stylishly. And then if you choose that route, the second you do anything slightly unathletically, it looks way, way worse. Um, can I throw out a little conspiracy theory? Just throw it out there. Let's see. Let's just throw one out there. Um, Brian Windhorst conspiracy theory. Uh,

So obviously every sport now isn't a sport unless they have a Netflix documentary, right? In season. The starting five Netflix documentary season two, which was announced in October. James Harden, Kevin Durant, Jalen Brown, SGA, Tyrese Halliburton. So this should be a pretty awesome if they're still taping it, which I would assume they are.

Do you think Netflix may be paid extra to have this be the finals matchup and a game seven? Just not going to put it past anyone. I'd say definitely. I would say without a doubt. I'd say the proof that you need is literally just a single tweet from Shams announcing the cast in October. Wait.

Wait, they're recording it now? I would assume they're still recording. This is from October. October to start the season. Shams said, here is the five guys that Netflix is following for the entire season. And SGA and Tyrese are part of that. They could have stopped recording in the middle of the playoffs.

Season one, they followed Jason Tatum around. Yeah, right. And they followed him through the championship. Interesting. So, oh, that's interesting. Who else is in season one? Yeah, who else is in season one memes? Anthony Edwards, Sabonis, Jason Tatum, Jimmy Butler, and LeBron James. LeBron James. Okay, whatever. We didn't even follow him.

All guys that made the playoffs. Interesting. Yeah, but Netflix is two for two for getting a finals guy. Actually, okay. So, yeah. I'm just saying. Just throwing it out there. There could be no other explanation for it. None. It's not like Netflix would pick great young players that are highly probable to go far in the playoffs. I actually would love to see a Netflix documentary for just middling and bad teams.

We got Jordan Poole. We got Zion. We got Vucevic. We're going to watch these guys scratch and claw for lottery picks in the play-in tournament. They already do a Zion documentary. It's called Cops. Yes. I'm excited for Game 7. That's all I got to say. I'm just excited for Game 7. Yeah.

Yeah. Very excited. I'm, I'm, I'm pumped. I'm glad that we get more basketball in our lives. Yeah. Uh, okay. Let's talk a little more sports. Uh, and then we'll get to our interviews. We've got Boban and Brett Bielema, two great, great interviews. Uh, before we do that game time, uh,

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Just look for zones 29 through 32 or zones 203 through 208 on the game time app. Guess what? I'm going to be at that game. I'm going to that game. I'm going to try to hit two games this weekend, but I'm definitely going Sunday. So take the guesswork out of buying tickets with game time. Download the game time app, create an account and use code PMT for $20 off your first purchase terms apply again, create an account and redeem code PMT for $20 off. Download the game time app today. What time is it? Game time. All right, PFT. I have a couple other things. Uh,

The first is I just love watching Stanley Cup final celebrations. The guys out at the elbow room all hours. We had well, actually, we should. Zach, what was your favorite? Because you are from the state of Florida.

I would probably have to say that the Barkov video when he's strolling up to the ring camera with the trophy to show his neighbor late night. Like, imagine rolling out of bed and getting that notification of it's just Barkov and the boys at the ring camera. Like, hey, you want to check this out, man? I think it's an all-time neighbor move. Yeah. PFT, Zach almost cried when I told him to sit in your seat. He was like, I can't do that, sir. I cannot do that. What?

That was a great Zach reveal. Yeah, it was a great Zach reveal. I was like, Zach, don't say anything. He was like, can we preload this question, please? I was like, yeah, I'm going to ask you about what your favorite celebration is. He's like, okay. He's like, is PFT going to be mad at me? I was like, no. It's going to be funny when halfway through the show, we just reveal that you're sitting in his seat. He's blinked a billion times since he's been sitting in that seat. Like, he's gone full...

I swear to God, a billion times since he sat down there. He's only been blinking. PFT, I respect you as a broadcaster, so I just didn't want to step on any toes, and I appreciate you allowing me to sit here right now. Well, he actually hasn't yet. Oh, that's a great point. Yeah, you can – oh, that's great. Yeah. Did you want to ask me if it's okay? PFT, was it all right that I sat here for a little bit? Absolutely not. Okay. No. You ever see – you ever read about the Yankees, Wally Pipp?

That's what I'm going through right now. Oh, not at all. You're taking my job. No, sir, not at all. Not at all. You're a fantastic broadcaster. A lot of respect for your broadcasting abilities. I can get out of this seat so quickly if you'd like me to. That's the first time anyone's ever called me a broadcaster. Great Zachary Mildew. Did you like that? Did you like the Zachary Mildew? It was good.

I did. It took my breath away. Zach, you did a great job. I also, you know, it's crazy. You're sitting in that chair. My favorite celebration was Barkov showing up on the ring camera. Yeah, it's so good. That's why I had to go to him there because I was like, wait, fuck, the plan's going to get foiled because PFT is definitely going to bring up Barkov before Zach can.

Yep. That was so sick. Also, Barkov's hand. Barkov's hand. It got cut in half at the beginning of the series. Zach, do we know who the guy's ring camera was? Like, who lives in that house? If I told you a name right now, it wouldn't be the truth because I'm not sure who lives in the home. I should have had that for you. That's my fault. But I can't find out for you. That's why you're a great broadcaster. Yeah. Yeah, we had a lot. Zach, you're a great broadcaster.

Go ahead. Do we know if it was like a friend of his or an acquaintance? I don't need to know the guy's name. I just don't know. Like I, in my mind it would rock if it was just like a random house that he showed up to. So context clues tells me like, Oh, he's got to have like a decent neighbor relationship with the guy. Or if they're not really friendly, it's kind of like, Hey man, look at this. Like I just did this tonight. What did you do?

Like I'm a Stanley Cup winner, maybe. Oh. Yeah, maybe. I think I would like it if this guy was like a – if he had a Panthers flag that he flew outside his house and Barkov saw it every day but maybe hadn't met the guy one-on-one yet but knew he was a Panthers fan. And then with a Stanley Cup, he shows up, rings his doorbell. That's how they meet each other for the first time. In my mind, that's how it went down. Yeah. What a way to introduce yourself. Yeah. Max, you have the guy's name? Yeah.

Nope. Oh. Memes, you have the guy's name? The guy who posted it was Roger Rojas. Who's that? Oh, the guy who posted it. He had the original video. Got it. Got it. So that answers that. It's just his neighbor. Also, speaking of neighbor stuff, do you see Brad Marchand that people are like, all right, I got a take that people are probably going to be mad at. Can you go back to PFT's face? Sorry. Okay.

I was looking up Roger Rojas. There was a story that Brad Marchand, I think like before game six, he accidentally left his garage door open when he left like the day before for practice or whatever. And his neighbor went over and was like, hey, your garage door's open. I wanted to let you know. And then Marchand gave him tickets to game six.

I feel like that's just a fair trade. Like, if I left my garage door open and my neighbor did, I would do something nice for him. Not that Brad Marchand's not a great guy. It's just like, that feels fair. Like, that's a... When you leave your garage door open, there's no worse feeling than leaving your garage door open for, like, a day and coming back and being like, holy fuck, what just happened? Yeah. Yeah.

All-time neighbor move. I've got a neighbor named Blake that came over one time and was like, hey, your garage door has been open for eight hours. He gets tickets to the Colts. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah. I mean, Brad Marchand is a very nice move. Also, he looks like he's having the best time ever. There was that picture of him like he had a cigar and three different drinks in his hands. It was like a beer, an energy drink, and a coffee. He looks like he's having the best.

Winning the Stanley Cup, it's got to be the best feeling in the entire world. And I heard that they dented the cup, and they're actively repairing the cup now because that thing has been through hell. The Stanley Cup, if it could talk,

uh, it's seen some shit. And so they, I think they cracked the bowl on it, maybe dented the side. And then the, the keeper of the cup was like, that's fine. We got a contingency plan. We'll repair this. We got a guy that takes care of it in like six hours. They're used to just like on the spot, fixing that thing up. The guys that like take it to their hometowns. I love that. You just, if you win the Stanley cup, you stay drunk for two months and it's gotta be the best feeling in the world. Yeah, it really does. Uh,

Also, we had the one celebration that didn't go well for the Panthers. I don't know if you saw this, PFT. In the locker room, they did a selfie cam on a champagne bottle, and it was just a highlight tape of them all facialing themselves. They didn't think that went through. Yeah, I did. That one was a little weird. No, that's...

This is why you got to hire a couple of shitheads to be involved with your media production team. Yeah. Because if you pitched that to us, we would have been like, oh, you're going to do the what he sees cam? Right. Right. Yeah. You just need some trolls. You need to hire a couple of trolls who look at this content. What's the worst case scenario here? And they'll find it in a second. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Wait, you want every guy on the team to open up their mouth as wide as they can and then pour foam into it? Okay. Yeah. Should we just put the Brazzers logo on the GoPro or wait? Also, speaking of the Stanley Cup, shout out Seth Jones, Blackhawks for life, but he is the first Seth to ever be on the Stanley Cup. Pretty cool.

I don't know. That's a pretty cool thing. I always loved that one. Stanley Cup. They're like, this name's never been on the Stanley Cup. First Seth ever. You would think that there would have been some Seths. Yeah. You'd think there'd be at least one Seth. Congrats on the Seth. I saw there's a stat that it's basically –

The odds of you winning a championship in one of the four major sports is significantly higher if your name is Mike. Mike is the most common name on all of the trophies in terms of winning them. It's the third most common name on the Stanley Cup. And then there's a lot of, obviously, Super Bowls and basketball. So name your kid Mike. What's the most common name on the Stanley Cup, if you had to guess? I know it. I have it in front of me.

Do you want it? Okay. I got a couple guesses. Okay. I have one, two, and three. Three is Mike. Give me the other two. Okay. I think that one of them do not have it. Wait. I might not have it. Hold on. I might have the most common full name. That's just guys who want it the most. No. I think these probably make sense. Go ahead. Okay. I think Chris is number one. We're not going to fact check after this. No. Chris is not.

I think these make sense. It's not, okay. I think I have the stat right. Bob and Bill. Doesn't that make sense? Bob makes sense. Yeah, Bob makes sense. Wait, Bob and Bill or Robert and William? Bob and Bill. I'll have to recheck this. But yeah, I'll have to recheck it. Wait, you got it? Oh, he's got it. Look at that. Yeah, no, right. Bob and Bill. Here's a list of the eight most common names to appear on the Stanley Cup with the three most notable entries for each one. Bob and Bill.

So that's pretty cool. It's Bob, Bill, Mike, John, Dave, Ken, Doug, Joe. Those are the eight. Those are the most generic names ever. I love it. It's perfect. And I feel like Bob is a very Canadian generic name too. It is, yeah. It couldn't be an American. I don't think Orion would work on the Stanley Cup.

I was talking to our friend, new employee, T-Bob Hebert. And T-Bob said that he's got an uncle whose name is Billy Bob, which is a great Louisiana name. But Billy Bob's name is not William Robert. It's not even William Bob. His name is actually just Billy Bob. That's like his actual, like that's just like his birth certificate is Billy Bob?

His birth certificate is Billy Bob. Yeah. It's great. That is awesome. And very Louisiana. Very, very Louisiana. All right. Other stories. The Lakers sold for $10 billion, but not actually. Yeah.

So, well, what do you mean not actually? Valuation was $10 billion. The guy who bought the Lakers, who kind of a sick fact, he lives in Chicago. He lives like a mile away from me in this office. I don't know why he's not buying Lakers.

The Bulls and the White Sox, but whatever. That's neither here nor there. I mean, not actually in the fact that he already owned a percentage of the team and he didn't buy 100%. So he didn't actually, it wasn't $10 billion. Here's $10 billion. It was somewhere around four because he bought the majority of the team at a valuation of $10 billion.

So when I was reading about this, so he bought the majority stakeholder ownership from the Buss family. Yeah. And-

Jeannie Buss is still going to be the governor of the team. Is that true? That feels like a Mark Cuban situation where they have a deal. Yeah. And the minute like one season goes by and the guy's like, wait a second, I paid $4 billion and I don't get to make the decisions. That's not going to keep going. So I would say Jeannie Buss is probably like, imagine if they did something like trade Luca. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah.

Now, you put your fingers up. Another another wind horse question. OK, isn't it interesting that the Lakers got a screaming good deal on what's going to be the face of their franchise for the next 10, 15 years right before they sold? Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Like how much how much do you obviously the Lakers historic franchise, the brand valuation is going to be high no matter what.

How much do you think Luka actually increased the brand valuation for this sale? Would you say he's worth like $500 million worth of equity? I don't know. He's definitely worth something, obviously. But obviously you're also- It's the security of knowing that you have a superstar for the next 10 years. Yeah. And it's interesting because what you're saying starting to add up

You can put your fingers down now. Zach still had his fingers. He was holding them under the table. It's interesting you say that because it happened. So there's been a lot of talk about NBA TV ratings.

There's been a lot of talk about these finals ratings. There's been a lot of talk about where the league is going. There's been a lot of people bullying Adam Silver online. And then I would say the highest-priced franchise in the NBA, the team that you think of, it's the Lakers.

sells for $10 billion and now the NBA can be like, hey, our assets are so crazy. Look at how healthy this league is because we're selling for $10 billion. That's more than a lot of NFL franchises. Yeah, that's interesting. Every NFL franchise. Well, I mean, not actually every because if the Cowboys were to be for sale tomorrow, they would sell for significantly more.

Right, but I'm saying up until now, every team that's actually been sold, the Lakers just set the market for highest-priced sports team in America. Correct. Yeah, it is. It's very interesting. Also, Big Cat, you know what's interesting is if you look back over the last, what, three years, Mark Cuban sold the Dallas Mavericks. The Celtics got sold to the symphony guy, Billy Strings. The Lakers just got sold.

Is that a good sign for every other owner if all the preeminent owners are selling their teams right now? If you went outside right now and every dog in your neighborhood was sprinting full speed down the street towards the west, would you be like, oh, this is good.

Yeah, I'm another owner. I'm looking at all these historic franchises, probably the three groups that would have like the closest relationship with Adam Silver and the powers that be. They're all cashing out right now. Wait, I would look at my place and be like, are we in the bubble? All right. So Dallas and Celtics, I'd agree with you.

I would say this is going to maybe be a trend where you have Jerry bus buys the Lakers, whatever it was 40 years ago for $67 million. And for,

From all accounts, the Buss family, they don't have anything else. They don't have any other businesses. It's a mom and pop shop in that respect where it's like, this is the family business. So when you can buy something for $67 million and then sell it for $10 billion, especially when you don't have just like you're not liquid and it's the next generation, that one makes sense. But you're right on the Celtics and the Mavs. I'd be like, oh, that's weird.

Maybe this new guy that buys the Lakers, maybe he takes like two, three years, changes a bunch of stuff, everybody gets mad at him, and then he sells it back to Jeannie Buss for $1. That would be sick. Maybe some gambling commissions get involved. Yeah. He also owns the Dodgers, and he's been doing a pretty good job with them. Mark Walter. And Chelsea. And I still don't understand why he's not buying any. Why didn't he just offer a Godfather offer to Jerry Reinstorf?

He lives in Chicago. I don't care. So he lives in Chicago but owns the Dodgers. He owns the Dodgers. I assume he has a house in L.A., but I – He probably has. Maybe a condo. Yeah, like maybe just like a – maybe he's got like a timeshare in L.A. Yeah. He might –

He might crash in Rosilla's basement. Yeah. I'm sure there's a good explanation that would take two seconds that I didn't just look up, but I just know that this guy, because he built a house that I used to live maybe four blocks away from the street, and he bought five lots in 2012 and built this insanely large house in Chicago. He should have just bought the house. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, that would be nice. That'd be great. It'd be great for the city. Uh, but since he does own, I mean, he's got a pretty good track record with the, uh, with the Dodgers. So I'm sure, I'm sure the Lakers will be fine. Um, but end of an era. Yeah. End of an era. The bus family, although she is still the governor. Uh, okay. Speaking of the Dodgers, did you see PFT? I have two baseball things for you. One, we were robbed of one baseball. Okay. We were robbed of an immaculate inning. Uh,

I don't know if you saw this, but that was bullshit. The Dodgers Yamamoto almost had an immaculate inning, which is three strikeouts, no balls to start the inning.

or to finish the inning. So it would be pitching a nine-pitch inning, and he got absolutely hosed on the last strike, which was very much a strike but called the ball. That was bullshit. And then I just wanted to say I feel really bad for Arkansas Razorback baseball fans. I watched that game on Wednesday night. They are the most cursed team. This happens to them every time they go to Omaha. But they had LSU beat.

and their incredible shortstop, who's one of their best players, just decided with a guy on first and second and one out to throw to third to get the force out at third instead of turning a double play that would have been a double play ending the game. And then the next batter hit it to left field, and the left fielder misjudged it. The ball ate him up, and that was that. It was almost an impossible way to choke a game away, and the Razorbacks found a way to do it.

It sucked. I felt bad for the left fielder. I don't know. Did it hit him like in the chest and the shoulder and it bounced away? Did he lose his balance? I don't know. But it's a very, very tough sport to lose in that fashion. Like there's nowhere to hide in left field. You have to keep playing in the game and you have to just stand there and just think about it while everybody's staring at you. I felt bad for that kid. But I –

I felt bad for him, and I know you can't throw your teammates under the bus. You'd just be like, dude, what was my shortstop doing? Max, did you see this? Did you see him not turn the double play?

I did not see this. Okay. I thought maybe you had. Go look it up. It's an insane thing that they could have won this game. And, like, I know the left fielder fucked up, but he should never have been in that situation. It should have been game over. It does feel like LSU team of destiny, though. Yeah, it does. Hey, everybody. It's Vibs. And this is my PSA to remind you that golf season is officially here.

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Byte, he's amazing. 22 years old. I think he's got 20 dingers right now, 50-some RBIs. Hit a walk-off home run today. Hit two home runs today. It was against the Colorado Rockies, so asterisk on that. But the Nats were in a bad losing streak. But James Wood, I think we're going to have a James Wood face of baseball conversation in the next two years. You think it's going to be our lefties? He's that good.

You think it's going up against each other? Because PCA, I think he was the fourth fastest to get 20-20. He had his 20th home run, 20 stolen bases today. So yeah, we're going to have a lefty off. The league's in good left hands right now.

Very good. That's exciting. Very good. Yeah, but I know that the Nationals are not necessarily the sexiest team right now. They're better than people thought that they would be if you take out this losing streak recently. But they're a fun team, and they're young. And so I think within the next two, three seasons, they're going to be contending for something. But James Wood in particular, I love watching this guy play baseball. Absolutely love it. Yeah, that walk-off today was awesome. It was awesome. Did you see it? Did you see it, Max?

Yeah, that's a guy who going into that play was like, no matter what, I have to get the lead runner at third without having any feel for the moment and being –

You got that. That's the most Taylor made double play ever seen. It was literally hit to him to turn a double play. And then nothing else happened. But it's like it's exactly that situation is like I'm going to third no matter what when this ball hits a man. You just can't think that way. Yeah. Yeah. It was crazy. It's like right before the pitch. He heard somebody yell like a force in your base. Lead runner. Get the lead runner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

brutal, brutal for Arkansas. And then finally we just had, I don't know what was in the water on Wednesday, but Shador Sanders and Zach Eady both getting pulled over for going 101 miles an hour was, was just a funny, I don't, I don't know how that, what that happened, but it was just funny to see it back to back. Yeah. Yeah. So Shador Sanders, apparently he's been cited for speeding twice now last month since he's been, been up in Cleveland. So we've got a lot of people asking a lot of questions about what this means about his maturity and,

I don't really care. You shouldn't drive 100 miles an hour. I'm not going to make a decision on whether or not he's a good quarterback based on the fact that he sped twice in the last month. I will say coaches always tell you if you're going to make a mistake, make it go 100 miles per hour. That's facts. Can I say I don't care because he's not the starter? Yeah.

And Joe Flacco, let's be honest. Joe Flacco, his car doesn't go 100 miles per hour. His car tops out probably at like 72. It's a minivan. So we're not going to run into any of these issues with Joe Flacco at quarterback. But yeah, I would imagine that Shador probably drives a car that sticks out a little bit, just taking a guess that he might enjoy a nice vehicle.

You got to be smart on that. Got to be smart on that, Dion. Do you agree with my take, though, that I don't care about speed? I don't need to hear about speeding tickets if you're the third string quarterback or fourth string quarterback. It just isn't relevant to me.

So I'm more okay with a third string quarterback speeding than I would be with a second quarterback speeding. If you're the second stringer and you're speeding, that's red flag. If you're the starter, don't really care either. Third string, don't care.

Don't really care either, but if you're the backup, that's a guy that's got to be going like 60 miles an hour. Yeah, he's got to be the safe guy for sure. Hands of 10 too. Absolutely. All right, we got anything else, Zach? Did we miss anything? Any other celebrations? The Panthers are having the best time ever. Oh, the Conor McDavid thing. Did you see the quote? So we taped the Fyre Fest earlier in the day, and I did mention a quote about his – it was an old quote about what he liked about Edmonton. He also had media today –

And he basically was like, we've been doing the same thing with the same guys. And I got to talk to my agent. It feels, I don't know what's, he's got one year left in his contract. We're going to have Whitney on next week in person when we go to the Ryder Cup. See what's going on. But yeah, that,

That didn't feel like a great, and Conor McDavid is kind of like a grump in all of his press conferences, so I'll at least put that context in there, that it's not like he's the most gregarious guy and then all of a sudden he was very down today. But the wording of how he phrased everything and talking to his agent and being like, we've kind of been together and done this and not gotten through, and also Skinner asked for a trade, doesn't feel good. No, Skinner.

McDavid McDavid asking saying he wants to talk to his agent you don't you don't want to hear that after season's over no matter what that's that is not for him to say that to the media to

That's a man who is frustrated, probably frustrated in the moment. So I'm willing to give him two weeks to issue a new statement that doesn't involve him talking to his agent. But it's not good that he says that that's a guy that he wants to talk to right now. I want him to stay in Edmonton. I want...

I don't want him to leave and go to an American team and then win a bunch of Stanley Cups there with Edmonton not getting a single taste of it. I think you've got to go down with the ship if you're Connor. I think that there's no chance. If you want to talk about legacy, if you go somewhere else and you win a cup for them because you were unhappy in Edmonton, people in Canada are going to hate you. It's going to be very personal for them. Although, I don't know. I guess when we talk to Whitney...

Like, is there a part of it like, hey, he's done everything he can for the Oilers and they just – they aren't able to put the full team around him? I don't know. I don't know how the vibe is. Because you know how that can happen. You're doing the –

When a team's that special. If you love something, set it free. Yeah. And root for it. I'm not saying they want to set it free. But Connor McDavid is such a special talent. I'm wondering if there's maybe parts of the Oilers fan base, they do not want to see him leave, obviously. Put that as a blanket statement. They do not want to see him leave. They want to see him sign a long-term deal. If he did leave, I bet you there would be some Oilers fans who would be like, we don't blame you. You know?

Yeah, well, what they would do, they would turn their anger onto the team, onto the front office. Right, right. And wait, now, Big Cat, I think we might want him to leave, though. Yes, oh, absolutely. I think me and you might want to leave. Yeah, we want him to leave, and then we'll root for him. We'll root for him to win a million cups. And it's Whitney's fault that he left. Yes, yes. And then we'll be like, we always said this guy just needed to get out of Edmonton. He's the best ever, and it will drive Whitney insane.

Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. What if he went to Chicago? Listen, I mean, that would be sick. That would be so sick. We became best friends with him. I'll open up the checkbook. Yeah. We became best friends with him, Zach. That'd be pretty sick. Yeah. Well said. Would be pretty sick. Yeah, I mean, listen.

If they are going to move on from him, they got to do it now because they can get a lot for him right now. He's got one year left. You can't let him be a free agent. No. That would be very bad. No, you can't. You could. You mean you could, but you can't. You can't. You can't let him be a free agent.

It would be so dysfunctional if the Oilers were blaming him for any of this and they're like, we're not going to sign you to a free agent contract. We're not going to sign you to a contract extension. We're going to let you play this out and see if we can win one. That would be insanely disrespectful, almost like saying that you might be the reason why we haven't done it yet. Yeah. But that said –

I am willing to back up the Brinks truck. I will buy a Brinks truck and I will deliver it to Connor McDavid's house. If he, if he goes to the Blackhawks, that would be so sick. If he just became best friends with us and Whitney was like, Oh man, just rubbing in his face. That'd be so sick. Listen, Connor, Connor, we would treat you so good in Chicago. I don't know what, what, what's been telling you. He's probably kind of creepy coming on a little strong.

We would treat you so good. We'd get you wings anytime you want. Ice cream machine. It'd be so sick, dude. Free pass to the office to hit the simulator. God damn. I would hire an ice cream truck to just park in your driveway and then have it staffed with a guy that will just give you whatever ice cream bar you want at 24-7.

Part of my take becomes best friends with Conor. Zach, you're probably going to be that ice cream guy that lives in that truck. Yeah, he is. I can do that for you. Okay. All right, let's get to our interviews. We got two great ones, Boban and Brett Bielema, and then we'll finish up with Fyre Fest. And if you're wondering, hey, we haven't heard Hank's voice, we do give him a call. I think people thought we were pranking PFT, that we didn't actually buy him a trip to Pebble Beach. No, no, he's at Pebble Beach.

So we do give him a call. He was at a beautiful brunch before playing 18 holes today. So you'll hear him during Firefest. Yeah.

Also, shout out Pug getting married this week. Oh, yeah. Shout out Pug getting married. Way to go, Pug. Way to go. Let's go, Pug. Everyone do some Pugs in the chat. Okay. Before we get to Boban, incredible interview, by the way, we are brought to you by our friends at Truly Truly Unruly Lemonade combines the high elk fun of Truly Unruly with everyone's favorite lemonade. Lemonade let loose 8% ABV, 100% delicious for supercharged lemonade flavors and

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Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very, very special guest. I think maybe the tallest guest we've ever had. It is Boban. I'm going to pronounce your last name and you're going to tell me that I screwed it up. You ready for it? Mayanovich.

Mariano, you're right. All right, I nailed it. I was very nervous about that. Now that we got that, so Boban is here. Boban, thank you so much for joining us. You are in Happy Gilmore 2. Not your first acting. Let's start with that, and then we got a bunch of other questions. But how was it being in Happy Gilmore 2? Are you excited for the movie to come out? You might be like the next Hollywood star. I'm going to say it right now. You never know. That's my look. Yeah.

That's what I want to do. You know, like, I'm super excited for the Happy Gilmore 2. I have great experience on set. Everybody, like, everybody be so professional, so great. It's a lot of people, a lot of people there, a lot of famous people, and I think it'd be a great movie. Like, and you saw guys that picture, how you guys, like, that my hair and that my...

Mustache, they look really good, by the way. I love it. Maybe in the future I will wear. But, you know, the movie will be awesome. I believe in that. Yeah. Did you get a chance to hang out with Adam Sandler when you were on the set? Because I know he likes to play hoops. Yeah, he loves to play basketball. You know, when he was filming The Hustle, like, we was, like, playing –

playing like pickup and it was a lot of famous like basketball players of course you guys already know about the movie and it was like a lot of guys playing up and down we have like basically we almost have all stars all-star superstar NBA pickup and Adam on that game it was really fun what's his game like I've heard he's a good passer

He's really smart. He's really good. He's a really good passer. Like, great passer. Not like good. He's a great passer. Like, you know, no look behind the back. You know, like, try to be fancy, but he make it, you know? Like, I don't know how he do it, but he's really professional. And basketball, he's patient. And he really love it. And really, he enjoy it. Yeah. So, yeah, you're branching out with your acting career. I loved you in John Wick. You got killed by a book in John Wick. Did that hurt? Yeah.

You know what is hurt? They hurt like after the shooting because we were shooting from the I think 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. in the morning because it's New York library and we couldn't like it couldn't stop. Basically, we didn't have we didn't have like lunch break because lunch break or eat break or dinner whatever because it's over the night.

but we didn't have we didn't have the break to it because we need to we need to finish the super fast he was like a lot of fighting and uh with keanu was like really good and that book like because i hold that book for maybe like four hours because like it is scratched like hitting me here here and all like i tried to buy the book

And, like, my jaw, it really was painful after that. I couldn't, like, eat or, like, chew or whatever. Like, almost, like, brushing my teeth. I was like, oh, it's painful.

It's so painful. How many shots did that take for you to get killed by the book? You know, easy. You know, like John Wick, it's don't mess around with boogeyman and I'm done. I'm out. I give my special shot, but it didn't work well. Yeah. All right. So you played in China this past year or last two years. How is...

How was that? Was it like wildly different than the NBA? Because you had a great NBA career, nine years in the league. But how is it in China? And maybe are you trying to get back in the NBA? You know, I'm missing one more year in NBA. Oh, 10. Sorry. This is what I need. I need some good words from somebody, somebody from the teams. Listen to me. I want to come back. Okay. Let's get you back. You're 10. Yeah, we got to get you back. I need 10.

I need a 10 because like I was, how we say, last, it's more like last half season and this is because it's my first year outside of NBA. I play in Fenerbahce and we have three months deal. Three months deal after that expired because we believe we will come back, we will come back in NBA and try to make, try to make like again that 10 year in NBA. Of course, didn't work on that direction and I get, I get great offer from China and

this is it when I was there we play we won the championship we won CBA it's like Chinese Basketball Association and by the way the Fenerbahce the Fenerbahce where I play it's a Turkey team in Istanbul it's Euroleague game basically it's not NBA is the first one Euroleague is the second one and the best league in the world and they won Euroleague this year that means I'm

I'm past season, won like two big trophies. Oh, so double tips. Yeah. So you are a champion. Whatever NBA team wants to win next year, sign Boban.

Yeah, basically if you want to win, you must sign Boban in the team. I like that. I agree. Boban, I love you. I've loved watching your career unfold. You seem like a great guy, but off the court, I think my favorite thing that really made me really, really appreciate you is what a big fan of soup you are. You might be one of the top soup guys in the world.

What are your favorite soups? Can you tell me about some soups I might not know about? Because I love soup. Look, maybe if my English is a little bit better, I will explain more soups. But this I will keep simple. Tomato, mushroom, butternut squash, chicken noodle soup. You know, but it's the point of the soup when we're growing up here in Serbia. First, you need to eat soup. This is like the main dish. You know, like if you don't eat soup, you're not allowed to eat something else. Because it's not basically...

It's not basically not allowed, but it's more like tradition where everybody come to the table and everybody like eat at the same time. Soup is very important. And, you know, basically like you want to eat soup because you second meal you don't eat too much. Try to like, try to keep...

they fool you up a little bit. It's not like, it's not like they, they fill you with a, with a flute, with a float, I think I said, right? And, and you cannot eat like a lot, a lot, a lot. So what are, what's a good Serbian soup that I might not have heard of before? No, no, no, it's not, it's not Serbian. It's more like worldwide. I like mushroom soup. I like tomato soup. I like butternut squash soup. Of course, chicken soup. Yeah. And, and,

We have soup in Serbia, like they call beef soup. And it's a name like beef soup, but it really tastes so good. They go vegetables, beef, of course. And it's like the best soup I ever tried in my life. And if you come to Serbia, you guys be my guest. But because you guys in Chicago, when I come in Chicago, they have a lot of Serbian place there, and I can bring you some good and fancy restaurant with great food. I would love that. One thing I like to eat soup –

after my meal. Have you ever done that? It fills in the cracks like for dessert. I didn't done that, but you know, I want to try and to see how it's, how it works. It's great. Do you, when you eat soup, do you have a bigger spoon? Because, uh, I don't, I, I'm sure you're aware of this, but there's an entire Reddit, uh, community that's just Boban's holding things. And it's you holding different things. Uh, you know, like a deck of Uno cards, Luca's head, uh,

And they're all great. They're all great pictures of you holding things. So do you get a bigger spoon or you just go with the regular spoon? You know, I get what they have. You know, sometimes really they give me like bigger spoon. Like I was in China and they have Cheesecake Factory and they have like big soup and they give me like, oh, this big spoon. It's really basically the spoon.

It's really big. And that sometimes I got it. But, you know, I really don't ask for it because, like, I try to adjust on everything what is, like, normal size. Yeah. This is it. Like, you know, I'm not, like, spoiled too much. For me, it's okay just to be food on the table and let's go roll with that. And I want to be tasted, to be honest. I need to be tasted. Were you aware of the community that just has pictures of you holding things?

Did you know that exists? Yes, I heard about that. I saw a couple pictures and it was so funny. I saw how holding the ball, Uno cards. You say look ahead, but it's really, I saw that too. And a couple, like the hands. And I know like people, like a lot of people like want to shake my hands. It's so become like right now, like unique. They want, they basically, they holding their arms, whatever. I just basically like come from the restroom and wash my hands to eat.

And everybody was like, hey, how are you? And they shake my hands. I was like, ah. But it's OK. It's part of the process. I know for me, it's normal. For somebody else, I want to basically maybe I want to feel your hands to see how they fit in my – what is the size of your hand. Yeah. All right. So a question – this might be a weird question, but –

When was the first time you were like, oh, I'm tall? Because it is something that I'm sure little kids, they don't realize their self-awareness is low when they're really small. And then they get a little older and they understand their surroundings. Was there a moment in your head where you're like, oh shit, I am really tall?

Yes, yes, it was a lot of things, you know, like before, how do you say, I grew up in a small place and 3,000 people live there and everybody know each other. They know me when I was like, when I was really like small, small, when it was like, it was like really small to like growing up and I was always tall. For me, that was like normal. I didn't,

I didn't know that, like I said, I didn't recognize that. But till one time my friend, we have a class to write something about the friend and we can show who that person is. And one of my friend write, like he's super guy, great friend, whatever. He's tall and he have big nose. I was like...

Oh, that time I was like, I was like, you know, I have big nose. This is like, this is like one of the part, like, you know, he's tall and he have big nose. And after that, I figured out, I figured out like getting like real, like, like oversize and other people. And this is it. Yeah. Yeah. That was like, oh, I'm tall. Oh,

What did you want to... I'm tall and I have big nose. I'm tall and I have big nose. This is like... I find out two things in one class. Yeah. What did you want to be when you grew up as a kid? When I grew up, I want to be like... To be honest, I don't know. I didn't have that idea. I think about that every single time. What I can be and what I really want to be. It's like...

always you want to be something like your dad, always want to be like driver or like or somebody to help the people like something with the help community like they have it's not like big time job like I want to be like CEO of some company I want to be like the guy who

owns the big crypto or whatever like stocks or whatever something you name it like something like big factories where they make like apples apple farms whatever you say

But it was like more simple jobs. Yeah. And so your career in basketball, you played in Serbia for a long time before you got to the NBA. Was there – like obviously your dream was to be in the NBA. Was there a moment where you're like maybe this isn't going to happen? And how did it all kind of come together where it's like, all right, because you weren't – it wasn't like you were drafted when you were 17 years old. You played for a while and then you got –

got a contract in the NBA. So how did that all work out? Was it like, oh man, this is finally, all my dreams are finally coming true here. You know, you know, it was like, you know, always, always hard, hard work.

payoff you know because like I was always I was gifted to be like to be tall but and to have nice touch but everything else need to be work like work on my body be prepared for everything what is come because like that's why okay he's strong he's this but you know like I work on it I work on it basically thanks God I didn't have I didn't have serious injury all my career they mean like you know like I basically like

stay more in the weight room, stay more on the court, do all my skills, do everything what I do. That's why before, back in the day, I believed that everything comes from the sky. You know, like, okay, I'm gifted, I'm tall, I'm supposed to have that job. I signed for your league team, they fired me, I come to...

I couldn't find a team. I went to one team here, local. That time they play only Serbian league, come back and basically I play for 500 euros a month. That's basically like 600 dollars a month. And that time I have the baby and my wife. We live in one apartment. That was the struggling and I was like...

When I was like 23, 24, that was really struggling. That time I figured out, okay, you need to do something with your life. You need to be like, no Mr. Nice Guy. When I say nice guy, nice guy like outside of the court, on the court you need to show who you are. You cannot like just be super nice on the court, everybody go over you, whatever they happen.

That time I figured out I need to step up and be the best I am. The person who helped me a lot is an assistant coach from Golden State who passed away recently. You know, like Dejan Miljevic? Yeah. He passed away. He has the big role in my life. Yeah.

to put me on the real track and to start to play better. I was in Red Star. Me and Marcus Williams, we made them to play EuroLeague, how I say, NBA, and EuroLeague is second best basketball league in the world. We made them to be there right now. This is the play all these years. We won like three trophies because here you play cup,

You play tournament, you play tournament like Serbia and you play like basically like Balkan, Adriatic, you play three leagues. We won all three and from that time, from that time, this is like, this is like their, how this is, basically we leave them path to be successful today. But, you know, that time after, because I was named of MVP, MVP of EuroLeague, MVP, like the best five, the best thing, I was never drafted.

And that time I come to NBA. That was my pet. You know, like sometimes you need to fell down to you can step up and chase your dreams. That's awesome. It's interesting that you said that sometimes you're too nice on the court because I think one of the funniest moments of your career, maybe one of the best moments of your career from the people's perspective was last season when you were on the Rockets.

and you gave the crowd chicken at the foul line. So if you miss two foul shots, everybody gets chicken, right? And I don't know if you missed the first one on purpose, but you did miss. First I missed it. First I missed it. I don't want to lie. I'm going to be that guy. You know I missed the first purpose. First I missed it. Yeah, you missed the first one, and then you told the crowd, you said, chicken on me. I got you guys. And then did you miss the second one on purpose?

Yes, I missed the second one on purpose. But the point of that, I know I play for Clippers and I know that's how they happen. And they have that same in Washington, D.C. and a couple more places. But I have the dream about that. And I have a dream about that to really...

to really happen that something like that you know like why if the game if the game is over why nobody like you know just miss two free throws and give give the people what they want like you know of course some like free food and everybody be happy you know like

I hope so, like, "We won the game, you missed free throws." Because every time it happened when the opponent team, like visiting team, missed the free throws. Not for home court, guys. And we was... I have dream about that, that's happened. That was the person, me, I'm missing the free throws and everybody get the sandwiches or food or snack or drink, whatever. And it was in DC and game was done. We was leading maybe like 20 points.

And I was like, why this guy don't just miss free throws? Like, he was my teammate. I was like, why? I don't want to name it. Why just don't he miss free throws? Like, give everybody food and everybody be happy and he'll be hero. And I have that opportunity. Last game of the season, I was like,

We basically finished. They made playoffs. They prepared for playoffs. Clippers. We was in Los Angeles. The first one, I think I scored maybe like eight or ten points in a row. And I was like on free throw line, like shooting. And I missed it. I missed straight. At one moment, I looked up from the backward. Like everybody is standing up. Like everybody is standing up. Everybody becomes so crazy. I was like, ah.

I was like, that's a time to shy. And I was like, miss that. But in the point of my head, because everything needs to be fast, I can't airball from the free throw line. And I never did it. And I never want to do it. Like, how I'll miss? Because sometimes you practice, you don't practice misses, you practice makes. You know, like, to hit front rim, maybe I'll throw it a bit stronger. To hit, like, left, right, stronger, whatever, from the backboard, I know it still counts like a miss. I miss on my left side. This,

this is it, like perfect, the chicken on me and he was like great. It was not like the plan previously planned but it's happened and it's amazing. I missed the second free throw of purpose and...

People hear what they want. Yeah, you give the people chicken. I think people appreciate that about you. You were thinking about them, thinking about the fans. Maybe that's why we need to, maybe year 10 didn't happen because you cost too much money. The big corporations are like, Boban's costing us millions of dollars in chicken. We can't bring it back. No, but look at this. What's happened? I get the big cow, the big cow, like Chick-fil-A, and I get a cart and

And we'd be like, thank you very much for everything, whatever. It was an amazing experience from Chick-fil-A. And I get for one year free meal. Like, you know, one year free. I never use it, but, you know, like I get the coupons for all year free chicken. You got like the black card in your pocket. Anytime you go to Chick-fil-A, you can just get to the front of the line, get a free chicken sandwich. That's pretty good. Yeah.

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I got a question. The internet always gives us weird facts, but I read a story that when you were younger and started playing basketball, you could dunk, but you didn't dunk because you wanted to work on your dribbling. Is that true? Like, that must have been the hardest thing ever to not be able to dunk. Like, you can dunk, but you wouldn't do it. No.

No, it was not like that. It was more like, he was more to think, like, you could, first, I, like, I didn't, I didn't think he can dunk. Because, like, I remember, I remember the day when my coach, when I was young, I missed layup and he was like, why you don't dunk that? Like, come on, take the ball.

Take the ball and dunk. I was like, no, but I was like, I can dunk. You know, like, no, no, you can try. And I dunk it. He was like, now go with left hand. I dunk with left hand. And I started to go with two hands. How I go with two hands, I like hold the rim. I was like, wow, this is so amazing. You know, like, and from that time, I started to dunk everything. Like, back in the day, I really started to dunk everything. Everything, like, you know, like, every ball, every ball that I grab, where, I go to dunk. Because it was super easy.

super, super experienced. Before I'm missing the layups, do that. And the second part, because I think you guys hear about it, it's about, um, I was not allowed to make a dribbling ever to like learn how to, uh, to learn how to like basically dunk or, or, or shut the ball. Like basically every time I make a dribbling low post, that's, it's, it's, uh, lose the ball. That's how we practice on practice. That's why I like sometimes I go a lot of things without dribbling. Ah,

Have you ever tried to play point guard and pick up? Yes. And to be honest, I think I'm good. Maybe not like somebody playing full court defense on me, but I was not bad at all. I can shoot, I can dribble. It's not really fast, but it's really good, good. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not easy to stop me. And it's a fact. It's not about like, hey, no, I'm the best. You know who I am. It's really true. I tried. It worked well. But, you know, like, of course, like, it's not my position, but I can do everything. Have you ever crossed anybody up at point guard? Like broken anybody's ankles? Never. But because I can shoot over everybody. Nobody like everybody tried to reach the ball, but they couldn't have it. Yeah. You just shoot over them. All right, another one that makes me laugh because –

Boban, we're massive fans of you. You seem like the funnest guy. Everyone talks about how great of a teammate you are. But this story is, I think, from six years ago, your son's birthday. You got so excited for your son's birthday, but you forgot that your wife had planned a photo shoot beforehand. Yeah.

And it's just a picture of you, your wife, and your two kids, and you're just full Spider-Man face paint while they don't have any face paint on because you got ready so early for his birthday. No, that was not true. Okay, all right. But that picture is an awesome picture. No, no, no. The picture is there. I think he was like – it was not for my son's birthday. It was like for the new year. Okay.

Yeah, and my son's friend, he was in Detroit from Serbia. Yeah, she paint, she paint like, she learn to drawing, she paint our faces. And that's why how the pictures happen. Okay, because the picture is very funny because it's your two kids, your wife with no face paint and you're just full Spider-Man. Yeah, yeah, the picture is that. Yeah, you're right. It's like...

Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you seem like the best guy to be around. That's just a fact. Yeah. Maybe that's just your personality. Like, I think every story that comes out about you, it's just like he's just the best. I don't know what it is. Like, he's the man, and every teammate feels like they absolutely love you. Yeah.

I love all my teammates. I really have great experience with each one of them. Like, you know, like everybody is super great, super humble people. Like from the, when I was a kid to like, to like NBA, everybody, everybody was super, super perfect. Do you have a favorite teammate? A guy you're still great friends with? Yeah, I'm like, I have a lot of, I have a lot of, I have a lot of teammates who are friends, of course.

I played with Jokic in Mega. With him, of course, I played with Luka in Dallas. Of course, I played with Tobi. This is like some people who you guys know. I have a lot of friends around, but these three, we were mostly tight. What have your friends, especially the ones from Serbia, what have they said about the game in America?

When you're getting ready to go to the NBA, what's the reputation of the NBA like overseas right now? Like something untouchable. Something like nobody can play and you need to work a lot to make it. It seems like in the last 20 years or so, maybe even since the Dream Team, the world has changed.

I don't want to say caught up to the American game, but it's certainly really competitive. You watch in the Olympics and these are some great games that are being played in the Olympics right now. Is there something about basketball in Europe that you think makes it more competitive now than it used to be? I think basketball is like a big game. Everybody tries to find out something new and it's competitive every time. I feel like they change constantly.

players change everything changed like uh strategy change everybody everybody tried to be like everybody want to be like golden state like back of the day when they was like when they were shooting every ball everybody tried to be like steph curry but then they they don't they doesn't know the only one it's one and only steph curry like everybody tried to try to be like that team what is like my experience

and everybody like put the numbers you know like watching the stats you know like what is that type of things and now everybody start to shoot trees I figured out no really no really like like

basketball real basketball before like you know like you have post up you have shoot you have this you have run everything like you remember you remember like uh san antonio game and everybody like shared the ball and like one guy attack like uh other guy the shareable they make like 12 12 13 14 passes and uh

And after that, one guy opened on layup or one guy opened on three-point. Right now, I feel like everybody plays a small, small, small pick and roll and they try to attack the mismatch, the switch, and this is it. This is only what basketball does right now. But it's competitive, it's nice. Basketball is always fun. They play chess and it's...

and you basically need to be in the right place at the right moment. In Serbia, how big of a star is Jokic? Is he just like every single person? Because he seems like a great guy as well, very humble. Have you gone to the horse track with him? I didn't, but he's really...

he's really superstar not like big star he's superstar everybody everybody wearing his jersey on outside all kids like all kids you see play basketball and say hey do you know your kids do you know your kids can you say hi to him can you say hi to him and like big time but you know like he's not about like he's not about like he's just big star he's just like big human big heart like big like

good friend and nice person and that's why people and kids like him the most because this is who he is he was like that before when we was like together without nothing and

right now, right now, it's something, of course, he's, he's much more bigger level than me, but you know, like with something, everybody of us make, make something, make something like for rest of our lives. That's why, that's why he's so remarkable and everybody love him. Yeah.

You were talking about how everybody wants to be Steph Curry, but there's only one Steph Curry. But the level of shot making has gone up. Like three-pointers are – people are way better at them than they used to be. If you were to practice and you were to take 25 threes, how many do you think you would make? Just in practice, nobody guarding you. I can make a lot. I'm a good shooter. I'm not like Steph Curry, a good shooter, or somebody, some of the other guys. But I can make from 25, nobody guard me. If I'm – I can make like at least –

Maybe 20. Yeah, you should start shooting threes all day. Yeah, but I'm so powerful under the basket. That's my advantage. Yeah. Have you ever been playing and there's somebody who's like six feet tall that jumps up in the air to try to block your shot and they just don't even come close and you just laugh at them? No, I never laugh to nobody. I didn't laugh to nobody because I respect people who try –

who give their best to, of course, we have adventures about the high, about speed, about the power, about physical, but I never laugh to nobody like, you cannot reach, I never do that.

That's nice. You seem like a great guy because if I were playing basketball, you have to jump. I would have to try to get a hand in your face, but I don't think I'd come within like five feet of the ball. But, you know, you got to make an effort on defense. Yeah, of course. You know, like it's like – I think it's respectful because I need to respect him. He needs to respect me. So basically like –

but I want to beat you, of course. I want to attack every single time. Have you ever broken a backboard? I didn't, but we broke a couple, like unscrew the rim or something like that. Because right now it's hard to break the backboard because the rim is like so...

not attachable for the backboard. Yeah, yeah. I feel like the technology has gotten a lot better. Yeah, you can really bend, but, you know, like, I really like make a couple screws or, like, the rim would go like this. Like, I did something like that, but it really never broke the backboard. Not like Shaq when he pulled it down on people's heads. That was amazing. Yeah. I got another question about Serbia. Like, it's not a huge country, and it's produced such insane amount of

NBA talent recently. Like, what is it? Is it just basketball? Is the sport in Serbia? Is it the coaching? Because it is pretty amazing the size of Serbia and then the imprint it's had on the NBA in the last decade. I think, I think it's, I think always we have good, like, good people, good kids, good basketball players from there. But I think, like, because, because in Luka and Jokic from the, from this part of the world and I guess, I guess they figured out or Giannis,

and we have a lot of people like maybe we need to send the scouting and watch the kids you know I figured out this is why it happened there right now they saw them and was like oh they have a lot of kids there with a lot of talent let's go to see and bring them to NBA to see what we can do

i think that's happening right now because back over the back of the day it was really good basketball players too you remember like dark community yeah he was like he was like his second pick second pick or draft uh never mind like he was like we was we was in same team he went to the nba i remember watch one game he was like he's really beast he's not about like whatever he say how many minutes he play but it's like he was really beast and he's like he's with he

he make NBA 18 years old, 18 years old. And they changed the rule. They mean like, he is good. Yeah. And that's say like, he's like, he's the first and they have a lot of guys similar, like to the, to the kids in this year, this era. Yeah. So you might've never had this conversation. It's something we kind of like,

not dream about, but we just throw out the rosters. Have you ever had a conversation with any of the guys about if Yugoslavia was still the country, you guys would be the best basketball country? Because when you add up all of – Serbia's already really good, but then Luka would be on the Yugoslavian team. There's other guys in that part of the world that if it was still – it would be crazy. They would be beating the U.S. in basketball tournaments.

I don't know who will beat. Of course, for the basketball, we need to have that chemistry. But of course, we need to have that chemistry because we show in a bubble. We went like, I think 12 of us went to the dinner and we had our own party.

But the thing, yes, I believe in that. We will be really good. We will be amazing. I know we can beat the United States, but I think we have big chance. It's not be easy for States to beat that team. Yeah, the dinner you're talking about, it was like Jokic, it was you, it was Luka, Dragic,

Vucevic, like all these guys that would be playing on the same team if Yugoslavia was still the country. Yes, yes. There's the guys. Yeah. There's the guys. And it was like – it was big. It –

I think they will be very good. Like amazing. You, you read that all that names. I was like, wow. Okay. Yeah. It is crazy. It's a small part of the world. And it's just like, all these guys are coming out and being incredible pros in the NBA for a very long time. It's, it's very cool. And I, it's like, it's cool to just see basketball grow as much as it has around the world. True. It's amazing. Yeah. I can agree with you. I can agree with you. Um,

Yeah, nothing to add on that. Yeah, I think you guys could probably out-party us too. I think you'd be able to drink us under the table. Maybe that's what we do in the next All-Star break. They're trying to copy the hockey model of the four nations. We go former Yugoslavia versus the United States.

In the All-Star game. We talk about which sport? You say hockey. Well, in hockey, they did the four nations, you know? Yeah, they had USA, Canada, Finland. Who's the fourth nation in that?

I can't remember. You can't remember. It's a team that didn't win. But in the All-Star break, they're trying to figure out – Yeah. They're trying to make it USA against the world somehow. I think you – it's a two-part thing. One, you guys all go out partying the night before, and then the day after, it's a hungover basketball game of the former Yugoslavian countries against the United States. I would put that spread at you guys would probably be favored by 12 to 14 points. Agreed. Yeah.

You know what? Because kids watch this, we never drink. Never drink. Professional athletes, they never drink. Never drink. I mean, the video of you at the club with Jokic is so funny, and you guys are having the time of your life. Yeah.

Yeah, we was having a great time, but, you know, never before the game. Yeah, never before the game. When you went out with Luka that one time, it was apple juice. You guys were drinking apple juice. We drink apple juice, you know. Yeah. You guys gave good research. I figured it out. Yeah. That was funny because it was a picture, and I think it was like –

More than 24 hours before the game, right? It was like more than a full day before the game. You know, it was a day before. It was a day before the game. But they come out on Twitter like really late. And that's why it looked like that. But it was like two days before the game because we arrived there two days before the game. Right.

Well, we need you back in the NBA. Oh, I have a stat. So for anyone who's listening right now who is making decisions on bringing Boban back, here's the stat for you. Career player efficiency rating, yours is 25.3. It is higher than the following players. Kevin Durant, Charles Barkley, Tim Duncan, Magic, Hakeem, and Steph Curry. I'd say that's pretty damn good.

Yes, let's go. Hey, yeah, let's get that on a resume and just be like, hey, hey, do you think we just got to walk into a meeting with GM and be like, hey, do you think Kevin Durant and Steph Curry are good basketball players? They're like, yeah. Well, we got a guy who's better, statistically better.

Statistically. We only show statistically. We only show the numbers. This is the number. This one specific number. And he's hot right now. Two championships in a row. Yeah. Winner. We even go there, but we don't believe in that story, too. We just throw the story there and believe they will bite it. Yeah. You let other people say it about you. You don't say it yourself, but we'll say it. He is the best player in the history of basketball. Okay. And I'll be like...

I'll do it like this.

All right, well, Boban, I have one last question for you. It is the Roback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, promo code TAKE. 20% off your first purchase, Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, Roback.com, promo code TAKE. Everyone go see Happy Gilmore 2, our friend Boban. Can we call you a friend now? Of course, we are friends. Okay, all right. Our friend Boban's in it. My last question is, so your mom and dad are both on the shorter side. Was...

Was there a point where your dad was like, this is getting ridiculous? Like you're just weight, like, cause I know I have three kids. If they get taller than me, I'm going to be mad. I'm going to be like, this is bullshit. So at what point was your dad like, Hey, this is kind of bullshit. You're weight. You're like two, you're, you're over two feet taller than him. Right? I feel. Yeah, for sure. I'm, I'm basically like, I just happened in second grade. For sure. For sure. He looked, he looked to my mom and say, what's happened?

Yeah, this is bullshit. What we do to Boba? Like, maybe I use more material than it's supposed to be. I've got some bigger.

I just want to, I know like I want to finish something. I want to say, I forget to say because we was like, we was doing, you talk about horses and Jokic, I want to add. I try, I will try because we film, we film some, we film TV show Robin Hood and with MGM and with MGM and

We talked about horse. I'm learning to ride a horse. I'm super excited. That will be fire. This is like Lonesgate and MGM. This is like the make TV show is be fire. I'm super excited for that. I forget to tell you about that in the beginning when you talk about horses. Yes.

That's amazing. I can't wait to see it. Have you gotten on the horse yet? Nah, I didn't. Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. Wow. Big day. Tomorrow is the day. Are you going to ask Jokic for any tips? Because he is the horse guy. Well,

Of course. In the morning, I would call him. Seven in the morning, I'd say, hey, Nicola, what I can do to be better? I have to see the picture. I have to see the picture of you getting on the horse for the first time. Watch out, but keep that like a secret. Okay. Keep it a secret. We won't tell anybody. Maybe hold the horse's head in your hand. That would be a good one. Yeah. Whatever.

I'm super excited for this. I'm really super excited for this and I hope for more acting in my career and of course for more basketball games. I love it. Yes, we're getting you back in the NBA. And by the way, for DJing, I try to be DJ too. Okay. There was like, I was working in China. I'm in China working on that skills. Of course, I'm like, I don't want to say I'm great, but I'm really good. Okay. And we,

We'll come out with a couple new songs, couple new singles. They'll be soon there. You guys listen on Spotify? Yeah, yes. We're looking forward for some good collab and I'm super happy for that.

I hope you guys listen to my music. What's it listed under on Spotify? Is it just your name or do you have a DJ name? Just my name, but it's only one song right now, but it's only one song from last year, but we will add more five songs or six songs in the next one month.

I love it. And when you come, whenever you come back to the U.S., you got to come by the office. We'd love to have you here. I will. And I'll bring you guys on lunch. I promise the Serbian soup. Okay. Okay. Love it. Perfect. Perfect. Boban, thanks so much, man. We really appreciate it. No, I appreciate you guys. Thank you very much. I know it's not personal like in Chicago, but Zoom, it still works. Yes. Yeah, we're friends. We're friends now. And we're going to do this face-to-face. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes, face-to-face. I love it. And can't shake. Yep, there you go. All right, thanks so much, Boban. Thank you very much, guys.

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Okay, before we get to Coach Bielema in studio, I want to talk to you guys about Mountain Dew. You see it right here in front of me. Oh my God, it's so cold. It's delicious. And guess what? They went throwback nostalgic candy.

Zach, are you a Mountain Dew guy? I love to do the Dew. You love to do the Dew. Listen, it's the start of the summer. It's golf season. It's grab a Dew while you're on the course season. It's heading out to the boat season. It's going fishing season. It's going to the backyard barbecue. It's grilling. It's doing everything with Mountain Dew. Nothing goes better with basically every summer activity.

Nothing. You need the Dew with you. You need to drink the Mountain Dew, the refreshing citrusy kick of Mountain Dew. And guess what? We're going to Barstool Camp this year. Again, thanks to Mountain Dew. It's going to be awesome. So, listen, you got to be drinking Mountain Dew all summer long. The new cans are absolutely gorgeous. Makes me want to just go sit outside, look at the trees, look at a mountain, look at an ocean.

All with Mountain Dew. Grab a Dew in the new packaging and enjoy the refreshing citrus kick of Mountain Dew. Go do it now. Gosh, it is so beautiful. And it is summer in a can. Go get a Mountain Dew today. Okay, here he is. Coach Brett Bielema. Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest. Recurring guest. I forgot you'd been on, Coach. It is Coach Brett Bielema.

Coach of Illinois getting ready for the Big Ten season. It is, you know, late June or mid-June. So let's start there. At what point in the summer are you like, let's just start playing ball?

Probably the start of June, we go an eight-week training program for Illinois. We do a window there that the first four weeks we're with the coaches. And then after this week, we'll leave and we go on four weeks of vacation. That's when our players actually get together the most. And that's when I think I kind of have that moment, like let's just get together. I try to get out of the country. I'm going to Cabo with my family for a couple of weeks just to kind of relax. Love it.

But when we come back, that third week of July, it's kind of game on. You're looking like you're in good shape. Have you lost a little? Trying. Trying to get down to normal weight. Listen, as someone who's taken a lot of pictures of Brett Bielma on the Arkansas days, I would kind of adjust the camera. Apologize for those. But that was also when our relationship wasn't the best because you left Wisconsin. But you look like you're in good shape. We're trying to get there. We've not got there yet, but feeling better, looking better.

Do you find yourself thinking about football when you're on vacation? I know you're supposed to be locking in on vacation. Yeah. But I'd imagine a guy like you, the mind drifts a little bit. You know, my wife always laughs because, like, if I'm sitting in front of TV, I usually flip on a game. I just like watching football. And for me, I like watching games I've never seen because then you can kind of work through the game, right? And then recruiting is just such a different animal, it's a different beast, you know, retention. So I think about it a lot. But also during that two weeks, I'm going to try to –

Put my phones in a drawer in a hotel and just kind of try to get away from it a little bit. Do you feel like maybe this is just me knowing you from afar and also getting to know you through the past few years and watching it Wisconsin and rise up? Do you feel like you're in like a stage of your career where you kind of don't give a shit? Because I feel like you were there.

Whether it be the Shane Beamer or chirping Lane on Twitter, I enjoy it. You have no problem kind of saying whatever you want. Is that fair? You know, it's crazy. My first year head coach at Wisconsin, I went to a Big Ten meeting, and Lloyd Carr and Jim Trestle grabbed me. And I had just finished a year. We went 12-1 at Wisconsin, and they kind of asked me to kind of sit down for a minute. And those two guys kind of said, hey, Barry Alvarez says you're going to be really good.

You're 35 years old. You're going to be a spokesman for this occupation for a long time. And at that time, I'm just like, oh, these guys are being pretty cool to me. Well, now I go into those Big Ten meeting rooms, and I am one of the older guys in the room. I'm 55. I've done it 17 years. And some of these guys say things. I'm just like, just shut up, right? Right.

Let's just pay attention to what we need to do. I want to protect our players all the time. That's my number one priority. But I think you've got to protect the game a little bit too because I think there's so many people trying to attack certain things. What we get to do for our players right now and the way they get to be paid is absolutely awesome. But with that comes complications that we've got to work through. So,

Yeah. I don't know if I'm at a, I don't give a hoot, but I do definitely not afraid to speak my mind. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe what other people say, it feels like, does that not affect you as much as it used to? Oh, totally. Yeah. You can say whatever you want about me. You can post a picture of me. We had your side in the Beaver situation. Yeah, we did. Yeah. We did. I would not want to mess with you.

And our relationship has gone through some tumultuous times. Obviously, there was the time when you left Wisconsin. I was upset. And then I did maybe tweet karma at your wife after every time you guys lost in Arkansas. She blocked me, but now we're good. Listen, there was hurt feelings all around. That's how sports fans operate, right? It is. You take it personal, which I think is why it's so awesome. There is no better time in my career to be a head coach. And the way the game has expanded, 12 playoff teams now, it just –

it's about as good as it gets, you know, down to having so many players too. Like I know you're a commander's guy, right? So I literally Johnny Newton hit me this morning. Right. And you have these kids all over the league. We got two or three guys have been drafted at Washington. So now you see those guys in a different light. I didn't have all those pro players back then. And now you kind of see what they're doing in their careers. And you realize you've affected these guys, not just the four years you're with them, but for the rest of your life. And it's pretty cool. I imagine that as a former defensive lineman yourself, you work pretty closely with Newton then. I did. I,

Strong guy. When we got there that first year, I literally knew he had some exceptional skills. The burst, he's really strong. His little brother's on our team now, too. I got five sets of brothers on my team. Holy shit. Yeah, the first set of brothers were these guys named JJ, TJ, and Derek Watt. I'm like, I like brothers. Yeah, we got Josh and James Crutes, their dad, Owen Crutes, right? So DNA means a lot. But yeah, Johnny, one of the things we did after that first offseason is really took his early down production. So everybody thinks third down is all that.

in a bag of nuts, right? But like the part that's really awesome about third down, everybody knows what's going on. First and second down is your easiest pass to the quarterback. So he was the most productive early down pass rusher in college football two years in a row, and that's really got him where he was. Who's the strongest guy you ever coached? Strongest guy? You know, J.J. had country strong. Like he wasn't maybe – but his hands, you know, he had those –

Those meat hook hands, right? I remember sitting there the night that JJ was trying to decide if he was going to go in the draft. And John Watt just sat there. You know, he's a firefighter, right? And he sat there and he looked like 10 Polish sausages hanging off his hands, right? And I'm just like, good God, right? But, you know, Johnny is very powerful, very, very explosive player. Actually, Gabe Backus, who's in town with us today, outside linebacker, rush player, is a really –

Really strong player. So a lot of those linemen, but some of our offensive linemen, you know, Kevin Zeitler was probably productive. You know, he's still playing in the league. I think Russ, that team that we won a Big Ten championship, every offensive lineman on that team was drafted in the third round or higher. They were a very explosive crew. Do you do that when you're recruiting? You evaluate the father's handshake?

You're like, I think this guy can get strong. They hear PFT, honest to goodness. The best thing you do is if you can meet mom and then if you meet one of her brothers, the uncles from mom's side are usually the greatest indicators of what you're going to get. That's a good tip. I like that. Yeah. You are in the I don't give a shit. You just gave away the whole scheme. Yeah. Well, we're going to keep that in mind. Yeah. We'll take that out. So we talked about Shane Beamer. What's the status of some of the beefs? Shane Beamer. Have you talked to him? Yeah. I actually called him. I'm a very –

I get caught up in the moment. But that one was kind of more of just a little moment in the game. So I literally called him. There was later in January, we have a coaches convention and I knew his dad was getting an award. So I probably knew he was going to be there and I was going to try to make it to the event. Couldn't do it. So I called him and had a conversation and it was very,

very cordial um so i think you gotta you gotta get past those moments that ended up being a rule change you know so probably in the good of the game was actually a good thing that happened yeah but uh yeah all the other stuff you know when i'm pimping lane i wasn't really going at him i was agreeing with him right i was like hey you should be in the playoffs illinois should be talked about three losses all right what about what about jim harbaugh i have not talked to jim okay that one's still that's you know i've never really had a problem with him but it was just that moment that scenario um

Actually, his strength coach, Ben Herbert, you know, he's a good guy. Yeah, we actually interviewed him last year. Incredibly impressive guy. Stares through your soul. Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But when I got let go at Arkansas, he hired – Jim hired four of my strength coaches to Michigan, and that's kind of when they made their turn, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got respect. I love his family. I love his dad. He's good people. All right. What about Barry Alvarez? Very close. Okay. You know, he just had surgery yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. I would say –

Maybe after my second or third year at Wisco, we were at New York and we actually met. Somebody tricked us into meeting at the same restaurant and we kind of just hugged it out. And from that point forward, he still called him yesterday on Father's Day, other than my dad, one of the most influential people in my life. I almost feel like having a beef with Harbaugh. It's almost a badge of honor. He doesn't have beef with somebody that he doesn't respect deep down inside. Just two hard-headed guys. Yeah, and I've had a lot of people that have worked with him and

Obviously got a lot of respect in the things he's been able to do. Yeah, I I read that your favorite word is consistency I do like consistency that you see is consistency and communication are big ones Those are the two C's I know I every time I hear you say consistency you like to say it's a hard word to spell But it's a tougher word to do right. Can you spell consistency?

Probably not on air. I would have to look it up real quick. So what is consistency? Why is consistency one of the two Cs? I think it's the greatest thing you bring to the organization. It's probably why you're sitting in your chair, right? As people are successful, it could be that. But I think you got your look, you got your phrases. You guys, what you've done here is absolutely awesome for our game, right?

But people tune in and watch because you guys are consistent. I don't think people want this, right? Right. Even our best players, like I say, one of the greatest things they can bring is just to be that same player every day. Because if you're it one week and you're not the next, I can't coach that. I can't plan that. You know, I got –

I got 20 coaches in the building. Nine of those guys played for me, right? I knew them as players and now I know them as coaches. And the thing that I really know is I know who they are, right? It kind of applies to everything that we do. And then communication, I think in this world, like there's too much –

you know, handheld devices and things that you can communicate without talking. So one of the things we do in our building, literally the first meeting they come into, they have to stand up, say their name, hometown, where they're at, position they're going to play. They share, you know, three things. What's their name, their full name, if there's any meaning. You know, basically a story about them that helped them

helped them get to where they are today, right? And I want those guys to speak loudly and proudly, and it makes them feel confident. Do you think that kids have changed over the years, like the players that you're coaching? You know, I get that question all the time.

I think the venues that are accessible to them, right, the fan that can get at them through a DM and whether or not they want to read it or not, you know, I think kids, you have to, when you get them, teach them the things they don't know. I always say, you know, they only know what they know, right? So if they came from a house where 10 minutes late is being on time, then you got to teach them what that really is, right? If they don't know how to effectively communicate, hey, easy conversations are easy to have, right?

tough conversations are tough to have, but they're usually the most productive. So I always tell kids, man, Hey, just cause I'm getting on you or I'm saying something you don't want to hear. It's probably cause I love you. Right? Like I'm trying to do this to get you to go somewhere we've never been. And that's what, that's a big part of it to get kids to understand that. Cause kids, when you come at kids,

they think you're coming at them, right? They don't realize it's from a place of goodness. Yeah, I think that ultimately, and I don't, obviously, I'm not around college kids as much as you are, but I think kids are going to be the same throughout all the different generations. It's just the devices that they have, the forms of communication, the forms of technology, they're a little bit different, but ultimately, I feel like if you can reach kids with a message that's going to resonate, that's going to apply to all the generations. It does. We have a phrase that we say all the time. My coach, I played for a guy, Hayden Fry at Iowa, and he always used to say, you recruit your own problems, right? Yeah.

And I think a lot of times in recruiting, I'll be sitting at a table and I'll say or hear something that I'm like, OK, I'm out. Right. Like like the young man, like Luke would tell you. Right. Like his mother is an angel. And most kids respect their mothers. Right. They're going to disagree once while their dad's right. Like my dad and I argue. But anybody that disrespects their mother is usually showing you something about what they are. Yeah.

So there's like little indicators I've had in my career where how people communicate with others is usually a good indicator of what they are. Reading people, yeah. Yeah, it's a big part of the job. Would you say you have it rolling now at Illinois? And I mean that in the best sense because when you as a coach –

And watching your career, when you get it rolling, there's something about a Brett Bielema team. They put you in a cement mixer. They're basically going to play football where they're going to make it hurt whenever you play them. I think there was that stat when you were at Arkansas where it was like every team that played Arkansas the next week just absolutely got killed. So do you feel like you have that? You've put your year five. Do you feel like you have the Brett Bielema imprint on Illinois?

I think going into year five, I feel better than I did going into year one for sure. But this world we're in, I got 40 new players in the building. Yeah. Right? Like the world that we're in in college football, you own and you operate our program now very much like an NFL team, right? Like the rosters are even getting more balanced. Yeah.

I said this last month. I said the thing that's really happening with college football is awesome is we're all going to start shopping in the same store. I don't care if we're shopping in Louis Vuitton or if we're at Walmart. As long as we're in the same store, I feel good. And I do think the physicality that we play at and to play with, we're starting to be more consistent in that, and that's probably what's making me more excited. We sold out season tickets last year.

43,000 seats, right? First time in like 20 years. So I know the fans are feeling it too, which is a really good thing. But the bottom line is our players, right? And how they feel is what matters. Yeah. All right. I got a dumb question. Hit me with it. So you, after Arkansas, you went and coached the NFL for a little bit with the Patriots and the Giants. There was a year where you were a consultant to the head coach. We're dumb. Every time I see a

fired or coached, go from one place and be a consultant. We're like, oh, he's just going to sit on his ass and just basically be friends with the head coach.

Can you explain to me what a consultant to the head coach does? You see it a lot in NFL or college where it's like you guys kind of take care of each other. If you have a year where it's like you don't have a job, you go work with someone else, what exactly do you do? You know, it was crazy. So I got let go at Arkansas. That next day, 7 o'clock in the morning, my phone's ringing. It's Coach Belichick, right? And I'm like, all right, so I pick it up. And he just starts talking to me. He talked about –

you know, relating things when he got let go of Cleveland. And I really didn't know Bill. He had drafted a lot of my players. He had four guys on our roster that year that were former players of mine that he had drafted. And he just kind of started talking to me. He said, hey, I don't know how long we're going to go, but when we're done, you know, I'd like to give you a call and see if you would like to think about working in our organization. Didn't know what it was. So literally that was the year they got beat by Philly, right? The next day at 11 o'clock, he called me.

And he said, hey, would you be interested in this? So I started watching some film. He didn't offer me a job. And then we met at the Combine. And I went on Wednesday and I stayed until Sunday. Saturday night, he's like, hey, can you go with me? I'm driving to my place in Nashville and then I'm going to Alabama Pro Day. So I'm like...

Sure. I don't have any clothes, but yeah. So we hopped in a car from Indianapolis and drove to Nashville. I was driving the whole way, which was an experience and a half. Don't really know the man, right? And then he just kind of kept giving me other jobs. And then finally, when we were in the spring, he invited me to the draft. And then in the spring, he said, hey, would you like to stick around and be with us in the fall? And I'm like, sure, what? And he goes...

whatever you want to do right like wherever you want and he goes and then he came up with that title yeah uh but he literally one of the first projects he did he gave me four teams to look at uh in a in a playoff season and and and said look at it in the red zone and tell me what you think

So I literally kind of did this little project, and I think that's what turned into – I ended up working on the defensive side of the ball, Brian Flores. I kind of gravitated to that side, and then the next year I was a D-line coach. But I'll tell you, with Coach Belichick, I learned something every day I'd never heard before. Really? He is truly one of the most brilliant football minds I've ever been around. We were watching the Bears, right? And we were getting ready to play in Soldier Field, and I'd played in Soldier Field when I was at Wisco. We played Northern Illinois a couple times.

But we were going to play a noon game, right? And he's showing film and he's talking about, well, the sun's in his eyes here and he's saying all these things. I grew up on a farm. Like, I took care of animals when they were hot, you know, and I knew about the sun and the heat of the sun. And so finally, at the end of the day, I said, how do you know where the sun is, right? And he goes, oh, by their shadows. You know, the shadows short behind them versus long in front of them. I'm like, holy shit, he takes...

shadows and then we talked and then sure enough we kicked into the sun and told these we had a whole game plan about when they were going to be kicking kick returning into the sun using the sun as a weapon yeah that's crazy so so and then like for the first year when you're consulting you're just basically doing special projects i did a lot of projects then we won the super bowl that year yeah and and uh we were playing kansas city in the championship game we had to beat kansas city right but i didn't really i coached on defense but i didn't coach a position so that week he came to me and said hey once you start prepping

for LA, right? And in the NFL, you don't have NFL films, right? So you hear the quarterback. So I would make an audible tape and I knew what they were saying. So I worked on that thing for three weeks. So when we went to the game, you know, McVay was an awesome dude, but he kind of... You guys fucked him up in that game, yeah. He was calling it because their quarterback, the guy that's at Detroit, if they broke the huddle,

At 20 seconds, he had five seconds to get the communication in. So we knew he wasn't going to audible much, right? But when they broke the huddle at 30 seconds, we knew that he was going to get to the line of scrimmage and change the call. So that was the lowest scoring Super Bowl in NFL history. Yeah, I took the over.

Yeah. That sucked. You should have called me. You were pissed at me then. You were still pissed. I mean, it was one of the best defensive game plans of all time. And it was honestly because it was a video game. We knew by when the clock was going when we could audible and when we had to shim and stiff. It was really kind of cool. Wow. So as you're watching that game, you're obviously nervous going into the game, but then you see your plan and your plan's working. You're just sitting back like, yeah. I knew this was going to happen. I was a part of the plan. It wasn't my plan. But yeah, Brian Flores, I'm telling you, he's now the D.C. at Minnesota. He's one of the most –

very very gifted defensive mind uh so those guys put it together and then you know coach belichick i remember specifically aaron donald was on their roster and he literally said that guy's not going to wreck our game right and i think he had one tackle in that game yeah i mean they did such a good job of covering him up all right so that's a good answer because i always whenever i see consultant i'm like oh he's just getting like a no-show job i was like a soprano yeah now i do think there are a lot of times though big cat seriously where they they do what you're saying right like

Like I've never done that and I wouldn't have wanted to have done that but I do think there's a lot of times where people just kind of take care of everybody. Yeah, yeah. Maybe they hire you so that somebody else doesn't hire you. Well, and then

Yes and no. Um, but, but, um, I really grew with Bill. That was really an awesome year in my career. And then Brendan Daly who went to the chiefs left. So I took over as a D line coach. I was a D line coach that year. Um, and we got knocked out in the first round of playoffs. And I'd learned a lot about, I got to coach a couple of my former players. Um, and then I went to the giants for one year and, uh,

That was probably one of my most enjoyable times. That was during the COVID year, so it was really cool to be a part of that process, starting an NFL organization. When you go to New England and Bill's like, hey, is there going to be a consultant to me? Is Ernie Adams standing behind you like, you motherfucker? I loved Ernie, man. So I went from being a head coach for –

12 years to a cubicle in the New England Pagers. Everybody has a cubicle, right? So I'm like sitting there like talking to my wife on the phone, right? Like it's just kind of crazy. But Ernie had an office. Yeah. You know, so I went around the corner and Ernie had, you know, boxes on boxes. And then he and I, once he realized how I kind of ticked, like we kind of started bouncing ideas off each other. And then there was a Monday, I think it was a Monday night game or Sunday night game.

And I was up in the booth my first year. And Ernie was the challenge guy, right? And I was watching the play and I could see that the ball came out. And I'm like, it's out, it's out, it's out. And they called it, it wasn't out.

And I'm like, Nick Casario turned around and looked at me. And I'm like, because Bill threw the flag. And I'm like, oh, shit. Like, this isn't going to be good, right? Like, I hope to hell this ball came out. But I know I saw what I saw. But I know somebody's fully touched the sideline. And we ended up winning the game. And that was a critical thing. So I'm, like, nervous. Like, you know, Ernie's looking at me. Nick looked at me. And it ended up being the right call. We reversed it. Bill challenged it. And we got it. And so Bill called me. He's like, the next day, he's like, hey, why did you say that? And I'm like,

because I saw it. Yeah. Right. And he's like, well, why don't you kind of continue to do that? You know, and I'm just like, awesome.

I was scared for a moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always wondered what Ernie Adams does besides just sit in a room watching old football plays and then seeing something like once a day he's like, aha, I got something for Bill. You know what he was, PFT? He was unbelievable about forecasting problems, right? So he would – every scenario that we went through he had already played at. He had an Ernie tape. So every night, the night before we played a game, Ernie would have about eight to ten plays that he would show that were very unique situational things.

and I was blown away. That's what I do now, actually, still with my crew. He was just so far ahead. Like, he knew the analytics, but it was in his head. Like, some of these guys try to do it, but they're looking at charts. Ernie knew it. And, you know, just an awesome dude. That was one of my experiences there that I had no idea that was coming. But, yeah, he was a pretty special advocate. Take me back to 19-year-old Brett Bielema. You're in the tattoo shop. Yeah.

Did you ever think that you getting an Iowa tattoo, the Ticrock tattoo would be one of the most talked about tattoos because every time there's maybe, Oh, I was got maybe, maybe they're going to move on. Maybe it's like, well, Brett Beal has got a tease and Iowa guy. He's got the Iowa tattoo. Did you, did you ever think that it would be talked about the way it's talked about? I can assure you in a spring afternoon at 19 years of age, when maybe you're not making the greatest decisions. Uh, we actually had five roommates and we all went and got tats together. Um,

And then, uh, uh, you know, it's funny. I didn't, I don't want my mom to know. So that summer when I was home, I was always wearing high socks, never really showed it off. I was worried my mom was getting mad at me. Um,

But it's kind of funny, whenever a recruit comes to my room and says, Coach, can I see your left leg? I'm like, okay, you just came from Iowa. Yeah, because whenever Kirk Ferencz decides to hang it up, you know that that's just going to be the top story is like, well, Bielma does have a top story. Yeah, well, so I actually, my new contract, I signed a non-compete with every school in the Big Ten. So I can't, when we, I've signed three contracts, my second one came up, Wisco was open, and Nebraska was open. And I know they were,

concerned about that so I volunteered it I said hey I know everybody thinks I want to go to Iowa I don't want to go to Iowa I spent five great years there yeah coached there for a long time I'm like I'm happy so I actually signed a no compete with all of Big Ten okay yeah that's good to know you mentioned that you sold out tickets for the upcoming football season are you guys can we say is Illinois a football school

You know, I think Illinois is a good school. Brad Underwood, the basketball coach, is one of my best friends. I used to go to that, like, when we were at Iowa, Steve Alford came in and he kind of said that at his opening press conference. Yeah. And Hayden Frye was there, like, what are we, you know, like, and so I get it. But I think the sum of Illinois is, like, when basketball and football is doing well, everybody does well. Yeah, it's a good answer. Our friend Tom Fornelli wanted me to pressure you into saying that it's a football school. No, I don't ever see it that way. But, you know,

Brad's throwing out the first pitch tonight. And Sean, our women's basketball coach, throwing the pitch tonight. I'm singing. So we tag team all the time. I love that. I also read that when you tore your ACL, the rehab back then was a little bit different than it is now. How long did it take you? I was actually a walk-on at the University of Iowa. Sophomore year, I tore my ACL. And I'm like, I was just on the verge of maybe getting – I'd been a walk-on for a year, and I needed to get a scholarship because I couldn't keep doing that to my mom and dad. So I tore my ACL, and the next day the doc's like, hey –

You know, you don't have a lot of swelling. It's pretty clean tear. He said, we can do one of two things. We can have surgery, and it's about a nine-month rehab, or we can just train your hamstring to take place of it. So I actually tore my ACL and played seven days later in a scrimmage. Jeez. And then ended up playing three years. But I remember the doctor said to me, he goes, if you don't do an ACL repair, the only bad thing, if you go to the NFL, they're going to reject you at the physical. And I started laughing. I'm like, NFL? I'm trying to play here, right? Yeah. Sure enough, three years later, I'm sitting on a Seahawks bench

table, right? And they asked me if I had any knee issues. I said, no, I had some meniscus taken out this year. Well, the next day, I'm walking out the field, I hear, hey, bulimia. So I knew that somebody was going to kill my name. Bulimia, bulimia, I've been every eating disorder known to man, right? So they said, hey, have you had any knee reconstructive surgery? We found out you had your ACL. I'm like, yeah, I tore it, you know?

I tried to bullshit them. They got me on the table, did a couple things. So I got cut. I had a wonderful NFL career. Six days. Six days with the Seahawks. If you had to go back and do it again, would you have played in the scrimmage or would you have gone through the whole rehab process? I mean, I appreciate the question, but I don't really think I'd be where I am today if I hadn't done what I did. Yeah, that's true. I went through this phase of like I was pissed. Like, you know, you're right there knocking on the door. I was in an NFL training facility. I was sitting in there with my roommate who was from Auburn. We're talking about a chance of playing in the NFL.

And you'd always dreamed of that moment. So I actually went back. Coach Fry gave me an ACL resurgery, and I was going to try to play again. So I went and played for the Milwaukee Mustangs.

I tore my ACL that very first game back with them. - Oh, jeez. - Yeah, so I tore it twice and at that time then I had never thought about coaching and that's when Coach Fry offered me a job in coaching, that's what I took. - Is it fair to say that you were kind of a psycho? To say I'd rather play in a scrimmage, not a game, not a practice, like a scrimmage with no ACL. - Well, I knew that if I played I'd probably get a scholarship, I was starting to be one of the better players.

So I was only just really thinking about the now. And really, I didn't have any problems. There was a game against Michigan my senior year. I got rolled up from behind. This guy clipped me, and my knee locked. And you can kind of see there's a TV clip where I'm trying to crawl. I was going to go whoop his ass. I was pissed because I know he hit me low, and my knee was locked up. I couldn't move it. The cartilage slipped into the joint, so my knee was –

And, like, I remember at that time I was kind of mad, right? Like, I was definitely psyched I was going to get him. Yeah. But I couldn't get up. Yeah. Is running the football back? It feels like it's back. I think it's balanced, right? Like, obviously, I've got a quarterback here who's exceptional at what he does. He actually wants to try to run the ball more than we want him to. Yeah. So I think – and, you know, when I was at Wisco and we had a role and we always used to say if you can get 175 on both sides, if you throw the ball 175 and throw for 175, you're going to win a lot of games. Now, we averaged for a lot of years 200 on both sides.

two and a running and throwing and you, you'll win 90% of your games if you can do that. So I think the balance of running, I think the, the teams that throw it all over the place, just, you can't win consistently. You can get a hot hand, you got a great quarterback, maybe some receivers, but you can't win consistently. Yeah. Yeah. How are we feeling about fullbacks these days? You know, we actually use our tight ends as fullbacks. Yeah. Um,

And we'll use our other running backs. We don't have a fullback per se, but we do use 12, which is kind of the new 21. Yeah, I love fullbacks. I miss old school downhill smash mouth football. I feel like it could still work. It does. We truly, Tanner Arkin for us, he's a kid that ran a fake against Michigan. We kind of use him as an H, but he's an F. And we'll run some 21 this year. But 21 was great for a long time, especially if you've got a back that can catch it.

Yeah. As long as the fans can just stare at the field and be like, just run the damn ball. They feel smart just by saying that's kind of us when we watch football. Well, you know, one of the great phases that I learned from Bill, he said it all the time. Great teams do three things. They run the ball, they defend the run and they cover kicks. And there is a lot of truth to that. Um, and, and, and I think that's the part that I'm going to never, never go away from football. Did Bill ever, uh, get real nerdy with you about, uh,

something like real granular about the game? Like we've heard him talk about long snappers, right? Where he'll just go on for five minutes, talk about long snappers. Was there something that, that you learned from him that he got real obsessed with? So I, I, I love to get up early, right? So like usually, especially when I was in new England, I was living in a hotel right around the corner at Patriot, at Patriot's place. And,

I remember I went in that day. It was about 4.30, and it was a little before 5. Me and Brendan Daly were there. Brendan's cubicle was right next to me, and Bill comes walking in. It was literally right before 5 o'clock, and he goes, hey, you guys got a minute? We're going to go over D-line games, right? So we were doing D-line drawings and putting them in the playbook. We literally went in the meeting room at 5 o'clock. It was 10.15 in the morning, and we took our first break. And I went out, and my wife's like, hey, I've been trying to call you since 8, right? I'm like, well, I started meeting at 5. For five hours –

we looked at and diagrammed defensive line games. Like, tackle goes first, no, draw it a little higher, let him attack the inside. I had the, you know, as you say, like, you know, attack the guard, never leave the guard until he leaves you. So it was absolutely five hours of the most awesome D-line experience I've

I've ever had. And it was very granular. It was, it was absolutely awesome. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. I got one last question. Uh, always great to see it coach. And thanks for stopping by. It's a row back question. RHO BACK.com promo code. Take 20% off your first purchase. Q-zips polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, rowback.com. I think I asked this last time you were on, but I'm going to ask it again because it, I would say maybe an unhealthy amount, probably like once a month, it pops in my head. Um,

The Rose Bowl against TCU. Why the hell didn't we run John Claymore? It...

Does it ever pop in your head? Oh, 24-7. All right, that makes me feel a little better. Scott Tolzien to this day, right? And then I don't know if you remember that game. I was there. I was like 10 rows up from the two-point conversion. John Clay had 1,000. James White had 1,000. Monte Ball ended the season with 998. We would have had 3,000 yard rushers. Never been done in college football history. But right about the middle of the third quarter, I said to Paul Chris, I said,

bro, they can't stop us running the ball. They can't. So we got into it, and then that two-point play just got in my mind. It should have just been a man run. We lost that game. The next year we play at Oregon. I was at that one too. And I was like –

Like the Dolphins called that week and offered me a job like two weeks before that Super Bowl or before that Rose Bowl. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to play in this Rose Bowl. Like we got Oregon. I got Russell Wilson. I think we got a chance. And then we had a Barry. Remember the ball that sat on it? Remember Jared Aberderish? Yeah. Right. It didn't move. Yeah. Like you can't do that. Yep.

And he clocked it in time. That rule changed too. Just like this year the rule changed. It seems like all my bowl games I get bullshit rule change. I mean it was an all time. I mean that first quarter was 21-21 I think. It was just insane. And Abby was like the greatest Christian based awesome kid. Never had a fumble one time on the sideline. Never moved. Crazy. And then the last bowl I didn't get to coach because I took the

Because you stabbed us in the back. No, that wasn't you. Do you want to apologize for stabbing Big Cat directly? Not in the back, even. In the heart. I just thought at the time, I was like, Brett Bielema, because I think your first year was when I was a junior. So I was like, this guy's going to be my coach for the next 40 years. You ruined it. One of my most enjoyable things, I just got a letter about a month ago from a young man that graduated from Illinois, and he talked about how

we changed his career, right, or his experience at Illinois. And you kind of lose sight in those moments, right? Like it really does make a more enjoyable experience for the kids to win games, right, and be around that. So it was never personal, I promise you. Were you the head coach or was it Barry's last year, the game that we're undefeated going into Michigan State?

and then got stopped like seven times in a row. Yeah, I was a D coordinator. Should have run Matt Bernstein there. I wasn't making the calls then. Yeah, all right, all right, all right. I was making the defense call. We were number one in the country. Yeah, yeah, you're off the hook on that one. Well, Coach, thank you. It's always great having you by, and best of luck this year. Thank you very much. Appreciate you.

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Okay, let's wrap up the show. We got Firefest of the Week. PFT. Actually, well, we usually start with Hank. Yeah. We bought Hank an all-expense trip. We actually... I'm not trying to be humble here, but PFT and I didn't mention on Wednesday's show, we not only bought it for Hank and his dad, but we also bought it for his brother and his brother-in-law, too. So it was a foursome. We sent a foursome to Pebble Beach, all expenses paid, not looking for credit.

but obviously an insane gift by us. That's what we do here at Part of My Take. We take care of our boys and nothing better than spending time with the family out on the golf course. And we said a year ago, we said, Hank, guess what? A year, we're going to plan this out. Your whole family, I know that you're about to forget your dad's birthday. Don't worry about that. He'll forgive you because you're going to Pebble Beach. Well, we sprung it up. We didn't tell him a year ago. We told him that night and then he had to get on a 7 a.m. flight. But holy shit, planning by us. Let's call Hank real quickly. I

I bet you he's sleeping. All right, so it's 940 Central Time right now. That means it's 740 AM West Coast Time. No, he might be at the range. He might be at the range. Wait, that was one ring directly to voicemail? Hello? Hank! Hey, it's the guys from Pardon My Take. We're doing Fyre Fest right now. We just wanted to see how you're enjoying your Pebble Beach vacation that PFT and I paid for.

Oh, how much is that going to run us? Yeah, no problem. How much is the avocado? Oh, he's living it up out there. Jesus, you're really running it up on me. Are you guys doing breakfast drinks? Are you doing breakfast drinks?

Yeah, a couple of mimosas. Oh, jeez. Damn. What are you going to tip? Because the people at Pebble Beach know we're paying for it, so make sure you tip like 25%, 30%. Oh, minimum. Okay. All right. Maybe take a picture of that 30% tip and send it to us. Okay. Yeah. Hank, where are you going to shoot on that par three, the downhill par three?

That's actually tomorrow. We're playing Spyglass today. That's right, yeah, Spyglass. I forgot about that. We're at like 94 and a half. Okay. I want to sound off. Okay. All right. Well, we miss you. We hope you're having a great time. You know what? Actually, go 40% on that tip and send me that picture. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah. And tell them it's from us.

And you know what? Buy... They're all saying thank you. Buy like, I don't know, like two grand's worth of stuff at the pro shop. And that's on us too. Oh, don't worry, boys. I'm coming back with gifts. Oh, okay, great. But Hank, if you get a hole-in-one, then you have to buy us drinks from Pebble Beach. You have to Venmo us back. Deal. Okay. Okay, all right, great. Great, all right. Love you guys. All right, love you too. All right, bye, Hank. All right, bye, Hank. All right, bye.

So, my Fire Fest of the Week is that I've been training for golf. I've been doing Hank's protocol that he put in place. Yep. And part of the protocol is I'm not allowed to hit driver. I can only do that as a treat after I've worked. Now, I have noticed that Hank's cousin, who is an intern this summer, has been spending a lot of time hanging around me while I'm golfing. Oh. While I'm practicing golf. I think Hank's got a spy. Oh. I think Hank is sending him to monitor me to make sure I'm not hitting driver. Yeah.

And so I think Hank's got eyes and ears everywhere. Have you guys heard about this? Has he told you?

No, but I think that he's working on the video that we're putting out of your journey here. So I think he's just working. Also, memes and I have started to call him Little Wood. Little Wood? I like that. Little Wood? Well, yeah, because it's Little Lockwood. Yeah, that's a good nickname. But I'm pretty sure that he is a spy. And so I have to act accordingly around him at all times. Oh, definitely a spy. That is a move that Hank would do, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that he's going to try to punish me if I hit driver too much?

Yeah. Now he's going to be scared to go around. Good. Good. Good. I hope he's scared. I'll be nice to him later, but now I want him to have a healthy fear of me. Yeah. But also in this training process, I'm getting just blisters everywhere, all over my hands. So I'm waking up, got blisters in new places. I'm so sorry. Look at that. Look at that thing right there. Oh, shit. Yeah, it's bad. It's bad. But I'm on the grind right now. And man...

Playing a lot of golf is a lot of work. Yeah. It's a lot of work. Full-time job. It is more than a full-time. Sometimes you have to leave your full-time job to go travel to play golf. Yeah. Because you love it that much. Well, we bought him that trip. We did kind of force him to do that. We can't get mad for that. You know what? I'm going to text him right now. I feel like he should do like 60% on that tip. Right? I feel like... Amp it up a little bit? Yeah, yeah. And he's got to prove it. All right. I'm going to say, yeah, you know what? Go 60. 60% on the tip. That's a nice thing to do. All right. Well, so...

What about you're wearing a glove, right? On your left hand. What about does anybody go Teddy two gloves? What about like sleeping with those like Vaseline gloves on? I put Vaseline on my right hand almost every single night before I go to bed. So I've got that covered. Okay. What are the Vaseline gloves? I don't know. Aren't there like gloves you can wear when you sleep to make your hands softer? Are there? I think so. I might. Listen, I'm going to assume that's the thing. Do we have anyone on Google right now? I got to get my hands insured. Yeah.

Let's see. Vaseline gloves. Okay, that's not it. It's a Vaseline globe. Globe. Vaseline used on a... All right, no. Are there gloves you can wear at night to moisten up your hands? I don't know. Although a blister, you might want to keep it open at night. I think I just have to put extra Vaseline. Oh, yeah, there they are.

Nope, those aren't it. Those are just gloves. I might have made this up in my head. Oh, yeah, there we go. No, overnight hydration gloves. Okay. You might need these. Get your hands back to 100%. Sleeping gloves? Yeah. I'm into that. That would be very funny. Sleeping gloves. You know what else I need them for? It's driving. Driving gloves. Yes. Because that'll give you blisters, too. Like your car? Yeah, my car. Yeah, yeah. Driving gloves. Not golf driving. Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about cruising. If you're a professional driver, you own a pair of driving gloves. Right. And it looks awesome. Right.

uh,

Okay. So, yeah, my hands are hurting, waking up early, grinding. Hank's got spies on me, but it's all part of the process. So I'm enjoying the process. I'm getting 1% better every day. Love that. If you get 1% better every day, you get 36 times better over the course of a year. That's just math. It is. Compound interest. Straight up math. Okay. My Fyre Fest. Well, I have an update from last week. I told you guys about my son doing the Barstool After Dark with me. Turns out.

He didn't tell me this, but we hit 80 shots in a night. And then I was like, all right, what do we do next? Hoping he wasn't going to say 160. He said, we're going to go to 100 and then we're going to go back to 10. I was like, great. That's good. Awesome. That's good. So we're back on the climb. We hit 100. Now we're back on the climb. So I didn't know that was a possibility, but I was very...

He doesn't understand if you just keep timesing it. It's just we're going to that's all we're going to do for the rest of our lives. Is there a fun? Is there a part of you, though? That's like, come on, don't quit on this. No, 100 was a lot. What would Kobe do? Kobe might might keep going. Kobe would have kept going. He would have. Does your son have the mom mentality? No, I need to. Well, I don't want him to have the full mom mentality. That's true. Yeah. All right. And my real fire fest is I got to be honest, boys.

I really wish we were going to Edmonton for game seven. I really, really wish we were going to Edmonton for game seven. It's a bummer. I was so pumped for that trip, and it just fucking sucks that we didn't get to go to game seven in Edmonton with the boys. It was bucket list for me. It was. I was legitimately. Me too. What am I saying right now? I was pumped. I was pumped.

We got on that call with the Chicklets Boys. I was like, this is a crew I would love to go to games with. They are an all-time crew. As soon as we had that phone call, I was like, this would be so much fun. Yeah. I was looking at restaurants up in Edmonton, figuring out where we could go. They can't have good food.

can't have good food. Dairy Queen. Oh, come on. Did you guys see? Got a lot of blizzards up there. All right. That's good food. I stand corrected. There's a lot of talk about Connor McDavid maybe being traded because he has one year left on his deal. And there was some clips going around and one of them was like, what's your favorite part about Edmonton? And he said, well, the days last longer this time of year. Yeah, that's true. That's actually a big thing. That's a good thing. But Max, there's a reverse on that.

Yeah. That they don't last at all. Pretty much the entire time he lives in Edmonton, it's very dark. What he's saying is I don't think he lives in Edmonton in the offseason. It's a great combo because golf season, the days are a lot longer for him. So he gets to play a lot of rounds. He's like, yeah, it stays light till 1130, which would be great if that was what was happening when he was playing hockey. But yeah, I think he lives in L.A. in the offseason.

Yeah. He's like, it's nice to drive home from work when it's still light out at the end of the season. Sometimes. Yeah, exactly. That's what he's getting at. It's nice to drive to the airport to leave Edmonton when it's still light out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Zach.

I think sugar cones with soft serve is crazy.

I think it's crazy. The emoji for soft serve ice cream is a cake cone. Soft serve ice cream will drip. Like, I will do a waffle cone with soft serve, but you know it's going to drip. Sugar cone's guaranteed dripping. Like, sugar cone is a classic ice cream cone. You know what I mean? What's the difference between waffle cones, regular cones, and sugar cones? It's right here.

Can you explain? Because he actually has a Venn diagram. I know exactly what a regular ice cream cone looks like. I know exactly what a waffle cone looks like. What's a sugar cone? Okay, so I don't have the Venn diagram handy, but I can go off the top for you a little bit of ice cream cone knowledge super quick. So the waffle cone, you know, with the batter in between the two hot plates to make the waffle cone. The cup cone, you'll see it's got a little deeper, I guess that would be the, not dwelling, but...

It makes to it with the hand. And then the sugar cone will be more of a pointed cone, so similar shape to the waffle cone, similar consistency to the cup cone, but a little bit thicker. So the difference between a waffle cone and a sugar cone is the waffle cone is uneven at the top. It, like, wraps around. It has the jagged edges at the top. The sugar cone will be flat across the base. There's also a difference in the batter that is used between the sugar cone and the waffle cone. Yeah, and every picture of the sugar cone I'm seeing, it's all scoops.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's a classic ice cream cone, not a soft serve cone, because the sugar cone will drip at the bottom. Yeah. You will see a lot of hard scooped ice cream in the sugar cones as opposed to the cup cones being typically with the soft serve. But the customer is always right, and we have acquired the sugar cones that will be here today. That was a massive misstep on our part. Okay. Quick. Mount Rushmore of ice cream flavors. Go. Zach. By the way, someone pointed out very funny. They're like, you guys are so clearly unprofessional.

chomping at the bit for Mount Rushmore season, which will start next week. Uh, because we asked him for his Mount Rushmore sports, uh, playoffs. And someone was just like you and PFT and Hank and Max, just like,

We took over the entire thing. We were just like, no, no, no, you forgot about this. Yep. All right, but this is yours. Okay, do you want branded flavors or do you want like if we go to a parlor? Whatever you want. Okay, whatever. Okay, so we'll go a Netflix and Chilled, which is a Ben & Jerry's flavor, which is peanut butter base. It's got salted swirl and fudge cubes. Second, we're going to go cookies and milk from Ben & Jerry's, which is going to be a vanilla base, maybe a sweet cream base. I could be incorrect on that. It's got chocolate chip cookies, like a milk swirl almost, and then –

other chocolate chips in it as well. Third, I'm going to go Moose Tracks, which is really going to be vanilla ice cream and then the Reese's chunks that are in there. And fourth to round it out with you guys, I'm going to go with a...

I'll go pistachio four. Oh. So pistachio ice cream. As soon as I said that, pistachio isn't my fourth favorite ice cream flavor. It was the fourth one that came to mind. It wouldn't be on the face mount or Mount Rushmore. It wouldn't. This is there now. I can't rescind. Sometimes the bright lights of Mount Rushmore gets you. You panic. Yeah. And I went pistachio. A wild pick for a Mount Rushmore of ice cream flavors. Listen, I really like pistachio gelato.

But I don't think I've ever gone to the store and bought pistachio ice cream. Yeah, pistachio ice cream is not one of those things. It's not like it's bad. It's just nowhere near the top four. It's not. They have a decent pistachio from Haagen-Dazs, but you don't put it on a mountain. No. You were going so strong. So strong. It was like banger, banger, banger pistachio. It's okay. It's okay. I would put pistachio on my Mount Rushmore of nuts.

I think that's like number... It might be number one for me, actually. I think that might be my favorite nut. Ooh, I think I'd go peanut. Macadamian. Peanut. We're doing it again. When was the last time you reached into a bowl of macadamia nuts? Literally. What, do you live in Hawaii? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, peanuts is the most consistent nut out there. And it's got, you know...

Do it with peanut butter. Yeah, I mean, peanut, it's a double off the wall. Pistachio would be on my Mount Rushmore as well. Peanuts are doubles off the wall. I enjoy peanuts, but you talk about a Grand Slam. Now we're talking pistachio. Peanuts, pistachios, almonds. I like cashews. I also think pistachio is the best word to hear a Midwesterner say.

Pistachio. Pistachio. I just realized, too, the fattest thing I just said was I like cashews, and I'm thinking about it. I just like cashews when it's with Chinese order. Yeah. With chicken. I feel like cashews are the saltiest nut. When you get a fully salted cashew, it really coats the mouth. Yeah. But I just like cashews with Chinese food.

It coats the mouth. It does. It really coats it. That's the saltiest nut. It's a salty nut. Sometimes for me, the nut is so salty that it's hard to swallow. Nope. The saltier, the better. Oh, you love the saltiest nut. You don't like a salty nut? There's nothing worse than when you see a thing of nuts and you take a little handful and it's unsalted nuts. Unsalted nuts suck. Well, what if there's pineapple? What if you've been eating pineapple?

It's a little sweeter. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It tastes better. Yeah, sweeter. That's true. That's a good point. Are you just putting this together? Yeah. Macadamia nuts. No. Pineapple, Hawaii. What about when you have to lick the nuts off your glasses? Because it's so salty. It never happens. Oh, okay. It doesn't happen to you? No. I would never get salt on my glasses. Okay. What about on your chest? Maybe on my chest. You'd get a little salty nut on your chest? If I'm laying in bed. Oh.

Eating some nuts. You get a little salted nut on your chest. You're laying in bed eating nuts, then you roll over a couple times, you wake up in the morning, you've got nuts on your lower back now. Yeah. I guess that's possible. When you're eating really salted nuts, are you using tissue paper? What are you using? Normally just a rag. Yeah, yeah, just a rag. All right, he's got it now. He's got it the whole time. Max just rolls around the house with Shamwows instead of napkins. Max, what's your fire fest? Uh...

It's really me being an idiot. Last week's Fyre Fest, I thought I was allergic to my dog. Not allergic to my dog. Let's go. About $500 worth of air purifiers for my apartment because I was freaking out. Absolute panic mode. It's just seasonal allergies. And I'm a pussy for having that bad of seasonal allergies. Okay. And I got told online what was going on. And it was very obvious that my dog was just... We brought her to the park and she was running around in...

in the grass and it was very high grass pollen so that's why when I was like petting her I was getting more allergic because she was carrying the pollen yeah you were being a bitch she was bringing that pollen into the house okay whatever what's the stuff that floats around and it looks like cotton

They're like tree stuff. No, it's not pollen. I'm telling you, it looks like actual cotton and it like clumps together and it looks like snow on the ground sometimes. That's everywhere. That's tree stuff. I hate that. That's my mortal enemy is that tree stuff. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, good for you, Max. Yeah. No, I'm back. I mean, you are still a pussy. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're very allergic to trees. Yeah. That's like, that's as much of a pussy as you could be. Yeah. It really is. Like, come on. Beta human. Yeah. That's one of those ones like you...

Natural selection. Maybe science has gone too far where we've had like drugs to help people deal with that. It's like that should have been something like, hey, if you can't take sniffing a tree, having a tree sent around, maybe you shouldn't be on this earth. I'm just walking around with the sniffles like such a child all week. Right now, I'm sitting next to memes and memes are just like.

Take some allergy meds because I just have the sniffles back here. I've noticed it's like you, Jackie Tables, Nikki Smokes, a lot of allergies going around this time of year. That's not. The award seasons for NFL. Yeah, I also hate allergies just because I don't have any. Just want that on the record. But I hate it because then real sick people use that as an excuse.

They always just, like, an actual person with, like, the flu or a cold will say, no, it's just allergies. Like, that's just not possible. You're sick. So they just use it as a cover and get everyone sick. Yeah, memes. Yeah. Okay. Oh, Shane does that? Oh, we got finger pointing. Shane, you do that? I get allergies sometimes. Okay. Oh, Shane, I have a question for you while you're here. Yes, sir. What do we think about the Chargers' new throwback uniforms? I think they're going to be sick. They're the same as their other uniforms. What do you...

They had that. Those are their current uniforms. They put out that post like, hey, we're excited to unveil the new alternate uniforms. And then I looked at it, and I could not tell the difference between that and their old uniforms. Shane's actually not a Chargers fan anymore.

He was the last to find out. Yeah. Memes told him like five hours after it got unveiled. That's just not... I saw Adam Schefter's tweet an hour later. I was... Had my head in my work. Five hours later. It was an hour. Brutal shame. It was one hour. You gotta be on top of that shit. I was... Had my head in my work. It was...

Why didn't they come out with a new... Why are they telling us that this is a new uniform when it's identical to their old ones? They are coming out with new ones. So the announcement was just... That was their... They're preparing... Like, prepare yourself because we're about to drop a new uniform on you in two months. That was their current uniforms. Yeah, it was just like a hype video. I think they kind of leaked online. Some... I can send it in the group. Some guy who is...

like behind the scenes photographer for chargers like took a picture of their current jerseys and like on a on a whiteboard there's like pin pictures yeah this is way too much it's shane's corner but i'm excited i hope they go with like the old like navy white like uh with the white bolt like the the early 2000s can you design one can you design the what you would like it to be

I mean, it would just be their old jerseys. I can Photoshop something up. Yeah. Maybe give us Shane's versions, like Taylor's version. Yeah. Chargers uniform, Shane's version. Okay. Let's finish the show. Numbers. Three. I feel like I'm distracted by chargers. 99. Memes. Six. 19. 21. I'll go 72. Memes, you're never going to get this.

We got to start reminding him more often that he's never going to get it. Because he literally is never going to get it. Somebody put a tracker for the days until I pass out. How much more time? It's like, no, it's like 44. It's like 340 days? It's that long? Yeah, it's like a year. People forget how long Hank went without getting it. It was crazy. It was absolutely insane. Love you guys.

Thank you.