The Right Time with Bomani Jones - James Harden & Clippers lose again, Warriors & Steph Curry to face Anthony Edwards | 5.5

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

On today's episode of The Right Time, Bomani Jones reacts to the end of the 1st round of the NBA playoffs. Bo starts off the show by saying he won't call anyone a "loser," but there is a strong correlation with James Harden and losing (2:43). Sticking with Harden, Bo says why big moments swallow him up (4:30) despite thinking he is a top 5 shooting guard of all-time (12:22). Bo transitions to previewing the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs where he says why he'd take Tyrese Haliburton over Donovan Mitchell (18:50) and why he believes the Oklahoma City Thunder will win the Western Conference (26:36). And finally, we have another round of If You Haven't Heard stories involving the demise of outdoor dining in NYC, why you've already met your best friend and why chicken breasts are now losing out to dark meat (32:44). Then Bomani listens to some voicemails about unexpected significant others showing up to a family event (42:18). If You Haven't Heard Contributors: Henry Grabar, staff writer at Slate, "How Did New York Kill the Best Thing to Come Out of the Pandemic So Completely?" https://slate.com/business/2025/04/outdoor-dining-new-york-city-why-over.html?pay=1746457654245&support_journalism=please Faith Hill, staff writer at The Atlantic, "You’ve Probably Already Met Your Next Best Friend" https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/04/friendship-start-ups-success/682518/ Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, "The End of Chicken-Breast Dominance" https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/04/chicken-thighs/682612/ . . . Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media: http://lnk.to/therighttime Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Support the Show: Discover faster, more reliable search with Perplexity today. Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at perplexity.com! https://pplx.ai/bomani-jones When any player scores 50 or more points in a game, DashPass members save 50% on an order, up to $10 off. Use promo code NBA50 to redeem. See further terms and conditions at https://drd.sh/8ONpZP/ Download the DraftKings Pick Six app NOW and use code BOMANI. Better payouts. Bigger wins. Only with Pick6 from DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A Wave Original presented by perplexity. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.

We got a lot going on in the NBA. We're going to talk about the upcoming second round in just a minute. But first, like, as I have said many times on this show, I am quite reticent. That's the word I'm looking for. Reticent and apprehensive about calling anybody a loser. I feel like calling people a loser is like the harshest thing that you can do. And if you think about it and I said this and if you hadn't heard me before,

I understand the most of you people who listen to this show are old like me. But if you are like a little young, you know what I'm saying? A bit precocious, quite honestly, too young to be over here hanging out. out with us, but it's whatever. I get it. If you have ever had your parents stop and tell you that you need to stop hanging out with somebody, and whether they explicitly say it or not, they are implicitly calling that person a loser, okay? Then that means, number one, that person is a loser. But number two, that is about the meanest thing that anybody can say about someone, but you have to protect your kids from being around losers. Right. Like, you just can't,

you just can't have it. Like, you think about that, man. Somebody wrote up and call you a loser. There's nothing that feels more like a punch to the stomach. Like, you should want to fight, but you can't even want to fight because you're like, damn, what have I done to make somebody call me a loser? So for that reason, it's some people that like, if I'm on the phone talking about them in like the stuff we do. Maybe I'll refer to that person as a loser, but I will never, ever get out here and call somebody a loser on this show. And I firmly believe that I am a man of my word. And I want you to know that I am a man of my word. And how do you know that I'm a man of my word? You know that I'm a man of my word because after Saturday, I still will not come on this show

and call James Harden a loser. If ever I was going to be. to say that somebody was a loser. This would be the time. I will not call that man a loser. I will say, however, when the games matter the most, there seems to be a strong correlation between James Harton and losing. I don't think we could deny that. Now, I studied economics for quite a while you social scientists in the house people who work with mathematics or those of you who have just been eavesdropping on our conversations and heard us make this point while not necessarily understanding what we mean i'm going to say something that is very important right but it's important it's very important for people to know which is that correlation and causality or causation

are not the same thing okay just because two things are correlated does not mean that one of those things causes the other right now just stop and thinking you your head. I will not tell you the answer here, but stop and think in your head. If one were to be the causal factor of losing, what would that person's title be? Just keep that in your head. Okay? I don't ever want to think that about somebody. I never do. And that's why I am asking James Hardin to throw me a friggin' bone, man. Throw us all a friggin' bone. It's too late to throw one to Houston. It's too late to throw one to Philly. It's too late to throw one to Oklahoma City. Brooklyn, you played there too. It's too late to throw a bone there. You're going to probably opt into

your deal with the clippers. You've got a chance to throw them a bone. And I understand also that what I'm doing right now is probably what people refer to as concern trolling. And what makes it concern trolling in this case is, and I mean this part sincerely, this is no sarcastic. This is no sarcastic. here. What I'm saying would not make things better from James Harden because what has become abundantly clear is that the moment swallow him up. I actually feel bad for him about this. I wonder what steps he has taken to do something about this because everybody chokes every now and then. Okay? Quite possibly the best clutch player in basketball in the last. last 20 years has been LeBron James.

The problem is we got those couple of years where he was out here getting his choke on and he's never been able to get past it, right? Kobe Bryant shot those air balls in 1997. My point about those guys is everybody chokes a bit. Team sports are different than individual sports in the sense that the way that we talk about being chokers in team sports is far more damning than the way that we do in individual sports. We have watched every good golfer choke. We have watched every good tennis player choke. We not just choke, but completely lose their shit. Like, I don't feel like we ever watch James

Harton just completely lose his shit. But I've seen Serena Williams completely lose her shit, for example, right? We've seen them all do it because they're human beings and every now and then what surround you gets to be too big. But there are some people who are better than others in those moments of just wholeness steady, right? The moment doesn't get them. All them games are the same. They treat them the same and the weight of it comes down on them. James Hardin is very clearly not one of those people. Okay? And we just saw him put up another classic James Harden performance against the Nuggets. Only scored seven points. Only took eight shots. Now look, Kauai Leonard did not put up a bunch of shots in the course of this game. The Clippers very

clearly looked gassed, right? They look like they put it all on the line in game six and then had to play a game seven at altitude. I understand that's very difficult. But you know who else had to do that the people that kick y'all's asses. Yes, I know that the altitude is home for them or whatever it is, but still, there really wasn't that much that y'all did that the other team wasn't also doing at the same time. Y'all were there. But with Hardin, what makes it interesting to me going through his track record is that rather than conquer the choking allegations, he just works around them. Now, Josh Eberley, who writes for a lot of people about basketball, did the full rundown of the James Hardin choking experience. 2012 finals where some of that was choking,

and you can ask Kendrick Perkins what the rest of it was. 37% from the field, doesn't go over the double digits in three out of five games. He was the sixth man of the year. And by the way, the year in which he gave the spurs the work. Important detail with Hardin. Harton's not always bad in the playoffs, just the most high leverage moments. Okay? In his first elimination game as a Houston rocket in 2013,

he turned the ball over 10 times. As I recall, my buddy Nick Wright said that there are 26 games in the playoffs for James Hardin has had more turnovers than field goals made. By the way, it was two and two. in the last game. But yes, turn it over 10 times, 4 of 12 from the floor. 2015, don't forget when the Rockets won that series, they came back down 3-1 against the Clippers, but they were down 3-2 in the series, and they were getting their asses kicked by the Clippers in game 6.

And with James Harden on the bench, Josh Smith and Corey Brewer led those boys back to extend the series to a series in the game 7 where James Harden didn't actually play that well. I want to throw this out here. I say he didn't play that well. He was five for 20 in that game. I just want to repeat for you, however, what I just said. Josh Smith, who if you listen to this show, you have heard me say the way that my father refers to Josh Smith,

which is, Josh is sorry, talented, but sorry. Which is not an inappropriate characterization of the Josh Smith experience. and he the one that led the rockets back, and they left James Hardin on the bench. Okay. Then that year in an elimination game against the Warriors, he had 12 turnovers. I can keep going. Do I need to keep going?

I can keep going. It was when they missed 157 threes in a row in that game against the Warriors after Chris Paul got hurt. We can go up and down, up and down, up and down. This keeps happening. But what started to happen later, okay? And I want to say the year 2022 is when this really happened. 2022, he stopped shooting in those games. Game 6 against 2022, okay?

He is now playing for the Sixers. They're playing against the heat. James Hardening in game six has 11 points and only shot nine times. Only took one shot in the fourth quarter, didn't draw any files. 2023. Remember, Philly was up 3-2 on Boston before they ultimately lost that series. Game 6 at home, James Harden, no points in the fourth quarter, 25% from the floor for the whole game, only had 13. 2024, James Harden, game 6, only scores 16 points, shoots 31%. So at least it sounds like he shot the ball. But last game, you saw it, he only put up eight shots.

He just decided, and I think there's something to this, stop trying to force it. right? I'm not that guy. I'm not going to put up the shots. And so he's done that. This is my question, because I think it's easy to chastise him. And I'm actually trying not to chastise him. Ryan, am I being honest about that? I kind of backhandedly called him a loser. I mean, I think the hardest thing with Hardin is when we associate meltdowns in sports, it's people are demonstrative, right? You talk about Serena, Andy Roddick came to mind. Clayton Kershaw's another famous playoff,

non-performer, if you will. But, you know, James Hardin, it always looks like those want to get away commercials. He looks like you'd rather be anywhere else but there. Well, the other problem is, I think part of what had been tried to be fixed about Hardin was, it's one thing with the Rockets early in the time where he just had the whole team by himself, right?

And you could even say the year they were up three two because Chris Paul got hurt. So he kind of had to hold it down at the end by himself. But James Harden played with Dwight Howard, who's a really good postseason performer, right? And James Harden, who has taken a team to the finals as the best player, which is something that James Hardin has not done. Philadelphia, he had Joel Embed. Brooklyn, where really the one playoff year he had there, he was out there dragging one leg, so I don't really blame him.

With the Clippers this year, he has had Kauai Leonard and had Paul George last year. I'm saying all bad to say, it's not like he's out there by himself, right? He had Russell Westbrook for whatever that was worth in the year they had him, but he's not out here rolling for Dolow. And this keeps happening. I have no comp for this. I can't think of any player as good as he is, where if you're just looking at the statistics for regular season in his career,

James Hardin is maybe a top five point guard, I mean, shooting guard, excuse me, who can also play point and who will dial his game back and his usage back based on who's around him. I have a lot of actually pretty good things that there are to say about James Hart. But he's the guy who always winds up in this situation. But unlike some other players who are somewhat similar to him, has never had, I guess, the proper infrastructure to account for where he can come up short. Because look, there are a lot of guys that we would consider to be great players that are not the dudes that you want to have the ball in their hand.

when it's time for shots, and you can see it on their faces. And there's some of them who have had choke moments directly on our faces that we just don't talk about. I'll give you a great example, Tim Duncan. That incredible finish in 2004 between the Lakers and the Spurs where Derek Fisher made the shot with 0.4 seconds left right on the baseline, right? What you have to remember is right before that, Tim Duncan made one of the most incredible shots that I've ever seen in my life, a turnaround, fadeaway jumper with shack directly

on him, where after the Lakers, one of the game. Shack gave the quote, one lucky shot deserves another. Okay. Tim Duncan was petrified putting up that shot. I want to say it was game seven in 2013 against the heat and I was there for that one. He choked at the end. He missed a layup at the end of that one where I remember he was at that press conference and it was all over his face. I was sitting in the room and it was all over his face. Yo, I blew this. But nobody talked about it because the whole story was LeBron and the heat. But with Duncan, you at least, You remember him slap in the floor.

He was so frustrated with James Hardin. Again, it's nothing's there. It's nothing there. I don't think he knows what to do, right? Kevin Garnett is a guy that wound up in a great situation going to Boston because Paul Pierce could be the guy to take the shot. Magic Johnson, I mean, not all the time, but Magic Johnson had the 1984 finals, dribbling out to ball and just watching it go.

I'm just saying this happens to guys all the time. So the fact that it has happened to James Hardin isn't the issue. The fact that it always happens to James Harden. is the issue. It stays happening to James Harden. And yes, he rose to the occasion those two games in 2023 for Philadelphia, for example, right? He rose to the occasion in 2012 against the Spurs. We have positive things that we can say about him as a postseason player, but he is the best player I can think of with a tendency to come up short. Now, I have a group chat with my buddy Jason and our good friend, Joe from Missouri City. Now, Joe is from Houston.

And honestly, Joel has an affection for James Harden that's a little too strong because Joel, by his own admission, it's kind of like what Cat Williams said about Shannon Sharp that time. He has a bit of an unnatural affection for losers. He's an empathetic soul. You know what I mean? So like the teams that come up short, he feel like we go too hard on him and he is largely correct. But we were having a back and forth about who's a better player and who's at a better career, Jimmy Butler or James Harden. And Joel understandably leans towards James Harden because James Harden has the statistical profile. James Harden has the start of him, and he makes the point that most people at the end of this will probably say that James Harden is a better player than Jimmy Butler. And I get where you're coming from.

I just don't know if given the choice between the dude who has taken two teams to the NBA finals and the dude that you have seen come up short over and over again, no matter what the spread she says, no matter what the commercials say, no matter what the party promoters say, no matter any of that stuff. why would you want the guy that you know is going to come up short over the guy at the very least you know what's going to give you his best? You know what I mean?

Like I just, I don't have the argument for it. And this all jumped out by the way, really strong watching the Warriors and the Rockets on Sunday night. Because Steph Curry did not have a great game. But when it was time, he was there. Like that dude right there, and we watched it through his career and watch more and more of it, whether it be the Olympics, whether it be those finals against the Celtics,

he got in it in them, man. That dude seemed like a winner to me. He makes it happen. Not all the time. There are going to be times where it goes wrong. But watching him on Sunday, after watching James Harden the night before, I don't know where there is for him to fix it. But he is the best player who will go down as the dude who just,

not just couldn't get it done. Carl Malone had the choking gene. but we don't think of Carl Malone the way we think of James Hardin. There's nobody like him. And that brother is not a good thing. All right, Ryan. I don't know about you, baby, but I'm kind of excited about these next rounds of playoffs.

Thank you, Cleveland and Indiana, for giving us a good game one, because now I might give a damn about your little series. Yeah, I mean, going in, you'd think that would be the NBA TV spectacular. Yes. But, you know, Tyree's Halberton and the boys getting it done in game one makes that eight times more interesting off the jump. It does, but don't you worry. If there are any nights where there are three games,

and they are one of them. They will be on NBA TV. Oklahoma City and Denver, you will also be the NBA TV spectacular. It's just a matter of population, baby. Poor Milwaukee. I don't know, Milwaukee could play the Dallas Cowboys, and they will wind up on NBA.

To be on FS2, yeah. Yes, it doesn't matter. But that, look, I will be honest about this, though, Lager, Pacer's and Cleveland. Go ahead, put up a great game, have all the fun you can, so forth and so on. The Boston Celtics are going to eat y'all boys alive. I feel very, very, very confident saying that that's what's going to happen. Boston Celtics got going to be bad news for you. But in the meantime, you guys might be fun.

I feel like in watching that game, and this is why I think Cleveland, needs to worry a little bit. A lot of the players believe that Tyrese Halliburton is overrated. I understand why they might be inclined to say so. I do not think that Tyrese Halliburton is overrated. And I know there were a couple of hiccups in the postseason last year, but when it came time to get it done, he was there, he was set, and he was ready to get it done.

Now, if you were to ask me, who would I rather have in a series like this? Tyrese Halliburton or Donovan Mitchell. I would tell you Tyrese Halliburton, and my reason is pretty simple. I'm not comfortable with a 6-2 guard who's not Steph Curry or Isaiah Thomas being the one that's supposed to hold this down. Right? Like, Dary's Garland's hurt. We'll see if Dary's Garland comes back.

There are numbers to indicate that Cleveland might be better off with Darius Garland out of the game, or at least they might have been in the first round. That's another discussion for a different day. But what I know they have is little bitty guards. and I personally don't like a team with little guards. And so watch at Halliburton be able to face dudes up and take him to the basket while knowing he's got that size. His game just looked funny.

You know, like, it does not have an aesthetic that encourages confidence. He has an aesthetic in his game where, like, he keep making shots and you just be bad, right? After it's been established how cold he is, it doesn't matter. That shot is not supposed to go in, but the shot keeps going in. And then all those other guys from the Pacers came up. They had Miles Turner, then what's his name, who you call it, what's his face, and Pascal Seaccom. That's who plays for the Pacers. I'm right.

I am honest with people. It's a lot of teams that I get reminded of in the postseason and don't let them have been sorry for a while like the Orlando Magic. I don't know. Do you play the Immaculate Grid? I am aware of it. I do not play it. Okay. So the Immaculate Grid is like it's a game and they'll put three teams on one axis, three teams

on another nine squares. And so it'll be like grizzlies, Timberwolves, Cavaliers. Score 500 baskets in the other. Yeah, yeah. But it could be like Lakers, clippers, jazz down here. Yeah. And the intersection, you pick somebody

who's played for both teams, right? Jay Crowder is a great answer. He's played for everybody. Chris Gatlin, you know, you could put those guys. And if it was an NFL one. Bingo. But he's tricky because you have to have played a game.

And he just gets checks, right? That's true. But when I got to pick for the Orlando Magic, If it's not Shaq or T-Mack or Dwight Howard. Jamir Nelson, yeah. Yeah, Penny Hardaway? It's the problem with Jamir Nelson is, he only playing for like two teams, right? But if it's not a, I just haven't watched y'all in a while.

The Sacramento Kings, I can do a little something with them, but I don't know who plays for these teams. Indiana, that Nimhart dude, I remember looking him up on the wiki last year during the playoffs because I didn't know who it was. them dudes is out there hitting shots. And Rick Carlisle, he has a difficulty getting along with people, but when he is on, he can cook. Kenny Atkinson obviously also can, and the Cavaliers look like a team that we would say was the better team from the way that they marched back.

But I'm going to say, Donovan Mitchell taking 30 shots and Evan Mowby taking 13, ain't the way they're going to win. Like, I don't think that's going to happen. The expectation that Todd Jerome is going to come out here and take 20, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. no, that's not it. Ryan, also, I don't know if you had this situation with Todd Jerome, but, you know,

his name is Jerome. And so I expected him to look a certain way. And then I looked up a picture of Todd Jerome. And I thought that he was hashtag white Jerome, like the dude, like Jerry Seinfeld and the head of the Fed. They are both white Jerome. But it turns out he's not white Jerome. He's actually just Jerome.

Yeah, I mean, we're all learning new things about the calves and the Pacers every day. We are. We are. The best team in the East. The one seat in these. Yeah, man, they play for the calves. Shout out to Cleveland, too, by the way. They packed it out.

It's cracking like LeBron still played there in that gym. Like, I felt like they were doing that. They had, it was ups and downs. It was back and forth. It was more three-pointers than I would prefer. Cleveland wasn't making them so much, but it was still a great game. And I look forward to the four or five games

that the winner of this series plays against the Boston Celtics, because then after that we're going to be able to give. better sleep. I have one question for you about the calves with Evan Mowbly. I mean, this is one of your axioms. Is he a big man or a tall man for you? He's tall man. He's tall man. He's an excellent tall man. He's he's a great tall man. But he is a tall man. And Jared Allen, that's a tall man. Like that my issue with them, they have small guards and a collection of tall men and no big man to be found. Like what's Evan Mowley got for poor Zingis and poor Ziggins wants to take him to the block.

Another guy who's a legit seven three. Yes, and who went from being a tall man to a big man. Yep. He started his tall man. He became big man. Miles Turner, who is a tall man who does bigish things. You know what I mean? Like he gets down there.

He has a very tall man game, shoots a lot of threes, but he's more inclined to bigness than the mother cats are. Nicks and Celtics, I think we're going to have more time to talk about that. As that goes, I'm looking forward to it. I just need to hurry up and get to Warriors and Timberwolves. This is the series that I'm looking forward to because I just want to know, can the Dragon Slayer keep doing it? That's all it comes down to for me.

Can Anthony Edwards continue to kill everyone's heroes? He has slain so many of them up into this point, right? He slayed LeBron and Luca last round. He took Yokeage down. He took Kevin Durant down. He's the Dragon Slay. The next dragon for him, Steph Curry. Can he do it? I feel we talk a lot about these, you know, USA basketball, these stars come out of the Olympic

year. I feel like we haven't really talked about with Anthony Edwards. And if he takes down Steph, we're going to be talking about it a lot more. Oh, yeah. Like, I don't like how he changed his game this year, turning into Clay Thompson, leading the league and three-pointers made. It's not what I want from Anthony Edwards, right? But what I do know about the Warriors is that Steve Kerr likes to go small with that team. the Timberwolves can go can be big without betraying the small which is the Nas Reed factor right the other thing and I think that this is very important I don't think that Golden State can play Rudy off the floor because Draymond Green will be in the game

Dreymar green who lost his goddamn mind again on Sunday did you see that thing where he here for every family in the face what is wrong with him it's one of those things where it only at some point when it only happens to you and these situations you only find yourself in every single time. Yes. Yeah, like if you had said someone was passing the ball and accidentally punched someone in the face twice, twice. Yes. You would not have to guess who that was. It's like, hi, I'm Draybond Green. I'm the common denominator. Like that is, that is like what his title, what he exists to be in this world is the common denominator. But he made a couple shots in his last game and that was cool. But I don't think he's good enough at this.

point to where you could put out lineups where he's going to be the one that plays Rudy off the floor, right? Um, I don't think he can do that. And I admit, after watching the way the Ant Man talked about Rudy and the way the Lakers flat out disrespected him by going small, I might be rooting for Rudy just a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think that there are no good guys in the Rudy Dremont beef. That's a fair point.

Rudy did get everybody COVID. Like, not everybody, but he was, he was patient zero. But he can do things in this series. And I think the Timberwolves have got some dudes that play defense. And the Warriors just don't have that many guys. They just don't have them. And this is Ant Man's chance to slay one more drag. One more.

I think Oklahoma City is probably going to win the West. If Minnesota wins, it's because Anthony Edwards is just going to go on a one-man run. And he didn't play that well in the first series. is to be honest, but he was there and he was that guy. And I think we generally give him credit for being a steadying force. But on the other side is Steph and what he has to bring. And if the Warriors were to somehow beat the temper wolves, I think they have a chance against the thunder just because they got that dude.

I can't say that about Anthony Edwards just yet. But they have that dude. Oklahoma City has a million dudes, though. Just not a dude that I trust to be the other guy to get shots. That's the only concern that I have, but otherwise, they got a million dudes. In the other series, we have got the Nuggets and the Thunder. And I am very curious to see how the Thunder decides to come at Yokic, who I did not think played close to excellent in the first round,

at least not according to the Yokish that we have seen and that we know. He's still the best player in the world. We have the two best players in the NBA from the last season in this game. We've got him and Shea Gilders-A-Less Alexander, right? These are going to be the one, two guys, for the MVP. The Thunder have tall man, Shett Holmgren to throw out there,

but then they also had Big Man, Isaiah Hartenstein, who is both at Isaiah and a Hardinstein. I know. It's crazy. They're going to throw those guys at him. But I do think, and this is fair to say, he's got a championship and good for him that he got his ring and everything else.

but for Yogesh to be the guy that we talk about him being, he's got to be good enough to get them a game or two in this series, I think for Denver to actually have a real live chance. And this guy who has presented himself as really one of the 15 best players of all time by most statistical measures, this is your chance. This is your time. He's got to get it done. It's been a chaos season.

They basically made him to coach. All right, coach, you got to get it done for him. But this right here, this is the best time in the basketball season. I know I've talked about it before, like the beginning of the playoffs is the best time. But quite honestly, that's too much. I can't pay attention to all them games at one time. But this right here where we just got two in the east, two in the west, maybe two games at night. Not all of them got to be super duper crazy late.

And in fact, damn, the Warriors, we had got all the California out of there. We was going to get ourselves a lot of 930 and 830, 930 tips. You know what I'm saying? We ain't have to worry about staying up super late. Damn Warriors. All right, get the Warriors up out here, man. Help your boy out. But this is it.

This is like the best. My buddy Nick always says that the best football weekend and he's right is division playoff weekend. This is like division playoff weekend in the NBA. Except it's probably going to go all for two weeks. I love it. We are here. Woo-hoo!

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This is Henry Barbar at Slate. I wrote about the demise of outdoor dining in New York City. After the pandemic, of course, New York City was one of many cities across the country that permitted restaurants to set up tables and chairs outside so that people couldn't eat dinner and so on without worrying too much about transmission of the virus. But then everybody found it was so nice to eat outside that they kept them there for years. And at one point, there were as many as 13,000 restaurants outside in New York City. But the city decided when it made this program permanent two years ago that they had to be taken down each winter. And the result of this,

has been an enormous decline in the number of restaurants participating, especially in places that didn't traditionally have outdoor dining like the Bronx, where there were once more than a thousand restaurants, but today there are less than 100. So the city council is trying to figure out what went wrong. Okay, Ryan, we both live in New York. Summer in New York is what makes all the other stuff worth it, right? Like we make that trade, but he's great three months. And one of the great things in the three months. And, I guess I really hadn't thought about before the pandemic that it wasn't that many places that had it like this is sitting outside and eating. The pandemic got that right.

It made the city a much better place. And we just can't keep nothing. No, it's just one of those things where, you know, I never like to be on the side of people, you know, talking about too many government regulations being a bad thing. But it's just one of these things that, you know, I'm not sure who the winner is here, right? Like the restaurant seemed to win, the patrons seem to win, you know, the neighborhood seemed to win. I'm not really sure who this benefits. I think the loser is the city because they don't get to hit people up for them parking tickets. Maybe that's what it is because, you know, that was a funny thing about the pandemic.

If you did have to drive and park your car somewhere illegally, don't even give it a millisecond after. They had to go get that money. They ain't lost, they lost so much money on parking tickets. They was just, watch, watch, watch. That's funny. All right, this next one's about friendship. Hi, I'm Faith Hill, and I'm a staff writer for the Atlantic. I wrote a story titled, You've probably already met your next best friend. Recently, a new industry has been flourishing.

Call it the friendship industry. Companies and startups have been hosting meetups in cities across America in hopes that people will set down their phones and come hang out with new people. The goal is ambitious. These ventures often claim that they're trying to solve the loneliness, one potluck or pickleball game or craft night at a time. I just have a few notes. First of all, research doesn't back up the idea of a loneliness epidemic.

Regardless, plenty of people are lonely, you might point out, and that's true. But helping those people is more complicated than just getting them in the same room. We don't really know exactly what loneliness results from, but it isn't actually closely correlated to alone time. Different people need very different. amounts and kinds of socializing. And studies suggest that the large majority of people do have friends. What might be more pressing than the quantity of those friendships is the quality. A lot of us don't see all that much of the friends we already have.

It's hard. We're all so busy and burnt out, but going to spend our precious time with strangers instead isn't going to help. We might be better off focusing on the people we know, not only seeing them more often, but trying to really listen and be vulnerable and affirming so that everyone leaves the hang feeling motivated to clear the space in their schedules the next time. When working on our friendship feels hard,

it can be nice to imagine that what we really need is just to meet the right person. But even if you show up to a social meetup and you talk to someone great, developing that bond will take a lot more time and effort. And without another shared context or mutual friends, getting it off the ground might be tough. The friendship industry, no doubt, is full of very well-intentioned efforts.

But they might be distracting you from the people who've been there for you all along and who could probably use a bit more of your attention. I think that that is a great point that she makes. And I do think that all this technology, what it is done, is allowed us to receive attention without giving it. right so you can put something on instagram for example and you get all this attention and you don't have to give anybody any attention in return and then they put something on instagram that you can make them feel like you're giving them attention by clicking like or whatever it is but not really

so you're just scanning through but you know what we've done is we've made it a less costly endeavor but not necessarily a more profitable endeavor just a less costly one but where i will push back just a little bit. It's one, I do, I don't always like talking to strangers, but I do like meeting new people. Like I do find that it is good. And I find that as my life has evolved in part because of my job, it is at once much easier, but also more difficult to just kind of meet new people. New York is great for me in that front because being who I am in New York is less impressive to people than it is in other places. Like, that's just kind of like, people like, oh, guess who's on my rec league basketball team type stuff, right? Like, that's kind of how New York works. But I'll tell you this,

you can have people in your life, and I'm going through this right now. One of the homies is about to move, right? And hey, man, we got a, we got a big hold on the roster right here. Like, we got retirement and we ain't really got nobody on the bench that you could just like bring up into that place. Like, I do think that while that may not be the loneliness epidemic at play in this, that there's something to be said for continuing to meet new people. people and even if the bonds aren't the exact same, like developing something with them as you go along, or like I say with the pandemic, the friends that I had that I wasn't that close with, that I got closer to because I made it a point to be more active about the relationship.

So on one hand, I think she's right. People in our lives, we should probably invest more in. But number two, what those people's lives are changed very often and you can wind up stuck like Chuck after the fact. Yeah, I think it's interesting meeting new people at different points of your life because you're almost reintroducing a different person. Yes. You know, like the person you're introducing now is different than the person you were 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So I think that is like that is a good skill for people to, you know, to have.

And again, it's very easy to put on the backburners. We're all. Well, yeah, on our phones. But I also think, though, that a lot more people, I think there are a lot of people who are, maybe there's not a loneliness epidemic, but there definitely is a loneliness bug going around. Right. Like it may not be an epidemic, but I do think there are a lot of people that would be well served to go do these things. I will also make this point, though. The discussions now about how fewer people are in clubs or da, die and all of that. That is a discussion that Americans have been having now for like 50, 75 years. It is, it began before this internet thing happened.

Just so you know, I've been reading all kinds of books and they talk about how this has been a thing forever. For sure. The last one we didn't get a submission for, but it's from Sammy Zhang at the Atlantic. It's about the dominance, the decline in chicken breasts. For decades, chicken breast dominated the American market, you know, with the health benefits, low fat, low cholesterol. But recently, dark meat and thighs and legs have really jumped up much more prevalent now. And somehow, and now they're even more expensive than, you know, what would seem to be the more desirable cut just a few years ago.

Yo, that's crazy because the whole point of the high quarters is that they're cheap. y'all don't jack the price up on high on thighs right like i've come around on the thigh the thigh like the the as many call them the shoet thigh the thigh was the thigh had a lot going on there's a little bit too much work the consistency whatever but then a lot of places i go they wind up using the thighs because thighs are cheap right and i believe that the chicken breast is just a wee bit overrated it takes a lot more to prepare it properly. It can easily become a chore rather than a pleasure. You know what I mean? But if they cheat now, I guess that's what we're going to do. Yeah, the breast has always had a very low ceiling high floor for me. Yes. Yes, that is the

best way to put it. We need to like, damn, legs and thighs, the price of them is going up. I will tell you this, though, I used to work with a woman at the gap, who I thought, was very attractive. And she said a man came up to her one time on the street. And he was like, I think I know you from somewhere. And, you know, it was the Gap at Atlantic Square. So in Atlanta, you know, that was a reasonable place for somebody to know her from. He's like, I figured you knew me, you know, from working at the Gap. He's like, no, I think you work at churches. She said churches. He said, yeah, I think you work at churches. Because all you got them legs and thighs. That's what I think of every time I see legs and thighs. And by the way, he was right.

All right, Bo. We had another great voicemail topic. Tell us about an unexpected, significant other at a family event. Great submissions. Here's the first one. Hey, Bo. Unexpected significant other at a family event. Kind of a long story.

My brother was 25. He had turned into a little bit of a bitch because he was dating a girl who had a substantial amount of money. And he just wasn't behaving like himself. He wasn't very happy. He was taking a toll on the relationship. So right around Christmas, the whole family was supposed to come out to my place in Colorado for the thing. And he let me know that that relationship was not going to be working out anymore, and we shouldn't expect to see this girl anymore.

That was cool with me. My family had gotten tickets to go see the local hockey team, and we were all going to go. And I showed up with my wife and my child, and I saw my parents, and who do I see? But that girl, and I pulled my brother aside, and I was not happy. and I said, why is she here? She's not one of us. She doesn't belong here. She sat through the game, but I didn't see her again, man.

Take it easy, Beau. No, that's a white people's story. Hey, man, you can't say she ain't coming and then she's coming. Can't do that, especially when ain't nobody like her in the first place. All right, here's our next one. So this wasn't your typical family event. It was after my friend's funeral. he and I served in the military together.

So I didn't know much of his family and they didn't know me. And everybody was doing that fake happy thing, like forcing smiles through grief and like the vibe was heavy. So I stepped outside to breathe a little bit just to be alone. And while I'm out there, this woman pulls up and kindly asks me if everybody's inside and how I knew my friend. And it turns out she's his aunt. She starts talking about how close they were and how they're. used to go to concerts together, and they were really friends and not just family. So naturally, we bonded over how much we missed them.

And when we walked back inside together, I was thinking, like, hey, this is cool, somebody who loved him, and everybody's going to be happy to see her. And I was wrong. You would have thought I walked in holding a turd. The mood shifted, the eyes darted, conversation stopped, jaws clenched. it was immediate. Someone eventually pulled me aside and goes like, nobody's mad at you, but she's really not welcome here.

And they didn't want to cause a scene. So I didn't bring her, but it feels like I did. And apparently, I brought the wrong one. I ain't even know her until five minutes ago. Yeah, it's tough. It's like, I just met this person. I can't be responsible for whatever it was before this. No, I mean, I thought that we all had the same thing in common.

I did, but we did not. Yikes. All right, Bo. Here's the last one. Hey, Bo Manee. This is A.A. Ron in Kansas City calling in about that time. You had a family member show up to a family event with an unexpected guest. So this actually happened on my former wife's side of the family, you know, in a lot of black families. shoot, and a lot of families of America in general.

You got, you know, you're more country or hood side, and then you got your more sophisticated side, right? So this is on the hood side of my former wife's family. And she had this uncle Cecil. And just imagine Cecil is your classic brother, dressed in the nines, where the gaiters, always has the fly hat. Looks like a brother that, you know,

from Detroit, something like that. So anyway, Uncle Cecil had just gone through a divorce. And, yeah, oh, man, he showed up to a family event with his nephew's baby mama's mama. I always have to slow down when I say this because, yeah, it's hard to do the math on that one. but yeah his nephew's baby mama's mama was his new lady his new wife as far as I know they're still happily married but yeah love the show by money

hope you have to keep it going and shout out to Shannon Penn came back on your show that was awesome listening to him so god bless take care appreciate it yeah I mean I think you feel on one hand that once you start dropping that many qualifiers you got enough distance to, you know, like it wasn't the nephew's baby's mama's the nephew's baby's mama,

you know, I need to get a better handle how big the area was that they was from. You know what I mean? Like, maybe he ain't know. I imagine that's a bit of a one stoplight town kind of problem. Yeah, that is what that sounded like. Like I'll all live on the same block. Like nobody leaves, huh? Okay, you're restricted to everybody that's in that space. Okay, I got you. But Sean, I mean, not Sean, sorry about that Ryan. That's going to happen from time to time. Surprise it took this long.

That's a great point. You got draft kings picks for us. All right, we sure do. All right, we got two game ones tonight. In Celtics Nix, I like Porzingis over 17 and a half points going against his former team. And in the Nuggets, Thunder game, I like Yokage over 27 and a half points. And Murray under 19.5 points. I think Jokic has a big one.

Murray's been coming on. on weight, so I think he's going to struggle. But the playoffs are on, so why not take a shot at making a little money while you're watching? Download the Draft King's Picksixix 6 app right now and use code BOMONI. That's code BOMONI to play $5 and get $50 in bonus bakes. Better payouts, bigger wins.

Only on pick six from Draft Kings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-78-7-7-77-7-7. Or visit ccpg.org in Connecticut. Must be 18 and over.

Age and eligibility restrictions vary by jurisdiction. Pick six not available everywhere, including New York and Ontario. Void were prohibited. One per new customer. Bonus awarded as non-withdrawable pick-six bonus picks that expire in 14 days. Limited time offer. Terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. I got to warn you, though, Ryan, they don't know what that word under means.

They don't got a year and a half or all over all the time for Sean. Like every now and then, we're going to hit you with the U. I guess I'm giving Jamal Murray. He's sometimes a four-star player, so I guess I am being a hater. Yeah, no, it's fair. I think you're making the point. But ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the right time. We do this here three times a week.

That's Ryan Brumley, handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Also, thank you to our if you haven't heard of contributors. Thanks to Henry Grabar of Slate. Check out his story on the demise of outdoor dining in New York City at slate.com. Thanks to Faith Hill of the Atlantic. Check out her story on meeting your best friend at the Atlantic. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars.

You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. And we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.