Pardon My Take - NBA Champion Pat Connaughton + Mt Rushmore Of Sports We Could Medal In, Maybe

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

The Olympics are here and we have some gripes (00:02:46 - 00:13:09). Aaron Rodgers is getting emo and the Yankees invented new ways to lose (00:13:09 - 00:20:09). Who's back of the week including J-Lo and Ben Affleck and the Cleveland Guardians (00:20:09 - 00:31:08). NBA Champ Pat Connaughton joins the show to talk about winning the title, Giannis, his baseball career, and tons more (00:31:08 - 01:16:14). We wrap up with the Mt Rushmore of Sports We could Medal In, Maybe.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

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. On today's part of my take, we have NBA Champion Pat Conaton, an awesome, awesome interview with Pat about winning the title, Giannis, his career, really great stuff. We also have some Olympic talk, because the Olympics have started, but fuck the IOC and fuck NBC and their coverage of it, whatever. We have Aaron Rodgers, now is to the point of posting cryptic Instagram stories, Who's

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slash take. Okay, let's go. It's part of my TAKE presented by Barstool Sports. Welcome to part of my TAKE presented by tickpick.com slash take, use it right now, get put in code TAKE, you get $10 off your tickets, fans are back, tickpick.com slash take. Today is Monday, July 26th, and we officially suck at basketball. I've got Olympic fever, big cat. We suck at five on five basketball, and our men's three on three team didn't qualify.

When I think of, when you say we suck at basketball, my mind automatically goes to women's three on three. We're a fucking dynasty in that one. Three on three, I watched an entire game between Belgium and Japan on Saturday morning. It was one of the worst sporting events I've ever witnessed. It looked like a Saturday morning pickup game, I then tweeted out a clip of it, and the IOC and their infinite wisdom, I incorrectly said it was NBC, it is the IOC, doesn't want anyone sharing any Olympic clips, pictures, anything, because God forbid anyone talks about the

Olympics and these random sports that you stumble upon that you're like, oh, this is fun. No, they want them. It's like fight club. Don't actually, never, never talk about the Olympics. First rule. Do you think that when they're, they're selling advertisements to potential sponsors, they're like, hey, just so you know, all the videos that will be coming of any sport, they're

all going to come from our account, so you don't have to worry about spending money on our official tweets and then having Barstool Big Cat tweet out an advertisement to go watch the show that you're sponsoring. Yeah, because I can't understand, like you could, I could sit down with the head of the IOC, the head of NBC, and I would sit there for the rest of my life, waiting for them to give me an actual explanation as to why tweeting a 20 second clip of a random sport like handball, some dude got smoked in the face, the bully, but it actually is technically a penalty, which is the pacification of handball.

Yeah, no, it's not my handball. Back in the 90s, handball, when like men played handball, that shit was like, that's how you scored most of your goal in the bad boy era. But that, yeah, that clip, which you see it and you're like, oh, handball's on, let me go watch it. Nope. Do not talk about it. I would respect it more if the IOC sat down and they're like, you know what, we'll let

anybody share clips as much as they want, except those bastards from Pardon My Take. Yeah, that's fair. Those guys, we're going to DMCA the shit out of them the second they put something up. Way to go IOC, the Olympics, and then, listen, I guess it's good that they put the US game on the cock at 8 AM. I would have probably put the most popular sport, the thing that people want to watch the most in America, maybe on NBC proper, but it turned out to be a favor because we do suck at basketball.

France beat our ass in a way that I actually, like, if you told me before that France just beat us, I'd be like, okay, you know, they're pretty good, you know, Rudy Gobert, Batum, whatever. Fournier. Boris Diao not walking through that door, but he was. But no, we actually were leading with like three minutes left and totally blew it, and France had like a 16-2 run to win the game. That was a France legacy game.

Yeah. There was also a sequence at the end that looked like your three-on-three clip where the US just couldn't make a shot. Yeah. Like the three wide open threes in a row and they just bricked up. And Vince Carter was on the call, which was supposed to be like another dunk on France because it was famous dunk, and then it was reversed. Here's just an idea.

Maybe at some point, USA basketball should consider putting the best basketball players on the team and not the best athletes on the team. Yeah. A team. A team. And then they should get that guy from Miracle to coach it, or at least some guy wearing a plaid jacket. Yes.

And then have him abuse the players before the games until they reach a point where they almost break, but then all fall in love with the coach. I really do think that the Wisconsin Badgers could win the gold medal because it does feel like that's the style of basketball that it takes. I was actually thinking that probably the worst NBA team would have a better chance at winning the title than this group right now. Just practicing together? Yeah.

Just like knowing each other's names. Yeah. The Houston Rockets were really bad. That's like 60% of the job. Were they the worst? Yeah. Houston Rockets with John Wall on the team, I think, could win. And it's the birthday curse.

The birthday curse of Kevin Durant when he wasn't his birthday and they sang, they SVP'd him. It wasn't his birthday. They sang Happy Birthday. No. I like that. And you also did a video of Gaviel McGee on the national team. Yeah.

You could just do pranks that make no sense. How about that reporter? Did you see that clip? A reporter asked Gaviel McGee if his mom is still alive. That was weird. He was like, yeah, she is. And he could have taken it too sick because she played in the Olympics. Yeah.

Is it Jeff Ireland? Is your mother a prostitute? Yeah. Whew. That was a tough one. But yeah, the Olympics are here. I don't know. Time zones fucked me up.

I also, I'm just gonna say this, it sounds very stupid to say, but I don't trust whenever it says live in the top corner. I still don't trust it. No, I just assume they're fucking because sometimes it's not even live. Right. The live is not actually live all the time. I've got a number of Olympic grapes. Number one is they always start the opening ceremonies like five days after the Olympic start. Yeah. So you know how how college football does week zero, which we love. The Olympics go two steps further and they have day negative two. Yeah. Day negative one day zero and then day one because there's some sports that they need to play a lot of rounds. I think softball started on Wednesday. Yeah. But why not just

have the opening ceremonies start before those games? And then they always end after the closing ceremonies. Yes. There's always like two events that are like the Battle of New Orleans. Yeah. Where you have like them finishing out the competition after the event is officially closed. Yes. I don't know. I guess I have Olympic fever. Oh, I don't know. You know what? I'd say my Olympic it's a mild fever. It's a 99.5. I'd rather go to work. Yes. Go to work with this fever. Listen, I would not mask up if I was feeling some sort of Olympic Olympic fever. I think I would also like to see more of the superimposed flags in the swimming lanes. Yep. During the swimming events. I miss that rowing to the rowing lanes are really cool because

it's so you know a lot of water and they're just they're going right over their flags. Kind of disrespectful. I don't like the earbuds on the skateboarders. Yeah. I like that a lot. You should not be allowed to unless you're listening to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtrack, which I assume that they're just listening to the beginning of Superman by Goldfinger every time they start. Unless that's what they're listening to. I don't like it. I would like to feel like I don't know if you're running a marathon, you're not allowed to have your buds in right? No, I don't think so. To distract you. I don't know what they're doing. I also think they've completely bastardized skating like they do one trick and then they judge it like give me the full

two minutes, you know going around trying to get the fucking the tricks off. I don't know. I just I'm not a big fan of it. I think they should have sharper swords and fencing. Yeah, like give me an element of danger. There should be death. Yes. Death and not death, but like maiming. Yeah. All right. What's this tweet you just sent us? How does this guy getting to tweet it? This is not right. Oh, they fucked up the beginning of the triathlon. Everything France. Yeah. And and and and no fans. I can't go back to no fans. I just I need fans. So whatever. I also think that skateboarding should include getting away from cops. They've kind of they've sanitized skateboarding. Yes. Too much where they're wearing like polo shirts and nice

pants and athletic shorts. They all dress the same. Yeah. Yeah. If you land in Olly and no one's wearing cargo shorts, did it ever really happen? Oh, yeah, they got cargo pants on right now. I need to see like actual like stuicy baggy shirts. Yep. I need to see some chains. I need to see police officers. No, no, rena Cops. I need to see like a rena cop driving around in a golf cart trying to arrest all these kids. By the way, three on three, they should call your own foul. There's no reason there should be a ref for three on three. I do love how it's ones and twos, though. Yeah, which makes the two point shot. That's that's in that clip that you put out. They're all just trying to know I didn't put out a clip. Oh, you know what clip it got the

clip Billy down forever. Yeah, no, three on three. And they should really like why not have one on one? Why not have four on four in a way too small of a gym where there isn't even a three point line in the corners? You know what one of my favorite parts of the Olympics so far has been? There's this kid this I think he's 20 years old from the United States. He was competing in the rifle competition, the shooting competition. And he was hitting like close to bullseyes every time. And when you shoot in the rifle competition, you have like you look like a cyborg. Yeah, it looks like you're wearing Google Glass and like a mirror over your eye and all this shit. It that to me should go also if you're shooting rifle, there's no need to bring a mirror into

the situation. You have a gun and then you have a target and that's it. Yes. And the kid from the United States, he won in dominant fashion. And then he was pissed off because he didn't win as much as he wanted to win. And he looked like he was going to shoot everybody around him. And he had a guy like people were scared walking past this psycho kid. Oh, man. Alright, so Olympic fever. I also wouldn't mind if in the skateboarding, they just had one guy who was way too old who was just buying beer for everyone. And that was an Olympic competition because I assume every skate park has that. That would be a nice wrinkle. Like a creep. Yeah, yeah, just a creep, just a resident creep. And who could be the creepiest creep? That wouldn't be a bad, a bad Olympic sport. I mean,

if we're going to go, if we're going to do this silly shit, let's go all the way. You did you know that break dancing is an event? Yeah, I think it's not there yet. Oh, so it's like next to next one. So I think the IOC sits down before the Olympics and they because I know La Crosse have the same thing. La Crosse is back for the 2024 games, not not back right now. Oh, and also the Russians, we're not allowed to say the word Russia. It's not it's not the Russian team. It's what is it the Russian Olympic Committee. So they're not wearing the official uniforms because they all did steroids. Yeah, ROC. Yeah, rock nation is what they should actually call them. Yes. Okay. So all right, that's our Olympic talk. We have more coming up. We have the Mount Rushmore of

it's the official title is Mount Rushmore of events, sports we could medal in maybe. We will do that after our interview with Pat Conniton. Let's talk a little about some other sports. So Aaron Rodgers, will he won't he? There's a big, I don't know, like, I don't even know if it was real, but essentially a bunch of sports books took down the Packers win total because they thought Aaron Rodgers was going to retire. Then he puts up a picture of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin. And so does Devonte Adams, which I guess they're trying to say the last dance, which would mean they would both show up. But then what is the last dance for Aaron Rodgers losing in the NFC championship game? Like what? They're not going for the sixth title. Let's run this back one more

time where we disappoint everybody. Let's try to lose as as the number one seed. Yeah, let's let's come back and then have everybody at the end of the regular season talk about how I'm the best quarterback in NFL. And now you're the best wide receiver. And then that's it. That's their last dance for one more year. Okay, I'm telling you, I think I think Aaron might go off the grid. I hope he retires. I hope he finds peace. I think he will. I think if I were to put money on it right now, it's like 30 30 30 30 30 percent that he retires to host Jeopardy 30 percent that he plays the Denver Broncos and acts surly. Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably for the Broncos. And then the other 33 percent or whatever is that he just like goes and lives in the mountains of Peru. Yeah. And we

don't hear from him. Every every like six months, he'll put up an Instagram post being like, look at me, I'm in a market somewhere. Yeah, I've long hair. Come try to find me. He'll probably do something crazy like buy an actual Waldo sweatshirt. Yeah. And then take a picture of himself, upload that and then boom back to the little ayahuasca hut. I just want to have this on the record. So the takies are on Wednesday. Everyone get ready for the takies. Unbelievable. We just finished taping it. Blake of the year was exceptional. So get ready for the takies on Wednesday. We are on vacation this week. We will have three shows. So don't worry about that. But if Aaron Rodgers does show up to camp as planned on Wednesday, just remember when you

treat me mean things. I'm on vacation. Yeah, he's trying to take he's trying to unplug for his so don't do that. Don't do don't treat me. Respect. You know what my time off. I don't get much listen. He's with his family. He's being a dad. Yeah, don't tweet me mean things. And if he doesn't show up, I'll take a break from vacation. So tweet it to me all the mean things that you would say and I'll copy big cat on the ones that are most relevant. Please don't please don't tweet it to me. I'll filter them out and I'll make sure that you only see the ones that are the meanest. He's going to show up and it's going to suck and whatever I'm on vacation. So don't do it. Don't do it. All right. What else we have? I just got to give a shout out to the New York Yankees.

They're they are inventing new ways to lose. So Thursday night, we saw them with four, four pass balls to lose the game. I think two of them are wild pitches to her past. The catcher looks like he was trying to catch a butterfly. Yeah, like he had those two have never worked together, right? They met earlier that day. Never. They have to and then today they had a no hitter going into the eighth up for nothing and lost five four. Yep, that's tough. That's and then Aaron Boone was like, we've faced adversity before that guy. Does Aaron Boone have? Does he have anything in his head? I feel like he's a complete robot. What? Yeah. Why? Why do people still think that Aaron Boone? I don't think anyone does. I don't think a good manager. I don't think anyone

does. Well, we have seven games, seven Yankee fans and fucking Boone. Does anyone still think that it's a quick straw poll? Fire them or or keep them? Billy, I think we should fire him. Jake, this is the big one. Boone out. Jake never calls for another man's job. Yeah, I don't think it's the Yankee way to can someone in the middle of the season. So I'm not expecting. I mean, George Steinbrenner fired Billy Martin like seven times, at least from what I can remember. They don't fire a manager midseason. I'm pretty sure they got rid of Joe Girardi just because he had braces as an adult. Do you think they should? I'm not in a position to say whether they should or shouldn't. God damn it. I just don't understand how you let him throw the third wild pitch. Like

the first two, like take him out like the guy definitely was not in any position to be on that mountain. Or the fourth one. Yeah. Yeah. The third. Yeah. Much less get to number four. He should not have been throwing number three, but that honestly, that was a very fun inning to not watch. But we were sitting here in this room while Frank the Tank narrated what was happening. Yes. Singing wild thing to us after every single wild pitch that he threw. Damn. I just felt bad for the guy because everyone was shitting on him. The pitcher. Listen to you, Billy. Wow. Get a little soft. I think they like, they tweeted. They immediately sent him back. Yeah. Yeah. Big kind of Yankees fans lost it. I think so. Lost that edge. I think so. He just shouldn't have been

in that situation. Hmm. I mean, he's, he's, he's a moron. So I don't know what else to say. It's incredible what he's doing, like the way they're finding ways to lose. It's unbelievable. I'm enjoying it though. I am too. I mean, pinstripe Dan only shows up in the playoffs. Me too. I don't care for the Yankees. I don't care about the Yankees right now. All right. Anything else in the sports world before we get to who's back? Anything else? Any other takers? I'm trying to think there wasn't much else going on this weekend. The cross was off. Baseball happened. Game week. Game week. Jake is going to be announcing the game on Saturday night. Get excited. Is that on? Wow. That was excitement guys. Jake, is that on the top? Damn. It is on peacock. Yes. Okay. It is on. Jake will

be on the cock on Saturday night. Wow. Exciting. Are you getting the cock before the USA basketball team or afterwards? I got to see the rest of their schedule. Okay. Hmm. Probably don't want to follow that up. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. All right. Bo's out of the Olympics. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Holy Billy, you called it. Thoughts and prayers. Billy called it. Thoughts and prayers to COVID, which has to spend the next week with Bryson DeChambeau. Do you think he actually has COVID? No. He just doesn't want to get tested. Like you said, you said the two longest drivers in the PGA, Bryson DeChambeau and John Rom, both have COVID. Interesting. Hmm. And didn't John Rom just have COVID like two months ago, right? Correct. Correct. But spin zone, guess who's back? Patrick

Reed, bitch. Yeah. Patrick Reed and Captain America and his wife, who will probably be catting former at least tweeting on his behalf. Very excited to see Patrick Reed represent our country at the Olympic Games on the international stage. Oh, imagine. I would imagine that they don't have a shirt in his size. Well, no one has a shirt. Right. So this is going to be great. He has to get them prescription made by a pharmacist. Yes, he does. All right. Captain America. Okay, let's do who's back. Then we got an awesome interview with Pat Conniton. We did like 45 minutes with him. It was great. And then on the other side, we're going to do our Mount Rushmore. Who's back of the week is brought to you by our friends at the Cash App.

Cash App is back. The stock market, investing through Cash App, buying and selling Bitcoin. Download the Cash App. Right now, enter referral code BARSTEL. You'll receive $10 and they will send $10 to ASPCA when you download Cash App from the App Store or Google Play Store. Today, the Cash App is back. Enter that referral code BARSTEL. You get $10 off or $10 for free and $10 goes to ASPCA. So do it right now. The Cash App. Who's back of the week? Henry. Conniton's back. Yeah. So on Friday, I think it was Thursday night when we were recording at like a big album listening party at the Falcons field, whatever it's called, Mercedes Benz Stadium. And then the album was supposed to come out Friday. He apparently opened a studio inside the

stadium and right after the concert has been working on the album and just staying at the stadium. And there was a soccer game there on Saturday and he was just like walking around. Yeah, I saw that. With pantyhose. Yeah, with pantyhose. So Conniton can just basically do whatever he wants. Meanwhile, everyone's just freaking out, wondering where the album is. And then he just showed up at this game with pantyhose. It would be very relatable, though, of Kanye West, like told everybody, Hey, my album's coming out this week. And then completely spaced and forgot to do any work on it, which is probably what happened. Yeah. And so now he's just like, Okay, shit, how, how quickly can I put an album together? The good news is,

it's not going to be worse than his last weird album. Right. I love the Life of Pablo. Yeah, Life of Pablo is great. The last album that was a Christian. Yeah, the only good song on there was the one he did with Kenny G, which is just the most bizarre thing to say. Although he does have a song with Jay-Z on this one, right? Yeah, I think it's more of a normal album. Okay. All right, so let's have it. I know. Please give it to us. Drop the album. Drop the album. Do the album, Tweet, Kanye. All right, that's it. That's it. Okay. Good. Who's back? Good job. I was actually, I was confused because on Friday, I pulled up Spotify. I was like, time to listen to Kanye album because everybody was like, it's coming out tomorrow. It wasn't there. I thought that it was

like on one of those weird streaming services that only, yeah, like Psycho's subscribed to. Yeah. So I'm glad to know that I'm not, I'm not too far behind on it. Nope. Nope. My who's back the week is Dexter. Dexter's back. You guys remember Dexter? Never watched it. So it had maybe the worst ending of any television series of all time. And that's including the Sopranos where it just cut to black when Tony was sitting in the diner. And then that guy walked in and it looked like maybe he was going to shoot him. It's including that one. Yep. Dexter, the finale of Dexter. People still get mad at us for that shit. Spoiler alert about Dexter. Yeah. What do you mean? Show came out 15 years ago. Yeah. But people, you know, I think we have younger listeners like

myself who didn't watch it in real time. We're too young. And so they're like, what's the good show that I should have been born? So then they start watching it now, thinking that they can just watch it willy-nilly because no one's going to spoil it because no one's that big of an asshole. And then they listen to a sports podcast and all of a sudden the show gets all right. What's where's the line? What can I not spoil here? Can I spoil the ending of Jurassic Park one? Can I spoil the Bible? You know, it had a bad ending and then not say exactly what happens. Like maybe you can like what you used to do with me before you just turned a plate in like assholes where you'd kind of imply you kind of like would imply spoilers and not tell me. And then it just turned into you just

telling me exactly what happened. Well, I mean, Bobby Balacapa gets shot in the train. Balacapa. But the ending of Dexter was way worse than Sopranos. If you haven't seen the ending of Dexter spoiler, but it's not really spoiler because you're actually privileged if you haven't watched this. He just walks off into the woods and becomes a lumberjack. And that's a bad. No, everybody hated it. Everyone that's seen that watched all the seasons of Dexter hated the ending of it. They're finally like six years later, eight years later, however old it is, they're like, Hey, we fucked up. We're going to bring it back. So showtime is bringing Dexter back. And I'm excited about it because I had the first two seasons that were awesome. So if they can figure out a way to undo

you know what, even just do the thing where you're like, it was a dream and have him wake up in the first episode and be like, he never actually walked off into the woods. That would be fine by me. Okay. My who's back is fake love. So fake love is back. If you saw Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez had quite a weekend is J Lo's 52nd birthday. And then there was a picture that came out that Ben Affleck just palming her ass, which I guess was a throwback picture because that happened like 15 years ago. It's like when Eric Musselman does the pictures. Yeah, right. But it was both of them. Oh my God, that guy just ate shit. That was awesome. Holy fuck. Encycling. Yeah, he ate it, dude. He just hit his break and went over the curb. That's awesome.

That was so sick. I wish you could see a replay. Oh, I'm going to clip it. That was that was you can't do not post it. Do not post it. It's just for private use. Do not post it. Send it to me for private use. That was fucking my phone for private. Awesome. He went face first to the curve. Hope he's okay. Okay. It's fake love because it's all publicity stunt. The fact that they're remaking old pictures. They don't actually love each other. Imagine doing this. Imagine having a relationship that is all for the tabloids and for people to talk to you as, you know, a couple and benefit and all this. It's disgusting. It is like it's gross. Imagine if if you were in a relationship with Jennifer Lopez and all you were doing it for was just to get into page six.

Right. Just to have people talk about you and be like, oh, look, oh, he's not such a weirdo after all. Yeah. Look at JLo and ARA. I mean, JLo and Ben Affleck. Like it's fucking bullshit. It is bullshit. It's absolute bullshit. So true love is dead. Fake love is alive. Who's back of the week? This sham of a relationship. All right. This cyclist is going downhill. Dude. He just ate shit. The road turns. He didn't turn. He didn't turn at all. In his defense, there was no sign. There's no sign saying, Hey, you might want to take a right here. Oh, that's awesome. All right. Who's back of the week, Jake? Yeah. Yossiel Puyg is back. He is in the Mexican league. A team of Elegia de Veracruz. And he got hit by a pitch and there was a brawl. So back in the mix. All right.

So he's back doing Yossiel Puyg shit. Yeah. What happened? What happened with Yossiel Puyg? Because I feel like he was about to take over the world for like two seasons. Yeah. Then he just started striking out, I think, and not being good anymore. But he's got awesome arms. He's got awesome arms. Yeah. Also, there was something with like, wasn't he, there was like kidnappers or something? Someone tried to extort him. It's Oogeth Urbina. No, no, no, no. I know Urbina and the machetes and shit. Something happened with someone trying to extort him. Either way, Billy, what's your who's back of the week? My who's back is Tate Martell of QB1 fame. So turns out Tate Martell has two years of eligibility left, which he is using at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. Oh, so he was

Yeah, he was committed to Ohio State. He then flipped to U Miami, where he didn't see any playing time and tried to play wide receiver. And he is now transferring to University of Nevada to hopefully start his quarterback and continue his career. Let's go. Yeah. I always like it when wildcard quarterbacks end up going to wildcard schools. Yes. That makes it seem so much cooler. Yes. Okay. So we're root for him, huh? I actually am. I mean, yeah, why not? Doesn't really hurt me to root for him. True. Right? Yeah. No time out of my day. Kind of electric. Right. But we'll see if he's actually good. Okay. Good who's back everyone. What do you got, Jake? Did you find the extortion? No, there was also something that I should have involved. It's new team names,

the guardians. Oh, yeah. That was from Friday right after we shot the recording. So when it got announced, I was like, well, this is lame. And then about an hour passed and I was like, I don't really care if guardians works. Yeah. So the guardians, it's not a bad name when you take into account that those giant statues on the side of their bridge are called the guardians of Cleveland or the Cleveland Guardians, whatever. Yeah. Those are cool statues. Right. I liked it. And I'm not even a statue guy, but those are cool statues. So I get it that way. I just always think like, this is well, two things. One, the spiders is just such a cooler name. Yeah, I wish it was. But I get it because it scares kids and all that shit. And then the other thing is this is just a look

into the future for when the Washington football team eventually gets a name. Everyone's going to hate it no matter what it is. But then you realize, I don't really care that much. And you also realize there's a ton of team names that are equally as stupid. They just came way, way long ago. Yes. Utah Jazz is the dumbest name in sports. It really is. LA Lakers. LA Lakers. Yeah. I mean, there's just a bunch of dumb, like if they came out right now and they say the New York Metropolitan's, people are like, what is what? What are we doing here? Like if it was just the Boston Red Sox. Yeah. The, the, the, the Knickerbockers. There's so many team names. You're like, this doesn't make any sense. So I'm in on the Guardians. Sorry for those tweets. Had to get

the tweets off though. Isn't there, is there any other teams that have that name? The Guardians? Yeah. It was the Galaxy. It was the XFL team. Isn't there like a handball team or something? Oh yeah. Who cares? Yeah. Who cares? Is there, I bet you the Cleveland. Oh yes. Oh yes. Good call. Hank. Yes. We should at least bring this up. There's a handball team and Ravel and his infinite wisdom did his, Hey, look at me. I was able to do a search and found out that the roller derby team. Yeah. The former Cleveland Indians didn't, didn't secure the Instagram handle or whatever. And then Pat McAfee, uh, tweeted out a picture of them, a team picture, and Ravel was like, look, it's two women on the team. There are five women on the

team. Three of them are maybe different looking women than, I don't even know what, no, they're women. I saw it right away. No, they're women. I was like, that's five women. I looked at it too. And honestly, they just have short hair. That's the only thing. I either Ravel only looked at the left side of the picture or he just doesn't know what women look like. Yeah. That is a possibility. Hold on. I want to watch this clip real quick. One more time. He's going, he's going, he's going, he's going, he's going and yeah, he forgot to turn and oh, fuck, boom, eight shit. Oh, he actually might've gotten really hurt. Listen, you gotta, you gotta know how to turn if you're biking. Okay. Hopefully he's okay. Thoughts and prayers to that guy. Uh, all right. Before we

get to Pat Conniton, Chevy, the strongest, most advanced Silverado ever. Silverado is strong, advanced, dependable, hardworking. Silverado is dependable like the people who drive them. The design is big, bold and commanding and this truck turns heads. A partner with grit and determination, anything is possible. And Silverado is a partner in that tailgating, hauling, towing, off-roading, moving day, helping out your friend or family member move road trips. Chevy Silverado is the truck. If you're thinking about owning a truck, Chevy Silverado is the truck to do, to buy, uh, show up, whisper PMT or take into a salesperson's ear. They will give you a hundred dollars off your new Chevy Silverado. Everyone's now, it's a ripple effect across the

studio of people watching this guy eat shit. I'm going to watch it one more time. The strongest, most advanced Silverado ever. I'm going to watch it. Chevy is the best. You know, would have helped that guy if he was in a Chevy Silverado, not on a bike. I like that the big screen going up. Silverado is strong, advanced, dependable, hardworking Chevy Silverado, the best truck ever created. Okay, here he is. Pat Conaton. Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. He is an NBA champion for less than a week now. It is Pat Conaton. Uh, let's obviously start there. Uh, one have, has the party stopped? Has it slowed down or is it still going? I hope it's still going, but how's, how is like the last couple nights been? Uh, the party never stops. So you

can appreciate that. But the last few nights, we've been able to get a little more R and R arrest and recovery, um, keeping it a little bit more low key. Okay. Okay. And now has it, uh, you've been, I assume you've been introduced a few times now as NBA champion. That's got to be pretty cool. Has it like, have you had that moment where you've been able to let it, you know, set, settle in and be like, Holy shit, I got a ring. I'm part of history. No one can ever take this away from me. I'm an NBA champion. That's how you introduced me for the rest of my life. I actually, I haven't had that particular moment. I would say, uh, you know, some from the texts that I've gotten, some people that have just called me champ now moving forward or claim they're going

to, uh, it started to set in, I'd say each and every day that kind of goes by, it sets in a little bit more what we did. Um, it's unique, right? Cause like you went in NCA championship, it's one game, it's one night, like that's where all your eggs are in NBA championship. It's a two month process. You got to go through every single round. You got to go through all these different things. So the actual culmination of that night, uh, it takes a minute for it to set in because of the entire journey it took to get there. Yeah. Would you say that this is the toughest NBA championship to win of all time? I mean, look, we played the Brooklyn Nets in the second round. Uh-huh. They got three superstars. They got three MVP candidates. I think, um, it was definitely one of, if not the

hardest, we started off with a team that we owed revenge to. Um, and then the Atlanta Hawks are a good young team. You know, they got some, some good young talent and the Phoenix sons are obviously a great team. So I'd say it was one though. I think obviously not having to go through LeBron helps a little bit. Yeah. Also the Nets have four superstars. They're forgetting about Blake Griffin. Yeah. Oh, good call. Blake, I thought you were going to give the nod to my guy, Joe Harris. Yeah, Joe Harris. Well, yes. He had a great playoffs. It is crazy though. You mentioned it like it's, it's crazy to think how much time has passed because I'd look back at like game one of the entire playoffs. And I thought to myself like, you go to overtime against the heat.

It's like, Oh, the heat are going to be a problem for the bucks again. That feels like 10 years ago. I'm sure it's the same for you. Uh, like throughout the entire two months, did you go zero dark 30 where you just locked in no social media, like basically eat, sleep and you know, basketball all the time? Yeah. I actually went zero dark 30 this entire year. The last social media post I had was right before our first game in Boston, my hometown. Um, I guess there was one aside, uh, coach break out a little bit of flack at one point in time. I had to show all my support, but that was a quick sign on sign out. I went zero dark 30 the whole time and, uh, maybe, maybe LeBron's onto something to work. So, so what's your burner then?

LeBron, I don't have a burner yet. I'm not that technologically advanced. I think I, now that I'm an NBA champ, I should probably figure out a burner. We should take some like burner account username, uh, you know, suggestions. Yeah. I think you definitely should have a burner. You're at that point. Not Matthew Delovedova should be your burner handle. Deli, I played with Deli for a year. That would be a pretty good one. Or I could just, you think PC burner would be too obvious. PC burner. What about your, I don't know if anyone in your entire life calls you this, but on basketball reference, your nickname is vanilla thunder. Actually heard that. I've never been physically called that by anybody. So I don't know where it

came from. Those are the type of nicknames you read it. You're like, there's no chance anyone calls you vanilla thunder. You know, I kind of thought you were going to add, uh, at least from what I heard, I thought you were going to add vanilla thunder with the big stat line on game six. Cause I heard I got a little bit of a chirp dude. No, that wasn't a chirp. That was the bit. You won my big heart of the game. I, okay. So this segues to a question I wanted to ask you, because, um, there were, you know, you're, it's a weird situation because you're, you're an incredible athlete. We want to get through like, we'll talk about your backstory, but you're now in the NBA finals. You're clearly not asked to do a ton offensively.

You're doing all like incredible stuff on defense and rebounding, you know, eight rebounds in game six. How do you like figure out a way to stay engaged at all times when you know that, Hey, going into this game, I may only have four shots tonight. Like I, the ball might just not, you know, it might just not be the night where I have to shoot a lot. How do you stay engaged and how are you like able to get rebounds and, and do everything you do that might not show up on the stat sheet? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, uh, on a serious note, I'd say it's, it's the mental side of the game. I'd say a lot of that comes down to the mental side of the game.

Obviously everyone sees the physical side of it, the athleticism, the things that, you know, Janice's transformation from when he was drafted to now physically. You see all the shot making, you see the dunks, you see the playmaking, things like that. I'd say the mental side of it is what I've really tried to progress on throughout this season, and especially in the playoffs, because my role is unique. There's going to be nights where I get nine threes. There's going to be nights where I get one or two. There's going to be nights where I don't touch the ball for the first half, and then I'm expected to make one or two shots in the second half. But the one thing that has to remain consistent is my ability to positively

affect the game throughout, whether it be rebounding, whether it be defense, whether it be taking charges, whether it be just causing havoc, whatever it might be. So for me, I just kind of mentally remind myself, Hey, just use the athleticism that nobody thinks I have, you know, use the athleticism throughout the game, find ways to impact, use my instincts, do things that they may not show up on the stat sheet, but it's going to force coach Bud to continue to put me in the game or keep me in the game. Because that way, when Drew or Giannis or Chris or the guys that have the ball and play make, obviously on a consistent basis, when they do get double and triple teamed and the ball does get kicked to me, I'm a little bit more engaged to make the shot as

opposed to just being cold and like firing it up. Right. So a little follow up. So let's say there were times during the playoffs, like you get three shots. If you air ball one of them, or you miss one badly, doesn't hurt a little bit more. Cause that's the mental side that I feel like is really remarkable that if you have three, four shots a game and you had more games with, with more, uh, and you miss one badly to be able to be like, all right, I got to keep my confidence up because if you have 25 shots a game and you miss one badly, who cares? You're shooting the next possession down. Right. No, you're 100% right. So I'd say it's funny because that's where the majority of my growth this season came from to the stretch during the

regular season. I played back in Portland where I, you know, started my career and I threw the first one off the, you know, backboard in the second one, barely hit the rim. And I realized like I went into a shooting slump for like the next week or so, and it was because of that. And so how did I look at myself and be like, Hey, how do I grow from this and learn from this? Because it's going to happen again. You know, I hope to play in the NBA for 10, 12, 15 years. Who knows? You're going to miss bad shots. You're going to miss them poorly. And fast forward, the Atlanta, you know, game one, we lose and I miss a shot that could have tied the game or put us up by one and it was an air ball. And I think what I've learned is

you got to somehow understand a miss is a miss. It doesn't really matter what kind of miss it is. Can you self-evaluate why you missed it? And for me, the Atlanta one, it was time, score, moment. I let the environment kind of dictate how I shot it. I got too excited for it. I was like, Oh, I'm going to make the shot. We're going to win the game before I even shot the shot. So how do I self-diagnose that? So the next time it's just, Hey, the ball's coming to me. Find the front of the rim and let it fly. I'm happy you brought up that one because I think I just have the tweets. I don't have like what the context is. I just have one from June 24th that just says, Oh, no,

pack content. I think that was that. Yeah, that would probably be it. I mean, that was probably one that's good. I wasn't on social media for sure. I'm sure the messages, the tweets, the mentions were probably not crazy. No, but the next mention I have of you is I never should have doubted Pat Conneton on July 14th. See, it's all about how you bounce back. I'm looking at your stats here. And just about across every category, every shooting category, your regular season stats compared to your playoff stats every season, your playoff stats are much better. Like you improve as a shooter in the playoffs, whereas a lot of people go the other way. Do you feel different in the playoffs? Do you get in the zone? Yeah, I mean, some of my

buddies said I should, I should trademark it as playoff Pat. It's just a different mentality. But now I think for me, I enjoy those big moments. I think when you're, when you're able to calm your mind down and understand, Hey, I'm just trying to find a way to win the game. Like that's, that's the biggest thing to me. The reason the Atlanta one bothered me a little bit while I was in the gym that night early the next morning was we lost. If I had missed a shot badly and we didn't lose and I found a way to help my team win the game, that's a different story. But I just want to try to find ways to win the game. And in the playoffs, that's when it really shows during the regular season, you know, playing time and things that coaches look at will be a little bit more

statistically oriented during the playoffs. They're just trying to find guys that can help them win games. And that's where I try to make my mark. And I've been fortunate to do so quite a bit since I've been in Milwaukee. Okay. So another dumb question about the mental side of the game, which I think this is why people like our, you know, our show, because we asked these kind of dumb questions. So have you ever found yourself in a playoff game and a regular game being caught being like, Holy shit, what you honest did was so cool and like didn't get back quick enough or like kind of kind of get caught because like we're watching it and we're our mouths are on the floor with some of the blocks, some of the dunks. Has that ever happened where you were maybe like

a split second, you didn't get back fast enough or, you know, you lingered a little too long because he did something so incredible. Yeah. There's a, I got a perfect one for you. There's a, there's a picture of it where if you zoom in on my face, you see me like, it's the block he had versus the under eight the other day or in game three, I believe three or four. Yeah. That was at the end of the game. That was incredible. I, the rebound was supposed to come right to me. If you watched the film, it was coming right to me. I didn't move. Thank God. PJ Tucker like was still in, in like his self, uh, mind, but I was just, I was like, he threw the lob. I thought it was, I thought it was done. I thought he had it.

And Yannis comes from nowhere and pins it off the glass, hits it off the glass. And it took me a split second to jump back too. And by that time, PJ, I already grabbed the rebound. So we were good. That's amazing because that's obviously one of the highlights of the NBA finals. You know, that game, that block was just incredible. All right. I'm watching it real quick. That's, that's, that's perfect though, because that's the human side. You know, obviously you're locked in. It's, it's high stakes stuff, but then Yannis is doing stuff that like you can't, it's, it's incomprehensible sometimes has his athleticism and what he's able to do on the court. Also, Pat, I'm watching this play right now. You need to get credit for it. Assist on

the block because as eight is making the backdoor cut, you point at him and you're like yelling at Yannis like backdoor, backdoor. And then Yannis does something that's physically impossible for a human to do and blocks that shot. But we need to start keeping track of, of assist blocks because that would be one for you. Maybe the greatest assist of all time. Yeah. I mean, I'm telling them, Hey, look, Yannis, I can't do anything about this. You need to go do something about that real quick because if not, we might lose. I'm watching this and it actually like it's very, very small. So you're, you actually are harder on yourself than, than in reality there. But you can see your body kind of relaxed for a split second. I think you would have gotten it anyway because

PJ Tucker might kind of stole it from you, but that's so funny that it's that block because it really was, I mean, I watched it a million times being like, how the fuck did he recover and get that high and block it at that level? Man, crazy. If you saw, if you saw the picture from like, it's got to be either underneath the backboard or behind the backboard in the glass or whatever it is. It's a picture of him doing it and it's at the time of the block or like right after. Yeah. And the still frame, if you zoom in, someone sent it to me, I haven't on my phone, if you zoom in, that's where you see me like, that's incredible. And now it's a quick second, but, but to give you credit, Yannis, I read somewhere that Yannis actually is jealous of your ability

to show up to the gym and like jump out of the, out of the gym without any warm up. So you guys are like workout buddies, right? Yeah. Yeah. So me and Yannis have a nice little friendly competition on who can lift more during certain exercise. You know, pound for pound, who's stronger, things of that nature. And I kind of started right when I got in Milwaukee three years ago and obviously he gets all the credit for being as strong as he is from where he came from. And when we first got there, I said, Hey, look, you deserve all the credit, but don't think that I, I think you can beat me in a weightlifting contest. That's not going to happen. Okay. So we need to redo that. The picture that went viral in game six of they

showed Yannis when he was drafted and Yannis today. And it was like, he grew seven inches and gained 50 pounds. We need one where like when Yannis met Pat Conaton and Yannis today, that's all you get credit for that. 100%. The last three years, I'm going to take a little credit for like, Hey, there's a few, I'll send you guys a few photos. There's a few where after he gets an and one, my big thing is like, put my arm up like this, like how strong is, and there's a few great still, still shots where like his face is like, and like, it's right at that moment. And I haven't, I haven't lasted a month social media for it yet. I wanted to make sure we want to challenge it before I did. But where I said, look, even the MVP is jealous of some of the,

some of the strengthening guys on this team. What about his eating habits? Do you think that he was actually able to finish all those Chick-fil-A minis? I actually have no doubt he was able to finish all those Chick-fil-A minis. I think he loves Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A is his thing and the man can eat food. I mean, 50 minis is that's just a ton of food. That's more impressive, we were saying, than any of the blocks, any of the alley-oops, any of the dunks that he's had. If you're able to put away 50 Chick-fil-A minis in one sitting, that's actually just superhuman stuff. Yeah. I mean, his nickname is the freak. He's the Greek freak. I tried to get a little campaign going during the playoffs when I was interviewing on NBA TV with Jared Greenberg.

I think, you know, he's the Greek freak. I'm the Irish freak, but it didn't take. Unfortunately, Nike stuck with the Greek freak stuff. They didn't add a new line. We can get on that. What about the PC freak? Yeah, we can get with the Irish freak. We got you. Yeah. Yeah. I'd assume you jump higher than most Irish people. What about his, so the other part of his freak is the knee injury. After that happens, was he telling you guys, like, don't worry, I'll be okay? Because I still don't, it feels again, like 10 years ago, but he's up there now with Adrian Peterson. Obviously, Adrian Peterson stores ACL, but how he got hurt, how bad it looked, and then how he was able to come back. It still kind of blows my mind. Yeah. I think, to be honest, it's kind of undersold.

It's under talked about. Like you look at the way, I mean, you look at what Chris Bosh was saying. Like they were worried about certain blood clots, things that Chris Bosh went through. Chris Bosh was worried about him playing again, or next year, let alone playing again in the playoffs. I think it just kind of shows a, his growth, like on a serious note, his growth as a leader. Like you look at some of the stars throughout the course of these playoffs, some of them that got hurt, they weren't down on the bench. They weren't standing up. They weren't taking guys aside and talking to them during the games. Like, Giannis was doing that throughout those two games, these comments files, which really helped us. It really helped us get through and he was addressing

the team collectively before the games, which I think just speaks to the growth that he's had as a leader, especially locally. He's always had obviously the work ethic side of it. And then just the treatment in the 24 seven things that he was doing in order to try to put his body in a position to heal and get back and, you know, be there for game one of the finals. And then to put up the numbers he put up during the finals, I mean, that's coming off of a hyper extended knee that, you know, if he wasn't as strong as he was, or he hadn't put in the work in the weight room, who knows what that injury actually would have meant. Yeah. So were you, were you confident? Like, I guess how soon after the injury, were you thinking like, okay,

he's going to come back, he's not done, because as fans, we just, we assumed he was done until next year, like maybe even going to miss some time into next year, given how serious that injury looked. Yeah. So him and I, because we've lifted obviously together for a few years now, he's sprained his ankle over the last few years, and I've sprained mine once or twice. And the thing that we kind of say to each other a single time we go over, like, don't feel pain, like be stronger than pain, like stronger people are hard to kill, but don't feel pain. When he was walking off that plane later that night, I was, I didn't go over and say to him, I was like, I'm a little bit concerned. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay to feel pain just this one. It's okay to feel pain on this one,

like I would feel pain on this one. But I'd say probably like, the next day or two, seeing the progression that he had just in walking, and now granted walking is way different than running, playing, going left and right, laterally jumping, exploding, things like that. But his, his walking improved significantly. So I thought that's when guys had a little bit of more hope. And he said, Hey, look, we're focused on this series, do not focus on me, focus on winning this series. I'm here as a voice to help you guys win this series. I'll make sure behind the scenes, I'm taking care of myself to put myself in a position to hopefully come back. He's a freak, but you're a freak too. And one thing that I think is under, we don't talk about

enough is your performance in the slam dunk competition. When you jumped over, well, you jumped over Yanis, which is pretty cool. But you also jumped over Christian Yelich, a friend of the show, recurring guest. When you were planning on jumping over Christian, was he like, did they, did they tell you like, please don't bump your testicles against my head? No, so we practiced and I showed him video of me jumping over a video guy that we have that's so that he knew I could do it. It was more or less, I would say the city and state of Wisconsin I was concerned about because I was jumping over the two MVPs. I was going to try to get Aaron Rogers there to jump over all three of the MVPs, but I didn't make it to the next round. And so I

didn't have that opportunity. But I would say there was a lot of breath holding from both the brewer's ownership and management, and then the buck's ownership and management when I was like, yeah, this is what I'm planning on doing. It was a great outfit though. You were rocking the, the white men can't jump the, the wood. And then the problem with the dunk over Yanis, I thought was there was almost too much nuance to it. The tapping the ball on the backboard. I don't know if the judges saw that when it happens in real time. Yeah. So I would say they didn't see it until there was slow motion in the arena. So being in the arena and afterwards, I knew it was going to be kind of tough for the city. So me and Yanis

went over and like kind of pointed when they replayed it in the arena on the big screen. It was almost like a bigger reaction than when I actually got the dunk down. It was like a double reaction. Like I got the dunk down and people were like, Oh, and then they showed on the arena and people were like, Oh, and like, it was the second one that I think kind of helped. But the first one I think was the one that had the most controversy because I was the only guy in the first round to get the dunk down on the first try jumping over Yelich in the white man can't jump costume. And my man Dway gave me an eight. Oh, that's tough. Yeah. Have you have you talked to him after that? No, I haven't. I haven't spoken to him. I told him that it's going to take me a few

years to get over it because he had a fellow Miami Heat guy in the dunk contest that happened to make it to the next round as opposed to me because of that eight person. Yeah, that's bullshit. Um, we're going to get back to the interview with Pat Connickson just second. But before we do 3G 3G 3G is back. I love 3G. I make no secret about that. I'm not a drug guy, but I am a 3G guy. You can go to 3G.com and you can shop for Delta 8 THC vapes, gummies, tinctures, and oils. You can use those to make your own homemade edibles. 3G is the industry leader in Delta 8 THC products. All of their products are formulated by biochemist. What does that mean? It means, well, they're made in the USA with USA grown hemp and their Delta 8 is a federally

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but if they don't, you're an incredible baseball player. You get drafted by the Orioles in the fourth round. You decide to play basketball instead of baseball, but actually let me go back. So I read that essentially your life changed in one week at an AAU camp. Is that, is that like true or is that kind of an embellishment of a story that some writer made up, you know, maybe a little bit sexier so they could, you know, have an awesome article? I'd say it was my life in basketball changed in one week for sure. I would say baseball, and it was actually probably right around exactly 11 years ago this week. It was a week in July. I never played AAU basketball really because I played baseball in the summer. Like that was

my thing. I played basketball all fall, winter, baseball, spring, and summer. And so I didn't really get seen for basketball. The only offer I had going into that tournament was from a division two school Bentley University for basketball. I had baseball offers from everywhere starting since I was like a freshman in high school. And I told all the baseball coaches, Hey, I just want to wait and see what I can do with basketball. And all of them looked at me like, why? Like, why? Let's be honest, you're, you're a six, five white guy. Why are you waiting to see what you can do in basketball? Like, let's do this baseball thing. And so I finally got down there. And I went down with an AAU program, those like magic from back home. And I've got to play in

front of some division one coaches. And I left there with like 30 division one offers. And when I really knew like things were changing, like coach pray, my obviously college coach was like the first guy that really saw me and offered me. But when I really knew things were changing, we, we had lost the game. And you know, in those AAU tournaments, like you're at like the nice facilities until you lose and you're in like some random gym at like the second court isn't even like, it's like torn up. It's like, there's only one court is dividers. And there's those little crappy like metal stands. And I got Ben Holland, coach pray, Bruce Pearl, I got all these head coaches sitting on those away from the main event. And that's when I kind of knew, Hey,

if they're coming to these shitty gyms to see me, things are looking up. That's incredible. So like you, if that week doesn't happen, you're probably in, you know, in the minors, maybe the majors at this point, and your life is just completely different, but you went down, you bald out, and then everything flipped. And it's like, now everyone looks at you, Pat Conn, it's in the basketball player who's just like that. Yeah, it's just like that. And I think like the funny part about it is, you know, I worked, I worked really hard before I went down there and I got myself in even better shape. But a lot of things was, which is ironic and different back when I was there, there wasn't

all this high school mctaib. There wasn't as much coverage of the AAU or the high school circuit. So not many people knew who I was. And the last I went to nationals, but like the first few games and nationals just during warmups, I did some 360 dunks, I did some windmills, I did some things and like everyone starts turning their heads like, who's this guy? We've never seen him before. He's doing all this. That's, that's nothing you bet on yourself. Like you wanted to always play basketball. You get the, so you got a signing bonus from getting drafted by the Orioles for $400,000, while you're still at Notre Dame. That must have been hard too, to be like,

I could go get paid to be a professional athlete right now, but I'm going to keep playing basketball. Yeah. So I went, I met with all the scouts my junior year, the baseball scouts. I also, you know, I was an athlete in baseball. I wouldn't say I was a pitcher. I was an athlete. I could throw it hard. I had a little bit of a control issue from time to time. Like batters got in the box and they were a little bit nervous because they didn't really know where it was going. Sometimes in warm-ups, I'd say I went over the catcher's head and hit the backstop and come all the way back to me, like things like that. So when I was talking to all the scouts, they were like, Hey, look, we'll take a chance on you. There were guys that wanted me at the

end of the first round, guys that wanted me in the second round. And I said, well, the one thing I want to do is come back to Notre Dame to finish out my basketball career. You know, coach Bray gave me the opportunity. I thought it was important to me to make sure that I finished the four years that he gave me scholarship for and finish out my degree and things like that. I was set to graduate a semester early and the Orioles said, yeah, sure, we'll let you do it. No problem. And the exact quote they sent to me was like, we have no problem letting you do it because we know there's no future for you in basketball after this. Holy shit. And so I went, I actually went and I took the signing bonus and I played

that summer. I played minor league baseball in Aberdeen, Maryland for the short season A, the Aberdeen Ironbirds. Pitch probably started four or five games and then went back to Notre Dame and played basketball in my senior year and never ended up going back. Damn. And so I'm reading a quote here from one executive said, he definitely cost himself some money by returning to school. I think it ended up pretty good for you. Like if you were to do it all over again, probably do the same thing. Yeah, for sure. 100%. I think the funny part that not a lot of people know was I had the Yankees sitting in my living room back in my senior year of high school offering me a couple of million bucks to forego going to college at all to play baseball. But I felt like

if they were offering me that then, that opportunity would still be there as long as I advanced in college. And I felt like it was easier for me in both sports to progress if I was trying to do them on the same campus, working with each coaching staff, not having to fly places to get better, but being able to just walk across campus. Granted, it was snowy and negative degrees, temperatures and self then. Yeah. Are we going to hear it in a couple of years? Like if you have a contract coming up, you're like, well, I'm thinking about going to play baseball as leverage. Russell Wilson does that every couple of years. I'd like to hear Pat Connington get involved in that too. Yeah. I mean, look, maybe not in a couple of years,

but when it comes maybe five or six years down the line, when I'm getting to that point, there'll be a few stories leaked of me playing long toss in the summer. And you'll see, you know, we've thrown it from the plate out of over the green monster at Fenway when I'm back home in the off season and stir up a little bit of controversy. I mean, the Yankees love pitchers with control issues right now. Yeah. You'd fit in their bullpen right this second. It's true. Wait. All right. So I'm mad though, that you ruined one of my questions because you admitted to having control problems because I did want to bring up the first pitch that you threw out in 2019 for the Brewers. So I watched it and I was like, this guy played baseball because you

fucking airmailed that thing. Hold on. I'll pull it up for PFT right now. You airmailed that thing. So that now it makes sense though. So you're basically saying this was commonplace for you. Like this, this didn't bother you because this was a kind of routine Pat Connington warm up where you might hit the guy who's holding the camera, you know, 20 feet behind home plate. Yeah. So two tidbits for you. One, there was our social media girl was holding the camera and she was watching the camera, not like the pitch to make sure she got it. She did not move an inch and I have her footage. It went right by the camera, like right by her. Like she didn't move an inch. She was stoic through the whole thing, like nerves of steel. And then the other

tidbit is there was a time in high school where I hit the first batter of the first four innings to the point where the parents on the other team thought that I was doing it on purpose. And I was like, look, I'm honest. I'm not doing it on purpose. I hit the first batter of the first four innings and then I struck out the remaining three guys of each inning. So I ended up with 12 K's after four innings, but four hit by pitches. I guess I just wanted to pitch out of a stretch. I don't know what happened. That's one of the best stat lines ever. It's actually great because you set the tone right away. Like the next batter that comes up, they're not digging in. They're not great on you. Hey, you should have seen the first batter of the fifth inning.

So four innings pitched, 12 strikeouts, no hits, four batters hit. Yes. What is that line? That's incredible. Yeah. So it was a unique stat line. And one of the one of the hits by HPPs hit the kid in the helmet and I caught it. It came right back and I caught it. Oh no. In the air? In the air. That's ridiculous. Yikes. Yeah. If I was a parent, I probably wouldn't try to catch you too. But that's good. Now we have it. You should have just said that right away after that first pitch because it was a very bad first pitch and you were a former baseball player, but now I love it. You're just wild thing. You're Ricky Vaughan. Yeah. Well, you know, when I threw that first pitch, I was still on a vet minimum. I was a one

year team option the second year. I didn't want the Orioles or anybody thinking, hey, his control might really suck. Like we might have to rethink this whole fourth round draft thinking. I had to make sure that this basketball thing was really going to work out before I really started to give myself a hard time and show the world what kind of pitcher I really was. That's awesome. We have a recurring debate on this show between myself and Big Cat on whether or not it would be better to just be able to step back and just be wet shooting threes or to be able to step up and just throw down dunks in a pickup game. So you're probably the perfect person to ask because you dabble in both. You're an athletic freak. So what does vanilla thunder say to that?

Dunks for sure. I mean, I've been, you know, one of the best basketball experiences of my life goes back to high school. I went into the Mission Hill projects in Boston with this team from Lynn, which were a bunch of guys I used to play against and played with an AAU. And we played against the Mission Hill projects team, which had Shabazz Napier, who's a close friend of mine. And there were a lot of Division I guys there. We walk into the gym. One of the guys on Lynn reached out to me before I got there and said, Hey, before you get here, let me know. I'll come out and get you. And then I'll bring you in. So I'm the only white guy in the gym. I walk in. My dad comes with me. A little kid runs up to my dad and goes, Hey, like, are you meaning like,

we were the only ones that really looked like in that gym. Shabazz showed us up. The place goes wild because Shabazz had just gotten back from Yukon for the summer. It was usually a year above me. And so we play, we're playing the first half. We're tied. I hit, I think four or five threes in the first half and people were impressed. But like it was still like they were rooting for Shabazz and the Mission Hill projects beginning of the second half. There's a block. I'm coming down the right wing. I got two guys on the Mission Hill team, one who's like kind of lining me up. And the other one who's just trying to come over from the weak side. And I go up off one and I put both of them in the room. I dug on both of them. The game stopped. I got people running on the floor.

I got people going nuts. I got people yelling things like this white boy can play. Who is this kid? Like the whole, the whole nine until I would say to you guys, the threes were, they were fine in the first half, but we shut down a game with the dunk. Yeah. It's pretty cool. In my defense, my argument has always been not about Pat Connaughton level pickup hoops. It's about like Saturday morning, everyone's fat running around. And if someone dunks, it's a try hard move. Like I've, I play and pick up games where a guy will dunk and everyone be like, all right, dude. So yes, I would agree in what you just described is a lot different. Like if you're playing with guys above the rim dunking, yeah, you dunking on people is fucking sick. You probably have not

played in a, in a level of play that I play at since like probably fourth grade where it's just everyone's just running around missing shots and sucking. And then one guy will show up and dunk and everyone will be like, all right, dude, like, come on, really? I would actually, I would, I would agree with you only because I have seen my buddies play. I have gone to a few of the pickups that my buddies play over the summer. And whenever a guy hits a three, especially if it's a few feet behind the line, there's a lot of trash talking going on where it's like, Oh, he got lucky. He won't do it again. The second he hits a second three, it's like, Oh, even a broken clock's right twice a day. Second he hits a third three, it just keeps going. And that's when people start to get

pretty anime. And you, and pick up hoops, like you're playing at 21 or something. And it's like, you could, you could basically rattle off three wins if you get hot at three. You know what I mean? Like where it's just bang, bang, bang. But yeah, I mean, what you described is very cool. Yeah, appreciate it. Have you, have you considered like just making yourself available to go over to Tokyo and play in the Olympics and just, we need a shooter. We need, we need to pack. Yes, please help. Yeah, I was, I was buying for my guy when we were still in the final or in the yeah, in the playoffs in the finals, I was, I was buying for my guy, Duncan Robinson to get called up over there. I thought he would have fit him perfectly with them deep threes. But

yeah, if they give me a call, I'd be happy to go over my guy, Dan still over there or is over there. Obviously played with him Portland, Drew and Chris are over there. Drew had a great first game, but it's a different brand of basketball. I think that's what, you know, it's different than the NBA. There's less spacing. The ball has to move more. People have to move more. It's got to be shared more. It's not as much isolation. And those guys that play in the NBA that then go and play for their countries, they're used to that. They grew up playing that. Yeah, no, can you explain it like a little bit more in depth because I'm really dumb. So I've heard people say that like there's more spacing involved and it's a different game and it's not just like,

okay, we have the players who are by far the best athletes in the world and some of the best scores in the world like Kevin Durant, like they don't obviously have anybody that can match up what Kevin Durant's able to do offensively. But what's what are the differences in the rules that make it so much more difficult for guys that just play their United States career in the NBA? So the three point lines closer. So immediately when guys are guarding around the three point line, you've got five bodies within a tighter space. And that's before you put the offense in there. The key is a little bit smaller. So there's no defensive three seconds. So you can sit in the key for really as long as you want. Goal tending. If the ball's on the ball, touches the rim, you

can bat it off. So you'll see guys throw up a free throw. It'll roll around the rim and you'll see the good European guys jump up and bat it off the rim when in the NBA that might roll in and count. There's like little nuances like that where when you you can mitigate the athleticism, it's basically how I describe it to people. Like when you're able to shrink the court a little bit, you're able to give Kevin Durant less space, you're able to give a guy like Dame who's super fast, less space. It's all it becomes more about skill. And then you look at guys like Luca Donchic, you look at guys like Rudy Fernandez, who didn't make it in the NBA, but when he was playing for Spain in those exhibition games, you know, he was killing the United States and Paul Gasol,

who's not in the NBA anymore, but he's still having a significant impact in the Euro League basketball and the Olympic basketball. So it just kind of mitigates that athleticism. I think that's where Americans and the United States have always made their bread and butter is we're just a little bit more athletic than the than the Euro in the Europeans. You can also say the roster construction is baffling because we don't have like a true point card or centers, which is very weird. Like when you play, because all these other teams have huge guys, like they all like you said, the point about athleticism, you can play a big guy who doesn't move. Like in the NBA, today's NBA, you have to, if you're a center, you have to be able to guard anywhere on the court, hopefully

hit threes. And when the athleticism goes down, you can play like old school centers a little bit more. No, 100%. 100%. I would say, I mean, let me ask you guys the question. Why do you think less guys from the NBA, less Americans wanted to go, I think it has to do with this COVID. Yeah, there's no fans over there. I think for some reason, and this Olympics isn't even in a fourth year. It's because it's the late a year, right? So I think there's a little bit of, Hey, we want to get ready for next year in the NBA. We'll catch the next Olympics in, you know, 2024. And this one's not as important, which is a shame. However, I still believe we should win it based off the talent that we have on the roster. Agreed. So that actually leads me to the question, the debate we had

on the show. Chris Middleton and Drew Holliday, did you have a moment where you looked at them like drunk at the party or at the parade being like, come on, guys, look, let's keep partying. Don't get on this flight. Yeah. So the parade was Thursday and Drew Holliday was on my bus. And I turned around, I took a bus selfie and then I turned around and I looked at Drew and my man Drew was sitting there like, I need some rest because I got to fly on a flight to Tokyo tomorrow. And I was like, is it still worth it? Like after winning it, like, is it still worth it? And I mean, both of them, you know, had the same answer. Like Chris Middleton, you know, he's the guy that was just like, I want to be able to compete for an Olympic gold medal.

These chances don't always come around. Same with Drew. And I couldn't fault them for that. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're looking at, Hey, we won the NBA championship and we got a gold medal in the same year. That's a pretty historic year. That's a hell of a year. So I couldn't fault them for it. But when I asked if it was worth it to both of them, they both thought about it for a split second longer than I thought they would. Good. I'm happy that you at least brought it up because I agree. Like at the end of the day, playing in the Olympics, that's something special. You'll remember forever. You got to suck it up for a week in a flight. But I'm happy that you asked him because that's, that's what like every like regular fan guy sitting at a bar was thinking

like, Whoa, I would, I just party my face off for a couple of weeks and just pretend the Olympics didn't happen. I did tell them, Hey, look, if you want, the other way you can look at this is just party and don't sleep. So that flight goes by really fast because you're just passed out on the entire time. Yup. That's a good strategy too. Very good strategy. So we saw, we saw PJ Tucker's speech, the dog speech. He wants dogs. He looked like he was having a pretty good time. Do you think that was he parting the hardest? Or was there some guy who was low key partying harder than PJ? No, I think it's, it's evident PJ Tucker was partying the hardest. Like PJ is one of those guys. I mean, obviously he came to us probably a third of the way through the year. So he's with

us for like two thirds of the year. He's one of the best teammates I've ever had. He's a guy that he's a great locker room guy. He's a great human being in general. Obviously the stuff he does on the court is those winning type plays, which, you know, I resonate relate to really easily, but just as a human being, he's great. And he's been through an incredible career. I mean, the guy went overseas for a few years to come back to the NBA. So for us to win, he was one of the guys I was most happy for that we're able to get him a championship. And let's just say he took full advantage of winning that championship afterwards. Like he was the most. He was the guy who I was getting snap chats from people within Milwaukee that he was

still out at a few bars by the time it was over. Like he was, he was, he deserved. Yeah. Yeah. There was a couple of funny, like just a bar that you would never expect an NBA champion to be at the day after he wins an NBA championship and people like tweeting it being like PJ Tucker just bought everyone at this bar a beer, pretty cool move. So that's the way to live it. Yeah. And that's the type of guy he is. He's the type of guy where, you know, he celebrates things that are worth celebrating. And obviously an NBA championship is worth celebrating, but he wants everyone to feel the same type of thing. And the city of Milwaukee embraced him when he got there. I gave him some food spots because he's a big food and coffee guy to go to. And they treated him really

well and he wanted to make sure that the fans felt the love back. That's awesome. All right. So I had one last question. This has been awesome, man. We really appreciate you doing this. The game seven against the Nets. I was there. I, I didn't for a second think that Kevin Durant had a three there. Did you think that he had hit a three or did you, cause it actually on the board, on the Jumbotron, it said three pointer. Did you think your season was over in that moment? Or were you like, no, his foot was definitely on the line? No, I didn't. So I, I wasn't on the court for that play. Um, I was standing off, uh, but I wasn't on the bench. I was almost at the scores table and I couldn't, I didn't have a great angle. I had a great angle of like shot,

but I didn't have a great angle while the play was going on. So I was with you. I was looking up at the Jumbotron, watching the play unfold. And the second he spun and turn around when I was looking at gentleman, I saw his foot looked like it was on the line. So I knew it was a two. And then I looked at the play and it looked like it was going in the whole way. Like when he let that thing go, I was like, God damn, this thing's in again. Um, and to be honest with you, that's why, like, if you put into perspective a game that felt like you won the NBA championship, it was that game. Like that game was an instant classic. You had Kevin Durant hitting shots to put it into overtime at home in a hostile environment. Like winning that game showed the type of character

and, and, you know, camaraderie that we had as a team. I love it. I mean, I couldn't agree more. That felt like the first moment where it was like, Oh, the bucks are punching back this year. It's not like last year they have the top. Let me ask you, who were you rooting for during that? I was rooting for Blake Griffin. I, it actually was bizarre. If you were watching it, like I only would cheer for Blake Griffin. He had a fucking awesome game. If they had five Blake Griffin's out there, we wouldn't be interviewing you right now because you wouldn't be an NBA champion. I will say, I will say he did play really well. Yeah. He was a dog. He was exactly what PJ Tucker, he was a dog that whole series. So his transfer, his transformation from Detroit to Brooklyn was, was like night and day. I was

like, Janice's rookie year to this year. You just need a little fresh air. Some of that famous New York city fresh air. And then all of a sudden he's able to dunk again. Yes. Well, let me ask you, is this, has this week been better than your one week in, in, uh, of like AAU legendary performances, which is the best week of your life? Oh, that's a great question. Uh, yeah, I would say this week's been better. I mean, it's not often you can win an NBA championship. There are guys who have great careers that never go through it. It's not often like a guy of my stature, who everyone thought was going to be a baseball player, um, who actually ironically enough, I see your guys logo back there. I was, uh, at home in summers playing on my buddy's men's league softball team who our name was the

Yabos. Oh, love it. Yes. So we had some good, good stories then, but, uh, you know, it's not often the guy that, you know, everyone picked to play baseball was having the type of role that I had in the playoffs, in the NBA finals. And so, um, I'd say this week, Trump's it. I wouldn't say it's by a lot because if I didn't have that week, we might be talking about, uh, me just playing men's league softball. So, uh, it's something that, uh, I won't see that just striking, hitting people in, in slow pitch and like, yeah. That one hurts a lot less. I don't think the parents would heckle me if I was hitting people on slow pitch. It's true. It's true. Well, Pat, this has been awesome, man. We really appreciate it. And, uh, congrats again. Appreciate it guys. Thank you.

This was a lot more enjoyable than when I got my ass handed to me in the spit and chicklets, uh, NHL video game year, year and a half ago. Yes. Love it. Pat Connick has brought to you by our great friends over at Lightboxer. We have a Lightboxer in the office. It is the coolest piece of workout equipment that I've ever worked out on. It's basically a pad that has different, uh, things that you can punch and it tells you where to hit, different workouts to do. It's a boxing workout and they have exclusive music, licensing partnerships. So you get the newest and best tracks from artists like Bieber, Post Malone, The Weeknd and much, much more. If you're sick of your normal workout, maybe you're sick of going

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Get a hundred bucks off your purchase or you can use the code take at checkout to get a hundred bucks off your purchase. Either way, lightboxer.com slash take or use promo code take at checkout when you go to lightboxer.com. Okay, let's wrap it up with the Mount Rushmore. We have the Mount Rushmore of Olympic events we could medal in maybe and we're doing summer and winter. So it's all Olympic events. Let's hit the lottery machine to see who gets to pick or who gets to decide the order. Okay, who picks the number first? Why don't you go first, Big Cat? 45. 20. 19. 69. Here we go. And we're going and we're going and we're going and we're going and we're going. 57. Me? Yeah, Big Cat. No, Ty. No, Big Cat. Oh, no way. Ty. It's a Ty. Wow. Price is right. Over

disqualified. Wait, so that gives... Wait, what? No, we're not going to change it. Then we would lose. Jake just literally did the ref it went out of bounds on me. Let's go. It's their ball. Let's go. I'll re-alpha Jake. I'll say Jake goes first and we'll come this way. So we'll go wrap around that way. Okay. So Hank will go fourth. Jake and Billy go first. I am not going to... Oh, no, that's time traveling. Okay. I was going to say I'm not going to... Okay. Yeah. All right. Go for it. I don't know what you're going to say. Go ahead. First pick. Go. You go. Go. Table tennis. Okay. I thought the easy first pick is handball. I absolutely could meddle in handball. I watched again. It is a joke of a sport. It really is gym class. You... Yeah. On a team could meddle in handball. Okay. All you'd

have to do is just do band workouts for your shoulders. Dude. Develop like an 80 mile an hour fastball and guess what? You're automatic. I think that gives you the silver medal in handball. It is gym class. I'm not going to ever lose to Croatia in a sport. No. That's just a fact. No. I will overcome them with my sheer mental will. Easiest sport ever. Yep. By far. My first pick is going to... Well, I was going to do... There's an alternate version of handball out there, big cat. No, there isn't. It's a more chill version of handball. But it's not an Olympic sport. Yet. No, it's not an Olympic sport. You're talking about beach handball? Yes, not an Olympic sport. It was on the list of Olympic sports. You were probably looking at the all list. It was a youth Olympic sport. Okay. So

that's why I'm not going to take beach handball. Yeah. So instead of not taking beach handball, I am going to pick pretty standard one for easiness curling. Okay. I think if you just gave me like four years, I could figure it out training every single day. Yes. I like shuffleboard. I like ice. I like being slightly overweight. As far as I can tell, those are the only three requirements to being a professional. I agree. That was my number one pick as well. I also think because if you're... That's a team game too. So it's like, let's say you get put into a training facility and you're just curling all day every day for like four years, you would get enough skill and then you could... If you're playing with two good players or three good players, having many players, there are,

you could win. I just be the broom guy. The broom guy seems like it's... I love cleaning. Everybody knows that about me. It's so easy. So easy. All right. I have two here. I will go with pole vaulting. Okay. That's maybe the hardest. One of the artists works in the world. That's the one where like you're going to get a pull up your butt at some point. You just run? That is such a hard sport. Stick the stick in the ground. That would be easier. Listen, big hat. If me and you were both training for four years, I would be closer to being a pro meddling polebalter than you would be to a meddling handball player.

I know how to throw a ball. I know how to run and hold a stick. Dude, I don't think you... Okay. That's a really hard sport. You know what we... People are like dying at that sport. Yeah, yeah. You know what we need to do, Hank? We absolutely do need to get you out on a track with a pole. We know the kid who's like the heavy favorite for polebalting. He's Swedish, went to LSU. We met him at a LSU tailgate and like we stayed in touch. We met a fucking Olympian handball player. He looked like an accountant. He came into this office. We interviewed him. He looked like an accountant. We've interviewed Aaron Donald.

That doesn't mean I'm going to get defensive player of the year. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying. Okay. All right. I'm trying to be positive this year, but that's a hard sport. A bad pick. All right. My number two is... What's your number two? Boxing? No. Billy's got Billy just crossed off boxing. Surfing like fuck. Surfing. Okay. Yeah. Yes. It's better than polebalting. Yes. Better than polebalting. Also, surfing is just like entirely subjective. So if you could invent a cool looking trick,

then you might find a judge who's like, yeah. Why are you fucking like that? I just don't like... I just... Polebalting's hard, dude. But if all... Like let's say I just live at the track. I'm training for four years straight. I have a coach. All you got to do is run straight and get the timing down. Yeah. It's scary. Versus handball where you have to be in much better physical shape. No, dude. There are fat guys playing the handball Olympics right now. Also Hank, to polebalting, there's a shitload of upper body strength

that's required to push it in and then spring yourself over the bar. Yeah. Well, I'm going to be jacked by August. That's true. What skill do I not have that handles? Endurance. Dude, the courts are so small. Being able to jump lateral quickness. Again, the courts are really small and they basically just walk around throwing the ball at each other's face. It's fourth grade dodgeball. These are things that can all be learned, by the way.

If you get with an elite speed teacher and just have you do that thing where you slide back and forth on your feet for like two days. Also, I could just be one of the fat guys that just throws it hard. Or the goalie. And you just throw it at their feet. I would actually... I think I'd be a good handball goalie. Dude, should I take some balls to the face? I regret picking polebalting. No, no, no. I don't want to.

No, no, no. You guys... I do. I just want that on the record. Okay. It's just a very hard sport. All right. Is it my turn? Yes. All right. My second pick. I'm going to go power walking. Is that still a sport? Did they take that out? I don't think so.

Hank, you don't know. Yeah, I do. I think that pick should stand and it should say not an Olympic sport anymore. But it has been an Olympic sport. You should vacate. You should have done... You're like the Twitter reply guy. Not a sport. Yeah. I mean, you should have to vacate that pick. Official Olympic website. I do not see it.

As of 2016, it was. Let's see. Get with the times PFT. Come on. Race walking is an Olympic athletics event, according to people also ask. I don't think it's there anymore. I'm on the official Olympic website as well. I think you just vacate this pick. Yeah. It says there are two race walking distances contested at the Summer Olympics, the 20 kilometers.

In 2020? And this is Wikipedia for race walking. Is it in this year's Olympics? Race walking is an Olympic athletic event. Yeah. I think that I don't see it. Does anyone see it? Yeah. I think that it is. Does anyone see it?

International Olympic Committee says the 2020 Tokyo Olympic marathon and race walking events will be moved to the island of Hokkaido because of its clue. Well, this was in 2019 though. So as of two years ago, it was an Olympic event when they're planning for 2021. You think they forgot? No, no, they didn't. Race walking is an event in the Olympics. And I think I could do it.

Oh, all servicemen's. Okay. All right. All right. That was contiguous though. You guys really came at my throat. You don't have very long legs. I don't, but they're quick. That's like kind of the thing that you need for race walking.

Not necessarily. You ever see like a doxin run? That's kind of like my tiny little legs. They don't go fast. Yeah. But I feel like if I trained hard, I got good calves. I thought there was a whole like big thing that race walking got taken away. And it was like very sad because it is a very funny sport. I'm looking at maybe the funniest sport.

Yeah, it is. I'm looking at the builds of people that compete in race walking. They don't seem to be super tall. Okay. It still is. I thought they were trying to get rid of it. Please never get rid of it. Never do. And yeah, this is my body type.

I'm looking at some race walkers right now. I could dominate. They're very skinny. Yeah. But I could walk my way into shape. Okay. All right. I can't believe this one lasted bobsled. There's fucking be a sack of potatoes in the middle. One of the guys in the middle.

Like what the fuck? Sanka Cohen. That's the easiest fucking sport in the world. Did you watch Cool Runnings? Yes, Sanka. You have to be fast. Wait, wait, wait. Sanka was like his buddy and he just was on the team.

Did you watch Cool Runnings? There's a bunch of dudes who didn't know how to bobsled. They just started bobsleding. But they were actual athletes. But one of them wasn't. One of them wasn't. The fat one wasn't. And you need a fat guy.

You need a fat guy. In the middle. He wasn't fat, but whatever. Yeah. Dude, put me in the second or third spot. And all I got to do is lean every now and then. So you got to specify four-man bobsled. Yeah.

There's nowhere to hide in two-man bobsled. No. Yeah, that one's scary. Okay. So this one, you actually don't have to be athletic at all, but equestrian sports. Mm, yep. Good pick.

It's because you can train a horse. Like you don't actually have to be that good. Yep. Good pick. Good pick. So. Yep. Good pick.

An equestrian-tested positive for cocaine recently. That's sick. Really? Yeah. The horse or the person? The person. Oh, I thought it was a. Yeah.

Yeah, no shit the person did. All these crazy horses. Yeah, they're all rich people. Yeah. Like, oh, Bruce Springsteen's daughter. They party. It would be more surprising if she wasn't using cocaine. Turns out they do give cocaine to race horses.

Yeah, that's awesome. I looked it up. That's pretty cool. They run faster. Dude, that's not cool. Don't give drugs to animals. All right. Unless you're Billy.

You're trying to make your frogs super big. All right. Next, Billy. I was going to go. Wait. No, it's you, Jake. No. Oh, yeah, Jake.

It's me, either or. By the way, race walking is under the athletics in the official. Yeah. I found it. So the final is on Friday, August 6th. I'm very happy. I thought for some reason I read a story where they're like, race walking.

This might be, is this it? It might be it. They're trying to get rid of it. They should just, they should always say that about the stupidest sports. Yeah. So that we beg you to make them return. I agree. Yeah.

I'm going to go with badminton. Okay. Similar to tennis, similar to table tennis. Okay. And you know what the thing is called? They're ball. Shuttle cock. The shuttle cock.

The shuttle cock. The shuttle cock. Or the birdie. Which you're going to be on the cock. Yeah. Nice little. I think I'd be a good badminton player. Okay.

I think you'd be pretty good at it. But have you seen some of the experts play? No, it's fast. Badminton. It's crazy. It's actually like, it's remarkably violent. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. I'll next one. I get next pick. Sailing. Sailing. I mean, come on. That can't be hard, athletically. You can learn sailing.

It's sailing. Yeah. Sailing. It's 90% the wind. Yeah, dude. It's sailing. And just fucking hold the rope really taut. Tie a couple knots.

And boom, you have a bronze. We're not talking about gold. Bronze. It depends how rich your dad was. If he made like over $500,000 a year, I feel like you are just naturally born into it. I do think that those kind of sports, like sailing, they should eliminate those sports.

Because there's no way that the people, like there are certain sports, handballs, another one where there's no way the people that are like winning gold medals are the best in the world in it. They're just the only ones that fucking do it. I would love to see a movie, or maybe just a real life coach

that takes like a sailing program to an inner city school. Yeah. In high school and develops like best sailor. Landlocked. Yeah, the best sailors in the history of the world. I, we're, this is going to be great because we are going to piss off

so many like random niche sport fans. I'm fine pissing off sailors. Oh, dude, sailing, come at me sailors. They're called sailors. Come about us. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ.

It really is though. Like it, when I watched some of these sports, I'm like, there's, there's no way that these are the best in the world. They're just the people that do it. Like if you, again, going back to the handball, if you just had our best athletes, we'd win gold every single time.

Or even like, Patrick Mahomes would win everything. Even our above average, slightly above average athletes. Every time. You could probably take Notre Dame football. And they would win. Win, yes, yes.

Got to learn how to tie some knots. Yeah. Easy. It's also like the curling and bobsled. Our best chances are teams where, where a team sports where it's like, you have a good captain and good teammates. Yeah.

Good teammates. Right. You can help contribute to medal. Correct. Correct. Correct. All right. PFT, your next pick.

My next pick, I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with ski jumping. Ski jumping. Oh, you got to land though. No, I don't think that you do. Yeah. It's part, you know, it's part, no, no, no, no. Because I've actually had this thought.

I can't remember when I was having this discussion. It might have been on a rundown. I was like, I'll just bomb it once. And just go full send. Yes. That's what I'm saying. And just land and crash and I'll have the longest one. I'm pretty sure they judge landing.

I don't know if they do. And also you kind of have to go, like you'd have to go multiple times. So you can't just go once crash and like break all your bones and be like, boom, I got the longest one. All right. So, so there's style. There are style points that are involved.

Right. And there's also a target. I went down this rabbit hole. There's also a target that you have to aim for. Yeah. But I feel like I could go full send one time. I do. Yes.

No, but this is it again. No, I agree with you. Because I had the same thought. Here's why. I can stand perfectly still for about 10 seconds while I'm going downhill. I can learn how to balance myself doing that. And then you just do like one of those,

like a little spring at the last second. And that's my biggest muscle groups are my calves, my ass and my quads. And I feel like my body is designed to be a ski jumper. And then I just land however I land. I might die. Right. But then I get a bronze.

The problem is, I think there's, like you'd have to do multiple. You have to land a couple to get to the final. The good news is, though, you get to train at this sick facility where you don't have to land. You go in the pool, you go in the foam pit. That's sick. I would definitely raise some red flags with my trainer,

like the hijackers. And be like, hey, I'm calling the FBI. There's this guy. He only cares about flying. He does not care. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would be awesome to just go full send once.

All right, Hank, you're two picks. That's crazy. I had that same thought. It was like two or three months ago. And then someone was like, dude, you know, you like, they do judge how you land. I was like, fuck. Let's go with the skeleton.

OK. Just sit there. Bob sled related. Yeah. Yeah. That's a head first. Head first. That's a little bit of like a ski jump

where you just like no fearful send. It's turn your body a couple of times. Mm-hmm. And then golf. Ah. OK. Same thing. I mean, I feel like if I was just golfing every day

for my whole life, I could really get my handicap down and potentially go pro. Well, no, you can go pro right now. I remember calling more a cow told us that. Right. Yeah. So you can get pro and then become an Olympic golfer if you're proud to start off.

That is true. That's a good pick, Hank. Um, this is my last one. Yep. All right. For my last one, I'm going to go with fencing. No. No.

Can I switch? Can I switch? Whoa. OK. Yeah, I'm going to. I'll stay with fencing. I don't want to cause disturbance. OK.

I feel like fencing is just a quick twitch. If you've ever watched a fencing competition, it's not even really a sword fight. It's just whoever swings their sword like first, that person usually touches the other person. Yes. And so I also feel like there's room where you could like cheat very easily in fencing.

That's true. I have a question on my last one because I don't know, like, I want to pick a sport that I think I would actually be able to compete at. It's a team sport. But they may not like guys do it. Field hockey. No, softball. I think I would.

I would medal in softball. Yeah, sure. OK. You could. You could compete. All right. Softball. I think if you just get off, get a quick operation and then you'd be good.

Not even. Softball. Not even. Softball. Softball is my final answer. I was going to say basketball, but I feel like now you guys are going to throw in flags. Like you'll never make the team, which is probably true.

You never say never. Probably what you just said. Probably true. You basically alluded to that with pack on it. Saying like you've never played anywhere near the type of basketball he played. Right. Right. Fourth grade was last time.

You could also say hockey and then just never get into the game. Right. But I did want to give like the idea that I'd have to actually make the team. Because if we're being honest, the best, maybe not this year, but the best chance of meddling is on the USA basketball team, right? Yep. All right.

So softball is my last pick. All right. So going off of the idea that you're not athletic, like this is something you can just get to, which is like a little bit of practice. This one's going to be contentious and don't take the wrong way, but shooting sports like rightfully. Because like think about, you don't actually have to be athletic.

So you're picking rightfully. Rightfully. You are a young white male. So you're like halfway there. Yeah. Yeah. You do go on message boards. Yeah.

So you're three quarters away there. It is like, what do you want me to say, volleyball? No, it's a good pick. You don't have to say anything. I don't think that's contentious at all. I knew you guys would make shooting jokes. Well, yeah. This is a podcast.

Yeah. You the only thing was shooting though. I think all those, it's like you have to be born with amazing vision. Yeah. You do. It's vision and also you have to be able to control your heart, which you take way too much pre-workout to be able to do that. But think about if I don't, if you just go cold turkey,

then your arms would get weak as fuck. And you need a gun because you couldn't defend yourself with your hands. True. Maybe that's the trick is just to raise the biggest beta that you can find that's completely unable to defend themselves unless they have a firearm. All right. Here's a question of all the track and field sports. Which one is the easiest pole vaulting?

Race walking. That's not track and field, right? Is it technically? Yeah. Hammer throw. It's field. Javelin. I think that's all harder.

No, there's no way that javelin is harder than pole vaulting. Dude, being on a four by 100 with Usain Bolt. Good point. Maybe discus. Triple jump. Nobody really does the triple jump. Hammer throw. Hammer throw?

Yeah. Okay. Just throw a hammer. Which is the one with the, oh, the steeple chase. Yeah, steeple chase. No one wants it. That's just half just not tripping. It's the event that they leave up to the people that don't mind if they get their socks wet.

Yeah. All right. Other ones that missed the cut. I also had diving on there. I don't know. I feel like if you just figure it out. Well, there's that video of those guys that like couldn't even do the dives. Right, right.

I could do that. Right. I had skateboarding just in the event that everybody that competed failed the drug test. Yep. Yep. Synchronized diving too. Because if you just, again, I'm going under the premise of like, I'm taking the next four years of my life and just focusing on this one thing.

And if me and me and PFT just went to the diving, whatever, the diving pool every day and did a synchronized dive, we could figure it out in four years. We worked on one dive. Right. Yeah, just fucking nailed one dive. Synchronized swimming. Definitely. That's part of, you know, just don't, just try to keep up with the team a little bit.

Water polo. I was thinking about water polo, but then I remembered that we were at Stu Finder's house and I almost drowned like six times in the shallow end playing essentially water polo with a greased up watermelon. And if you ever see the guys that are playing water polo, they're just, they're different species. Yeah, they're fucked in the head. And they also like wearing Speedos.

Yeah, they like just beating the shit out of each other and like half drowning each other. I would, yeah, they would just not let me on the team for the sheer fact that they're like, okay, this guy's too hairy. I'm shocked PFT, you know, you've considered yourself to be a potential professional kicker for the last three years, but you didn't think you're good enough to be a professional rugby player. Well, I mean, there's a lot of other stuff that goes into rugby. You got to make the team. As soon as I got to make the team, I have to think you could make an NFL team,

but you don't actually think that's what that's my point. I have too much respect for the sport of rugby to say that I could walk in off the street is maybe the most challenging sport besides pole vaulting to compete in. No, I think if you were to ask me if I was 26, you could put me in for like four minutes a game on the US Olympic rugby team against an inferior opponent, maybe we wouldn't lose. But right now, no, absolutely no chance in hell sport climbing. I'm afraid of heights stuff.

The only other one that I wrote down was I feel like the track cycling. Like if you just don't crash, yeah, the big one hits. Yeah, yeah, or yeah, or if the big one hits behind like in front of you. Yeah. And you you're the last one standing rhythmic gymnastics as well. I don't understand that. Do you guys do that one? I don't know.

I have no idea trampoline trampoline. I was sick at the track. I know. I always thought the double bounce would fucking tear my ACL. I hardly ever got injured. All right. That was good. Mount Rushmore, boys.

Mount Rushmore season is officially back. All right. That is our show. Do you have suggestions for Mount Rushmore? Yes. What do you want us to do? Please tweet at Jake. Jake's going to take a list or at the part of my take Twitter handle.

Jake's going to start taking a list Mount Rushmore season. Reminder Wednesday. The Takies get excited. The Takies are here. Numbers to finish eight. 99. Wait, I think the deck you lost. 18.

Thanks. You got mad at me. Silver. For spoiling sopranos. 86. 68. 99. 37.

37 is the number. First timer. See you guys Wednesday at Takies. Love you guys. Ants can carry up to 50 times their weight. Finally shining away. I'll be coming for your love of kings. Take on me, take me on.

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