2X NBA Champ Mike Miller In Studio, Randy Moss, Nuggets Force A Game 7, Hank Saves The Celtics And Has A New Rival In Timothee Chalamet + NFL Schedule Release
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Hey, Pardon My Take listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

But trust me, it looks delicious. New with crispy strips now at McDonald's. On today's part of my take, we have a twofer for the people. We have two time NBA champ Mike Miller in studio. Awesome interview with him. Really fun interview.

To talk to him. We also have our good friend Randy Moss to talk about the Preakness. Try to fix horse racing. And a bonus guest, Sandman from the barn. Randy is the best. We got a lot of sports to talk about. The Caps got bounced. Hank saved the Celtics season and had a showdown with Timothy Chalamet. Denver forces a game seven. We have the NFL schedule release coming.

New stuff about Caleb Williams before the draft.

And then we'll finish with Firefest, as always, on Friday. And we're brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. The eyes of the horse racing world are on Baltimore this weekend. The race is on. But who will rise above the rest and be crowned king of the track? Find out on DK Horse, the number one downloaded horse betting app. DraftKings is turning up the thrill with the king of the track promotion. Here's how to get in. Head to the DK Horse app, opt in, and bet $5 or more on a horse to win the stakes. If your pick crosses the finish line first...

You'll win a share of $150,000 prize pool. Randy's going to give us some picks, so make sure you listen. He's got some great picks for the Preakness and the Black Eyed Susan on Friday. So who will reign supreme? Download the DK Horse Racing app. Use code TAKE. That's code TAKE on DK Horse. Bet $5 or more on a horse to win the stakes.

for your shot at a piece of $150,000 only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 18 and over, 21 and over in certain states to open, own, or access an advanced deposit wagering account in resident of state where DK Horse is available. Eligibility restrictions apply.

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Welcome to part of my take presented by DraftKings. Who will reign supreme? Download the DK Horse Racing app and use code TAKE. That's code TAKE on DK Horse. Bet $5 or more on a horse to win the stakes for your shot at a piece of $150,000 only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Friday, May 16th. And PFT, we are no longer agape. I'm sorry. I know. I'm all closed off emotionally, physically, spiritually.

I even, I left my sunglasses on the flight to Washington, DC. And I felt like I was just out of rhythm from that point on. Just, just nothing clicked into place. But the good thing about this game, and there are some positives I took away from this game in terms of perspective, I got to watch a hockey game with my mom. She had an absolute blast. She kept looking at me being like the sun. This is so fun. I can't,

I can't believe we're doing this is the best mother's day ever. Thank you so much. Yeah. Bigger, bigger than sports. Mother's day is, it was bigger than sports. And she was just like, you know, we love spending time with each other. And so even though it was a tough loss, I think it really showed me that, you know, some things truly are bigger than sports. And she kept saying, son, you know,

Uh, it could be worse. She calls you son. Yeah. Son could be a lot worse. I'm so glad we're not Maple Leafs fans because that's embarrassing. And at least we won the Stanley cup in 2018. Uh, she kept saying, son, the, uh,

The WNBA starts this weekend, and I wouldn't want the series to continue and take away the shine from WNBA opening weekend. Facts. She just kept saying, son, I love you. This is just a magical Mother's Day. Best Mother's Day ever. So it was fun being on the glass with her. We are rookies on the glass, though. We are.

I brought her like this big meal from one of the restaurants that they have in the concourse and a couple of drinks, brought it down to the front row. First thing I did put the drinks on the on the shelf next to the glass. I thought it would be OK. And then I think it was Van Riemsdyk. I think he checked somebody right into the glass right in front of us.

Her bourbon goes flying everywhere. My beer goes flying everywhere. But you know what? It was just one of those moments. It's a memory that we made together. Yeah. She's like, son, it's okay. We're both wet. Yeah. Son, thank you for buying me that bourbon, even though it's all over your lap right now. So it was really a bonding experience. No, it sucks. Listen, it sucks. I thought that the season was going to be –

It was a special season. Nobody thought or expected anything from the Capitals, but I did expect us to go a little bit further in the playoffs. So that part's disappointing, and I got to call it as I see it. Ovi did not look well on the ice tonight. He looked pretty slow, not really moving around that well. There was one point, and you can't quote me on this, but I did lean over to Nate, and I said...

I almost think that he shouldn't even be on the power play right now. He wasn't, he, he did not look like he was moving around like, uh, like the Ovi that we saw in the regular season. Now he is like 40 years old. He has played a long season. He did break his leg this season.

But it looked kind of like a different guy. And so I hope he'll take this offseason and rest up and come back next year because I thought that we had a team that could really do something special this postseason. So it's tough for me to get over, but, hey, that's part of sports. Yeah, that's part of sports. It sucks, too, that the Hurricanes were just –

They like, they basically were a boa constrictor on you guys, this series. Like, I think what would you score seven goals? Like it just wasn't, it wasn't even a fun series from, from the capitals perspective. Cause the hurricanes just like choked you to death. They do a great job of just destroying any sort of rhythm you have. Once you get in the attacking zone, you're a good team. You don't really possess the puck there. Uh, it's hard to get the ball through the neutral zone. Um, that's, that's the main thing that all the hockey guys are saying. Uh,

And yeah, once they get an offense, they do a good job getting into the rhythm. So they're, they're a really, really good team. I got it. At least we're not the Leafs. That was my bit. I didn't think about that until my mom said it, but she makes some really good points. Yeah. The Leafs. Yeah. If you were up to all in the series and about to lose in six games, that would be devastating. And if we hadn't gotten the Stanley cup in 2018, right. That's what she kept saying to me was I remember at least we got that Stanley cup. I,

I got two questions for you, PFT. The first is how quickly did they show the offsides? I think it was the first period on like the Jumbotron because that was heartbreaking. I bet the caps in in in solidarity. And I was like, so pumped when they scored. And then the minute they go to the replay, you're just like, fuck, because it was so cut and dry. Well, what they did was they didn't even put the goal on the board.

So they waited, and then I was like, wait, why isn't that goal showing up on the board? They should show it on the board. And then the ref skates out to center ice. He goes, the call is being challenged. And then after they announced that it was being challenged, then they put the sad goal up for about 30 seconds because it was the fastest challenge of all time. I know. It was so obvious. It sucked. The ref picked up the phone. They didn't show the replay a single time in the stadium. That's when I knew that it must have been pretty bad. Yeah. And then my other – well, a side question.

That you did say going into this series and going into the playoffs that goaltending was an issue. That last goal for the Hurricanes was an issue. It was pretty soft. That was bad. But also Thompson played pretty well tonight. Besides that, that's like besides besides that, Miss Lincoln, how was the play?

But it was a decent night for him in the first couple periods. He made some great saves, but that was a soft-ass goal. And you know me, I don't tolerate soft-ass goals. No, you never have, and neither does your mom. Your mom probably went to you, son, that's a soft-ass goal. We were raised better. She said, son, from that angle, as an NHL goalie, you should never let that in. All right, my last question is, and this is the painful one, how much blame do we put on a gape?

I mean, you know exactly. I handled a gape the only way that I knew how to handle a gape. I know you did, but it was... And you would handle it the same way... I know. No, no, I'm not saying you. I'm not saying you. I'm just saying...

That felt like the moment that was like, oh, no. And also, I was alerted to something, which I'm sure you knew. But someone commented, because I was getting a gape tonight. I was trying to get a gape. I was tweeting about the game. Hitting some nitrous. Someone commented under one of my tweets that there's a certain person who has a gape tattoo on their arm. Yes. Carson Wentz. Yes.

When I saw that, I was like, I was, I was hoping that, that nobody would bring that up on the show. There's certain things that listen, I will bring up a lot of stuff to make fun of my teams. And I'll, I'll try to be vulnerable in front of you guys because that's what we do. I was not willing to introduce into this conversation. Right. Moved by you. Cause when I saw it, I was like, Oh my God. Yeah. No, no, please. No. I thought it was Photoshopped. I had to go to his Instagram to check. I,

I've never even said it out loud to anybody because I knew I couldn't keep up the whole agape bit after I verbalized the fact that Carson went because that makes it real. I want you to know, PFT, if the series had still been going on, I would not have mentioned it. I would have also buried it because that was like – it was literally – I was basically –

uh, Kieran Culkin in, in, in, uh, succession when his rocket blows up, I looked at it on my phone and I just put my phone back in my pocket and walked away. I was like, I can't do that. Listen with, with the whole agape thing. It, I think I showed that I'm a true capitals fan by going along with that. Yes. And in retrospect, maybe it's not the best idea to hand out towels talking about getting your butthole nice and loose. Yeah.

That doesn't inspire me to have a lot of confidence in the team. But if that's where we're going, I mean, I'm wearing – I wore this shirt tonight. It's a game. Did you get an extra one for me? I'd get one. I'd wear one. Yeah, with hearts on it.

And then the hand sign, again, it's like just big loose buttholes. No more gape. Big loose buttholes do not – it doesn't make you fired up to get violent on the ice. Yeah. No more gape. Hank, is there anything – oh, you'd like to say something, Hank? I just have a question.

Sure. It should be good. Where'd you get that sick ass hat? Oh, good question. Um, the, the people at the, uh, at the capitals were nice enough. They gave me a nice little grab bag, uh, shout out Taryn and the rest of the caps crew. I actually, I got some stuff. I got something for, for your kids. Big cat. Oh, love it. Like Legos, right? Yes. And it's birthday season. Okay. I got, I got a little Lego thing. Um, and then who does a stupid question. I was about to ask who here on this podcast likes gravy the most. Um,

I was like, maybe Hank. Like, no. Okay. So I got Max a gravy boat. I literally, I never eat gravy.

I don't even eat on Thanksgiving. What are you talking about? Red sauce? Red sauce? It's called sauce. I literally don't eat gravy on Thanksgiving. It's gravy. I'm out on gravy. Well, get ready to learn gravy, buddy. Yeah. No, that was bullshit. Big Cat's badass probably eats gravy on everything. I love gravy. I fucking love gravy. Max, you're going to love gravy.

It's good to laugh after a loss like that. It is. Yeah, but I do like this sick-ass Capitals hat. I wish I had it for the entire series. Also, another spin zone, like, losses suck in the playoffs.

But a loss in game five is definitely less painful than a loss in game seven. I would agree. And I was pretty clear about like, just don't let us win game. If we win game five, then it's a problem. If we don't win game five, then I don't think we're going to win the series. Right. It sucks to lose. But like when you lose and it's,

convincing fashion. You're like, well, what are you going to do? So one other little story I was, I think it's in between the second and third period. And I was hanging out, just waiting for the puck to start again. I get a FaceTime on my phone and it's oldie FaceTime. Yeah.

And I picked it up and my mom was like, who's that that's FaceTiming you? I was like, I'll tell you the whole Oldie story after we talked to him because it's a long story. And I opened it up and Oldie was just shirtless in his living room screaming into his phone, let's go, boys. Busy, busy. Let's fucking go. And then my mom was like, hi, Oldie. And then, yeah, it was quite the scene. Son, what's a side pocket? Yeah.

How did Mama Commenter describe that jersey that you're wearing? Was she like, son? I taught you right. I taught you well. She was like, son, that's my grail. Yeah.

Son, you're getting a fit off. Yeah. I think she's like, son, I'm having to beat the chicks off you. What's going on? I might leave this behind for now. I actually got a shocking amount of compliments on it. It's a one of one. Can you describe it for the listeners? Yeah, it's a half Jaden Daniels, half Alex Ovechkin jersey. It's the Jaden Daniels.

Jay Zander Dan Vetchkin jersey. It's a one-of-one, but it's also a true one-of-one because it was made for PFT. And he's the only one who could wear it and be like, damn, that's sick. That's it. Anyone else put that on, you're like, what the fuck is this guy doing? Shout out to EWL. I don't have his name in front of me right now, but I think he probably made it for himself. And he was like, I...

No, there's only one guy that looks dumb enough to pull this off. So shout out to him. All right. So, yeah, the Leafs are in trouble. I don't know. That was the other hockey thing. The Leafs are in a lot of trouble. They're in the...

Don't let us win one, and I don't think they're going to win one. You can't come out flat at home. No. They got fucking... Oh, that was bad. In basketball news, the Denver 5-2-8-0s forced a game seven. So I was very skeptical when I turned on the game and saw the 5-2-8-0s were out there on the court tonight. Not really elimination game jerseys, but...

It was just the Nuggets bench was just – like Jokic was great. Jamal Murray, who actually I think had the flu, was very good. And I know Christian Brown is a starter, but like Julian Strother, that was – you need one of those guys to step up and have that type of game. And he had 15 points and hit like three huge threes. I also think –

That game was basically not won by the Nuggets in the last few minutes of the first half, but kind of lost by the Thunder because it felt like the Thunder were going to take that game. And they were up 9 or 10. And then SGA gets one of the worst, dumbest fouls. And the refs were like, they were all over the place. Guys were just fucking beating on each other.

But he fouled, he like a frustration foul on Jokic where he got the ball stolen and then 60 feet from the basket just like smacked him. Got his fourth foul, had to sit for the last two minutes. And outside, Lou Dort hit a buzzer beater, but the Nuggets came all the way back, tied the game, and it felt like all the momentum switched because it was like Thunder are here and they're going to win this game.

and then the second half was more nuggets and I'm happy for a game seven. I wanted a game seven in this series. Yeah, very much. This has been a great series so I can't wait for that. I got to listen to the second half call on the radio on the Denver radio broadcast and they just kept screaming out

Strother. Strother. Like, they couldn't believe it that he was hitting all these shots. So, yeah, I mean, that's the key for Denver. If they can have Murray contribute, and then they need one X-Factor guy. And that X-Factor can be 5'2", 8'0". It could be the altitude. It could be, yeah. And it was, I mean, Michael Porter Jr. didn't play at the end of the game. They were just like, we're going to ride with Strother. It was the...

It was basically in hand. The only thing that had it like, Ooh, this could get close was Alex Crusoe for like probably 90 seconds. Almost like created a comeback by himself where he picked, I think Jamal Murray's pocket, then Jokic's pocket on back-to-back plays and then had like a rebound and, and did another thing where it's just like, he's just not giving up, but I'm excited for game seven. I don't know. I, I,

I was listening to the postgame. Kendrick Perkins said that he gives the Nuggets a 40% chance of winning game seven, but he has the Thunder by 10. I'm trying to do the math. So I don't know. What are the implied odds? I don't know. But he was like, yeah, I give him a 40% chance, but I have the Thunder by 10. I feel like there's a great opportunity to middle that. Yeah.

What I love about Kendrick Perkins, though, is sometimes he just says stuff. All the time. Exclusively just says stuff. Yeah, all the time. All the time. He's the number one stuff sayer.

in NBA media right now. He does not think he just shoots. He moves on. He's a Michael Scott. He starts a sentence and doesn't know where it's going to land. Yeah, what he does is he just starts talking, and if he starts to lose his train of thought, he just throws the word damn in there. Yeah. And then he picks up. It gets him going. So the Nuggets have a 40% damn chance of winning this game.

I like the thunder by 10 damn points, but he's got, yeah, he's got him here. The hell on 10 points. Let's do a little, uh, let's do, I think that's fine. I think that's fine to say what, like sometimes you can have the take of like, I think this game's either going to go like, this team's going to win easily, no chance, or the underdog is going to win outright. Like people have had that take before. I agree with that. Uh,

But a 40% chance you'd think it would be a little bit closer. Yeah, 40% would be, yeah. It'd be like a five-point game. I can't do math. The whose line is it anyway? You guys want to guess it? I think it's Nuggets by, or sorry, Thunder by six and a half. Four and a half. Seven and a half. Whoa. So Perk was closer than Hank.

Should we do first baskets? We got to do first baskets for Celtics Knicks on Friday night, which we're going to get when we're back in studio. We're going to talk all about Hank's time on the wood. He's got a new rival in Timothy Chalamet. DraftKings Sportsbook officials. We're like, you know, we're boys, but it's like we're just kind of at this moment rivals. What do you mean?

Frenemies. Your rivals. I put in the title...

Oh, no. Yeah, I put Hank saves the Celtics, and now he's got a new rivalry with Timothy Chalamet. You know what I mean about that? No, that's fine. I'm going to change it. All right. DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, is giving you a chance to boost your winnings every single game during the playoffs. That's right. Every game, all playoffs long, DraftKings is rolling out a special NBA profit boost. So what are you waiting for? Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now. Use code TAKE.

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Luke Cornett plus 750. I'll go Derek White plus 650. Okay. I'm going to go Jalen Brunson. That's plus 450. Plus 450. I'm going to go Cat plus 600. Okay. Wow. Jalen Brunson.

Should we talk about this Seth Wickersham article that came out real quick? So there's a new book, Seth Wickersham, who's a very good author. Maybe we'll have him on. American Kings, a biography of the quarterback. Obviously, he's selling a book, so there's got to be some salacious things to get people talking about it. And the big one was that Cale Williams did not want to be a Chicago Bear, which...

I think most people kind of – well, his dad especially didn't want him to be a Chicago Bear. Most people – that story was out there. I chose to ignore it. It turns out it was true. I took my takeaway from the whole article, not just the tweet, was, yeah, I was wrong for thinking that Caleb Williams always wanted to be a Bear, but –

I was right that Caleb Williams is the guy because he knew better than anyone that Shane Waldron and Matt Eberfuss were fucking morons. Like, he has good judgment. He was like, Shane Waldron's an idiot. He said that before. And shout out Ryan Poles because the story goes he met with Kevin O'Connell at the Combine, was like, I want to be a Viking. I don't blame him for that. Kevin O'Connell is a fucking unbelievable coach, especially with QBs.

He then went to Alice Hall. Ryan Poles was like, hey, we're going to draft you. And then he changes to him. He's like, you know what? I can fix this. And then the story goes that in his rookie year, the coaching staff was basically AWOL, and he's watching film by himself. And I knew they failed him. I didn't realize to what extent. It's pretty shocking. So listen, past is the past. Ben Johnson is the future. It's all good. Okay. I like that.

And that's, I think that's the right take, which is like what you had last year is nothing close to what he has right now. I also, I, I want to know how true that is that he wasn't given any instruction whatsoever about how to watch film because, because that quote, I think if I remember the article, correct. I think, I think that quote came from maybe someone close to Caleb. I don't think that was a direct quote from Caleb. It was somebody else that was like quoting Caleb to Seth. Yeah. Wrong about that.

But if that's the case, then it feels like his dad is saying things secondhand. Oh, no. So, no, this is actually a direct quote. It says, at times, Williams said he would watch film alone with no instruction or guidance from the coaches. No one tells me what to watch. Caleb Williams told his dad, I just turn it on. So maybe his dad said that to Seth Wickersham. Yeah, so it's a quote from his dad that he's imparting from Caleb.

Like through a media. I just, I don't know how true that is because I feel like no matter how shitty of a coach you are in the NFL, you probably tell your rookie quarterback what to watch on film. I think there was probably, there's been like reporting of it is that like the coaching staff kind of went AWOL towards the end there before the firing. They were just kind of like, we're cooked. Also, like I know that it obviously looks bad. The headline, Caleb Williams and his dad weren't wrong.

Like the bears have historically been bad for quarterbacks. Like they weren't wrong. They, you can't be like, Oh my God, how could they say that? They weren't wrong. And especially with the coaching staff. Now, I think now it's changed because Ben Johnson is here and I've apologized many times for saying it was a,

Great situation that Caleb Williams walked into. That was a very bad, stupid thing I said all summer long last summer. Really, really dumb shit for brains. But yeah, I read the article because obviously I saw the tweet and I was like, oh, fuck. And then I read the article and I was like, I don't really know outside of his dad being like, we're going to go to the UFL, which I didn't realize. Like,

There wasn't anything that was like, oh, man, how could they say this? You know what I mean? There's also kind of a bargaining play. I think he was looking for any way possible to maximize Caleb's value as a quarterback. And that included the fact that he was not happy with the fact that Caleb would potentially be tied to a team for like eight years. Right. At least five. His dad fighting for his kid. I also watched an interview that Seth Wickersham did this week.

with Adam Hogue, who's a beat reporter for the Bears. And, uh...

I think Seth Wickersham's exact quote, because they're like, how close was this actually to happening of him? Like not of being like, we're not going to the bears. He said, he said the gasoline was out, but they never took out the matches. So it's like, I think a lot of the coward stuff, like coward was reporting directly from his dad. I think it was that like, just, you know, floating it out there, but never actually going that extra step to being like, no, we're not going to get to, we're not coming to Chicago.

You know what made me suspicious was when that article came out last year that was Caleb Williams saying, I really like Chicago. Like, I want to be a bear. That felt like it was something that at the time, and especially now looking back on it, was done because they had run out of options. Right. And all the stuff where they're trying to see if there's any way that they can make a manning move.

After all those options were exhausted, then they're like, okay, now we'll just kind of clear the air in Chicago and be like, hey, let's do a story about how much I want to be a Chicago Bear now. Right. And it does look like, from the reading of the article, that Ryan Poles did a really good job of kind of convincing him because the story goes that he went to Alice Hall and came out of that meeting with Ryan Poles being like, I can do this. I can fix this. And again, it was...

He's right that Matt Eberflus and Shane Walter are bad. That's a really good sense of judgment of people. Yeah. He also, I mean, I don't know if we can say this, but when I talked to him at training camp last year, he was like, yeah, the commanders, they've been a team that I didn't really want to go to at all because of their ownership.

Right. When Dan Snyder was owning. So like, right. If, if, if he's talking about two franchises that historically have not done well in this situation, those would be two good ones. And yeah, it's a, if you were to ask him right now, are any young quarterback right now coming into the NFL?

Would you want to play for the bears in the situation that they have now? I think every quarterback would say yes. I think they'd say, I want to play with Ben Johnson because of what he's been able to accomplish and how creative he is. I feel like if,

if you're asking truthfully right now, yeah, he does want to be in that situation. And, and that was the biggest thing. Like I, I, I had to accept it, but I, I definitely wanted to Eber foods fired. I wanted Harbaugh very, very badly that I think would have changed everything. And it, I think a lot of people thought that. And then the bears obviously were like, we're not going to fire him. We're going to keep going with this, which was stupid, very stupid in retrospect. And that's probably comes from George McCaskey who, who,

I wouldn't put him in the Hall of Fame of owners of professional sports teams. That would have been wild, though, if he was a battle hawk.

Yeah. If he actually went the UFL route, that would have been great. We tried to get Joe Burrow to do that for the XFL. He said I think he wanted 50 million guaranteed in his first year. Maybe it was 100 million. I forget. And I said, deal. Let me talk to the people at the XFL and see if they agree with that. And then get the fuck out of here. Yeah, get out of here. But yeah, it's...

It's like bad shit happened. New stuff. We got new stuff. If he was still the coach and this came out, it would be panic level a billion. Yeah. Right. Like it's not, that's just not the situation anymore. Folks. It's the foreplay guys. Let's talk foreplay.

We'll be right back.

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All right, before we kick it to ourselves, we forgot to mention this during Fyre Fest, so we should say it now. Max, you are paying up your payment this weekend. Yep, going to the bachelor party with a group of AWLs. I'm looking forward to it. Hank picked it out. I don't know exactly what's going on, but it should be a good weekend. You know exactly what's going on. Good producing by Hank. You knew everything that's going on. Yeah, I don't know.

You know exactly what's going on. I was trying to convince Max last night because we saw the video. The guys seem like good guys. One of them is the wild card. And I was telling Max he's got to out wild card the wild card. So he's got to order some strippers. He's got to bring a loaded gun, some Russian roulette. Just be the wild card, Max. I'm just going to be a guest at this guy's bachelor party. You're going to get wild carded.

I've seen this so many times. You got to take the wild card to the wild card before he can take it to you.

No, I'm going to allow the wild card to be the wild card. I'm not going to take anyone's role. Once a couple of drinks get inside of you, the wild card comes out. How do you describe yourself, Max? If you're like if you're writing into your favorite podcast and you're like, oh, you should come on my bachelor party. And everybody in the bachelor party has like a thing that they do. Like one guy is Mr. Mischief. One guy is like bad news. What would you consider yourself?

Just a friendly guy that, you know, goes with the flow of the group. I'm not loud. I don't try and do too much. I don't try and take too much attention away from anything. I never drink too much. I never do any of that. Go watch the last case race. Yep. Are you going to do an Oklahoma drill with anyone? That's exactly me.

No. Wait, so Jack is going to go in and film it. So we will have a vlog of it. I still think you got to be the wild card. Like you got it. You got to fuck dude. You show up with a loaded gun, literally, and a couple strippers and maybe some extracurriculars and people like, holy shit, this guy's a wild card.

I won't be coming with any of those things. I will be a good guest until I have like seven beers and then I'm just going to be probably bad news.

Yeah. Yeah. If there are any strippers that listen to part of my take that live in the Milwaukee area that would like to be in touch with Max this weekend, just in case after those seven beers hit, if you'd like for Max to have your number, please, please DM Max. This weekend is about The Bachelor. That's what we have to remember. Any gun owners as well? Yeah. Nope. Definitely none of that. Let's talk to him. Yeah.

Oh, it's about the bachelor. When's the wedding? I don't know. How do you not know? You're going to this guy's bachelor party. I haven't been in contact with this crew once. Are you bringing a present? You got to bring a present. You got to bring a present for the groom. Fuck, I probably should bring a present. Are you looking around your apartment right now to see what you can get? How fast, PFT, how fast can you get him that gravy?

I can probably find something good from the office. I'll just steal something off your desk. That was such a good look Max gave. He was like, is there anything in this corner? I was trying to explain to Max because Max can drink, and these guys are just regular guys, but if they're from Wisconsin, they can drink. I don't care what they look like. They can drink. Definitely more than Max. Yeah, and I actually was talking to one of them last night, and they were like,

We're going to out-drink Max. And I was like, that can't happen. I hope they do. I really hope that they do. That can't happen. For our podcast, that cannot happen. I really hope that they do. You got to go in there being like, no one's out-drinking me. No, I'm excited. It's going to be good. What was the punishment for again? Yeah, I didn't know either, PFT. Losing the NFL picks. Okay. I'm excited for the video. I think it's going to be a great video for the AWLs. Yeah.

And you're playing paintball. Yeah, you're going to a bachelor party. You're playing golf and paintball and drinking. I haven't picked up a golf club in like two and a half years. So that'll be interesting as well. There was one trip that was you playing six rounds of golf in three days. That would have been too much. Six rounds of golf would have been a lot. That is too much golf. It was a hilarious itinerary.

Oh, man. All right. Let's kick it to ourselves. We've got Mike Miller in studio, and then Randy Moss and special guest Sandman, the horse. And then we'll finish with Fyre Fest. Okay. Before we get back in studio, game time. Football is back. The 2025 NFL schedule is out. And the only place you should be getting your tickets is game time. The official ticketing partner, Barstool Sports.

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We were looking at that Monday night game. Bears, Commanders, week six. Week six, Columbus Day. What do we got? Monday night, get in price, $185. $185. So what are you waiting for? Go buy those tickets on GameTime. Get the Bears, Commanders tickets. Get all your NFL tickets on GameTime. Take the guesswork out of buying NFL tickets with GameTime. Download the GameTime 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 GameTime app today. What time is it? GameTime. Okay. Hank is back from sitting on the wood. The Celtics have won game five. Great individual performance from Hank, by the way. Great job by Hank. You left it all on the way. The haters tried to take me down. They tried to put out false narratives. That's okay. What were the false narratives?

PFT posted a video, PFT commentary. Man to your right. Oh, hey, what's up? Yeah, it was me. All right, people talk about Boston sports fans like they're the end-all be-all. Like it's a great sports town, they know ball. I don't know who these clowns are that they let sick courts have these games. Never seen a basketball game in their life. Look at this thing. Look at this egregious foul. Watch this. Just gushing blood on this one. And then you've got this jackass in the crowd saying, oh, he went straight up.

Who the fuck is that guy? Josh Hart. It was one of the... He just threw his body into a defender and then fell to the ground. They call it a foul, which, you know, whatever. It probably, by letter of the law, was a foul. But...

I was sitting on the wood and I just put my hands up because that's what I think it was. Luke Cornett just had his hands straight up and Josh Hart just flung his body. This is the play that Josh Hart got all bloody. And I think he, I think it was his, I think it was Luke Cornett has like razor blades in his armpits in the elbows. I think, yeah, I think the elbows got him. And then Hank, the, the, the camera was kind of, it wasn't even really on Hank, but I was watching and I was like, Oh shit, that's Hank in the background, just advocating for his team, fighting with everything that he's got. And,

And I wanted to bring more visibility to that moment because I feel like a lot of people missed it as a fleeting instant on the broadcast. So I just want to highlight you, Hank, as a fan. Great job on the wood. And I thought I could hear your voice once or twice during the game. Yeah, I mean, I was yelling. I was getting vocal. Double fist pump? A lot of double fist pumps. The Luke Cornett game. Last night will always be remembered as the Luke Cornett game. Big cat. Do you want to give me some credit? Yeah, I do. I mean, that was the different... I mean, I think the Celtics, it looked like...

The game started and Derek White was like, I'm going to be the man. He was awesome. I mean, he and Jalen Brown were great. And then Luke Cornett, like, I actually think that Kristaps, whatever he has, Luke Cornett is a better option than Kristaps right now. And Joe Mizzou obviously agrees because the second half, he sat Kristaps. Kristaps only played 12 minutes in the whole game. Yeah, you could see it in the first half. He was...

It was basically like he was doing, you know, when they do the football walkthroughs in the hotel room where they're just literally going through the motions. Like, that's how he looked on the court where he was moving. Slow motion, yeah. But there was no bounce. He wasn't, like, going aggressively. He looked like he was going at 50% speed. And then every time, you know, in breaks and timeouts, you could see him, like, leaning over. Mazzullo said he, like, wasn't able to breathe. He basically has what Ovi has. Like, he's just. Oh, come on.

Hank, I was rooting for you. He was looking slow out there. I was rooting for you last night. You're a dirty guy. You know that? The mode of Hank right now is so different than two years ago. Hank is such a motherfucker. And you know what? I blame myself. I don't blame Hank. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. You said Ovi doesn't look the same. He looks slow. That's what Porzingis is like. Yeah, but you're feeling spicy. I'm trying to relate.

I was going to be on the glass tonight. I was on the wood. Like, I'm just trying to make connections. Listen, we're both down three to one. All of a sudden you get another. You get a second one. Congrats on getting a second win against the Knicks in this series. Hank, a team that you've been dominating. And all of a sudden you get that second win and you just completely leave me behind.

No, I'm PFT. You said show me the way. You said show me the way, and I did. He's trying to show you the way. Step one, get there, get to your city, will your team to victory. You're going to do that tonight. I have utmost confidence. I'm so excited for you. There's nothing better than being down, back against the wall, home game. Well, being up is better.

Okay. But Hank was kind of up. You're still down three to two. Because they've been dominating the series. That's true. Hank was both down and up at the same time. But again, like... I saw the graphic of Hank saying we're on to the finals, and then in parentheses says Hank after Celtics down 2-1 against the Knicks.

It was as sad of a two days as you could have as a sports fan. It really, really did suck. And it still does. But like I said, it's like getting to the game, being in the city, forgetting about the Jason Tatum and the offseason, luxury tax, new ownership, whatever, and just seeing the team come together, get a win. We had the momentum. It was a great, yes, we were down 3-1, yes, we still only won two games, but it

It was a great, great victory up and down. So do you start Luke Cornett on Friday night? Yeah, he was awesome. Seven blocks. He was great. I think he probably do. Yeah. I think it's like Missoula said after the game, he couldn't breathe. That was his quote. That's kind of like Ovi. I don't know how you fix that. I don't know how that gets fixed over. Forget about start Luke Cornett. I think you build around Luke Cornett. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. That was awesome. He was just lurking in the key. He didn't move at all. He was just like, come in, I dare you. And then, oh, you're going to come in? I'm going to put it in your face. It was great. I have a question. Would it be, I guess it would be against the PED. Could they just give Kristaps like 100 milligram Vyvanse before the game? Sure. I think, right? Yeah. I mean, at this point, if you get busted for testing positive, you can just go through the process of appeals. Yeah, I bet you'd feel better. All right, so...

You also helped Jalen Brunson got in foul trouble. Big foul trouble. You got big foul trouble to start the third. You gave him a great wave off, by the way. Oh, yeah. When he fouled out, Hanks stood up. And they almost reviewed it. They almost overturned it. That was going to be tough. I was waving at him hard. Yeah, you hit him with an awesome goodbye. Yeah, so that one, I don't know if that's...

No, Cat was in foul trouble. But Cat's always in foul trouble. Cat literally just finds fouls. His fouls are so frustrating because he will foul when it has no impact on the play. And he's like, hey, I just got to get my hands on someone. And then it's like he has never committed a foul. Oh, my God. He also feels like the guy that never got away with anything in his life. Even when he was a kid. Like if all of your friends did something bad, snuck out, he was the one that would get caught because he's just like...

He's flagrantly cat all the time. He's never blending in. That last foul on Jalen was a stupid, stupid foul. Yeah. Like, you've got to be smarter than that. And Tibbs looked like he was about to wring his neck afterwards. Yeah, he was not happy. So how do you feel about Friday night? Because I think, obviously, if you get to game seven, I think the Celts will win the series. I do not think you're going to win Friday night. I think Jalen Brunson is going to...

win this series on Friday night. I think that's fair. I do think all the pressure was on the Celtics in game one and two, and they kind of folded like they were missing shots, and that's what happens when all of a sudden you're at home, you know you're supposed to win, shots stop going in, and all of a sudden things can flip. The Celtics are basically playing with nothing to lose. I think that's a good spot to be in, and they have championship experience. They have something to lose.

But everyone's expecting them to lose. Right. When you're in that spot, like that's the... Max, chime in. You're saying... Not anymore. The last game, everyone was expecting them to lose. Now everyone is thinking like you right now. Like now the pressure is back on the... No, the pressure is on the... If you're... Wrong. The teams-wise, the pressure is on the Knicks. If the Knicks lose, they're still... The Celtics players do not feel the pressure. They're still playing games. The Celtics are still... But they... Okay, Max. If...

What do you mean? You're the repeat champions. Be honest. Be honest. Be honest. Who do you think is more worth like the Celtics? If I don't know, I feel like the Knicks are like we have to win at home. No, I don't think this game. I game seven. Yes. Yes. That's six. The Knicks have two shots at it. Like they I do not think the pressure is. Yes. Well, three memes, but you already lost your first one. So you have two shots left.

I think the pressure is still on the Celtics for game for Friday night. If it goes to Monday night back in Boston, then it's just... Then the Knicks are fucked. How could you lose up 3-1 with Tatum out? Then it flips. What? What? Oh, I like where you're about to go. So, Max... No, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. No, no, Max. That was an impressive win for the Celtics.

Without Jason Tatum, I think what Max is trying to say is, are they a better team without Jason Tatum? No. I'm not even going to acknowledge these narratives. But I don't think you understand what he's asking. He's not asking, is Jason Tatum... They're a great team. Teams are built from the ground up. It's an organizational effort. Hank, if I may... 1-12, 12-60, everyone matters. If I may... If one guy goes down, everyone else has to step up. Luke Cornett stepped up. If I may... Derek White stepped up.

If I may, what Max might be trying to say is the Celtics...

Yes, Jason Tatum is a great player. He might even be the best player on the Boston Celtics. But are they a better team without Jason Tatum? Also, Max has not said anything. He's just giving us faces. We know exactly where his brain is going. If I may. He's nodding along being like, I've said one word. The only thing I've said so far is well. All right, so say it, Max. No, no, no. I like just... Hank, if you may respond to those allegations. If I may, my answer to your question would be no. Okay, Max. Yes or no question. What would your counterpoint be? My vote would be no.

I think this is something that, you know, talking heads, loser franchises, draft lottery, people that actually go to that stuff. These are questions that they make so that they have something to talk about. Winning teams are just worried about the win and loss column. Okay. Max? Jason Tatum, champion. Right next to his name, champion. All-star, finals MVP, Olympian, champion. Wait, wait, wait. What you just said is wrong. All-star MVP. I just said finals MVP. I meant all-star. I meant all-star.

I meant All-Star. Blatantly wrong. I meant All-Star. I meant All-Star. The All-Star MVP might be more impressive. You might need to put that on a quote card. I've slept for two hours. I do not think that the Celtics are better without Jason Tatum. I do think that if you, in this series, like last night watching them, they...

There might be a more team basketball. That might be every team. When your best player goes out, it's like you got to cut more. You got to move more. Everyone's going to spread the ball, make the extra pass. There can't be a reliance on, hey, Jason Tatum will bail us out. That exists. Do you agree? For sure. Yeah. And Joe Mazzullo is a great coach, and they still have great players like that. That.

That's okay. I think that's fair to say. I thought it's interesting. It's a team game, and Missoula's a great coach. It's like, yeah, you lose a player, you have to figure out how to game plan with the guys you got. Did you see Coach Missoula yesterday? I did see Coach Missoula. I saw him after the game. Is he locked in? He is very locked in. Josh, friend of the program, the guy I went with, he...

We like dapped up and then Josh, I introduced him. He's like, you know, congrats on all your success. And Mizzou was like, you're only as good as your next win or as your last win. So we're good. Yes, you're good right now. Yeah. So, I mean, just by the numbers, it looks like the Celtics were eight and two without Jason Tatum this year. Yeah. I think they're like, what was their winning percentage? And they're with Jason Tatum. Was it was it 80? Something like that. Are they undefeated in the playoffs? Jason Tatum. Do they win the game against the Magic without him? No. Oh, is there one and one?

I have a couple other questions, Hank. So the Celtics record overall is 74%, but they're 80% without Jason Tatum. That leads me to believe that just by the numbers, and we are a numbers podcast. We're a stats-based podcast. I'm a wins-based podcast. They are literally better this year without Jason Tatum. PFD is describing wins, by the way. Wins. No, he said stats. A win is a stat. Wins.

Hank, you better just get used to this because if the Celtics keep going, this is going to keep going. I think the listeners know this is the definition of cope and just trying to upset a man when he's up. I think it's the definition of asking questions. That's fair. It's the definition of being an in-depth national sports podcast. Correct. As a national sports podcast, we have to ask the right questions. You're also not up. Yeah.

No, I'm like Henry Lockwood is up. I'm feeling up. I'm up memes. Hank has ended this series twice already. I have not ended the series. No, we got it. We literally said on to the finals. Game by game. That was before a catastrophic injury. But right now, today, whatever the fuck the date is, May 15th, I'm up. Okay. So my other two questions. Can a guy not be up memes? My other two questions. No, that's a fair point. Do you have any statement about...

Jalen Brown jerking off Josh Hart. I saw the clip after the game. That was crazy. When you slow things down, anything looks like you can take anything out of context. I mean, he was like a search and destroy for the penis. Again, like Stephen Chase, a pervert for even finding that. Slow down angle. I'm sure in game speed, it didn't look like that. He tugged it.

I think that was technically a masturbation. I mean, we're football guys, right? Like, what happens at the bottom of the pile? It's like this shit happens in battles. Like, he actually kind of masturbated him. Yeah, he held it for long enough. I think the ruling on the field is masturbation. He's a ball-dominant player. He jerked him off. Oh, yeah, you can see. He kind of, like, fiddled his fingers on his dick.

This was disgusting, Hank. Yeah, I mean, it's slow-mo. Oh, this is Josh Hart's sister just said weird. Yeah, she quote tweeted saying weird. Oh, it is weird. They've hooked up. Josh Hart and Jalen Brown have hooked up. I don't think so. No, they have. I'm watching it. We watched it right there. That's third base. Yeah.

That's a pelt on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. He held on to that for it. I get it. If you like grab or you're like hands and you got to get an edge anyway, you can. He held it there. It looks like Josh Hart's getting the edge right now. All right. That's also Josh Hart's wife. Oh, that's his wife. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. She is jealous. Yeah. You can tell she's like he did it better than me. Yeah. Maybe she's saying it's weird for Josh.

Like, why is he getting handed? No, she's probably mad at Josh, too. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You should have made him stop. Yeah, weird that Josh would allow this to happen. Yeah. All right, my other question, last question about this game. There's reports that you may have met one of the top celebs in the country right now, one of the coolest guys out there, let's say maximum aura based on the fact that he does not lace up his Timberlands.

We're talking about Timothee Chalamet, and the report is you turtled. No, so I did do some journalism last night. So I was with Josh, but there's a little bar kind of like food area underneath for the woodies, the wood goers, and the people close to the game. They can go before the game and at halftime. And when I got in there, I sat down. Wait, time out, time out, time out. Dan, take that. Are you still wearing your wristband?

I went to sleep at 2 a.m. I woke up at 4 a.m. He's like a spring breaker going back from senior four. I slept for two hours. 15-year-old going to Lollapalooza. What a loser. What the fuck? All right, what am I going to do? I don't have a pair of scissors. I just, I woke up random. I woke up, my wake-up call, I slept through for 40 minutes.

I just sprint to the airport, sprint to my fucking gate, drive, sit in traffic for two hours, and just basically walk in the studio. Yeah, I'm still wearing my wristband. Are you just attached to the memories that go along with the wristband? You got to keep it on. It was a great night. It was a great night. You'll feel happy. All right, back to it. Sorry, I was just shocked. Anyway, I sit down and look to my left. Oh, bro, did you go to the game last night? Maybe. Yeah, dude, I got team VOM access.

Timothy was five feet to my left, which was, you guys know I'm bad at hiding my face. I probably gave him like one of the, I was like legit shocked how close he was. And then maybe five minutes later, the people he was with, like our mutual friends and Dave, they introduced them. They had a quick conversation about pizza and maybe within two minutes of, you know, introducing the table, Dave was like,

This fucking guy was on his show saying you're performative. And I legitimately, like, hand up, did not even remember, like, I was lashing out. It doesn't sound like a Hank word to use, to be honest. I didn't think I said that. So I was like, I don't even know. I was like, I didn't say that. And Chalmé, he wasn't mad. He went about it, like, very, like, cool. Like, I will say, like, I can report Timmy Chalmé, very, very cool guy. But he...

Maximum War. Oh, so again, I was right. You were. He came over. He's like, what was I doing that was performative? Like he wasn't like pressing me, but he's like, what was I doing that was performative? I was like, I don't even think I said that. And then he just basically told me his history as a Knicks fan. He was like, yeah, you know, when they were bad, I was getting season tickets, like trying to like flip them to make money. Chris Duhon, like naming all these players. And I was like, yeah, I believe you. Like, I know you're a legitimate fan.

Dave just threw me right under the bus. It was a cool interaction to have, but I was like, not exactly the start you want to get off with someone like Timothee Chalamet. And then they went into the game, we went into the game. I thought I was going to see him there at halftime. He was not there at halftime. But he was basically sitting across from me the whole game. So I would look over and pause, whatever. I caught myself staring a little bit.

Him wearing sunglasses courtside is, like, such a power move. Yeah, it's Jack Nicholson. He was, like, I was having the thoughts of, like, we're, I think, similar ages. And I was, like, he's quite literally a thousand million times cooler than me. Correct. More successful. Like, he's got it all. He's got everything. He's got it all. And how cool is that to be, like, I think he obviously is a real Knicks fan, but, like, to also reach this type of fame where...

If he plays it right, like Jack Nicholson went to, what, 40 years of Lakers games sitting courtside? He became synonymous with the Lakers? Like, Timothee Chalamet can be basically the heir apparent to Spike Lee. Yeah. That's fucking awesome. Was he wearing the Tims last night? He was wearing the Tims last night. Were they laced? They were not laced, I don't think. Smart move. Good move. You could hurt your ankle if you tie him up too tight. And the aura. Yeah, he was super fucking cool. Yeah.

Him and Dave just talked about pizza. So I know that you're a company man, always thinking about work, always doing your job, big time producer, part of my take. What did he say when you asked him if he would be a guest on part of my take? Well, yeah, so he came over. Dave basically set him up to basically get not mad at me, but he came over, addressed the situation. He started a conversation. Addressed the situation, and then he...

Went back to where he was sitting next to Dave, and then we had a brief interaction. I did not get the chance to say. You didn't book Chalamet. I didn't book him. We're not getting Chalamet. That's not true. The thing about Max is it was a good intro. Max would have booked him. Yeah. Yeah. Max definitely would have booked him. I would have been so scared. All right. So let's say you win game six Friday night. Game seven Monday, which is a weird schedule.

Should we fly Jerry O'Connell in and do a stream on PMT? Or are you trying to go to the game? No, I think if Jerry comes in, we should do a stream. I think the fans, AWLs, would love that. If Jerry can't do it, I'm just thinking out loud, we've got a lot of Knicks fans in the New York office. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Could send you there. But we wouldn't do that. No, I've never... We've never done that in the past. No.

I mean, it's not like we're sitting on an extended trip here, Max. If we would never do that, we would just, you know, one game. I don't think you could do it, too. Like, second round is late enough in the playoffs. Max, you've never had to go for the second round, right? No, it was second round for a full week. Oh. That's okay. The precedent has been set. The precedent has been set. Max, you know, had some rivals in New York. I think, you know, they got Clemmer. Who?

They got Clemmer versus Meek Phil, which is a good rivalry. Which is a must-watch team. I think there was a little bit of contention last night with me and Timmy. I think I got to go to game seven. Meek and Phil can handle the New York streams. I think I got to go. You got to go against Timmy. So you've already moved on from Jerry, but you will accept Timmy as a replacement.

Jerry moved on from me. He did. Jerry O'Connell did move on. But then you also just quit Game 5. But then you also burned the bridge afterwards. You were like, fine, flip-flopping pussy. That's not burning a bridge. That's a statement of fact. No, Jerry, the sequence of events is Jerry called the series over, retired bing-bong, flip-flopped and brought the bing-bong back.

That's when Hank said flip-flopping pussy. And he only did it because everyone was like, Jerry, what are you doing? But Hank called the season over before Jerry did. Thank you. Hank said the season was over before Jerry did. Oh, when did you say that? He said we're on to the finals. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's the same thing. That's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. No, but I didn't say I'm taking – she said I'm taking game five off. Yeah. And if the Celtics win, I'll be back. That's insane. And then he also said – but, yeah, he said Hank is not a good enough rival for him.

Yeah, but I mean, Hank called the series over. My whole point is that Hank is the one that called the series over. Well, there's extenuating circumstances that came in between. You're using a lot of $5 words today, Hank, and I don't know if somebody bought you a dictionary for your birthday or what, but it's unbecoming. Even if Tatum didn't get hurt, you would have been down 3-1. Eh, we'll never know. Okay. They are a better team without Tatum. That's true.

But yeah, if Jerry wants to smoke, I think the AWLs deserve a stream. But if he's not... You're going to have to go... I think, yeah, I can't let Timmy run wild. You got to be on Chalamet Watch. What about Frank the Tank? Henry Lockwood officially... He's been officially enlisted for Chalamet Watch. You need to fight him. Yeah.

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All right, other games. Series over for the Warriors. Also feels like kind of the end of maybe... This was a bummer. Yeah, I mean, they were never going to win a game. They were never going to win the series without Steph Curry. Yeah. It's that simple. Yeah, they're not a better team when Steph Curry is out. Although...

He can't stay healthy. Some are saying that Steph Curry is the West Coast version of Joel Embiid in the playoffs. This series was... Yeah, I mean, Julius Randle was the MVP of this series. He was so good every single game. And the Timberwolves are a very good team. And we'll talk about them more because obviously they're in the Western Conference Final, back-to-back Western Conference Finals, see if they can take the next step and go to the finals.

This was like a sad, hey, the Warriors, this iteration may be dead. Steve Kerr said afterwards he thought they had a legitimate chance to make a finals run if Steph had stayed healthy. I also weirdly, I know Jimmy Butler was sick, but is this the death of...

playoff Jimmy. No, I think Jimmy's just he can't do it all on his own for three games in a row. But that's what he's been like. Playoff Jimmy has done that. That's what playoff Jimmy did. That's literally what playoff Jimmy did. The last two games he took 20 shots total. I don't know. Again, he was feeling under the weather two games ago. Maybe he still lingered. But like

I mean, he's getting older. It might have been just the end of playoff Jimmy as well. I think the writing was on the wall for the Warriors where Kaminga was like, okay, I'm going to get the ball. I'm going to be able to show off what I can do. I don't know if they're going to bring him back as a restricted free agent. I think he's an RFA this year. I don't know if they're going to try to sign and trade him. I don't know if they're just going to let him go off. But this was like Jimmy was not –

The Warriors weren't doing their best team effort to win this series because I think they all understood that they couldn't. So you've got a guy like Kaminga that's like, I'm going to go out there and take a million shots too. So you can't really get into playoff Jimmy mode. I think that's exactly where, like if you, when Steph gets hurt in game two, you're like, playoff Jimmy will get him one.

He didn't get him one. Yeah, I think it's just the Warriors, they realize this is not, we don't have a chance without Steph. That's when playoff Jimmy should be. That might be the death of him. He's going to be 36 before next year. He's playoff Jimmy Dunn. I'm excited for the Timberwolves. Two years in a row, two years in a row getting to this place.

Are they a better team now? I think they might be a better team. And I think that both the Knicks and the Timberwolves both got a lot better by doing that trade. The rare win-win trade where I guess, who was it, the Hornets? The Hornets lost that trade. The other two teams won. Both teams got a whole lot better. I'm excited to see what the Wolves can do. I don't know, who would you rather play if you're the Wolves? If you had to pick?

I mean, they beat the Nuggets last year in seven. Yeah. So it's like you've done it. Yeah, no, Julius Randle was – he's exactly what the Timberwolves needed in the fact that he – Cat has these swings and he's an incredible shooter and incredible offensive big man. Julius Randle has just been consistent. And you've seen it where he doesn't do the old Julius Randle of spinning to nowhere and all that stuff. He's just been awesome. Yeah.

And Anthony Edwards, I feel like we're due for... I think... Has Anthony Edwards... He had a 50-point playoff game last year, right? I don't think he's gone nuclear this year, has he? He's toyed with it. I think we're going to get a 50-burger in the Western Conference Final at some point. At some point from Anthony Edwards because it feels like he's flirting. I'm looking right now for game logs. Yeah, I'm excited. And shout out also the Timberwolves fan who was just...

He was just doing coke in the middle of the game. Did you guys see that? I didn't see that one. Yeah, there was a guy who... It was the feed of... It was the Jumbotron feed. So people who have League Pass, they were watching and someone noticed it. But also... No, I think there's still... Oh, I guess League Pass isn't needed. There were people tweeting about it. Maybe TNT sometimes has the back. You can just watch the one camera angle. Yeah, watch this. Just blatantly. Good for that guy.

He's just dipping it on his... That guy's definitely an AWL. Yeah. Love that. He thought he was set, and the jumbotron was just right on him while he was just doing coke in his seat. That's a savage move, but it's also... It's a closeout game against the Warriors. I think that if it was a court situation, you'd be like, dude, we were closing out the Warriors. If I'm his boss... That guy's an idiot. Yeah. I hope that guy better own his own company or he's fucked. If I'm his boss, I'm willing to let this one slide. If it had been during a loss...

That's Wednesday afternoon. Yeah, imagine if you're losing a playoff game. You're down 15 points in the fourth quarter, and the camera catches you just doing a bump at the stands. That's an issue, doing sad cocaine. Although you could probably spin it anyway. You'd be like, yeah, the boys needed me. It's a tight game. You're like, I was nervous. I needed to get locked in. If the game's out of hand, though, that's a bad look. 44 points is his career. I'm going to say right now, 50-burger coming for Anthony Edwards in this series.

Feels I'm excited. I don't know. Are they going to start if well, I guess we've already taped the Nuggets Thunder. Is there a chance we just don't have any playoffs this weekend? Yeah. WNBA. They are taking some of the nights off to give more spotlight to WNBA opening weekend. Got it. Got it. All right. So hockey, the Leafs are in major trouble.

Major, major trouble. Big time. That was as much of an ass-kicking as you could get in front of a home crowd. Very important game five.

Holy shit. They got smoked. Yeah. Feel bad for biz. Oldie was watching the game with biz last night, trying to, trying to amp things up. And it's funny seeing biz be the parent in a relationship like that. We're like, normally there's somebody to, to business side being like, come on biz. Let's not get distracted with the shiny things. Let's, let's keep it moving. Oldie turned biz into, Oh, okay. Let's settle down. Oldie. Come on. Like he was the responsible one. Uh,

but it didn't do anything. It was 4-0 before you could fart. Yeah, well, Coach Craig Berube, the Leafs coach, said it perfectly. He said, I don't think they came in any harder than they have. I think we let them come tonight. We stood around and watched. So they were sitting in the cuck chair. Yeah, it's kind of hot. Yeah. Kind of hot. They were just coming. The Panthers were coming, and Craig Berube was just sitting there watching the whole thing. Oh, speaking of great coaching moves, how about – I don't think we talked about Chris Finch calling his team a bunch of losers. Yeah. Why?

When they were winning a game, I think. Yeah. I believe they were up at the time. He's like, you guys are playing like a bunch of losers out there. And then Anthony Edwards after the game was like, yeah, coach just called us losers at halftime. And he was right. So we just decided to stop being losers. Yeah. Craig Berube, that's... It is kind of hot. Yeah. It is kind of hot. They just let them come. Yeah. And then the Oilers.

domination of the Knights. You can't win a... That's as close to a sweep as you can get because they won the series 4-1 and the only win for the Knights was a buzzer beater. Yeah, so how many minutes did Edmonton's goalie go without letting in a goal? Skinner? Yeah, it was... It must have been...

After the... After overtime. So 60? No, no, no. It was 120. It was 120 before they got to overtime. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just really on a hot streak right now. Answered the bell because there were legitimate people saying like, hey, Skinner, that's...

And crazy that you did that in the buzzer beater. How could you let him play anymore? The series comes back. Doesn't give up a goal for the next two games. I mean, who's Batman? Who's Robin on that team? I think Skinner is probably Batman. And then you got to say McDavid is Robin. Dry cycle maybe is Robin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then McDavid might be Alfred. He's Catwoman. Yeah. Yeah. He's Catwoman. That seems right. I'm excited for the Oilers. I'm excited for Witt. Same. Oilers-Stars feels like...

Could be awesome. Could be very awesome. Should we talk about the NFL schedule? Oh, I had one last... I mean, we obviously taped the beginning of PFT, but what's your mindset going into this game? Oh, is he going to make you predict it? How do you feel? What do you think happened? How should I feel? You should feel excited and nervous. Nervous but excited.

I feel confident. Yeah. I feel confident. I think this is a four-goal win. Four-goal? I think this is on the city. All right, I'm going to take an alternate line. The city is going to win tonight. That's what it's all about. Yeah, it's like you've got a home game. You've got to rally. The district. Get a gape. We're getting a gape in the district tonight, and I'm feeling very confident. Hands on glass. If there's hands on the glass...

If there's any Russian gas available anywhere in the world, Ovechkin's going to have it before tonight. I feel like there's going to be a lot of energy, and don't let us win one. I got a message for the Hurricanes. Don't let us win one. Wow. Because if we do, we're bringing the storm back to Raleigh. This is going to be bad if they lost. And game six. I'm saying don't let us win one.

If they don't let us win one, then I predict that the Hurricanes will win the series. That's a good prediction. If they let us win one, I wouldn't. I wouldn't let us win one. Don't do it. You don't want to know what's going to happen if we win one. Don't do it. It's going to be very bad for you and very good for me. But I do feel strangely confident about this game. Home ice...

Logan Thompson took off the morning skate because he's just trying to get locked in for the night. And I think Ovi is going to get a goal. I think Wilson is going to put somebody through the glass. I think Strom is going to have two assists.

and I think Pierre-Luc Dubois is going to get an empty netter. That's what I think. Fuck yeah. We're taping this at 11 in the morning before you get on your flight to D.C. I mean, I'm bringing my mom with me. She's got to be worth at least two goals, right? Easily. Moms are good luck, Mother's Day week.

Taking on a double date with Nate. They get a whole week. Mother's Day week. Yeah, Mother's Day week. They get a whole week. Mother's Day week. Post mostly Mother's Day week. I told my mom, I was like, hey, listen, for Mother's Day, taking you out for a nice dinner in D.C., then we're going to go to the Capitals game together. She's very excited about that. She loves the Caps. So I think Mama Comets her is worth two goals at least. Yeah.

All right. Oh, I have one last thing before we talk NFL schedule. Did you guys see one of the saddest headlines I've seen? Cavs owner Dan Gilbert spent over $500,000 on fake snow machines that were used one time in the postseason. So this is a thing the Cavs did. It's called the Cavalanche. That's a nice touch. When the Cavs go on a run, like unanswered, like 10 in a row, they do a Cavalanche in the stands where they drop fake snow and

He spent $500,000. He used it one single time. But you can save that, right? That's also a business expense. Yeah. You write that off. I mean, 500K for a billionaire's.

It probably, I would imagine it went off. They were like, hey, we want to spend half a million dollars on this thing where we're going to drop fake snow. He's like, no. What if we told you it's the Cavalanch? Some guy came up with the Cavalanch and Dan Gilbert stood up on a table and was like, we need more of this guy. How much is it going to cost? Doesn't matter. Was it the fake snow that cost 500 grand or was it the entire apparatus? I think it was the fake snow. No.

Because he's getting ripped off by his fake snow guy. All right, here it is. Before the start of this postseason, Cavs chairman Dan Gilbert loved the idea of the Cavalanche, duh, so much that he paid more than $500,000 to install fake snow machines in the arena ceiling that could blast confetti throughout the arena's bowl when the Cavs went on one of their patented offensive tears. Okay, so that's an investment then. The Cavalanche machine went off exactly once in the entire postseason. Yeah, that's an investment. So it's not like...

You know, the Cavalange is still there for next year. Do you think? It's like if you renovate a bathroom, you add a bathroom to your house. Yeah. That ups the resale value. When he sells the Cavs 20 years from now, he's going to be like, oh, yeah, and he comes with the Cavalange. Yeah. Do you think Dan Gilbert, after they got bounced, like went into an empty arena and was like, just hit the Cavalange once for me. Just let me see the Cavalange. I think he probably got the Cavalange turned on specifically for him before the playoffs even started. Yeah.

He's like, use me as the test dummy. The fucking name is right there. It's the Cavalanche. Yeah. It's a great name. We need more guys like Todd and more ideas like the Cavalanche. Everyone else is fired in this room. Build the whole team out of the Cavalanche. We do the caviar, and we're just going to dump fish eggs on it. Fans that are in the wine and cheese section. Oh, man. All right. NFL schedule.

I feel very confident in remaining with my take that they completely have ruined the fun of the NFL schedule release because I don't know if you guys had the same experience. I knew the entire Bears schedule at like noon on Wednesday. It should be noon. It's not primetime. It's not a TV show. They give out too many games so you can all piece it together. It was a two-hour show. Yeah. It was two hours of unveiling the schedule. At some point, they're just going to do like one game per week.

Right. We're going to spend the entire month of April and May just dropping, okay, here's weeks one through four. Next week is weeks four through eight. Here are all the primetime games. They're going to try to milk it for everything. The only thing that was good about the schedule release was

was the apologies that had to come after the fact from teams that had screwed him up. Yeah. So the Colts had to apologize. I'm woke on that. Yeah. So, Hank, if you were to guess two things, one is a company and one is a person for who the Indianapolis Colts had to apologize to for their schedule release, who would you guess? I don't know. Jif Peanutbutter? No, they had to apologize. Martha Stewart? They said, we apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek Hill. Mm-hmm.

I'm woke on this. Two powerful enemies. So the Colts tweeted their video. By the way, I don't want to sound too old man-ish. I'm out on all the scheduled release videos except for the Chargers. Yeah, that's what I said on Monday. It's like, I will check the Commanders because I want to, and then I will check the Chargers because they usually do a great job. Everyone tries to get so funny and cute, and then you also remember that there's owners who have to sit and be like, approved or not approved. Just stop it. Just stop. It's not...

Whatever. The Chargers, though, and the Colts now. So I'm woke on this. I think the Colts might have deleted it to get more buzz because that was legitimately a hilarious video. They actually crushed it. They did Tyree Killett as a dolphin getting arrested by the Coast Guard. They had Will Levis getting hit by a bus, a bachelorette bus, where there was a chick puking on the bus. They had Kyler Murray as the chicken jockey. They had...

John Rocker and Mahomes Sr. fighting, and then Patrick Mahomes is a frog, and then they had Liam Cohen doing the Duval. It was funny. That sounds all funny. And then they deleted it. But I think that it actually makes it even better. It's like a cult classic. So there were multiple. There it is. Nice, Hank. Your brain's back. Multiple teams that did Minecraft. Yeah. So that was. They got to either. Maybe this was like a thing where they all agreed to promote the Minecraft movie and took some money on the side.

Or they need to have a group chat amongst all the social media managers where they say, hey, we got dibs on... They got to do a draft lottery. A televised draft would be funny. Yeah, to see who is allowed to use whatever the hottest pop culture references at the time. It would be very funny for them to do a televised draft and then you have every social media...

The head of every social media team sitting in a room and they get up there and they're like, hey, we're going to do Minecraft. Yeah. Or like last year, we got dibs on Hawk Tua. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hey, we're going to do a play on the bear and we're going to do different cuisines. Yeah. We have the Costco guys booked. We talked to them.

Seven months ago. Where the fuck were the Costco guys? How were they not used? My guess is that every team had talked to the Costco guys and they said, you know what? We're going to be busy. We're banging the drum. Well, the video of when they did the Panthers, did you see what they said in it? No. They're like, we're the Costco guys. We like every NHL team, but tonight it's the Panthers. Yeah. Well, Paul, we love all the NHL teams, but tonight we're in the Panthers' house. So that means that the Panthers are a...

And you're a dude.

So they could have done everything. You can't like every NHL team. That's illegal. The Costco guys should have revealed every single... They should have been every team's video. Yeah, you got to use them for everything or nothing. I think the Costco guys, their brand is open for everybody. They don't want to pigeonhole themselves to be in one team. But I imagine that there were a lot of phone calls that were made to them this year. Yeah, I have one other old man take, and I actually think this one's correct, and people will agree with me. I think it is absolutely bullshit to have...

Any division game played international. So the Chargers and Chiefs are playing on Friday night in Brazil to start the season. You should not have division games be international games. I would agree with that. That is so stupid. I also don't like the division games being super close together either. Yeah, that one, I feel like they've just been going towards that way. Like, you play the Eagles close? We got Eagles break Eagles.

Yeah, I think we have Packers last three weeks of the season. Yeah. Yeah, I don't like that. You're playing against the same team. Yeah. You have a Bible in the last three weeks. No, it's Eagles Christmas Eagles. I think I know we finished the last game of the season is Eagles commanders. So week five by socks. That's the Bears have not not too happy about that. Also, I was just looking like random things like the Browns.

The Browns scheduled to start as Bengals, Ravens, Packers, Lions. They're going to be. Yeah, it's tough. It's a very, very, very hard. All right. So he's opened the preseason at Gillette at that stupid fucking lighthouse, Hank. Oh, preseason. Yeah. Do a watch party. Hell yeah. Can I say bullshit that the Bills used AI? Well, you should have used them. We did the Super Bowl.

You should have used them. What do you mean we did the Super Bowl? Like, our release video was just a two-minute video of the Super Bowl trophy and then the last frame. So you're just hung up on the past? That's funny. I actually like that. That's a flex. Yeah, it's just who gives a fuck about this. Here's the schedule. I like that. But the Bills using Allen Iverson is absolute bullshit. Very creative, though. Yeah. I thought it was fine. What if the Nuggets had used them? That would have been fine. Broncos would have been fine. Well, Buffalo doesn't have an NBA team.

Then you can't use Allen Iverson. They did. They used AI. Yeah, they did. They can't. But they did. They can't. They did whatever they want. We also have on paper. This is my favorite part about the schedule being released is that we get excited for games. We're about to do our Mount Rushmore of games of the year. On paper, we do have a very strong Thanksgiving.

So it's Packers at Lions, Chiefs at Cowboys, Bengals at Ravens. Yeah, that's going to be a great day. That's going to be a great day. Really solid day. And then Bears and Eagles on Black Friday. Yeah, it was going to be my Fyre Fest, but I'll bring it up now. My Fyre Fest is at the NFL. As I thought they would, they are really going to shove the Commanders down your throat next season. Yeah. I think there's eight standalone games that you're going to have to watch them. It's a lot of pressure.

So I'm not used to the idea of my team playing in primetime so much, but it's a high likelihood that people will get sick as shit of seeing my team play. That kind of sucks. They also, speaking of primetime, they hit the Patrick Holmes button. The first eight weeks of the season, five primetime games for the Chiefs. Yeah. Smart. I'm down for that.

Patrick Williams playing in a game, it will feel more important. Yeah. It's just a fact. All right. You ready to do the dumbest draft? Because half these games will have like a backup quarterback playing. Yeah. Mount Rushmore of games of the year. Hank, you want to start? No. Okay.

PFT, you want to start? Yeah, I'll start. All right, go ahead, PFT. This is our Mount Rushmore of games of the year. We're going to take it very seriously. My first overall pick for game of the year, and I'm going to be basing this off ratings, however the ratings go. Kansas City Chiefs at the Buffalo Bills. Good one. In Orchard Park, week nine, 420, the afternoon game, blaze it. CBS, we got Nance and Romo on the call. That's going to be a big one. I like that one. All right, I'll go week two.

Eagles at Chiefs Super Bowl rematch afternoon window. That's a really nice thing they did there because we get so hyped up for week one. And then there's usually a little like, oh, week two doesn't you don't have the same, you know, excitement. And then we have that waiting for us. So good job by the NFL schedule makers.

I was going to take that one. Well, I did. I know. It's a good pick. Yeah. Good pick. Good value. I will go with kind of one that's like a guaranteed, you know, we don't know what's going to happen later in the season. Week one, Baltimore at Buffalo. Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Bills Mafia. Great pick. Great game. Great pick. You know, you never know what's going to happen throughout the season, but this is one you know is going to be exciting. Yep. Good pick, Hank. Great pick.

You get a second one. No, no, Max. I will go. My first one will be week 11, Lions at Eagles, Sunday night football. Lions fans, Lions players think that they would have beat the Eagles last year, so they'll give them a chance of some sort of redemption, even though it'll mean nothing. And then my next one will be week four, Ravens at Chiefs. Okay.

That's a good one. Week three. I'm seeing week four. Okay, week four. Ravens at Chiefs, 425 start. Wow. That's going to be a great one. Feels like the Ravens win that one. They get feeling themselves. Yep. Then they match up later in the playoffs. Yep. Okay, Hank. I'm going to go. I don't know where I'm going to go with this one. I'm going to go with week three.

Week six. Podcast, producer of this show. I'm a big fan of part of my take. I'm going to go with week six, Chicago, Washington. Monday Night Football. Yeah, Monday Night Football. Tattoo game. Going to be a good one. We're going to see. My guess is, you know, when they do those little weird animation things sometimes that they do on Monday Night Football? Yeah. They're going to have the Pope on there. Yeah. The Pope is going to be featured in the weird digital form. A lot of Hail Mary video. By the way, did you know that the Pope fucked?

What? Yeah, I just found that out this morning on DV radio. Apparently when he was like 19 years old, apparently he was in a little relationship and they found the girl. Oh. And so this might be the first pope to have fucked. Wow. A woman. Yeah. An adult woman. Yeah.

All right. I'm going to go with Thanksgiving night. You know, you finish all the meals, you watch some football, and then you're like, man, I hope there's a good game. How about Joe Burrow going up against Lamar Jackson in Baltimore week 13? I love that game. I'm going to love that game. That's a great one. Yeah.

So this could hinge one way or the other. Okay. But I feel like it's great value if it hits. Week 10, Sunday Night Football, October 26th. Sorry, week 8, Sunday, October 26th. Week 8, Sunday Night Football, the Green Bay Packers. Yes. Had it on my list. At the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If we get Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh. Yep. Now, if there's no Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh, then everything is off the table at this point. Yep. But that will be a great game if he is. Yeah, that was it was on my list. That's a great pick. Hat tip. Yep. Yeah. You got another one. Okay. There's just so many great games. So many great games. So many great games I have to choose from here.

Uh, I'm going to go with the bangles at the bills. Isn't we taking bangles at bills week 14, December 7th. Never forget bangles, Joe burrow going into orchard park playing our good friend, Josh Allen friendship game. Yeah. I wanted that one too. Prayers for tomorrow game. Prayers for tomorrow. Got to have prayers for, for, for tomorrow. Uh,

There's so many good games. So many good games to pick from. And it's hard to pick these games because there's so many good games. You don't want to leave one out. And there's just so many good games. I'll go week 13, Vikings at Seahawks. Sam Darnold Revenge. That'll be interesting. Sam Darnold Revenge. That is an afternoon game, week 13.

Good pick. Thanks. Similar to PFTs, this one hinges obviously on Aaron Rodgers, but I'm going to stick again, go to week one. This is just fun. Fun storylines. Pittsburgh at New York Jets. Jussie versus Rodgie. Teams reversed. Either way, one of the fan bases. Obviously, if Aaron Rodgers isn't on the Steelers, this won't be as funny, but...

If he is, one of these fan bases is going to be furious one weekend, which is just hilarious. Are they going to let Aaron Rodgers run out with the American flag before the game? They should. I think they should, too. This is crazy that Mason Rudolph might be their starter. Yeah. I mean, thank God for flex scheduling, right? They should trade for Jameis. Giants have too many quarterbacks. It's just a fact. They should have gotten Shedussie. They should have gotten Shedussie.

All right, Max, you got your last two. This has been some great podcasting. Yeah, this has been great. I'm going to go with week 17, Eagles at Bills. Okay. Nice. Another 425 start. And then crazy. You got to hope that game doesn't matter, though, right? It's the second to last week. Oh, true. Yeah. Still. Yeah. I mean, whatever. Eagles at Bills, week 17. And then I'm going to go week 10, Monday Night Football, Eagles in Lambeau.

I think I'm going to go to that game. That's going to be a great game. The tush-push revenge game. Ban this, pussies. Pussies. Actually, we know we don't say that to the Packers anymore. We don't say that. Okay. All right, I'm going to go off the beaten path here. I'm going to call my shot. I'm going to do that as well. I think the voting will probably happen tomorrow, but we might have to do a post-mostly vote because if this comes true, I think I would get the win. Week four, Cleveland at Detroit.

Shador Sanders coming out party. Oh, I like that. Three weeks of, you know, build up people saying stardom, stardom, stardom. I think week four is maybe the time when, you know, something comes to its head, maybe an injury with the quarterback. And it's like, okay, it's Shadussi time at Detroit.

You know, powerhouse goes in, wins on the road, and he's arrived. Yeah. Okay. I like that. All right. I'm going to go off the beaten path, too, and try to call my shot. This is my holy shit. There's too many international games. This game is going to suck. And then it actually rocks game of the year. It's Sunday, November 9th in Berlin. Falcons and Colts. I don't want to watch that game. Okay. But then it's just going to end up rocking. Yeah. I do not want to watch that game.

And it's also like perfectly, it's the fifth, I believe, international game, sixth international game of the year. You're just like, dude, we're doing this still?

And then somehow, like, Anthony Richardson and Michael Penix are going to have, like, the best games ever. Yeah, it's good to call your shot on one of them after you're already sick of waking up that early. Right. I'm also going to call my shot. Whoa. Okay. We got shot callers. Big time calling my shot. This is January 25th, and it is the Washington Commanders against the Chicago Bears for the NFC Championship. Wow. That is my game of the year. Wow.

Putting it all on the line. Love that. I would love that. What a great, great game that would be. It would be great for the show. I actually don't know where it's going to be played at. Either Chicago or D.C. What about England? My fucking Roger is going to make us do another one. Oh, never mind.

No, he's talking about the NFCG. I think it's going to be in D.C. I think it's going to be in D.C. It's got to be in D.C. It's got to be in D.C., yep. Why is it got to be in D.C.? Have you guys done a blind? Because they're returning. You guys are up and comers still. Have you guys done a blind? Washington's an established powerhouse. They've got to keep trucking. I feel like he's now trolling both of us. Yeah, he is. I'm choosing not to engage. You guys made the NFCG. That's established. I'm choosing not to engage with Hank. It's not.

Hank wins one fucking playoff game. I'm gassing you up. You win one playoff game. You swing back and forth like a motherfucker. I'm gassing you up. Oh, wow. God forbid a sports fan goes up and down with you. Good point, Hank. But you go from either wanting, you go from either thinking that you're God to turning into a mass shooter based on a win or a loss. Again, I don't know what you want me to say. I'm an emotional guy. It's true. Also, I was just complimenting you.

And that turns me into an asshole. Have you guys done a blind go through your own schedule and get your record? I have not done that yet. All of our games seem like cupcakes. But I'll just say...

11 and 6. So I did it on Waddle and Sylvia. They sprung it on me, and I ended up at 11 and 6. I was like, I don't like that. I'd rather be 10 and 7. Or 9 and 8 feels like 6 out of 10 excitement. But you know what? Every year I look at the schedule, and I'm like 11 and 6. Yeah, that's true. I can do it. All right. Let's get to our interviews. We've got two great interviews. We've got Mike Miller and then our guy Randy Moss talking Preakness. Before we do that, PFT, you got a couple ads? Yeah. Before we get to our good friend Mike Miller...

It's brought to you by Truly. Truly, it's time to get unruly with Truly Unruly Lemonade. It is delicious. This stuff is great. I love the Bumpin' Blue Raspberry. That's my favorite flavor that they got. The Truly Unruly Lemonade combines the high elk fun of Truly Unruly with everyone's favorite lemonade. It's lemonade let loose, 8% ABV, 100% delicious. You got the four flavors, the Bumpin' Blue Raspberry, the OG original lemonade, the punched up pineapple, the wild pink.

It's the official hard seltzer part of my take. Level up your lemonade with Truly Unruly. Find it at a store near you or visit trulyhardseltzer.com. Now here's Mike Miller. Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very, very special guest. It is two-time NBA champion,

Turned agent. He's here for the combine Shout out lift. Thank you. Yeah, it is Mike Miller Thanks for coming by. It's awesome to see you. It's awesome to have you in the studio Why don't we start with the combine so you are an agent now? How was how's the transition to being an agent? I?

First of all, dope spot. Appreciate you all having me in here. Yes, thank you. We're going to hold our pro day out of your guys' facility next year for sure. Absolutely. Get all the NBA teams in here. Yes. Show some love. But no, it's been awesome. I knew I wanted to stay in the game. When I retired after 17 years, I took a little bit of time off and then got into coaching at University of Memphis.

COVID hits, everyone's going crazy, right? So took a reset button and knew I wanted, like I said, I wanted to stay in the game and help these kids. And so it was a bunch of my guys, kind of like you guys doing this stuff, right? We started to put Lift together, and I think five years in now, we're super excited where we've grown this thing and we're continuing to build. Yeah, cool. So who do you represent now? So we have guys across the board. So Paulo Bancaro, Wendell Carter. We've got Jeremiah Fears in this year's draft. Boogie Flan. We've got Jabari Smith at Houston. Yeah.

Our company's got a ton of guys, man. We're blessed. It's been awesome. As a Wizards fan, I was very disappointed that we got the sixth overall pick. But now I took a day, and then I started doing some scouting, and I watched a little of Jeremiah Fierce play last year. But now I'm like, I think I want that guy. You should want him. I think he's going to be a great NBA point guard. I really do. So I got good news. I got bad news. Okay. The good news is you should want him. He's going to be an absolute monster. I don't think he gets a sixth.

Please? This is Agent Mike talking because I watched the clip of the year Paolo got drafted. Yeah, yeah. And he told the story. Paolo told the story. He's been on this show. He was awesome. He said that you were just pacing and talking to yourself and being like, lock in.

Get in the zone. You got to be Agent Mike. Is that true? You got to like it. It's different. You know what I mean? Like, you know, once you get out of the game, you got to find competitors to keep you going. And so, you know, for me, it was like, that's just the way I am, right? And so, one, I owe it to them. You know, if they pick Lyft and they pick me to represent them, I want to give them the best I got. So it's not Agent Mike talking about Jeremiah. Jeremiah is just a special kid, and he's a grinder, and I've been with him for the last month and a half, well, a whole year, but last month and a half training him and just seeing where he's at.

And he's just a baby. I mean, in three or four years, like when you remake this draft, he's going to be one of the top, probably the top one or two in this draft class. Wow. Yeah. I like that. Please just say, yeah, if you could go behind the scenes, just say the opposite of everything that you just said to me. To everybody except for Washington? To the Spurs, to the Hornets, to the Sixers. Yeah.

Yeah. No, he's junk. You don't want him. That kid's a wizard, man. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say, so you do have a gear that you have for Agent Mike? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's, you know, P gas that up a little bit. Yeah.

But I appreciate him doing that. But, you know, he gassed it up a little bit. But there's definitely gears to it, right? Like some of that stuff is out of your control, especially when you get there. Like the work's been done. You know, like going to this draft for the next two or three weeks, obviously our kids have been doing all the training already. But now they start going out here. Now that the draft lottery is set, you start going out here and visiting teams and go do your workouts. Once you get to draft day, you know, a lot of the work's been done. So it's just now trying to manipulate some things at the end, which you try to do.

Yeah. Behind the scenes as an agent, I feel like the NBA has a lot of, there's a lot of strategic trade requests that are floated out there. I think I know where this is going. Yeah. Well, no, I'm just kidding. You can take it wherever you want to. Is there an art to leaking a trade request?

I think there is an art to it. And I think, you know, depending on, you know, where your kid is at as far as how much scrutiny or how much light he wants to take, right? I mean, some guys are just blunt because they want to be out. Other guys, you can find ways to do it. Fortunately for me, in my situation, I'm only four or five years in, we really haven't had any trade requests, so I haven't had to deal with that. But I definitely think there's an art to it. I mean, the way you market it and the way you do it is important. Yeah. So when you retired –

You immediately were like, I have to stay in the game some way and get into coaching? Or did you take a minute where you're like... Because we talked to Joe Keem a couple weeks ago. He said he didn't watch basketball for three years. He was like, I can't watch basketball. That's the biggest Joe Keem thing ever. Yeah, he was just like, I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be a part of it. Now he's back to watching basketball. Did you have any of that? Or were you like, I had a great career. I got everything I needed to get out of it. And now I'm on to the next chapter. I mean, for a lot of us...

For most people, you don't get to land your own plane and decide to end when you want to. To play 17 seasons was a blessing. I still had that hunger and wanted to be in it. My kids were at an age where I could be involved a lot more in their stuff as far as basketball and stuff was concerned. I took a little bit of time off for sure. I didn't want to dive right back in. But like anything else in life, man, you get bored and you want to recreate some of that creativity and that competitiveness. So I got into college coaching.

And really, to be honest with you, college coaching and aging kind of align. You're doing the same things, just not the coaching part of it. But I'm still training the kids. I'm on the floor with the kids. So it's a dope life to have right now for sure. Yeah, so the college coaching, the famous viral clip of you just cooking everyone on Memphis –

at 40 years old that had to feel good if people didn't see it this is a obviously a division one very good college team and showing the levels to it mike miller's you know you've been out of the game for a couple years you're 40 years old and it was not even close you were just you were just dominating them one-on-one did it well you're like yeah this is awesome to show them like this is what the level is this is what you got to get to yeah i mean i think obviously it's

when you're an ex-player or anything you've done in the past and guys are young kids are trying to get there they talk a lot of shit to you you know what I mean so

At some point, you got to fight back. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, it's fun to be able to do that. Obviously, I can't do it anymore. But those guys are getting better. But, yeah, that was fun. And I had to make a statement. Did they look at you different afterwards? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like they took what you said a little bit more seriously? Yeah, a little more serious. I think they believed a little more. I mean, it was an unbelievable honor to be coaching there because at the end of the day, you're coaching with Penny, too, right? Like what are you going to say to Penny? Yeah.

unfortunately for some of them kids, they didn't realize how great Penny was. And so, you know, for all the old players, I had to stand up for at least once. Yeah, going back to the trade request thing, because I think you thought I was going to ask you about LeBron. So I will ask you about LeBron now. What was that like asking LeBron if it was okay if you got traded? Is that how it went down? Were you like, hey?

Or did he just insert himself after the fact when he was like, hey, just so you guys know, I told Mike it was okay if he wanted to go somewhere else. Hey, bro, is it cool if I get traded? What are we going to do here? Next question. So what was the difference between LeBron in Miami and then Cleveland? Because you played with him both times. Could you tell a difference? Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like Dwayne Wade, it was obviously LeBron is LeBron, but it was he was going to a place where it was Dwayne Wade's team, franchise, and then he goes back to Cleveland. It's more his team, more his franchise. Could you notice that? Could you feel that? Yeah, I mean, obviously going back there, having the success I had in Miami, you could see it. You know, I was one year removed. I went and played Memphis for one year and then went with him to Cleveland.

and so when I got back there even that year though like you could see the energy of himself especially coming back to Cleveland you could see where he's at if he had something to prove again but his game had changed too right like those three four the three years or four years I played with him in Miami unbelievable athleticism so people always ask me like how much more time has Bron got and at that time even when I was in Cleveland I said probably got two or three more years at this level and he just keeps reinventing the shit so it's like

Now it's like I don't even want to answer the question no more. You know what I mean? Because now he's a 40% three-point shooter and he's efficient as hell. If you look at his numbers across the board, they're like MVP numbers in Miami. So it's like...

I don't even know how to answer the question, but there was definitely differences. You could see the athleticism come down a little bit, but it was still freakishly athletic. But his mind and the way he approached stuff, you could tell came from some of that Miami stuff for sure. Yeah. I heard a story that he used to lose weight during games when he was on the heat. Is that true? Man, I'll tell you the greatest story, and I've said this. I'm sorry. I screwed that up. The story is that LeBron would gain weight during games. He'd weigh in before and then afterwards, which sounds crazy. Yeah, I'll tell you a crazy story. We did weight, body fat, Miami.

This is game, I want to say it's six. Might be off on the game, sorry. At home against Indiana in the playoffs. Weight, body, fat's always on Thursday in Miami. I think this game landed on Thursday. So he does his weight, body, fat. And he weighed in that day before the game at like 267 maybe.

I might be off on the weight, but the story is the same. He goes and plays. It's an overtime game, almost positive, and he has ridiculous numbers. And he don't use a towel, man. Like when you watch him on the bench, he's got like these little wipes. He like don't sweat, doesn't do anything.

Plays, I think, 40, like almost 50 minutes because it's an overtime game. He weighed like six pounds heavier. That's crazy. After the game. And that's why he's a test tube baby. He's not real. Yeah, that isn't real. Not real. That's crazy. And I mean, just the fact that he was weighing 267 to begin with and then playing like that is crazy. I mean, we joke about LeBron a lot because he gives us some material to work with. He's fun to joke about. He's fun to joke about. But at the end of the day, what he's done in the NBA is just

absolutely incredible to still be at this level. It's unbelievable. And it's like I said, they're worried about him, you know, cramping and body weight and he'd gain weight like during the games. Like he's not human. So what you guys are saying is a hundred percent, like what he's been able to sustain and do,

I saw him at the game in Memphis not too long ago. And the way he's prepping and doing stuff for the game is why. If I had to bring a young kid, that's it. You know what I mean? He puts so much time in his body to be able to do this. And obviously he gets hurt last game of the year. But to do this for as long as he has is unbelievable. Well, now he has his greatest test of all time. He's got to make Luka not fat. Do you think he will?

That's a good question. This is like LeBron's done it all, but can he do the one thing no one's been able to do? That's a great question. He said that's a great question. It is a great question. I know you were about to say it, so I just said it first. Yeah. Yeah. We're finishing the sentences already. It's crazy. I think Luka's 100% dialed in. I think you're going to see a different Luka. I do. I think you're going to see Luka. You think he's 100% dialed in, or you think he's more like 275% dialed in? No.

I think Luke has a lot to prove. He does. He has a lot to prove. I think he knows that, and he's being around Luke a little bit that I have. Super, super competitive.

I think he comes back in elite shape next year. As an agent, and you're obviously in the league circles, was the Luka trade as shocking to you in the moment as it was to everyone else? Absolutely. I mean, you don't see it, right? And as an agent, what it does is it puts you on your P's and Q's because if you can trade Luka, you can trade anybody, right? So it can't get comfortable. That's true. And so, you know, obviously everyone was shocked by it. And for

for anything to happen in the NBA and you guys know this is like for no one to know about it before it happens is almost impossible yeah so the fact they were able to pull that off and do that stuff with no one knowing about it was crazy but yeah I mean I don't I don't think anyone saw that one coming yeah I think he will be locked in I think he's gonna there were a lot of things that were said about Luke and he'll go back and he'll watch how he played in the playoffs and

He'll see what everybody else saw and be like, there's some things I need to get better at, conditioning, defense. I think he'll probably work at all that stuff. You in particular, I'm sure you worked a ton, like having a stroke like that. What was your workout routine that you would put yourself through to make sure that you dialed in? You know, I did the same thing. I was boring. I did the same thing every day for basically 35 years. But it was the same routine. And it was, you know, every day I would at least make 1,000 shots.

But as I grew in the league and you started understanding, like, your off season's about, yes, getting better, but once you've played long enough, you know where your shots are coming from. So now mastering those shots. And that's what I would say for every young kid. You know, there's probably one guy on the floor on a team that can dictate and do a lot of the creative shit.

But for the rest of them, you know where your shots are coming from and you know how many you're going to get. So the biggest thing for me was just dialing into that because if you're going to get – when I was in Miami, for example, if I was going to get three or four or five threes, I had to make three of them. Right. And so you had to put pressure on yourself and you had to do it in a training way to put pressure on yourself. Right.

Like, for all these kids, man, it's understanding where you're at now, where you want to be, but how do I get playing time now? So my routines were always the same. Once I knew who I was, I just dialed into it. Was it a lot harder to transition to, like, the veteran spot where it's like, hey, I'm only getting five shots a night? Like, this is now – because if you shoot –

15 times a night, you know, you can miss some. You're going to miss some. But if you shoot five, you got – like you said, you got to make three. Like, you have to do that. Yeah, it was – going to Miami was one of the toughest things. And we talked about it. We joked about it. Obviously, the big three signs there, and they talk about winning all these championships and put the pressure on us to do it. But –

the sacrifices that a lot of people had to make, not just financial, but playing and style. And it was new for a lot of people. You know what I mean? Like we weren't, I mean, I'm not sitting here saying it was great, but we had different roles on different teams. And when you went there, my role was completely different. Right. And, uh, and my shots went down. I was less pick and roll balls, not in your hands as much. So you don't get that feel on the rhythm of a game. So I literally trained myself because I got sick of it. I get three or four threes. I get on that treadmill and run for five minutes, jump off and shoot one shot. You know,

treadmill run for five minutes, jump off and shoot one shot because that's what my life was. I was running corner to corner being kind of a glue dude and making shots for these guys to give LeBron, D-Wade, and CB their space. You know what I mean? And I got sick of the ball getting hit in my hands and getting ready to shoot in the cold cold. Right now.

You know what I mean? I was like, I'm done with that shit. I'm not going to do that no more. So you've got to put pressure on yourself to do that, and that's how you got to train. But it's all situational, right? My situation was different there than it was when I played in Washington, which was crazy. My situation was different than it was in Memphis when I played there or Orlando. So it's all about opportunity and where your situation lies. What's the most shots you've made in a row in practice? I made 88 threes one day.

88 in a row? Yep. That's crazy. 88 threes one day. So if we said right now, like, go out and shoot 100 threes, what would you confidently – Plus 80, somewhere in that area. Still to this day. That's so awesome. That's like riding a bike, though. Yeah. When you're making 88 threes in a row, are you being critical of yourself like the ball hits the rim when it goes in? Like, that's a bad shot. Yeah.

I mean, you're never critical of yourself, but like you can feel like when you shoot as much as, like when you do something muscle memory for so long, like you can feel when you're slipping somewhere, right? Like that's where I try to get these kids now is like if you do something long enough or you do it enough, you'll start being able to self-correction. And when you get that thing in a rhythm like that, it's like anything in life, man. It's like when you go to play a softball game, you get your rhythm going. It's a wrap. Yeah. How good are you at beer pong? Elite beer pong. Really? Yeah, one because I can drink beer really well. So it's like I don't mind losing either.

Yeah. Are you the best South Dakota... Beer drinker? Yeah, probably. No, I was going to say athlete ever. Oh. Who would be in the running? Is Dallas Goddard from there? Yeah, I think... Your boy Benatari, isn't he from there? He's from one of... Yeah, I think Dallas Goddard's from one of the Dakotas. Brock Lesnar. Is he from there? Yeah. Chad Greenway. Chad Greenway, great football player. Mark Ellis. Hunter Lepke. Hunter Lepke.

Mike Miller, you were listed three here. Three? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're the best basketball player from South Dakota, right? I think so. You have to say. What were your – was there stars back when you were coming out of high school? Yeah, I mean, I was fortunate. I was McDonald's All-American. I got to do those things. So were you five-star? Five-star guy. Oh, yeah. So you're – it's not even a question. Jay Novacek.

That was, remember him? Yeah, he's pretty. Tight end for the Cowboys. Yeah, I think I'm going to give it to you. Thank you. South Dakota doesn't really have anything else. Can we get a trophy from you guys? Yeah, absolutely. Best South Dakota. I need a PMT trophy to put in my room. What was that like going from South Dakota to Florida? Like the level up in competition must have been huge, right? Yeah, I mean, it was. He's talking about the chicks. That was leveling up too. For sure.

One of the bigger reasons I chose that place. I like South Dakota women. I do. I do. Come back with me. We're going to bail some hay. Sturdy women. Strong. Strong. Strong. Strong.

It was definitely, you know, for me though, I was fortunate my parents did a lot of sacrifice. They were allowed to play in a lot of these tournaments when I was growing up. So I stepped outside of South Dakota and played in those tournaments to maybe showcase myself a little more. But yeah, I mean...

Anytime you go from high school level to college level is always leveling up for sure. Yeah. Especially in the SEC. Yeah. All right, so I got a couple questions about the championship years for the Heat. Yeah. The famous Ray Allen shot. Did you guys know that the Spurs were dead after that? Yeah, I mean, it's tough. I mean, the reality is when you play in a league for a long time and moments like that,

They had us beat dead in the water. They missed a couple big free throws. We had a couple scramble play, loose balls.

Ray hits, I mean, an absolutely ridiculous shot, not just to make that shot, but to stay in balance and make that shot. But the crazy thing is, I know it's been well noted. He said it a lot. He practiced that shot thousands. It's the wildest thing I've ever seen. I thought he was drunk the first time. He lays down, gets up. He does the whole deal. Like backstepping all the way to the corner? Backpedal everything. He does the whole deal. And that's where I tell you, if you're ever going to do anything in life, like,

You never think you're going to use that shot. But for that moment, it was worth it, right? Yeah. They were in trouble after that. They were in trouble after that. It's just hard to overcome that, especially at home in Miami. It's tough. Yeah. Were you in the air conditioning game?

No, I think that was the year after. Yeah, yeah. They smoked you guys out. When he cramped. Yeah, the cramp. Yeah, that was gone. That was in Memphis playing. Yeah, that was a tough one to watch. We were watching that and we were like, this feels like it's rigged. Do you think the NBA is rigged?

No, I don't think the NBA is rigged, but it's hard for you to ask that question now after the lottery just came out with a 1% chance. I know. I know. That was a make good. That's what we wanted in the business. I don't think it's rigged, but I ain't got a whole lot of ground to stand on after the draft lottery the other day, but...

I still believe it's not. When they did say not three, not four, not five, not six, seven championships, you talk about some of the pressure that it put on you. Was there a group chat on the side? It's like, holy shit, what did they just sign us up for? You didn't even need to have a group chat. Everyone felt that. I'll be honest, man. When we lost that first year in Dallas...

And then you go on the next year and you can just feel the pressure because you know at the end of the day they're more than likely going to keep the three. They're going to make a ultimate change if we don't win the following year. We go down – I know we are. We're down 3-2 going into Boston. First of all, the greatest game I've ever seen of one individual play, LeBron, in that game. It was unbelievable. But if we don't win that series, like –

we don't none of us are ever in Miami except for those three guys probably we're all out of there so like when you were done with that season it wasn't the physical exhaustion it was the mental exhaustion it was like we didn't get to for me personally I wouldn't even like a celebration it was like fuck thank god

You know what I mean? Like we won because there was so much pressure on us. Yeah. Was there more pressure from that statement of wanting to win seven or just having Pat Riley around all the time, just like observing everything? Probably the godfather. Yeah. So what's he like to work with? Because he seems like, I mean, a guy that he's got an enormous amount of respect from a lot of guys that have played for him. The absolute greatest because you know where he stands at all times. There's no sugarcoating anything. Yeah.

Like in life, all you want to know is where you stand. And with him, it's easy. He's got principles. And if you don't reach those things, you're out. It doesn't matter who you are. So it's why he's able to create a culture that he's been able to create there. And all you want, like I said, is just, okay, where do you stand? All right, cool. I know how to do it. I got to go do my job. I do my job. He'll appreciate it and respect me for it. And he's the best at that. Do you think he stole LeBron's cookies? No.

Do you know that story? Yes. Okay. And do you think it happened? D-Wade just told that story. Yeah. Do you think it happened? He might have stole his cookies. Yeah. I think he stole his cookies. It's disrespectful, honestly. Yeah. You can't steal another man's cookies. I appreciate what Pat Riley's done for the sport, but at the end of the day, man to man, let him eat dessert. Yeah. Yeah.

When you guys were starting off with him, did you know... Was there a moment where you're like, oh, Spoh, this guy can coach? Did it click? Because he was young and there was definitely some conversations of like, oh, can he handle this? Should Pat Riley come back down? That whole thing. The one thing I love about Spoh, I love about the organization is they let people be who they are. Spoh...

I mean, they don't want to meet cookies, but yeah, okay, keep going. Outside of the cookies, they're pretty much like... No, but I'm saying like Spoh had... They were so aligned that Spoh could be who he wanted to be, right? He didn't have to be like someone that was... Like they were so aligned in their journey and what they wanted to do. Spoh, the thing that I respect about Spoh is he was young and people questioned him. Obviously, at that age, getting that team...

about how he coached, and he did it his way. And he coached the way he wanted to coach and was loud and proud about it. And so I knew at that point he was going to be just fine because the hardest thing in those things is losing the locker room by being kind of soft, and he wasn't. He was as tough as he wanted to be. I'm sure getting results, that helps too, right? When it proves that he can win, that his way will lead you to winning basketball games. Absolutely. I'll go where you tell me to go.

And he was so dialed in and organized. That gets respect out of basketball players that understand how to play and the preparation of things. Once you see him putting the time in, your respect goes up. And he put all the time in the world. He was so organized and was so dialed in to everything we did. So towards the end of your career, you played with the Nuggets. Yes. What was your first impression of Jokic? Yeah.

I thought he was the best basketball player in the world. That's it? Yeah. I'll give you a funny little story. I get traded from Cleveland to Portland. At this time, I'm representing myself. I do a buyout from Portland, and I go to the Nuggets. I'm three days late for camp.

So I get there and I'm sitting at the practice. I don't practice today. Coach Malone and the Kroenke family just tell me, and Tim Conley, who's now with the Minnesota Timberwolves, said just sit and watch this one. So I watched it. And at the end of the practice, they asked me, so what'd you think? I said, I don't know who that fat, ugly kid is over there. Maybe he's your best player and it's not even close.

And is this rookie Jokic? This is Taco Bell rookie. Wow. So what did everybody miss about him, if it was obvious to you? I've never seen... I mean, obviously, listen, at that time he had flaws, right? Like his body wasn't great. If you look at his old combine stuff or hoop summit stuff, it's like, I don't jump high, I just...

But I've never seen a young kid like the ball hit his hands like the Matrix. Like shit just stops. Right. In the game's slow form. For all young kids, the game's super fast and out of control. That's why they make so many mistakes and why veteran coaches don't play them. But the ball hit his hands and everyone got better. Like if you see guys that play in that system, ultimately they get paid. Ultimately they go do certain things and then they go somewhere else. It's him. It's the Matrix effect. It's the Joker effect. What was he like as a teammate? The best.

Absolute best. Yeah. He didn't speak great English. He was broken English. But at the beginning, now it's just, but he's hilarious. And his brothers are great, too. I mean, everyone talks about it. They're the best. Yeah. And Joker can do whatever he wants because he has those big guys behind him. Yeah, great body guys. Yeah. For sure. Are you still a wild animal guy? I am. What do you own right now? I got a raccoon and a fox. You have a raccoon? Yeah.

Foxes I can see. I've heard that you can like domesticate foxes within like two generations. Right. And they'll be like your best friends. Raccoons are adorable. Did you see the meth raccoon the other day? No. It was a cop in Florida that was, they were arresting somebody. They go up to the door of the minivan, open it up, and there's a raccoon. Her pet raccoon is sitting there hitting a meth pipe in his adorable little paws. It was a,

It was the most Florida story of all time. How did you become a crazy animal guy? My wife is just as crazy as I am. So we love animals. And so whenever one gets brought into like the pet place or whatever, someone turns one in, like the raccoon was like two days old, three days old or whatever, got turned in and the

vet will call us and say we got this and of course we'll take it on with the idiots what are their names so coco is a raccoon and roxy is the fox my daughter named him so no more monkeys no more monkeys no we learned our lesson yeah the monkey that was awesome i love that pet what happened every one of my friends period what happened with the monkeys at the end they just you got yelled at by your neighbors for how i got caught up by a lot of stuff yeah riding the dogs yeah um

But at the end, yeah, so me and my wife went out, and we put Sonny up in a room. We had two Great Danes at the time. Sonny came down, let the two Great Danes in, and then opened the front door. And we're at dinner, and we got calls from the neighborhood. HOA, like, your monkey's riding your dog around the neighborhood. But at the end of it, we had our oldest son at the time, and Sonny, the monkey, was getting very, very attached to us.

And so it was the best that we gave it away at the time. Yeah. But he was literally like, honestly, and I mean this sincerely, like I had three friends living with me at the time. It was better IQ than all three of them. Yeah.

And I'll go get you a beer. What's that like raising a monkey? Because they're so smart. The great thing about raising some dogs, I like big dumb dogs. And as a great Dane guy, you know how they can be sometimes. They're easy to trick. But with a monkey, you can't trick a monkey. No, you're not tricking them at all. No. And they're...

and they're super fast and they, I mean, you can't keep up with them. Like he'd jump in the aquarium. Like he was, it was nuts. It was fun though. But yeah, like I said, they're smarter than most of my friends. It was wild. Was he actually riding the dogs? Yeah, ride the Great Dane all the time. Like sit on it, like it's unbelievable. That's incredible. I got to send video. I have video. That's so funny. What, outside of LeBron, actually outside of LeBron, Wade, Bosh, those heat teams, who is the best player you played with?

You had a lot of teammates. Joker. That's it? Joker. I think Joker. If Joker does this early, I think Joker goes down as one of the best players of all time. Yeah. If not the best. Yeah. You also played with eight other Mikes. Can you name them all? Mike Bibby. Okay, that's one. Did I play with Mike Bibby? Yeah, you played with Mike Bibby. Yeah. Mike Conley. Yep. This is where it's going to get tough. I played so many teams. Yeah. It was so bad they just kicked me out everywhere. You had two on the Wizards. Two on the Wizards? Yeah. Yeah.

These are tough names. Who is it? Mike Harris and Mike James. Oh, Mike James, yeah. Yeah. And then you had Mike Batiste. Oh, Mike Batiste. I guess it was seven because Mikel Gladness...

He's not a Mike. No, he's not. And then Michael Doliak. Oh, Michael, Big Doli. Yeah. And oh, Michael Dickerson. Michael Dickerson. You had a lot of Mikes. Michael Dickerson was good. When a Mike would come in, were you like, hey, I'm the Mike? Yeah. Yeah. Come on. What are we doing here? Come on. By the way, what are we calling this guy here? Yeah, right. It can't be Mike. I'm Mike. Yeah.

yeah you were talking about the uh the wizards being a wild time in your career what what is it about the wizards that it felt like that was a very chaotic point well that was the year that gill brought the guns in yeah oh so yeah we just had him on we had him on yeah oh i gotta watch that story yeah did he tell it did he tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth well we don't know he told what he told his truth yeah but i wasn't there so i don't know were you in the locker room yes i was okay he tells his truth what do you say what do you say

I love Gil, by the way. He said he brought in two guns and then put a tag on it that said pick one. Pick one, yeah. I think it was more than two, but pick one was definitely there. And he said that his gun was never loaded. Okay. And that Crittenden's gun might have been loaded. Yeah. And that the reason why...

Crittenden got the big punishment that he got was because Gilbert Arenas had been technically trafficking guns and weapons across the country from Arizona whenever he'd fly back. So they asked him, have you ever brought this on a team plane? And he had a bunch of guns that he was flying back to D.C. with. And in D.C., you're not allowed to have any guns. It's like it's a felony if you get caught with a handgun in D.C. So he says that he kind of had to get this big punishment because he was trafficking weapons.

That was his explanation. Your thoughts. That part I know nothing about. That's news to me there. The story of him bringing the guns in, saying pick one, 100% true. Okay. 100%. So were you sitting in the locker room when he comes in? I was literally on the taping table getting ready. Javaris walked in. They had a little beef on the airplane about cards. Don't have practice the next day. Following day, they come in.

JC comes in I said hey Javaris no matter what happens man like leave it I think it's over but leave it you know what I mean like you're not winning this one it's Gil right like it's a franchise dude right like you're not winning this one Gil walks in I think it was more than two but it's two we'll go with two today yeah he puts him on he puts it on Javaris' chair I'm looking dead at it

and writes a note that says, pick one. And I see Javaris coming out of the cold, so I say, hey man, leave that shit alone, bro. Yeah. And then it went sideways. Yeah, did you leave the... Oh yeah, exit step. Yeah, you gotta get out of there. I didn't want to see the ending of that one. That's crazy. Yeah, because I watched the Netflix, the documentary about it. Was Gilbert, like, my biggest takeaway from all of it is like, Gilbert Arenas

loved to fuck with people, and he kind of didn't know where the line was. Yeah, yeah. He was definitely a line stepper. Yeah. For sure. And if you know who he is, you laugh about it, but that's a little bit over the line, right? Right, yeah. Especially when you're telling a guy to pick one. Right. I think Javaris said something like, yo, I don't need one. I got my own. Right. That's what it said, and that's where I left. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, yeah. He liked to play with people. Gil was an awesome teammate. Yeah. But yeah, he...

you like to push it yes and you know you got on your nerves it's like yeah i got you bro yeah i heard that deshaun stevenson had an atm in his house he did so that when people would come over to party for various reasons why you might need an atm what do you think i need it for yeah he had an atm in his house what was the what was the service charge on that i'm sure it's quite a bit but i i never i never i was never invited those ones i don't know i would imagine it was like 20

$20 service charge. It makes sense, wouldn't it? Make money any way you can, yeah. How were you at cards on the plane? I didn't play cards. You didn't? No. You never got into any of the games? I watched those guys play Boo-Ray all the time, but I didn't play. Why not? It's fun. You know what? I just never did. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. But I used to tell all the young kids that they're like, yo, who doesn't fit at that table? Yeah. I used to give Mario Chalmers, I used to wear him out, bro. I'm like-

You got Bron D. Wade, Juwan Howard, who's played 864 years, Ray Allen, and you as a second-year guy in the league. Yeah. Juwan's nickname was really like 17. He was a 17-year in the league and made hundreds and hundreds. And you got you, Rio, playing boo. And you're getting booed all the time. Like, I'll never forget it. Rashard Lewis, who made...

billion dollars too man was awesome like literally picked up a check from Rio and went and bought a truck from him and drove by Rio the next day and was like yo thanks for the whip that's amazing yeah some serious stuff that's incredible so getting into the league as a rookie I'm sure you can provide some insight to the players that you represent too now yeah

Like the transition between being a college star and then what you expect when you get into the league. Were you nervous before your first game? Were you wondering if you could fit in there? Yeah, I mean, you're always like, listen, every time when you go from high school to college, whatever it is, whenever you're leveling up on anything, like there's that anticipation of, yes, I know I put the time and the effort and the work in, but now how is it going to carry over? Because you've seen this on TV and you've seen all these guys and when I stepped on the floor, you know, it's a little bit different now, but it's obviously still the same, but

The league was old, man. Like, my teammates were like Pat Ewan and Sean Kemp and, you know what I mean? Like, guys that are, like, now you're getting four rookies every year. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, so you've, I've seen these guys since I was 13, 12, 11, you know, nine years old on TV. You know what I mean? So you're like, you're stepping out like, oh shit, this is real. Right.

You know what I mean? And so you're always that anxiety, that nervousness. You know you've put the work in, but now I've got to go show it on this stage. And it's definitely an unbelievable feeling, but there's some nerve-wracking shit to it for sure. What's the best game you ever played? Just because of the outcome. It's the 7-3s and where I was at in Game 6 against OKC. Yeah. Just because of where I was at mentally and physically at that point. Yeah.

I mean, just playing in the games, probably 45 against Golden State, if you're looking at those. Ooh, that probably felt good. Yeah. But, you know, just...

The stage and what I was able to do on the NBA Finals was... It just takes a cake. It just has to. Yeah, especially winning the Finals. You don't want to be someone who wasn't participating. And then you have that game where you go... You went 7 for 8, right? Which one did you miss? Was it the middle? No, yeah. I missed one in the second half, which I shouldn't have missed. I had...

I had plenty of time to make it. I don't know why I missed it, but missed it. That's got to be such an awesome feeling. Did you tell everyone in the huddle, like, hey, just keep – like, I got this? No. No? No, I was just thankful to be out there because my back was so jacked up at that time I didn't even – you know, I was just happy to be a part of the game, really, to be honest with you. Yeah. What's it like being in the zone? The best. It's the greatest feeling ever. Like, I had a stretch, I think. I don't know if it's what it was, but I had like three or four games in a row. I made nine threes at each game.

And she hit that rhythm going. It's like anything else, man. Anytime you shoot it, you think it's going in. Do you just keep the same routine day to day? Every time. It's like whatever I'm doing right now, I'm not going to change. I'm doing the same thing. Everything. To what I ate, to what I showed up in. I can't shower. Exactly. I got good sweat on me right now. Definitely.

That's got to be an incredible feeling. You're right. Yeah. Have you ever shown up at like a men's run, like a pickup game, and not said, hey, I'm Mike, and just kind of blended in for a little bit and then got out there and just punished everybody? No, but I'm about to because I'm getting to that age now where Lifetime Fitness got my name on it. Like I go get some runs in. That would be the best feeling ever. Yeah. How about you tell me here, what days are we running here? Fridays. Every Friday? Yeah. That would be fun. I mean, it wouldn't be fun for us. Are we live streaming? Are we live streaming? We can. We can.

Mike Miller kicks our ass? I'd be in your shirt. I'd be in your chest like bronchitis. You would get fouled hard and you'd just be like, I'm not doing this anymore. I do not want to be a part of this. You said you can't do it anymore, but the Memphis video, you were cooking those guys. What level of college basketball could you still take everyone on the team?

Or conference. I mean, if you're putting me in a mid-major situation, we're going to have to have some ground rules, right? It's going to have to be like three dribble. I'm not going to be chasing these dudes around now. Right. If you do three dribble, make it, take it type stuff, I feel good. I feel good about most levels. Just like the athlete side gets me a little nervous because they know I'm going to play off my jumper a lot now. Yeah, right. Is there anybody in the game right now that reminds you of you? Good question.

Good question. Steph Curry. No, Steph was so fucking good. Gosh, damn. I don't know.

They don't make them like you anymore. Yeah, that's a fact. Jack Golke. Remember Golke? What a story that was, huh? Yeah. He was the man. He is the man. Where's he at now? I think he was playing in the Detroit G League, I want to say. He came into the office and hung out with us after that. Really? Yeah, yeah. He watched some games the Sweet 16 weekend after they got bounced. Yeah, I mean, we just...

We basically just sit around and watch you guys play basketball all the time. It's pretty fun. It's a pretty good life. All right. I got one last question. It's a rowback question. R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com. Promo code TAKE. 20% off your first purchase. Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Rowback.com. Promo code TAKE. So we started. We were talking about Lyft, you being an agent, basketball, media, everything. Is there anyone on your team that you want to shout out? Anyone who played at Providence or anything?

oh yeah um did he play there yeah he did play there how many years uh four all four did he score at all or no yeah he was scorer yeah he tells me all these stories i gotta see footage yeah we're talking about donnie mcgrath he didn't score in the tbt final when we needed him to let's let's talk about that though okay you know like we always give him his flowers and donnie thinks he's a big guy right now like yeah it is what it is but

Hey, did you see Donnie partying with Team USA after Paris? Yeah, that was awesome. It was like Tatum, LeBron, all these guys coming out of the club, and then it's Donnie McGrath. The guy absolutely shows up everywhere but the second half of the TBT Championship. Yeah, that's a fact. We were counting our money. It was a problem. We were counting our money. I would have loved to see that, but y'all smoked it. Oh, man, it was bad. It was bad. I don't want to point fingers. I don't think Donnie had his best night shooting.

Andre Barrett did get his pocket pick like five times in a row. Um, Josh Boone didn't feel like he really wanted to be there. It was a bad scene. It was a bad scene. How,

How much would you all have won? I think the players would have won. Well, technically I was a player. I think it was like 50 grand each, and then maybe Dave and I were going to win 25 grand each, and we were going to spend it all on the club that night. Dave had it all set up. That should have been motivation enough for Earl McGrath. He thrives in those situations. It should have been there, yeah. And it was a bad scene. Yeah, we choked. Did you get any points?

I did not get any... I scored in the tournament. That's good. I scored, I think, four points in the tournament. Okay. That was in a blowout game in the second round. They put us in. But yeah, I did not get any minutes in the final game when that much money was at stake. Yeah. All right. So seriously, though, on the agency thing, what's the next step? Are you just...

What's the process of getting guys into your – how are you differentiating? How are you like, hey, like Palo was probably a huge step for you guys. Yeah, massive, massive. Yeah, so like what's – how do you convince someone like you're the person that they should be entrusting? Well, I think at the end of the day, you just do it through track record, right? You know, the fact that I played 17 years and lived through it. When we first started Lyft, it was about building something that –

be like these other agencies but be basketball-led and be different like that, right? That they can't be like us but we can be like them and we continue to do that. So we continue to build infrastructure and invest in our infrastructure, build out people, build like a basketball team, star in your roles, between marketing, servicing, all those things but be basketball-led because at the end of the day, how good you are at basketball makes everyone else's job easier, right? So the way we differentiate ourselves is that. We're basketball-driven and so we do it through our track record. Obviously, Paolo's

has a lot of credit for starting this for us because getting him going number one and now seeing where he's at and being able to do his contracts. So you start seeing that we're capable of these things and seeing what we do and how we service them. But for us, it's us continuing to build this thing and be a big player in this game. Yeah, all right.

That's awesome. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. Well, Mike, thank you so much. Appreciate you guys. We're big fans. Yeah. And anytime you're in the city and need a court or you need us to gas up one of your players. Yeah. Only one favor I have is I need my part of my take South Dakota's Best Athlete Award. We will make a plaque. Thank you. Max is going to make a plaque. Yeah. We will put a plaque in this studio. I appreciate that. It means a lot to me. Like the Mike Miller corner. But just so you know.

If there is like if someone awesome comes out of South Dakota, it is. Yeah, it's up for it's up. It's 100 percent. It's not a lifetime. We'll vote on every year. Just make sure. All right. Still, Mike. OK, cool. Appreciate you guys. Thanks. Mike Miller was brought to you by our good friends over at Chevy. For over a century, Chevy has been building trucks that don't flinch and they never quit.

If you're hauling lumber on the job or trying to get the smoker, the cooler, the cornhole boards, and the whole crew to the tailgate on time, Chevy gets you there. When Chevy says most dependable truck, they're not just speculating. Chevy trucks have earned more dependability awards for trucks than any other brand according to J.D. Power 2025.

Sounds like they've got the stats to prove it. You can draft yours at chevy.com. In every truck, dependability comes standard. For more on Chevy trucks, visit chevy.com and visit jdpower.com slash awards for more award details. And now here's our very good friend, Randy Moss. And now for something completely different.

Okay, we now welcome on one of our favorite guests, very, very, very special guest. It is Randy Moss ahead of the Preakness this weekend. And unfortunately, it's a bummer of a Preakness, and we want to start with that, Randy. Sovereignty, who won the Kentucky Derby, incredible race, will not be racing at Pimlico on Saturday. Okay.

Like this sucks for horse racing, Randy. And I don't know if you have a spin on it or what exactly happened, but this sucks. How did this happen? Why did this happen? And how can we stop this from happening? Well, you and I have talked about this before in the past. The horse is fine. The horse is actually in great shape.

But trainer Bill Mott, the owner's dolphin, don't want to run the horse back in two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, which is the ultimate stress test for racehorses, they feel like.

That the horse needs more time to recuperate for safety reasons, for the horse's health and well-being, and also for performance reasons because they think the horse will run better with more time in between races. It's a very familiar mantra right now.

If the trainer were Todd Pletcher, we'd be seeing the same thing, in my opinion. If it were Brad Cox, we'd be saying the same thing. It's going to happen more and more frequently in the future until such time as the Triple Crown races happen.

become further apart on the calendar. So do you think that that's the primary factor? Or do you think that the financial implications have something to do with it where it's like your horse won the Kentucky Derby? That's, that's a massive, massive thing for, you know, breeding into the future. Is there just downside now to running again, maybe not performing as well, and just trying to maximize the value of the racehorse?

It's totally the calendar, totally the calendar. But I mean, they're going to run him in the Belmont Stakes. And after the Belmont Stakes, they'll probably point him for the Travers. And after the Travers, they'll get another race and point him for the Breeders' Cup Classic. You know, so he'll run more, you know, more this year as a three-year-old. Yes, his value has improved after the Kentucky Derby. But the Preakness is a classic. The Preakness is an American tradition in the sport. There is plenty of value to a horse today.

in winning the Preakness States, even a horse that just won the Kentucky Derby. But they think it is counterproductive to bring him back in just two weeks. Look, back in the heyday of the Triple Crown, okay, in the 40s, 50s, 60s, there was no problem running these horses back in two weeks.

As a matter of fact, there were a couple of Preakness winners, 1959 and 1960. They finished second in the Kentucky Derby. Then they come back two weeks later and they win the Preakness with a race in between, with a race on Monday of Preakness week called the Preakness Prep.

So back then, it was normal, for example, for horses, the one, two, three finishers in the Kentucky Derby to all come back and run in the Preakness. Sometimes one, two, three, four, five in the Derby would all come back and run in the Preakness. Now you almost never see that. And it's really cheapened the

the triple crown as a whole, uh, because that's the way horses are trained nowadays. And it's, and that's why the schedule needs to be adjusted. And I think it will not immediately, not next year, but maybe two or three years down the line. I think that's probably what you're going to see. So, so this isn't new to, uh, the rest of sports. This is something that we complain about all the time, whether it be NBA load management, whether it be, uh,

Major League Baseball pitchers only pitching six innings and getting pulled earlier than they used to and not going over 100 pitches. So you think the solution and what will happen is the calendar will change, not potentially a – like the NBA, for example, where they made it, hey, you have to play this many games to be eligible for the postseason awards.

Is there any chance they're like, hey, if you run the Kentucky Derby, you have to, unless there's an injury, you have to run the Preakness if you win the Kentucky Derby? Or is that kind of like, hey, that's going to open up a can of worms of health of the horse. It's going to be the calendar changing instead. Yeah, that's going to open up a can of worms. What you're referring to, like the load management thing and the baseball thing,

innings pitched and things like that you know that that's the performance issue and there's part of that going on in thoroughbred racing right uh todd pletcher for example one of the best trainers in the business um he runs horses back nowadays on two weeks rest or less four tenths of one percent of the time and the reason why

It's health of the horse, but also he has a 21% win percentage overall when he runs horses back in two weeks or less, 5%. Same thing with Bill Mott, almost exactly the same statistics with Bill Mott, the trainer of sovereignty.

But it's primarily it's it's the problem here is it's it's performance based. It's also horse safety because they've done plenty of studies that show that horses are less inclined to become injured with more time in between races to recuperate. And let's face it, the Kentucky Derby is the ultimate stress test race.

in horse racing for three-year-olds. But, you know, it's the health of the Triple Crown as a whole, really, is the bottom line. This sport is not what it used to be. Everybody knows that. But it still has the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown is still a huge event. It's by far the most important thing horse racing has, the Triple Crown and the Breeders' Cup. And it's been cheapen because all the good horses that run in the Derby that used to come back and run in the Preakness...

Doesn't really happen nearly as often anymore. And now you're seeing the Derby winners start to skip the prequels. Something's got to be done. Yeah, and it really is like I love horse racing. And I understand the dilemma here because you don't want to have breakdowns and horses get injured because that is bad for the sport. But the Triple Crown means something. And it's supposed to be really hard.

And that's kind of why it's special if you get a horse winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and then the Belmont becomes a huge, huge event. It's kind of like last year when we talked about Flightline, one of my favorite horses I've ever seen run, and I got to see Flightline in person. Flightline was incredible, ran what, five races, six races, and then was studded. Like, that's the best athletes in this sport ever.

Don't run enough. So it stinks. Yeah. I mean, you love horse racing. There's nothing bigger in sports in general than rivalries.

OK, and we used to see when the horse, when the same horses that ran one, two, three in the derby come back and run in the Preakness and then come back sometimes and run in the Belmont. You get these rivalries like Affirmed and Aladar and Easy Goer and Sunday Silence and Ali Sheba and Bet Twice. And it really captures the public's imagination to see these horses run against each other throughout the Triple Crown, which is what the Triple Crown is supposed to be all about.

Now, in 2025, 2026, if affirmed in Aladar run one, two in the Kentucky Derby, Aladar skips the Preakness and waits for the Belmont. Easy goer skips the Preakness and waits for the Belmont. Bet twice, same thing. You lose the rivalry aspect of it, which is one of the things that has made the Triple Crown so great historically. Has anybody checked with the horses to see if they want to run?

Is this like a bad week? That's a great question. You think that maybe sovereignty is like, hey, I want to get out there and compete. That's the mark of a champion. Do some horses get uneasy if they don't race? It would be really nice if horses could talk and tell us that. They try to with the way they act and all that, which is part of the reason why trainers don't like to run them back in two weeks. They think that the horses –

uh after such a race like the kentucky derby you know they try to but they think they're what they're seeing in the horse the horse is trying to tell them that they run better that they like it better when they're given a little extra time in between races to bounce back there was there was there was a report out there that maybe sovereignty got fat and that he got complacent and that's why he didn't want to race in this have you heard anything about that like is he too fat for the preakness

He started reading his press clippings, huh? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I don't need to run back in two weeks. There are some horses here. Journalism finished second in Kentucky Derby. Sandman was the second choice. They were the top two favorites in the Derby. They're both coming back in the preseason. This is – you can't see him now. That's Sandman's stall. I think he's out maybe –

walking around here sandman is a beautiful horse yeah sandman is a beautiful horse yeah do you think by the way the kentucky derby hang on a second oh yeah you got it we got this one i just got waved in oh let's go there he is that see that's a great looking horse that is a great horse thick look at that is sturdy that is a that is a great great can you boop a horse do you ever boop horses

Not me. Okay. All right. Stall 26. There you go. All right. Good luck, Sandman. Sandman. Sandman, I'm going to bet on you. Don't court, Sandman. This is called a jolly ball.

Oh, what do they do? Horses get bored sometimes, and they like a little activity, you know? They'll bounce around that jolly ball a little bit and have fun. Yeah, the horses are like the ultimate dudes. If I had a tennis ball right now and I started tossing myself, eventually PFT would be like, yo, throw that to me. Yeah, just toss it against the wall for a little bit, make up a game with it. Thank you, by the way. I love it. Last question about the Kentucky Derby, and then we want to talk picks for this weekend. Okay.

I know this doesn't count for anything, but I did bet Baeza in the Kentucky Derby. Do you think if the Kentucky Derby was, let's say, 100 yards longer, Baeza would have won? I think he would have run second. Okay. All right. That doesn't help. I've been convincing myself that. I'm like, I made the right pick. He just ran out of time. He also kind of ran sideways at the end.

You know, the great thing about the Kentucky Derby this year is that despite the racetrack, despite the sloppy track and all the rain and all that, it was an incredibly formful race and easy to predict. I mean, we talked about it. I thought journalism, Baeza, sovereignty, maybe Sandman fourth, maybe Final Gambit is a big long shot. I think we talked about that. It was really predictable exactly what was going to happen. And wouldn't it be nice to see the top three all back here

With Baeza as well to run in the Preakness, but it's a pretty good race despite that. Yeah, it would be. You did win us money. And you did a great job on the broadcast as well. Is Mike Tirico okay? Oh, thank you. I was upset that he had to leave. I'm sure it was probably for some good reason, if he was sick or whatever. Is he doing okay now?

He's doing very well. I just saw him about five minutes ago. He suffers from, like a lot of people, from a pretty significant nut allergy. And he ate something, he doesn't even know what, about a half hour just snacking, about a half hour before he was scheduled to come on at 2.30 p.m., and he began having a pretty serious allergic reaction. I could tell as soon as he sat down next to me. Right.

that something was off, something was wrong. He's normally real, you know, outgoing and ebullient and, and, you know, positive and let's go, let's go. And he was like very serious. Like he was upset. And then you could tell as he's, as he got into the first couple of segments that he was,

really, really struggling. And that's a scary thing if you've known anybody that has a nut allergy. Yeah. You don't know which direction it's going to go. It can be pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Keep your nuts away from Mike Tirico. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the races. Let's talk about Friday, which you can watch Randy on Friday, the Black Eyed Susan. Do you have any, besides the Black Eyed Susan, do you have any picks on Friday or races that you're looking forward to? And then also, what do you have for the Black Eyed Susan?

Nothing on the Friday undercard that I really like that much. Black Eyed Susan.

There's a horse in there called Margie's Intention. It's not, honestly, it's not a really good black-eyed Susan. In fact, it's one of the worst black-eyed Susans that I've seen in a long time in terms of quality because, again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but the Kentucky Oaks horses, the horsemen don't want to come back and run in two weeks. So it's a pretty weak field, but Margie's Intention, trained by Brad Cox, 3-1, 7-2, something like that, I think.

And to me, she looks like she's kind of solidly the best horse on paper in there. Okay. All right, good. And anything else on Saturday? Yeah, there's a couple of horses on Saturday, if you guys have any money left after I busted you at the Kentucky Derby. Well, you hit one of the oaks, right? Yeah, no, and you did kind of predict, like, if you do an exotic in the Kentucky Derby, you had the horses. Yeah.

I was okay with the Kentucky Derby. It's just the undercard races that I'm going to, I'm going to blame the, the off racetrack and the soft turf. How about that? That's fair. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. It's probably not, it's probably not accurate, but at least it's fair. So we're going to get a ton of rain, as you guys pointed out, um,

or maybe that was before we started. Uh, the, the forecast is terrible, uh, for the rest of the week. Maybe Saturday might be okay, but the turf course is going to be really soft and the racetrack is probably going to be muddy. Uh,

And there's a horse in the Gallerette by the name of Three Havannas. The Gallerette, I think, is the first race we do on, I think it's USA or maybe it's CNBC, when we come on the air on Saturday. I think it's the seventh race on the card. Phillies and mares on the turf. It'll be soft turf. There's a Philly Three Havannas who comes from Germany. She's never run in the U.S. before.

And in Europe, they run horses on soft turf a lot more regularly than they do in the United States. And they typically have an edge coming over here on soft turf. So I think three Havanas is a pretty good play. And then there's a horse in the race right before that.

the Preakness. It's a race called the Dinner Party. It used to be called the Dixie until political correctness caused Pimlico to change the name of the race. So the Dinner Party, there's a horse in the race named Neat. Just one word, Neat. And he is a pretty neat horse, but he had a horrible ride in his last start. They changed jockeys. He's a pretty nice horse anyway. He only got beat two lengths despite the horrible ride. He's 8-1 in the program.

And they, you know, it's not a super tough field. And so I think Neitz a pretty good play at that price. Okay. And then the Preakness. The Preakness, look, journalism is the horse to beat. No doubt about it, right? If all things being equal, journalism is the fastest horse in the race. He ran a really good race in the Kentucky Derby. He just got outrun by sovereignty. He was a strong second.

But all things aren't equal because journalism has had two or three really tough races in a row now, including the Derby, which was a really tough race. And he comes back in just two weeks. Usually in those situations, the horses might still run well, but probably usually not quite as well.

as they did in the Kentucky Derby. And there's another horse in the race called Clever Again, trained by Steve Asmussen, who might be the third favorite, maybe the fourth favorite. Who knows?

But he's got speed. He's coming off a really strong race. He's had plenty of rest. He didn't run in the Kentucky Derby. And, you know, he might be a good play, I think, to take a shot against journalism on the theory that even though journalism is the best horse, that he might not perform quite as well in the Preakness as he did in the Derby. Okay. So journalism and clever again. Those would be your two picks. Yeah.

Yes. All right. Anybody else that we should sprinkle in if we're looking at a trifecta? Well, let's see. There's a horse called River Thames trained by Todd Pletcher who did not run in the Kentucky Derby simply because they wanted to wait and save him.

for the Preak mistakes. He's not really a mile-and-a-quarter type horse. He was only beaten three-quarters of a length by Sovereignty when he ran in the Fountain of Youth a couple of races back. So he's a pretty nice horse. And there's a horse that you, as a long shot, you might want to throw into your exactors and your supers. His name is Heart of Honor. He came from England by way of the UAE Derby.

He's the kind of horse that he's probably not good enough to run first or second, but he's going to come from behind. He's going to be finishing decently, and that's oftentimes the recipe for a long shot to kind of sneak up into the top three or four at the end as some of the speed horses start to fade out. Okay, so despite the fact that Sandman is a beautiful horse, as we've just seen, you're not putting him in anything?

I'm not really high on Sandman just because I didn't like his Kentucky Derby, really. He was right next to Sovereignty when they ran into the second turn. Everything looked like it was perfect for him. And then Sovereignty just left him behind. I mean, he was probably side-by-side with Sovereignty going into the turn and maybe seven lengths behind him when they turned for home. Counterpoint, though, he looks locked in.

He looks locked in right now. He's facing the corner. Remember when Michael Phelps raced in the Olympics when they saw him and he was just dialed in next to the pool before he went out? That's what Sandman reminds me of right now. Just all business. Let's take one more look at him there. There he is. Oh, he's playing with the ball. Hey, Sandman. Sandman, you locked in, buddy? He's locked in. That horse is dialed.

His ears just moved when he asked him that question. That's a good sign. He's locked in. I have a dumb question, Randy. When they travel with the horses from Louisville to Baltimore for the Preakness, you know, when I do a road trip, I stop, I get snacks.

Get some pretzels, get some candy. Do they do any special snacks for the horses when they like take a, you know, like if the whoever's driving the car has to take out, take a piss. Do they like, hey, horse, here's a special snack for the road trip combos? I don't know.

Yeah, that's a good question. I know they have a hay rack for the horses to munch on and all that while they're on the road, while they're in the van. And they got plenty of water to drink to keep from being dehydrated and all that. And if they do have to stop and take a piss or maybe go through the McDonald's drive-thru window or something like that, I'm sure they go back there and check on the horse. That's really for longer van trips than

than just Louisville to Baltimore. But, yeah, I mean, there have been plenty of situations where, you know, they've had to pull over and go to find a parking lot somewhere and take a break and check on the horse and everything. Yeah, pretty interesting. When we're talking about the German and the Japanese horses, do they ever fly? Has anybody ever flown a horse? Is that even possible? Fly horses? Yeah. Yeah, they do it all the time. They fly the horse? I just assume that you put them on a boat.

Yeah, no, no, no. They have they there's there's airlines that were dedicated strictly to flying racehorses around the world and around the country. Now they FedEx the horses. Seriously, they FedEx horses. There used to be a company called Flying Tiger.

that specialized in transporting livestock, animals, zoo animals, back and forth, racehorses, you name it, circus animals.

And FedEx bought Flying Tiger, and now FedEx is in the business of occasionally transporting animals. And when they ship a horse from California to the Kentucky Derby, they often FedEx them. Do you know if the horses have a window that they can look out of? Because I imagine that would be very confusing. Horses do not have a window. They hollow out the entire, obviously, inside. They put stalls in there. You can actually fly...

up to, I think, 15 horses maybe on a plane. That's a party. That's incredible, yeah. And they have handlers in there with them, back flying with the horses to watch them and take care of them and calm them down if there's any turbulence and make sure that the horses are okay. The stalls are very small, so they can't be knocked around if there's any turbulence or anything. But horses generally handle that air travel well.

Uh, very, very well. You'd be surprised. Wow. Has a horse ever been put on a no fly list? If they acted up on the play, like they get nervous when they're flying. Yeah. Horses from the middle East. Maybe you put on the no fly. No fly. Yeah. Um, all right, Randy, I got one last question for you. It's a robot 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. I've done a terrible job in the nine years that we've known you. I've not introduced you correctly.

Really? Well, you're a Hall of Famer. You're in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame. So I have a couple questions. You are, right? No, I'm not in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame. All right, well, I saw an interview that someone did, and they called you a Hall of Famer. You should be. All right, fine. You should be in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame. What do we have to do to get you in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame? And then once you're in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame, what is it like? Instead of a gold jacket, is it like a golden saddle? How does it work?

The Horse Racing Hall of Fame is in Saratoga Springs. It's almost right across the street from Saratoga Racecourse. Fantastic place if you ever want to visit. And I think they do have a wing, like a media wing, right? I think of it as Joe Hirsch Media, Roll of Honor or something like that. And some people that I know really well that deserve to be in the Hall of Fame are in that particular wing of the Hall of Fame. I don't know if that's ever something that I'll be in, but...

Yeah, it would be kind of cool, I guess. You need to be in. Yeah, see, I looked up, like, you know, whenever we have a guest on, I'll just see, like, if there's any recent stories. And you did a Baltimore Positive podcast a day ago, or it might have been today, or it might have been earlier this morning, and the host introduced you. It says, Moss, a horse racing Hall of Famer reflects on his 40 years at Pimlico. So now it's on the internet. Now you're in the Hall of Fame.

If I heard that, I would have corrected it. It must have been Nestor. Yeah. Yeah. Nestor Eprito. So you're in – so I think we're just going to say you're in the horse race. You're in our horse racing hall of fame. Oh. And I didn't even bring my recurring guest shirt. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Yeah.

I'm thinking that what happened was they got a mix up and when they were doing their research on you, they looked up the other Randy Moss and then they saw Hall of Fame in like just a headline didn't click on the article. They're like, oh, Randy's in the Hall of Fame. You are in our Hall of Fame. We're going to do a plaque because actually so this episode on Friday, we also had Mike Miller who won two NBA titles on the show.

and we were talking to him about how he's the best athlete from South Dakota. We said we put up a plaque in the studio that says, Mike Miller, best athlete from South Dakota. Next to that plaque is going to say, Randy Moss, horse racing hall of fame. We're going to have a whole little corner of the studio. Okay.

Send me a picture of that plaque when you get it up there, will you? Okay, perfect. So it says it was established in 2010 to recognize individuals whose careers have been dedicated to or substantially involved in writing about thoroughbred racing, nonfiction, and who distinguish themselves as journalists. That's you. You were writing about this stuff when you were 12 years old, Randy. Yeah. I was. Who do we contact? Who can we contact? We need to start...

Like, I want to get a vote. Let's get a vote. I'm trying to see. I'm looking at the criteria for the Joe Hirsch, the media honor roll. I'm going to Saratoga later this summer. I'm going to go to the Horse Racing Hall of Fame, and I'm going to drop off a packet of being like, this is the guy. How have we not done this? I will not rest. It's a great injustice. Yeah. We were talking about Pete Rose the other day finally being allowed in. Like, Randy Moss—

it's not a legitimate hall of fame if Randy Moss is in it. Well, it's certainly not a legitimate hall of fame if Pete Rose is not in it. Absolutely there. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was,

That was a giant injustice. We're going to find out, and we're going to have the AWLs just spam the Horse Racing Hall of Fame and be like, let Randy in. Actually, Pete Rose should also be in the Horse Racing Hall of Fame. Yes. Yeah, I agree. You're right. He probably contributed more to the sport than a lot of guys. Yeah, maybe get you guys both in there together. What a class that would be. I actually hung out with him at a racetrack one time. The guy knew how to play the horses. That's for damn sure. Yeah, yeah.

All right, well, Randy, thank you as always. You're the best. And hopefully we'll talk to you in a couple weeks when we have sovereignty back in action for the Belmont. All right, guys. Take care. Good talking to you as always. Randy Moss is brought to you by Part of My Cheesesteak. We're in for a great sports week with the NHL playoffs, the NBA playoffs, and full slates of baseball.

and ordering part of my cheesesteak for your game day meal or late night eats is the best play call you can make. Part of my cheesesteak offers a wide variety of cheesesteaks, loaded fries, and popular desserts, all delivered right to your door so you don't have to miss any of the action on your couch.

Pick your favorite cheesesteak made with thin sliced steak, melted provolone, mouthwatering cheese sauce, and caramelized onions on a toasted hoagie roll. Or you can order the popular Big Cat Combo with your choice of cheesesteak, fries, and a drink. Go to partofmycheesesteak.com to order with the code PMC20 for 20% off. Okay, let's wrap up. We've got Fire Fest of the Week. Hank? Yeah. Not much. Great week. What? Mm-hmm.

No, Hank's right. Yeah, PFT, you know. No, you're dominating. You will your team to a Game 5 win. You're dominating life. It feels good. At home. Especially when some haters say that you can't do it. Yeah, there's nothing better. We're in the same spot. My really only Fyre Fest was I was in Boston at the game. I missed our softball game, and I just missed being with the boys. But we won, so all good. Put softball aside for a second. Jason Tatum's not a Fyre Fest? No.

Yeah, that's true. Am I going crazy right now? No, this is what I'm saying about Hank. He's like, yeah, I had a great week. I guess, yeah, I forgot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what it is? It's because Hank's had so much. He's been spoiled with success in the past so much. I'm not worried about the offseason. You're used to having every delusional thing that you think in your wildest dreams about your sports teams actually coming true.

So whenever something good happens, you're like, yeah, I'm back. He won one game and he was like, yeah, Jason Tatum's not even injured anymore. Yeah. It's basically the, the Patriots dynasty all over. You guys know it's, it's, it's, it's procrastination. It's denial. It's like, I'm not, I said, it's like, I am so locked in on this series until it's over because everything that comes with the off season is sadness. And yeah, it was two days of, of just sad, sad thoughts. Uh,

Again, those problems are being pushed indefinitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you did miss a really good softball game and a great vibes night. You guys keep saying that in a kind of condescending way, and that's all right. It was an all-time vibes night. You're kind of the Jason Tatum of our team. Big Cat came to post beers. I came to post beers. I know. I saw that. That's awesome. I'm happy. I'm happy for the pugs. I'm happy for the team. I got hit on, and my wife didn't believe me.

I find it interesting that the softball recap is like 10 times longer this week than it was last week. That's just interesting. I wasn't at the game. Neither was Hank. Wasn't at the game this week. We talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just interesting. I wouldn't be talking about it for one minute. It was just we've only gone for like 45 seconds. It was just an interesting point. Just a data point. Okay. Okay. Just a data point.

How was your softball game? You played, right? You showed up for the team. No, the hammy hurts. Yeah. Oh, why wouldn't you talk about your game? I was told load management. Your recap is a lot shorter this week than last week. 23-2, we won. It's okay. But you weren't there. I wasn't there, but that's all right. It's hard to recap. I want my boys to win even when I'm not there. Yeah. Same with Hank. Yeah. Yeah. I want them to win so bad. The worst part of my week was just not being there with the boys because apparently it was so much fun.

But it would have been just as fun if I was there, right? Obviously. They're all scared of you. What does that mean? They said that to me. They're like, Hank scares us. He's our boss. I was like, he is. You should be scared of Hank. Yeah, you should be scared of Hank. All right, your Firefest PFT? Well, it's just going to be that. I will say last week someone said, Big Cat's out here. We can drink beers. I don't know. It wasn't me. Who said that? I'm going to guess Max. No, Max wasn't there. Who said that?

I know. I'm not going to say. You can drink beers at softball. You can't be wasted at softball because then it's just not fun to just make errors. I agree. I fully agree. Having a beer or two, that does loosen you up. That's all good. It also might have been our manager, so it even really doesn't matter. Ah, got it. Pug? No, Quigs. Quigs is taking his coach.

Quiggs is the MVP of our team. Also, Quiggs brought a TV to the game. I didn't even know that existed. That's sick. It was a portable TV. I'd never seen that. Respect. So awesome. What's your Fire Fest? It was going to be that the Commanders have a bunch of primetime games and a bunch of standalone games, which sucks, and I'm not super pumped about, but already talked about that. So I think my Fire Fest is just going to be that...

There's a lot of talk about the NFL doing something to us that they should absolutely not do. And I'm worried that it's going to gain momentum. It's Mike Greenberg's dumb rules. Greeny yesterday, he had just seen the NBA draft lottery and he was like, the NFL should do this. It would be an event. You could make a lot of money off it, Goodell. I don't think it's a good idea, but I do think that Goodell hears the words like,

national television event that we don't have and he thinks about it because he's very good at making money for the league, it would be terrible for the NFL. It would be terrible. So what's the rule they're saying? To implement a draft lottery for the NFL. Number one, it's harder to tank in the NFL because they don't have guaranteed contracts. So at the end of the season, if you're playing backups, they're playing as hard as they possibly can to try to get another contract or get paid next year. So it's less likely that a team actually is able to tank effectively and

And number two, it would suck for the teams that are actually terrible that don't have a quarterback. What would happen would be they would get screwed out of getting the number one pick, and then they would have to trade a shitload of their picks to move up to number one to get a quarterback. And then that quarterback would stink because you don't have any weapons for your quarterback because you trade away all your picks to get them. Yeah. It's a bad idea. Greeny. Stupid. Bad idea. The tanking doesn't happen in the NFL. It doesn't. Once in a while, like the Browns at the end of last year,

Where they just... It's like a week 17, 18 problem at all. Yeah. It's not more than that. Remember the Giants won a game late in the season, right? DiNucci. Or not DiNucci, DeVito. Was DeVito last year? No, DeVito was two years ago. What was the game they won? Drew Locke. Yeah. Who'd they beat? Was it the Titans?

It was the Colts. Yeah, that's right. The Colts game. Yeah. In New York. Yeah. And that fucked them up. And Giants fans were pissed, but they're still trying. It's basically impossible to put on a full tank in the NFL. Yeah. It's very tough to pull up. But Greeny's a wild boy for this one. Greeny, just slow down. Dumb rule. Slow your roll, Greeny. Nobody wants this in the NFL. No, absolutely not. All right. My fire fest is I just have sphere withdrawal. I just wish I was back there.

I'm like... Did you say severe? Sphere. Sphere. What if we build one here? I would like that. I'm like the Avatar people who saw it and then got depressed because they weren't like the blue creatures. When I leave the sphere, it takes me a while to readjust. Like nothing...

The flowers don't smell as sweet. Conversations are boring to me. I just want to be tripping my balls off in a concert in the sphere. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that chemically the dopamine has been sucked from your brain from the mushrooms? No. Okay. No, no, no. It's severe sphere. It's the sphere. I just need the sphere. I need to be back. If I could live in it, I would. Unfortunately, I can't. Maybe someday. Maybe build one here. Maybe sphere.

A minisphere would rock. A personal sphere would rock. If we moved this show to San Diego, you'd be so close to the sphere. Hank? I don't know where that came from, but I like it. I like it a lot. I like where your head's at, Max. That's a great point. You didn't answer that. It wasn't a question. How much did the sphere cost? No, it was a great point. You didn't comment on it. I don't need to comment on every great point. But it was a great point. You can admit that. No, I'm repeating you right now. It was a point. A great one. It was a point. A valid...

Wise point. It was only $2.3 billion. Oh, dude. That's like 2.3 million to 100 X downsize. Imagine if imagine 2. Yeah, it's a thousand X. That was a good correction. So $2.3 billion is 4.6 billion. No Canadian dollars. No, no, no, no.

I'm trying to do the math of how many cavalanches that is. I can't do the math. Let's see. $1 billion would equal... 2,000. 2,000 cavalanches. Is that right? Is it? 500K times 2,000. I think we're in a world of hurt right now with our math. I don't know. The answer is I don't know. 500K times... 1E9. Yeah, that's 1...

A million is... No, one billion is... It's a thousand million. So it would be 4,000 Cavalanches? No, it's 2,000. We were right. Yeah, so then it would be 4,000 and some more because it's 2 point whatever billion.

One sphere equals like 5,000 cavalanches. No, 2,500. No. No. Yes. Because it's 2.3 billion. Yes. 1 billion is 2,000 cavalanches. 2 billion. No. What? 500. So dumb.

It's not as dumb as the Mount Rushmore schedule. 500,000 times two is one million. No. What? Tell us. You're keeping the secret from us. People are just smashing the 15 second right now. All right, whatever. You guys are right. I'm not getting into math. No, I don't know if you're right, but I'm not. I don't even know. What the fuck is an E? Like, why are E? 1.15 E9? Hank, let me ask you this. What's 500,000 plus 500,000? I don't know.

One million. It's one million. How many millions are in a billion? A thousand. There's a thousand. So there's 2,500 thousands. Yes. In a billion. So there's 2,000...

in $1 billion. Agreed. And there's $4,000 in $2 billion. Fully agree. And then some change. Yeah. And you've got Cavalanches left over. Yeah, we're looking at like 4,270 Cavalanches. Cavalanches machines. Yep. Across the country. Great job all around. Let's do numbers. Error by the pitcher. All right. Numbers. Six. Whoa. Nixon six. Seven. Three. For the rhyme scheme.

Wow, memes. Five. The formula is Knicks and six. If we get the seven. 72. Five for game five. 72. Nine and nine, Pug. 46. 21. Sweet. You have three, six, five, seven. Celtics in seven. Knicks in six. Canes in five. No, it's a game five for game five time. Oh, God. That was mean, Ink. It's not that mean.

64. 64 for the internet invitational, which we can get invited to. Love you guys.