Hour 2: Panky Rings
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This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast. This episode is presented by Smirnoff. We do game days. Please drink responsibly. The Smirnoff Company, New York, New York. If you want some concentrated, 100% pure basketball good stuff, Amin and Izzy and Oddball will be here at the end of the hour to cover things better than we did around here today.

as Greg Cody just fell in love with the mid-range game of Shea, what did you call him? Gilgus? Did you call him, how did you pronounce his name? Alexander. Okay, Alexander works, yes, that works correctly. The better analysis from experts better than us, Amin and Izzy, will be here shortly. Dominique had an observation during the break that I would imagine, Chris, can you reach out to your mother and ask her how she feels about this?

He was asking, how do you imagine Greg's wife feels? Earlene. Wonderful. Earlene. Thank you. Wonderful woman. Everyone agrees. How does she feel about the fact that Greg doesn't wear a wedding ring, but does wear two pinky rings? Okay.

How old are the pinky rings? Are they older than your marriage? Did you mean to slur that like that? In the meantime. I'm wearing a clear liner as you know. Okay, it's not the big leagued shoe from the other day? No, it's still stuck in my teeth though. Let's go ahead and clip that one for the club though. Couple blocks down. Little marble mouth.

I don't know how old these rings are. I'm not sure. But you've been wearing pinky rings for roughly how long? Ten years, maybe. And how long haven't you worn a wedding ring? Ten years, maybe. Something like that. So you took it off and said, you know where I'm going to put the ring? Instead of my ring finger on my pinky finger. Instead of one symbol for my love, I'm going to put two symbols for my narcissism. That's right. That's right, because I'm a playa. That's right. Spelled like we spell beach. That's playa.

I've texted her. I'll let you know when she responds. We can also get her on. It's a good question. How do you imagine she feels, Greg, about this? That you do not wear a wedding ring. You have not worn one for 10 years. But you wear two pinky rings because that you want to give off as style. And that is the only jewelry you wear, right? You do not wear a necklace or a watch of any kind. It's just two pinky rings. Yes, pinky rings. That's right. She knows we're married. I know we're married.

I don't need a ring. You know? She knows we're married is a great line. It's what a player would say. I want you to be honest with me. How long did you say you have not been wearing the wedding ring? I don't know. Ten years? During that time, have you ever had to say, like, somebody... No, no. Sorry. I'm married. Like, we're...

Somebody gets the wrong idea and you have to be like, I'm married. I know I have only two pinky rings here and that suggests I'm open for business. Does it? Yes. What? Did you ever hear the connotation of pinky rings? No. What is it? Tell me. Enlighten me. Greg. I have no idea. Your jewelry absolutely says you're open for business.

Your lack of a wedding ring isn't the only thing on your hand that says you're open for business. Well, where is that written?

It's never written on your face. It's an unwritten rule. Of course it's not. You don't write it down. Never write it down. The first time I became aware of pinky rings was through the HBO documentary Pimps Up, Hoes Down. Okay. The pimps. You familiar, Dad? They wear pinky rings. Sure. Nothing wrong with that. Okay.

And it was like, nothing's wrong with anyone wearing a pinky ring. Like, I think when I was young, one earring meant a certain thing. And then it became a time where two earrings was cool and you weren't suggesting anything by wearing two earrings. So things changed. But from when I was a kid until now, it may have changed. But it was understood that if you had on a pinky ring, playa. And if you got two of them.

Panking. Open for business two times. I'm open for business. You think I'm closed? I'm still open. I particularly found it interesting, though, because we were talking about wedding rings. And so I looked around to see everyone didn't have a wedding ring. And you were obviously very offended by the idea that anyone would expect you to wear a wedding ring. And then I looked a half inch down.

away from your ring finger and was like, so you decided that whatever these pinky rings represent to you, because it's not even I would get if you were like, rings make me uncomfortable. I don't wear rings. Then you have naked hands like my man Roy, naked hands. But you were like, no, I just don't want to wear it. For what reason? Why don't I want to wear a wedding ring?

but also making the stylistic choice of I do want to give this off. I don't want anyone to know what this one gives off, but two times over here, I want everyone to know what this is. I want to know also the backstory of how you purchased it. Were any of them a gift? Did you do it at the same time? Did you

do it when your hand was naked? Did you say I want to be open for business? Like, what's the backstory? I've got him just stumbling into like in his junk drawer, a bolt and be like, oh, this will look cool. Yeah, that's not entirely untrue. I don't remember the reasonology behind it. I have several of these. I picked two that I think go together, although one is silver and one is. But you like the way they look? Yes. Like what? Like, what are you really doing? Putting those on a little bit. I think

part of it is that you're entirely right. I've never worn jewelry. I've never worn a wristwatch. I'm not a chain guy. I just don't, you know, I don't have tattoos. I just, this distinguishes me in a very tiny, small way. I didn't know it symbolized anything. I thought it was just me wearing a

jewelry under a different finger. So before we get contact from Earlene, I think we as a team, we're going to have to come up with some good explanation for Greg Cody because I feel like I've backed him into a tough corner right now because it's like what you are suggesting is

Whatever the feeling that these Panky rings give me is so strong that I will put it on my ring finger, which would suggest that there's another feeling somewhere else that is so strong that you might want to wear a piece of jewelry. If you were naked handed, I'd be like, all right, Greg, it's uncomfortable. It's like an OCD thing. I feel you, dog. You don't have to wear it. But the fact that you were like, hey, let me put on one of these. You know what? You know what this left hand needs? Throw another one at it.

Two Pankys. The way that Greg is doing it. Take that, Arlene. It's so aggressive. What? Yes. You guys are insane. Greg. Yes. Two. Greg, you wearing two Panky rings makes it so that he has no discomfort whatsoever saying to you and being accurate that they're both Pankys.

He's saying it's P-A-N-K-Y because you have two of them. It ceases to be merely a pinky ring that you're being so aggressively I'm open for business that they're panky rings. Okay. All right. Hanky panky. Is that what that means to you?

Getting closer. It's in the realm. You go upside down pineapple on a cruise ship? Like, what else are we doing here? I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means either. You back off with that. If you see an upside down pineapple, don't go in. I didn't think that you thought that I would on this Monday ignore –

the number 11 Toyota Camry of Joe Gibbs racing. You didn't think I was going to do that, did you? You didn't think I was going to do that. Not today. What a race. I was not going to do that today. Oh, talking about this foolishness with his panky range might be my favorite fire keepers casino 400 ever.

Wow. It really might be. Great racing on Amazon Prime. Denny Hamlin, he had just had his 700th start, and he wins his first race post-700th start, 44 years old. And something interesting that he said after he won the race to the Amazon crew. Well, he said plenty interesting after the race. In fact, let's cue that video up first. All right, hold on. Heel turn? We're going full heel turn? I mean, he's been NASCAR's heel, and he relishes the role.

Daddy, I'm sorry, but I beat your favorite driver, folks. All of them.

Josevar was a hometown guy. Josevar has been racing really well, had a flat tire, gets him out of the race. But that is a cliched line that he occasionally tosses out there. He also, keep in mind, this was Michigan Motor Speedway. After that, recent Buckeye fan, Denny Hamlin, at least publicly, gave him the OH on his way out. But one thing that he said that was interesting is all he wants to do is get in the top 10 in NASCAR wins all time, which is a curious thing for Denny Hamlin to say because the thing about Denny Hamlin is...

He's never won a Cup Series championship. He's always up there. It would shock people that have casually followed NASCAR that he hasn't won a championship yet. He's still looking for that, but he says top 10 and wins all time means more to me than being a Cup Series champion, which I found odd and awfully convenient for a dude that hasn't won it. It's true that he's the Conor McDavid of NASCAR. There's no question about that.

Only he's 20 years older. You know, the window's closing for him. Yeah, but NASCAR drivers age a little bit slower than hockey players and some other athletes. Leave McDavid alone. Just stop. I'm just noting that he hasn't won a Stanley Cup yet. So what happened 10 years ago? So 10 years ago, what happened? I think you've been married for like 40 years. Oh, yeah. So you had that thing on for 30 years. Then one morning you woke up.

Let me move this over to my left finger. Okay, I can tell you very easily why I don't wear a wedding ring. It's more difficult to tell you why I wear a pinky ring. Okay, the wedding ring, probably because my fingers got fat, the wedding ring split on the back and began really pinching me, almost to the point of drawing blood.

And so I separated it, and rather than have it repaired, I'm like, you know what? It feels good without that ring. So fat fingers. Your fingers had gotten too fat. Yeah, yeah. I'd probably gained 10 pounds over the years, you know. I'm not the kind of guy who really balloons like you tend to. But, you know, I will gain, you know, 10, 15 pounds. Then I'll lose, you know. I just mean, I don't mean now. You look pretty, well, I was going to say svelte. Let's not get carried away.

He's laughing out there. What is that? I'm a pimp all of a sudden? It's in the preview. It's not on the screen. You're looking at something that only you see. Yeah, we're in terrible Photoshop. Where'd the right side of my face go? Bit of a difference in skin color there. All right, look. Somebody get a hold of whoever's in video with the Photoshop and arrest that person. Take them outside and take away their freedom. Danny? Danny?

Get out of here. The other thing that I just want to address here, the verb balloon. Oh, it hurts my heart. Balloon. What about it? I mean, it's just it's there's a cruelty in it. It's a fun word. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's fun. Yes. I think you've deflated in recent years. Yeah, he just meant you're a good time. I don't want to look at you. I can't look at you.

Balloon as a verb, like to look me in the face when... No one wants to do that. It's a party balloon. Helium. Have you ever been somewhere where there are balloons and it wasn't fun? Good question. Not a lot of balloons at funerals and sacrifices. Balloons are happy things. He did get me on that. But balloon is a verb to talk about... No, there's that. Yeah, that's a different kind of balloon. Roy reporting live.

Roy. Can we watch Roy again? Actually, you guys want to watch Roy again? Which one do you want to watch? I like the sad one. To clarify, there ceased being a balloon when the good times stopped. That's true. It wasn't like, hey, Hindenburg crash, let me bring in some balloons. I like the sad one where it's like, they've scored.

They've got a goal. Okay, let's do the sad one where Roy grabs his... Look, this is what's happened, okay? A man who's had many years in the field of military training, of knowing how to report in times of crisis. As others scurry for the exits, as others who like microphones but don't know the responsibility of microphones, yell, suck it, Mike Ryan, and then run into the distance. Roy Bellamy is in the middle of...

the chaos meets the moment and grabs his headset and runs into the fray. He is Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump going into the fray again and again to go and retrieve people and bring them to safety. Heroic. Yes, it genuinely harkens back to a time where you look to a news person to lead you when you're scared. In times of fear and crisis when you need a reasonable, objective voice to just deliver the news, Roy's there to give you the score.

Going back to the point. You know that. Oh my god, hit it out! Oh my god! The Edmonton Oilers have tied this game at four. Wow. Edward R. Bellamy. Going to go into overtime. Oh my god, dude. This is like a team of destiny. Holy shit. Corey Perry has tied this game at four with 17 seconds left in regulation.

I have fixated. It took several times playing this clip. Check out the terror on Rose's face. Oh my God, it's great. It's just pure terror. It's not only that. It looks like she saw a ghoul. It's wonderful for a number of reasons. First of all, inexplicably, Rose is doing the game in another language. It's like a broadcast in Spanish, like simulcasting it. She's broadcasting in Spanish. What is she saying? Well, she's giving more colorful play-by-play because Spanish is a better language. But the thing about Roy...

that makes this so wonderful is that he is giving the most basic of information to emergency survivors. Radio listeners. But it's just, everyone knows what's just happened. Look at how everyone fled the video. But Roy is there to explain. It's a bit of the slow report, but also factually correct. Right in the middle of it, everyone settled down. Here's what the score is.

Time and place. I know that. Oh, my God. Get it out. Oh, my God. Wow. We're going to go in overtime. We're going to go in overtime. This is like a team of destiny. Holy shit. Rose looks terrified. Corey Perry. Yeah.

Let's tie this game at four. 17 seconds left. Can I, can I, I want to ask you guys if, you know those dry cleaning racks, you know the dry cleaning that brings the suit back from... If behind Roy, as people scattered, a rack had come and just wrapped him in a news...

garb and he had just leaned right in and gone from wearing a baseball cap and the shirt that he's wearing to all of a sudden having a sports coat, a tie and reporting the news as a horrified rose nearby filled with pins.

It looks like she saw the mushroom cloud of the new year's last. She's not worried about Iraq. She's worried about Iraq. What she's seen is far worse than what broadcaster Roy is describing. And you know what she sees? What cometh this way? You tell me that that's not what she sees. Oh, God.

So good. The little moment, like there was like a little hesitation fear, and I'm trying to figure out if that's when the puck first found Corey Perry. She's like, oh, no, they're going to get a good look here. And then like because she kind of screams a little bit beforehand, and then it settles in on her face. Horrifying. It does look like that door in Greg Cody's garage just closed in her face. Yeah.

She looks haunted. It is the same silence, the two-mic silence that was everywhere is on Rose's face. You do understand that that right there is the whole reason to do the broadcast, correct? Like, it can have all sorts of other accents, noises, talking, voices. It's just, what does that better than sports? And the answer is the voice of a baby crying at midnight in a cornfield.

That's horror right there. She was going, she was loving her life. 17 seconds to go. I'm speaking Spanish. I'm delighted. Oh my God. What cometh this way? The game is tied. 17 seconds left. Love Roy just meets the moment. You heard the tremble in his voice though. It was shaky. The foundation, that house was on stilts, my friend.

That house was not, that was shaking. He did get in there and give the facts, but it's because it's all he was holding on to in the store. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. A little forward. A little forward. One click forward. Go back, go back, go back.

There! Yeah! Right there! Yes! Dwork's giving it too! Dwork's giving me a little something there too! Yeah, zoom out there. And then go to Roy. What's Roy doing right now? Oh!

That was me saying they scored. Score. Score. No, I think this was just before the score. No, that's score. That's the O in score right there. Let's play the sound. I don't think that is the score. Is that the score or is that something being inserted at a time you weren't expecting? The Edmonton Owls have tied this game at four. Wow. Smile. Smile.

And we are going to go over to Ovid. What's with that smile, Roy? Dominic was saying that you might have a little bit of sadist in you. What's with that smile? You like the pain. No, I was actually literally in pain because my shoulder was hurting. So you smiled. That's what pain looks like. Maybe he was smiling because he knew he delivered the news.

You did just hold on to the... Look at that face, Roy. That's a smile, Roy. How is that shoulder pain, Roy? It was... My shoulder was killing me. But, Roy, that's not shoulder... He likes pain. He likes it. It's a grimace. Yeah, the smile is a grimace. That's a good point by Roy. I just hurt myself again. That is not shoulder pain, Roy. That was you... You see the face you just made when you just hurt yourself? That's the face that people make when they're in pain. That's the face of pain, correct. Pain looks like pain. It doesn't look like joy.

It's a sharp pain. That's why the teeth are showing. Look at Rose there. Rose, that is a catastrophe. Yeah. And Dwork, by the way, I don't know how Dwork haunted and talking about, oh, no, it's a team of destiny, how he finishes fourth place here on emotional reactions because everyone fell apart. And again, I will explain, Rose and Ethan fell out of your screen. They just...

To recover from that in Edmonton, to give us a series, I know people are tired of how much we're talking about hockey. Not too bad. I mean, how much better do you want the games to be?

How much better would you like this to be that all of hockey is fawning at how wonderful the games are and how excellent the teams are? And we're two in. Dan, when they equalized, were you like, oh, this is the good stuff? Oh, my God. Hell, yeah. Give me that in game seven. I am psyched about this. Game seven. Give it to me.

Howdy folks, it's Mike Ryan. Now, if you've been listening to the show a lot lately, you've heard so much playoff talk. Playoff hoops down here in South Florida were especially enamored with playoff hockey. It's not just limited to the playoffs. Motorsports, tennis, golf. It's truly one of the best times in the sporting calendar. And with the weather outside warming up,

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Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Don Levitard. Quiet man. Yes. You know, I'm a married man. I don't cheat on my wife, despite that gratuitous line back in my day. Stugatz. I wish you were here, my wife. I really miss her.

No, I don't. That's the thing about being married. You know, you're not allowed to say, I don't miss my wife. I've been gone two days. I haven't been gone long enough to miss my wife. I'm sorry. I call her. You just said you do miss her. I'm on the phone with her for 30 seconds. You know, what am I? Hello. All right. All right. We'll see you. All right. And then, you know, I'm going to see her in two days. How's jumping, Charlie? Good. This is the Don Levitas Show with the Stugats. Stugats.

Means coming to us from Oklahoma city where the thunder have evened up the series, one 23 to one Oh seven. I like the live action feel of this. There's like people around in the background. I mean, I mean, uh, right from the top main story about this game too. All right. So first of all, like my, my location is right by where the thunder locker room tunnel is. So you're going to see a lot of activity in the background. Great. I'll describe it if necessary. Yes, there you go. Uh,

the Aaron Wiggins just walked by, by the way, the hero. It wasn't necessary. Thank you though. Not necessary. Okay. No, you know, but the,

The history of this team all season long has been after a loss, it's a resounding answer, right? It's not just they don't lose back-to-backs or two games in a row. It's they beat your ass, right? And that's what happened tonight. First of all, they did a much better job on the glass. The offensive rebounding opportunities that the Pacers were feasting on in game one were not –

They still, even though the turnover count was a lot lower, they definitely got their way in terms of creating offense off of those turnovers. The third part, I think this is the most important part. SGA got help.

And the help came from some unexpected sources like an Aaron Wiggins, but also from the people that you kind of rely on. Jalen Williams had a great game and Chet Holmgren had a great game. What I really liked about it was the aggression. He went out there and he, from the opening tap was intent on making an impact. And he did.

I'll give you that. I'll give you Chet. Chet was, you know, a lot more impactful, especially early on, really sort of set the tone. Jalen Williams, when things were close, was not good. And I think he finished with 5 of 14 for 19 points. But it was exactly like it's everything that you wanted from –

response game and you just so happen to get the 18 points from Andrew Wiggins and the 12 from Alex Caruso was there was some conversation you didn't hear this during the broadcast about why Tyrese Halliburton wasn't more aggressive like that

It's a little bit of a head scratcher for me that people say that is because he is like we said, he's the point guard, right? He really gets going if somebody else gets going with him. But it's never really been Tyrese, just go get yours. And so this idea that he needs to be the tone setter in terms of scoring. Do you think that there's more there from him or do you think this is pretty much his role the entire time?

Well, I mean, I think it's fair to expect him to be aggressive when the offense isn't operating, right? Like, I think that's the big thing is that I get it. And, you know, we went through this when I was in Phoenix with Steve Nash where Steve wanted to set people up. Steve didn't want to be aggressive offensively. But, like, I can't remember how many times he used to say this on the broadcast. Steve Nash senses the moment. And he senses, like, yo, it's not working.

So now I have to unveil like what probably could have been a 25 point per game score his entire career if that were his everyday mentality. Tyrese has a lot of things that reminds me of Steve Nash in that way and that he he wants to impact the game as a facilitator and as someone who's kind of touching different parts of that aren't necessarily captured in a box score. Right.

but there has to be that recognition of we don't have it going. I need to do something. Now, some people might say he trusts his teammates. He trusts them to, you know, if he keeps facilitating them, they're going to get it going. And like, the crazy thing is, is he, the building was nervous the whole time. Like, yeah, they were up 20, but like every time they would hit like a knee Smith three here or, or, and one day from, from Siakam. And it's like, everyone just started getting. So it's like they learned their lesson from not,

being as alert from game one. But the part about Tyrese, though, it's almost like because he knew his team could make a huge comeback at any time that he didn't really have to push the panic button. It's like when he finally did push the panic button, might have been a little bit too late. A little too little, too little too late. But also, let's be honest, they got what they came for in terms of the split. So right now they are, even as after a pretty tough loss tonight, they're still kind of feeling about like, yeah, we achieved something.

the, the mission, so to speak. And you go back to Indiana for two and we'll see how it goes there again. Izzy, I got to go back to, would love to see what the series would look like if we were still doing the two, three, two. Hmm. Yeah. That,

that added a whole lot of elements to like to break down a series back when it was 2-3-2 like now when it's 2-2-1-1-1 it's like it seems more fair so there's not a whole lot of rollercoastery to go around it's a little bit more drama back then but in terms of indie like what sort of

The strategic game plan has to change for them to keep Alex Caruso and Andrew Wiggins from going off because obviously they're not going to stop Shea. Like Shea is going to get somewhere between 30 and 40 and if you know 40 plus if he's having a great night. But it feels like they can control Jalen Williams. It feels like Chet Holmgren is not really going to explode for you. So if you can keep those guys off the board, like how do you do that?

Yeah, I mean, I don't – the simple answer is I don't think you can. I think that's what you live with. If you're Indiana, you say, I live with that.

Alex Schultz is going to have to. I'll live with that, right? Aaron Wiggins is going to come in and hit a bunch of threes. I'll live with that. You got to live with it. I think the part that's a little bit more difficult is, first of all, it's not like you helped out on Shea much. And I got a shout out to Eddie Johnson on this one. He said, I get that the strategy is we're going to guard Shea one-on-one, but maybe every once in a while just to mix it up, just to surprise him. We're just going to watch this.

this slow march down, down the drain. And then the other part of it is again, like Chet Holmgren, uh,

put his imprint on the game. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention this. The two big lineup, right? What they ended up doing is they basically ran it a bunch when Siakam wasn't on the floor. And so that kind of alleviates some of the issues as far as, hey, if we're going too big, does that mean we've got Chet on Siakam and Siakam being a lot more kind of laterally mobile? Right.

might present problems. But in those minutes where those guys ran together, I'm trying to find the details, uh, from, from my kind of like my naked eye, the two big line of what was, was tremendous for them tonight. Um,

Can you help me out with something? I know I was watching on TV. You were watching it there. What I saw, because we talked about the NBA Finals trophy being on the floor, or at least the Finals logo, some sort of fancy graphic. Today turned on the game, I mean, and there were two kind of tiny logos on the floor. It seemed like...

And it clearly wasn't real. It clearly wasn't put on the floor, right? You didn't see logos on the floor, right? I'm looking at the floor right now. There are no logos on it. It seemed like they didn't want to make them any bigger than the advertisements that were on the floor, that were showing on the floor, because they weren't bigger than any of those. And then, oddly, and they're also both facing the same direction, which people, when you're watching on TV, you're just like, well, obviously you should have one. The crowd should be facing the crowd on each side. So it should be the opposite way.

If you look at, if you look at like, so right now I'm looking at their floor. I believe this is true of every NBA floor. Hey, how's it going? No good. So every NBA, every NBA floor has all the signage, all the logos, everything all face the cameras. Okay. So if you're sitting on the bench, I'm sitting pretty much behind where the Thunder bench was. And so the TV cameras are there because the TV cameras are always facing the benches.

All the things on the floor are going to be facing the cameras. So that was accurate for them to put them both facing that way. Okay. The part that's crazy is I did see like a little video. I think Arash Markazi posted it. And he said, how do you, how can you tell? It was like his captions. How can you tell it's, it's digitally imposed? And,

You know, they're waving like the OKC flag. And then you see it kind of just pop up superimposed on the flag and superimposed on other things. Yeah. That's the problem with that kind of makeshift style kind of solution is you're bound to run into those kind of issues. You made it worse. And oddly, late in the game when it was pretty much out of hand, I know this because I switched the game from the big TV to the little TV. Then they went with the logo. What was on the big TV? Yeah, no, the big TV was The Last of Us. I'm trying to catch up on that. Yeah.

And so, yeah, the little TV and I saw the logo on there, the finals in script. And I was like, well, that's weird because if people were wondering if it was real and maybe had a question mark in their head, now they know for sure during that time out, they didn't just switch it to the finals logo. I don't really know what they were doing there. It's probably the biggest mistake Adam Silver's ever made. So you switched to The Last of Us. You missed the Johnny Furphy minutes. No, oddly enough, I saw it. He fouled Shay, which is amazing.

Like first seconds on the floor. And Furphy. Are we sure that's a real name? Dude, it's like fake Murphy, right? Isn't that what it is? Yeah.

Yes, it's exactly that. Back to the basketball. I mean, what do we think of the series now? Because like we've gotten the shaking off the rust. We've gotten the first two games out of the way. Indiana, the first game, the crazy comeback sort of masked the idea that it doesn't seem they don't really seem to have a consistent offensive flow. Right. So do you see that changing in any way when they get to India? No, no, this is this is how they've been all year long. So I don't see anything changing. And again, like this is the part where, you know, everyone loves to overreact to a game one loss. But.

Yeah, man. OKC over time is going to prove itself to be the better team because that's how this thing works. That's why we don't play single elimination in the playoffs while we have a little bit of time. I did want to shout out Don Nelson won the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. It's the award that the NBA Coaches Association gives out. There was two really important things that came out of this press conference. Number one.

This is the first time for him on the mainland in seven years. Wow. And the first time he's wearing shoes in six years. Wow. The shoes he wore are Luka Doncic Jordans. And he said, I'm wearing them in protest of the trade. Yes. So that's one. The other thing, and this is huge. He told a story about how they drafted dirt and how they flew him into a secret workout. Nobody knew. And they tried to hide them and they were worried. And on draft day, like,

They made the trade, obviously, to trade it down from six to nine with Milwaukee. Now, here's the part I didn't know. He said, my favorite player in the draft was Paul Pierce. We all thought Paul Pierce would be a top three pick and wouldn't even be like an option. So...

Imagine their surprise when at nine, Dirk's on the board, which is their guy, the guy that they went through all these pains to kind of hide and stash, basically. But also, Paul Pierce is on the board. Wow. And so Don Nelson's like, him and Donnie, he's telling Donnie, like, oh, shit, what do we do? And Donnie was like, look, man, we kind of did all this shit.

to get this German kid. Like we can't back out now. And that's how Dirk Nowitzki ended up to be a Maverick and Paul Pierce ended up being a Celtic. Wow, made the right choice. Let's be honest, made the right choice. Can I tell you my experience from watching Don Nelson get the award? Man, they played this still shot or it wasn't a still shot. It was a video of him and Rick Carlisle accepting the award and they were sitting there and they kept the camera on him for about 30 seconds too long. I mean, it was just, I was like, all right, let's get the camera off of Mr. Don Nelson here.

And then making matters worse, because I mean, I don't know what the hell Don was wearing. Making matters worse. They cut to him in the crowd. He had some popcorn food all in the corner of his mouth. And they kept on that one for longer than they should have to. Now, I wouldn't be too happy with these producers and directors if I was Don Nelson today.