The Ringer NBA Show - Coronavirus Concerns, the Nets Fire Atkinson, and We All Drink the Ben Bartch Smoothie | Heat Check

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

Instant Replay: In this special extended segment, the gang looks at the latest news from around the NBA, including what further precautions the league might take to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. They also discuss the Nets' firing of Kenny Atkinson as well as LeBron looking a lot like an MVP (03:57). Good Call/Bad Call: The 'Heat Check' family gets weird, and concocts and drinks the Ben Bartch smoothie with special guest Colleen Wolfe of the NFL Network (34:16). Host: John Gonzalez Guests: Haley O'Shaughnessy, Dan Devine, Colleen Wolfe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a heat check. You knew that was coming. It's heat check time. Welcome to Heat Check. I'm your host, John Gonzalez. Joined as I am every week by my producer, Steve Alman. Steve, you daylight savings time sprang right forward into this podcast. You're ready to rock, buddy. It's those time thieves, yet again. They struck my eyeballs super hard today. I forgot about it. I wasn't prepared for it. And frankly, we could use the extra time to prepare for the show because it's going to be a weird one.

Yeah, no, I could have used an extra hour to mentally prepare. for what's about to happen today. For what's coming our way, we have a lot of stuff to talk about basketball-wise, but then we're going to make good on one of our promises that we made on this show. It's not the mystery box. Yeah, no, that's still to come. The mystery box will happen one day, but instead we're going to drink that ridiculous smoothie that we told you about last week.

But we'll get to that in just a second. Like I said, we got a lot to get to on this show. Jampack show, a lot of fun. I want to say to all of you, thanks for listening. A reminder to please rate and review us, and don't forget about all the great NBA content on Theringer.com. Palo Esco blog Paloagetti wrote about Janus and LeBron's Heisman moments and how they could define the MVP race. Lakers just beat the bucks.

We're going to get into that in just a second. Haley O'Shaughnessy, another dip of Haley. She just keeps cranking them out, man. They're really good. She wrote one about Alonzo was quietly rebooting his career at Zion's side. And she wrote about Mark Cubans Forever War with the NBA. He just got fined a whole bunch of money by the league for protesting and crying about the refs. And then, of course, our wonderful day.

Dan Devine wrote his third quarter awards. Those are super fun. Those are on the site. Check those out. So, as I mentioned, coming up later in the show, we're going to debase ourselves for your amusement and drink the Ben Barch smoothie, plus a very special guest. Somebody who's never appeared on heat check before. I'm very excited for this. It's never happened. Yeah. It's very exciting. I'm very excited about it. We'll see what you guys think about it. But first, as I mentioned, lots to get to. Let's review the latest news from around the league and bring in two of our favorites, Dan and Haley. Boom, Shakalaka. He's heating up.

He's on fire. All right, one of them is in studio, won his way across the country in our NYCHQ. It's heat check coast to coast with Haley and Dan. Hello, gang. Good morning. Good morning, Gons. So last week we had a weird show. This week's going to be a weird show, too.

But last week's weird show led to some interesting results. So we were talking about, Haley learned about Dungeons and Dragons for the first time ever when she mentioned chaotic neutral. And that conversation, Dan Devine, led to. some interesting interactions on the old social media machine. Yeah, so a very nice young man named Chris Clark, who is part of the community social media team for Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Dungeons and Dragons and sells it, reached out to say he's a fan of the show

and wanted to know if there's anything that he could do to help us further our entree into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. So he has done that. He has sent over some materials for us to peruse and to take a look at and figure out. Maybe more on that story to come in the future. I have a basically my idea here is that Haley O'Shaughnessy is going to become a goddamn wizard on our airwaves. This is wonderful.

How excited are you? Is wizard male? Is there not a female one? No, they're they both. They're female. There's such a thing as, yeah, no, there are such a thing as, yeah, no, there's not even like 10 seconds too long. Oh, okay. They're absolutely.

Great. Steve is also excited about this. They're excited to explain gender normative wizards to Haley. So it's going to be fantastic. They're none. This is a non-binary campaign in the universe. Honestly, I would rather talk about dungeons and jazz. dragons, wizards than the Washington

Wizards. So, sorry. Good news. Lots of things for us to discuss on this show today, but not the actual Washington Wizards. We're going to skip over those. We're going to review all kinds of headlines. Let's hit it with NBA instant replay. All right. I thought we were going to start with the coronavirus, which we were going to get to in a second. But somehow

the Nets usurped the pandemic and fired Coach Kenny Atkinson over the weekend. I didn't expect it. I don't think anybody in the NBA expected it. Woage reported that both the coach and the team mutually agreed to part ways. I don't think that's ever happened, except for that time in Philadelphia when I lost my radio show, and that was totally mutual as well. But I was like, yeah, yeah, I don't want to have this radio show anymore that you're paying me to do.

I'm going to go not do that. Kenny Atkinson finishes with the Nets at 118 and 190. They were surprised playoff team last year, Dan. They had a losing record this year, but they're a playoff team as we record this without Kyrie and without KD, which I thought was pretty significant. Jacques Vaughn will be the interim coach. You may remember how awful he was with Orlando. So Godspeed Brooklyn. Dan, what happened here and why do we think this happened now, especially with the Brooklyn Nets headed towards the playoffs? Yeah, it sounds like this is sort of both sides getting ahead of something that they saw coming down the train tracks

eventually. Reporting from multiple sources indicated that some players, quote unquote, on the Nets felt you know, like Atkinson has sort of lost his sway with them. His voice wasn't carrying the way that it used to. And that was read in a lot of areas to mean like Kyrie Irving specifically, Kevin Durant specifically, DeAndre Jordan specifically, who was coming off the bench behind Jared Allen after signing his $40 million contract. It's notable that the first game that Jacques Vaughn caught coaches after Kenny Akins is firing, all of a sudden DeAndre Jordan's in the starting lineup. If Atkinson felt like he was not going to be able to, you know, have his voice carry the way he needed to with those.

stars going forward. If the team was saying, well, all we're going to have is a dysfunctional situation, if that's what's going on, this is two sides getting ahead of it. But it really doesn't leave anybody looking at all that great. And it kind of leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths, it seems like. Haley, the athletic reported that the Nets held a, quote, spirited team meeting in which they called out Spencer Dinwiddie and said that they wanted him to play more like the player that they know.

They also mentioned DeAndre Jordan. They said that Durant chimed in, pointing out that the Nets must improve their habits and that they were not building the proper culture traits necessary for a contender. After the game that Dan mentioned that DeAndre started over Jared Allen, he was asked about those reports and whether or not he was one of the people that led to Kenny Atkinson, quote, mutually resigning from the team. He said, yeah, I'm close to Kyrie, but Wilson Chandler's a new player. Garrett Temple's a new player.

We're all new players. So if you're going to see new players, put it on all eight of the new players. I think whatever you're saying, whatever the reports are, are bullshit. Who do we believe here? It's good to be the friend of the people who matter. That's all I have to say. Do you think? I absolutely do not believe DeAndre Jordan in one second.

I wonder what the beef is with Kenny Atkinson. I mean, obviously, I'm not in that locker room, but my interactions with Kenny Atkinson, and certainly last year when they were a surprise playoff team. By all accounts, they got a lot out of DeAngelo Russell, Karas Lever and Spencer Dinwiddie were singing his praises. That team was a happy surprise. It's almost always the case that for coaches who tend to outplay outcoach their talent, so their talent is playing better than they should,

that they are player coaches, that they get along, because that's how that work is relationships. So all of this is very hard for me to believe about to be a conspiracy theorist, but it is Kyrie Irving, so it's kind of appropriate here. It is Kyrie Irving. We're going to get to who the replacements might be in a second. Let's talk about Dan first. Kenny Atkinson.

I like him quite a bit. I think that he'll have his choice. of potential job openings. Where do we think might be a good fit for one, Kenny Atkinson? I saw because I'm a devotee of your Twitter feed that you sent out that there's a team that's just a subway ride away that might be a good fit for one Kenny Atkinson. Well, yeah, I don't really think he's going to wind up with the Knicks because I don't think the Knicks are going to view their situation as we are in a page one rewrite, start

from the ground up rebuild. I think they're going to always think, like, we're just one higher away, we're one player away. And I don't think they're going to view him as that. But if you're a team that's sort of that's starting something at the early stages of a building project, you know, whether that's, you know, Cleveland would be an example there, but, you know, maybe they like J.B. Bicker staff. He's done well in there. They haven't like put him in as an interim coach. He's just getting the job. Atlanta, if Lloyd Pierce winds up not being the ban for them for the long term, if they decides to change directions, Atkinson has experience down in Atlanta, you know, was part of the Mike Boodenholzer coaching staff there

and experience developing a lot of young talent. I think that's the kind of job you're going to see the kind of opportunity. You're going to see Target Atkinson. The question I would have with that, though, is like, if Atkinson's already been sort of like typecast as the development coach, the guy who gets you to respectability and then you get the players and the real star coaches to lift you up,

does he want to take another job like that that's kind of like a stepping stone gig or does he feel like, no, I've got to go for a team that's like ready to win now to prove that I can do that too. I think it's an interesting time for him. I bet he's going to have a lot of suitors, but I wonder what kind of job. he wants to take him. Yeah, I think that's unfair too to brand him as a guy who can only take teams and build them up and then somebody else and adult comes in and takes them further. I think what he

did with that team that was completely cratered, especially last year when they had zero expectations and he rebooted it. I thought it was very impressive. I'm going to throw out a team. Can we all just have like a little conversation just between the three of us? I was thinking about this. I really didn't want to bring it up. But Dan, you were mentioning the subway right away in the event that say a team that's just a short ride down I-95 got rid of its coach, which I don't want to happen. But if that team did that, maybe a team in the Philadelphia area might be looking for a new coach. See, Gons, I'm surprised to hear that because we don't usually talk about the Sixers on this show. And I kind of figured, I figured.

And I think Brett Brown's going to be, it's going to be like a Supreme Court appointment where he has the job in perpetuity for the rest of his life. I'd like that best. But I'm just like, just between us. I'm just throwing it out there. I wonder if that's a big enough change in sort of demeanor. But I also was I was wondering if you would be mentioning a team in turmoil right now, the Boston Celtics, another on the other way down 95.

We're going to get there. Brad Stevens, clearly on the hot seat. Haley, before we finish this off here, who are the potential candidates for the next job? Ian Begley and Stefan Bondi reported that Katie's business partner, Rich Climman, is a big fan of Mark Jackson and previously lobbied for him to get the Knicks job. There were also reports that Kyrie wants Ty Lou, obviously. Kyrie played for Tylo.

The Van Gundy's are always out there. The Van Gundy's in the same way the Mori twins. Tibbs, somebody's always going to throw Tibbs' name out there. Who do you think ends up as the Brooklyn Nets coach? Who should be the coach? If they want someone to step out of the way, which I guess that's what we can assume, right, is what happened with Kenny Atkinson is that he was just too much in the way of what the stars wanted. Those guys weren't even playing.

I don't understand that notion. But their friend wasn't playing. Fair. If it is a, it really could be as simple as that because once things sour, then everything starts as sour. It's like any other relationship. Once you have a little bit of resentment someplace, it's all going down the drain. So if that's what they want, they want someone to step out of the way, then the easiest pitch is Lou. And Kyrie knows that he has the ability to do that and listen to his players. He did it. He watched him while he was on the Cavaliers doing it with LeBron.

Picturing Tibbs and Kyrie trying to get along is hilarious. Yeah. That would be such a dumpster fire. Also, either of the fan Gundy's because if they come back, they're coming back because they want to prove that they can still be great coaches. I think they both want to heavy a hand. You're a gambler. I follow your advice. I would bet heavily on Tyloo. I feel like it's going to be Tyloo. Moving along here, we mentioned coronavirus. Everybody's mentioning coronavirus. Shams reported for the athletic that the NBA is preparing to play without fans and teams should identify, quote, essential staff. Woj reported that the league issued a Membo setting a Tuesday deadline for teams to have precautionary measures in place.

precautionary measures will include infectious disease specialist on call, a nearby testing facility for the coronavirus, which, by the way, the LA Times reported over the weekend that there was chaos at area hospitals over a lack of testing kits. Now, the CDC insisted that millions of tests will be available by the end of the week, but putting all this stuff in place won't be easy. They also want a roster of essential employees who have closed physical contact with players, a plan for scaled down traveling parties, and mandatory distribution of hand sanitizers to players and staff. Public service announcement because I've been doing a lot of reading about this. The CDC recommends that if you're going to use hand sanitizer instead of just washing your hands, you use a 60% alcohol base on those sanitizers.

So that's for all of you listeners out there as well as NBA players. Haley, how worried should NBA fans, teams, players, and you and I be about this? I mean, just take the same precaution as everyone else. but also, yes, thank you guys that we're now washing our hands. The commentary on Twitter has been so disturbing. Why is this what it took for people to be like, I guess actually you probably should sing happy birthday and wash your hands for that amount of time?

Like, what are you guys doing? This is disgusting. And what do you mean using hand sanitizer instead of? It's not like a tradeoff. It's a compliment. It should be... It should be a little bit of A and a little bit of B. No, it should be a lot of A.

Sorry, a lot of A. This is an aggression to you. I'm freaked out. I'm washing my hands all the time. I am also freaked out. I spent my whole weekend talking about this. Tobias Harris just did a little celebration with O'Quinn over the weekend where they pantomime doing hand sanitizer, which I thought was great.

But some other things here to be interested to be talking about. So the NBA is considering potentially playing without fans. Dan, LeBron said if I show up to an arena and there ain't no fans, I ain't playing. Are you buying that LeBron might sit out? And does he have a case that things are getting a little odd here? Things are definitely, I think things are going to get weirder before they get more normalized. And I think that that's something that we all got to be preparing ourselves for. But I think LeBron speaking out and saying that I get the point.

I get the idea. I play for the fans. You know, that's a very admirable thing to say. But this is not a one, this is not just about the way you would like things to be. It's a larger, it's a multinational, you know, global public health concern. And that's like, I think that is the messaging that you're going to be seeing from the league and from the way people communicate. A high-ranking team executive told Ben Gulliver of the Washington Post, with no disrespect to LeBron, this is a public health crisis that's bigger than any one person.

Personally, I think there's a good chance we will be forced to play games in empty arenas at some point. The virus is spreading quickly. It's not contained and it will not be contained anytime soon. Not to be a Debbie Downer about this sort of thing, but that's a huge issue. And if non-essential gatherings of a lot of people in public are something that we have to move away from for a short period of time, I think the NBA is going to do that rather than cancel everything. And if they're going to have the games, LeBron's not going to not play in them. I agree.

I think LeBron will be out there. The question is how many people are around him? We mentioned that they would limit traveling parties and players who come in contact with NBA players. That includes those of us in the media. The NBA is also discussing limiting locker room access to players and team personnel only with media handled in other settings to protect everybody. Sports writers are gross in general, so I understand this. On the other hand, I am pro-access because it helps us do our jobs.

and it also helps us inform people like our wonderful listeners. The NHL adopted this policy over the weekend. The NFL and MLB are expected to do the same. I'm kind of torn here because for those of us who spend our lives in locker rooms, like 98.7% of pregame access is us standing around talking to ourselves. Like the players don't really interact with us pregame. Post game, yes. Practices, yes.

Shooterounds, yes. Pregame before they're doing their routines and stuff, not really. So I don't think you're losing too much. there, but I also wouldn't want to see locker room access because then I'd be worried about them reinstating it later on. Brian Curtis wrote a great story for the ringer.com about how European soccer leagues don't even let reporters in the locker room, and it makes it very difficult for them to do their job. So I'm worried about a slippery slope. However, like Dan said, there's a public health concern here that's significant. The other thing, though, locker rooms,

despite being weird and gross, also where I met my wife. So I feel like this is, I want other people like KOC and Palo and Haley to find love? Chill out. Chill out. Who knows what could happen? It could be a misconnection. I'm going to find love in a hopeless place. Dan, what about the access job-wise?

I share your concern that if the locker rooms close, they're not going to reopen again. And I think that that's a real concern for beatwriters. People that are trying to develop relationships, a lot of the conversations that those reporters have are not on the record for a quote. It's about developing a relationship. with a source and, you know, being able to sort of know your post a little bit. And I think that that's, if you start continuing to chop out the opportunities to do that, the coverage of the league as a whole will suffer in terms of just the first order coverage

and then the commentary and the discussion after it that's built on those initial quotes that people get. So I have some concerns about that. I think to your point also about 98.7% of the pregame is just people milling around. A lot of times it's because players don't come out. Players are just like hiding in the back in the treatment room or whatever. That's a classic move. Treatment room hiding is a classic move. Yeah, because they don't want to talk.

And I understand that. Like a lot of guys don't want to talk to press or if they're going to have to do it before the game. They don't want to do it after the game or vice versa, yada, yada. But like, there are rules in place to ensure that people can actually have those communications, the opportunities for coverage. And the fewer of them we get, I think the worst shit broadly for everybody. So, I mean, to your point, it's a public health concern.

I got to see. We all have to see where it goes from here. Continuing public health concerns, Steph Curry missed the Sixers game on Saturday. He was out with what the team called this season. flu. Haley, you were calling this a conspiracy theory earlier. The specificity of this is so wonderful. I'm getting nervous about this. The team doctors checked him out. Supposedly he's fine. By the way, the Curryless Warriors beat the Sixers at home. It was their first win at home since January 18th. Sixers continued to be absolutely dreadful on the road. But I want to talk about

Steph Curry real quick, Haley. He returned on Thursday after a 58 game absence, 23 points in 27 minutes and a loss of the Raptors before getting the seasonal flu. Steve Kerr said he was good sore afterwards. How do you look? A little rusty in some spots, but there were many fantastic stuff moments. I think my favorite was very early on. He hit that behind the back past to Andrew Wiggins. A four point play, like all the stuff moments.

It was great. It's good to have him back. Good to have him back. Hopefully he'll be back later. Please take your time. Stay quarantined with your quote unquote seasonal flu. Self quarantine. Wash your hands.

And use your hand sanitizer. That's exactly right. I'm not going to say it. In other health news, Janice had a precautionary MRI on his knee. He didn't play on Sunday. He won't play on Monday in Denver. Dan, concerns over Janis.

And what's the chance of them winning 70 games now without Janus? Haley wrote about this. Everybody should check that out on the ringer.com. Yeah, I would say, I mean, if it sounds like he's going to be out for a week at minimum, like they'll reevaluate him in a week and we'll see where it goes from there. The whole argument for them going for 70 was if it doesn't cost you anything. If everybody's healthy and upright and not playing extended minutes, then go for it. If there's

any concern about it, then you pump the brakes because you're not trying to make that kind of history. You're trying to win the championship. So it obviously reduces their likelihood. They've still been great without Janus this season. But if there's any concern at all, you don't want to extend anybody now. You want everybody ready to go mid-April into May and June. Last health concern, Zion's conditioning is back in the news. After his first back-to-back ever last week, Alvin Gentry was asked about Zion's conditioning. And he said, I think, he's fine. We worry about him too freaking much, okay? He's fine. He's 19 years old. He's fine. It was a very Tibbs Van Gundy reply, old school, get off

Milan type of coaching concern. Haley, do we worry about him too freaking much? How freaking much do you think David Griffin worries about his conditioning and Alvin Gentry going, nah, it's not a big deal? I don't think it's fair to say too much or too little or whatever because we don't know what's good. All we know of him is that he's fantastic. We want him around for as long as possible. And for a short while, he was taken away from us. He's large. We know that too. He's a large man. And you know what happens with large men who are prone to injury is that they will be injured again. Could be injured again. So yeah, it's fine to worry about him. But I also understand the gentry probably

has enough things that he doesn't want to. He's a coach. He wants to get his guys out there. I understand that component. But as Dan mentioned on last week's show, got to play the long game with Zion. Those are just some of the many headlines we got to run through. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. We're going to come back and do some more. It's allergy season, and you know what that means, sneezing, watery eyes, running nose, the works. So you head to the pharmacy in search of relief, but research shows that 80% of allergy sufferers fail to select the best medication off the shelf to treat their symptoms. On the flip side, you could end up spending forever in the specialist waiting room or just trying to get an appointment to get your prescription treatment. Now, I don't have allergies, but my wife does.

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Sloan Analytics Conference in Boston. Very interested to see here your takes on. this guys. He wants to move the season back two months and start it in December on Christmas Day and end with the finals in August. His thing is, he says, let football have its time. They're a juggernaut. Let's have our time. Relevance equals revenue. We've got to create relevance and the revenue will fix itself. Haley, you had mentioned before that you were tired last week on NBA Survivor. You voted off the idea of people complaining about the ratings and all that stuff. But clearly CEOs, owners are thinking about this. Do you like this as a patch? Oh, my grandma would be so mad if we started on Christmas Day. Why? Because then I'd have to work on

Christmas Day and I couldn't. They're still playing games on Christmas Day. Yeah, I know, but the whole day, it'd be such a bigger event. That's true. If it was a kickoff, it was a tip off of the NBA season on Christmas Day, it does make it even bigger. But I think he's got an idea here. And I guess the players would that wouldn't be able to have a say in this, but do you really think that they would take away their summer break being actually matching up with summer? Yeah, that would suck. There's so many elements of this that actually do make sense. I agree with you.

It'd be better to have to kind of segment out our own part of the year, which I think would actually overlap with baseball now entirely. Yeah, he's watching baseball these days. I don't like, question mark. I'm not really sure. It would be really nice to get that into the NFL again, but there are just too many problems, I think, with this, especially that it would end so late. The summer idea is a good point that you bring up because in the summer, the whole of the NBA basically moves to Los Angeles and vacations out here and practices out here and there's games all over the city.

Dan, you and I spent a large portion of the two-month playoffs together and, you know, especially the finals. How would you feel about the finals wrapping in August? The first thought I had was like, oh, I would get divorced. My wife would kill me if the entire. We had a good run, but if the entire summer was instead of that being the time that I could be off with the kids when they went, like, Chavon's not in school, it was like, actually, it's just getting good now. And now is when I have to be gone entirely. Fourth of July going away, absolutely not. No, end of July. Yeah, I, I think it would, it would so discord in my own home. Personally, I'm against this idea. I think if you're going to take that the part of it that's started at Christmas because that's when everybody starts paying attention anyway, then you just, that's the lead into shorten the season. and do it in a more, you know, fewer games in that same period of time ending in late June. And then we, you know, you figure out how to divvy up the revenue from there. But the idea of pushing the whole thing back two months, I feel like that you're going to get a lot of push back on that.

But I mean, this is maybe, I don't know, we'll say. I imagine that the players would push back on that. Well, immediately after there's also, you have to think about the draft would then happen later. Free agency would then happen later. Right. So what are we really getting as a break? Good. This is okay.

Haley, see, we should have gone to Haley immediately. Haley should have been at the Sloan Analytics Conference to explain all of this to Steve Coon. He'll go next year. Fly me out, Steve Kroonan. We'll fly you out. On the heat check budget, Steve, can you make sure that Haley's booked for next year? Absolutely. Fantastic.

We'll just put that on the budget. Let's talk some basketball. Lakers and Clippers played. Technically, it was a home game for the Clippers. It didn't look like one. The Lakers obviously always turn out their fans. Takeaways from that game, Haley. The Lakers won.

How confident should the Lakers be after beating the Bucks and Clippers? over the weekend. Are they the team to beat now? Man, and LeBron looked incredible. Right. I mean, that's the, that was basically the consensus. And there were a lot of really different, brilliant ways to say it. Paolo did a good job. Ricky O'Donnell from SB Nation did a good job. But they were basically all getting it the same thing is that his elevator, I think, is the exact metaphor. Rick used goes the highest. Dan, we were sort of discussing this on NBA Slack here at the ringer. But is LeBron still the best player in the world? And did this weekend or this season, or how he's played recently, change,

how you think about the MVP reasons. I just assume, because you had an all-star vote, that they're going to come to you. The league will come to you first and say, Dan, who's the MVP? Yeah, that's the way it's going to work is the people in the league office are going to say, everybody else shut up, Divine.

Come on in, we've got to talk to you. Let's go to the source. Yeah. Whenever we have this conversation, I think about something that a guy named Miles Brown, a writer and NBA sort of personality wrote a while ago, which was whatever you're talking about

in the MVP discussion, when you get to June and you watch LeBron play versus watching everybody else play, you'll be feeling like a dope for choosing anybody but LeBron for MVP. But I find myself in that same space of thinking this season, there's no other answer but Janice out of Accombo. He has had the best statistical season on the team with the best record in the NBA from front to back.

He might win defensive player of the year as well. He's been the best player during the regular season. If you told me I needed one player to win one game that mattered for the rest of my life, it would be LeBron James and it wouldn't be close. I love Janice. I think what he's done this season is absolutely incredible. LeBron is still the person that you want in that game when it matters most. In the same way that Haley just broke down all the flaws in Steve Coonan's plan,

you just did an admirable job with this topic. The two of you and your logic today is really impressive. I'm really enjoying this from the two of them. We learned it by watching you, Gons. Killed it, other Lakers topics. Dion Waiters, he checked favor. Dion Waders signed with the Lakers for the rest of the season. He did not play versus the Bucks or the Clippers.

Frank Vogel said that they're going to wait a few games before, incorporating them. Haley, do you like this move? Is it a good fit? Deion Waiters? Yeah. Sorry, I'm sorry. Hey, did you just blink out for a minute there? Do you not off? Haley, nodded off. Just repeat, repeat the question that you just said. Welcome back to the podcast. You'll understand how jarring that was. Dionne Waiters, is he a good option? He's an option. It happened. They signed him. Deon Waders, congratulations on Haley, just dunking on you. Ten different ways in this segment. Let's go to Dan on this. Dan, Shams reported the waiters agent, Rich Paul, was told that this must work out for waiters. Otherwise, the Lakers reserve the

right to release him, which I think is probably true with anybody. But still, with the waiters, we know he's had some problems in the past and certainly this season. Is this the last shot for waiters in the NBA? Let's not forget that he was the fourth overall pick in 2010, but obviously this season was down in every possible way for him. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not the last shot because I think that teams will will bet on guys with talent. But I think what you need to how what you're looking for from him is exactly what you've seen from somebody like Dwight Howard earlier this season. Somebody gets to a point where they were once a really attractive asset, not viewed that way anymore, come in on like a prove it deal and then actually prove it.

And, you know, earn your keep for the remainder of the season. And waiters might not really get the opportunity to do that. There might not be a whole lot of minutes and opportunities for him to make that sort of statement this late in the season on a team that's got as high, as high expectations as the Lakers do. But it is a massive fall from, I guess, relative grace and where Deon was in terms of being somebody who bet on himself got a big deal in Miami. And then it all kind of started to fall apart from there. It would at least be a good citizen here over the last, you know, six weeks of the season

into the playoffs and sort of show that he's earned the opportunity to get another one starting next year. I'm looking forward to all future Dion Waiters calling for the ball memes while LeBron is on the floor. Those were always my favorite when they were together in Cleveland. Can't wait for that to happen again. By the way, Cross Town rival Clippers, Joe Kim Noah signs a 10-day contract with them. We'll see if he has anything left.

He had a sick fit on Sunday for the game. He was just hanging out. Love to see Joe Kim Noah out there rooting for him. But we'll wrap up headlines with this. Dan, you mentioned the Boston Celtics. And I just feel terrible for him. They lost at home to OKC on Sunday. Kemmel Walker turnover in the closing moments led to a game-winning layup by Dennis Schrooter.

It also led to me texting my friends from Boston just to ask them how they were feeling about things. The Celtics have now lost four straight at home. They had double-digit leads in those games against the Rockets, the jazz, the nets, and the thunder before coughing them up after the loss to the OKC Thunder. Gordon Hayward said, we obviously have stuff to work on right now. No kidding, Gordo. Dan, what's going on with Boston right now?

Part of me wonders if there was a little bit too much sort of reliance on Tatum when he sort took that giant leap. We've all been talking about, you know, Kevin O'Connor wrote about it for us. It's been something that's been a fairly, like, fairly, common topic of conversation here at the ringer. And then sort of everybody else let go with the rope a little bit. I mean, that's not exactly hardcore analysis. But, you know, some of these things come down to late game situations.

It comes down to Kembo was out for a while. He's coming back in. Has not been 100%. And, you know, your team sort of influx a little bit. You know, the game against OKC, that was a fantastic defensive play late in that game to secure the win. But if you're losing on the margins and you're sort of relying on your new superstar to carry you,

you know, everybody else still needs to be able to hold up there into the bargain. I think you're seeing Boston wobble a little bit here. Still in really strong position for home court, but, you know, the two seed getting, slipping away from them. Home court, yes, two seed, no. At the end of February, they had one 14 to 17. Now they're slip sliding down the standings. Chances of securing the two seed in the east is pretty much evaporating unless they get super hot or maybe the raptors fall off. They're three games back of the Raptors as we record this. Just a game and a half up on the heat. Haley, unless something changes here, it looks like, and I shudder to say this, that we are barreling towards a first round three, six Celtic Sixers matchup. I'm going to recuse myself from this particular part of the conversation.

Do we want this? And we had it a couple years ago where they met in the second round and it was basically Ringer Civil War. Do we want Ringer Civil War part two? Anytime those two can meet, it's great. You're on board. Yeah, it's absolutely great. And that'd be so much better than Annette's. I mean, it'd be much better for the Celtics if they could play the Nets.

I think the Nets are first round out easily. First round Celtics Sixers gives me a headache. Jock Von Led Nets. My God. Just not buying it. Let's wrap up real quick, though, with OKC. We mentioned that OKC beat the Celtics. I don't think we've talked enough about them, certainly on heat check.

They have been so good, Dan. They definitely won that trade. I mean, Chris Paul came in and revitalized his career, and they've got, you know, they've got some nice parts with SGA and Gallo and Stephen Al. Adams, but this is a greater than the sum of its parts team. No, I mean, like, you have to, especially when they are higher in the Western Conference standings right now than the Rockets who traded for Russell Westbrook and traded away all those picks and thought they were getting the bend around into the deal and haven't looked like

it so far, the Thunder or the little team that could. Yeah, and emphasis on little. They've done so much with that small backcourt, that three-guard lineup of Chris Paul, Dennis Schroeder, and SGA. You know, I had written about that earlier in the season and it sort of continued to bear out. They're killing people with that lineup on the floor. And they've been exceptional in clutch situations. Chris Paul, we've talked about him being, you know,

one of the game's greatest players when it comes to getting his shot, that Midranger from the elbow that just cash money for him all season long. The Thunder now, this is from John Schumann at NBA.com. Now 24 and 5 in games that were within five points in the final five minutes since Thanksgiving. That's the season right there. That is the difference between you being and also ran maybe looking for the 8 seat and maybe looking for the 5 seed at this point for Oklahoma City. absolutely sensational job by Sam Presti

in terms of the way they put that roster together, Billy Donovan coaching it, and then Chris Paul being healthy, this is what he can be, even still at this point in his career. It's been awesome to watch. It has been awesome to watch. We'll continue to watch that. Those were headlines. That was NBA instant replay. And now I think it's time for us to get a little weird.

All right, it's time for everybody's favorite segment. Good call, Bad Call. What a bold call here. Normally we would do a whole bunch of topics on this show. This week we're doing just one topic, continuing our downward trajectory from a basketball pod to a morning drive time radio shock jock program. We're making good on a promise that we did last week. Last week we told you about my wife, Colleen Wolfe, who was at the NFL Combine and interviewed a Division III tight end who was

becoming alignment. His name is Ben Barch. And he made a smoothie with seven scrambled eggs, a tub of cottage cheese, grits, a banana, peanut butter, and gator, and we said, hey, should we do this? And we all voted yes for some reason. So now we're going to try this. And to help us do that from NFL Network, the host of Thursday Night Football, Colleen Wolfe. Hello. Hello. I woke up with big barch energy this morning, so I'm excited about this. This is your fall.

Yeah, I know. So you're welcome, everybody. Get excited. You did it at the Combine with the one and only Ben Barch. And I immediately texted you and said, oh, God, you know, how was that? And you said, not that bad. It wasn't bad. I was shocked by it.

I really thought the scrambled eggs were going to throw me. just the consistency of it, but wasn't bad. Once you put it all in the blender, it was great. But they were warm when you blended them, right? What's the average temperature that this should be? So I asked him that, and he was like, room temp is fine. So it looks like we're in good shape, guys. So I got up this morning, and I made the eggs, and it's supposed to be grits.

Now, some things happened here. I want to inform the listeners about what happened. It's supposed to be grits. I forgot the grits at the store. So I subbed in oatmeal with a little, it's an oatmeal. quinoa mix. It's more of like a cream of weed type of situation. It looks very creamy now. Instead of grits.

So we're going to have that instead. Dan Devine, because we cannot teleport you this concoction, which are going to make on video here, and as the listeners are listening to it on the show, you made yours ahead of time. Yours is ready to rock. Yeah, I have a

doom shake here. A real garbage container. I also made my eggs. I also made a grit substance. it's polenta for me today. Oh my God. Wait, what? This is southern erasure.

Wow. Although that's Italian. You're Irish. Beggars can't be choos when it comes to cabinet searching. And I did not have any grits in the house. Shockingly, Haley, as a New Yorker who has said this whole life in the Northeast, no grits to be found. So we make do with what we have.

And then, yeah, I'm really, really dreading this, Colleen. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So nice to meet all of you. I can't. I can't believe you volunteered to do this again. Yeah, I know. Why not?

You know, I'm just living life. Who knows when Corona's going to get me. So it might be now. Might be today. I said to her, oh, you know, we're going to do this on the show because we mentioned that you had done it at the combine and we all voted inexplicably to actually do this. And you said, yeah, sure, I'll come in and do it. See, I also suggested maybe getting some Philly cream cheese and making it like a jawny special,

making it sort of like a Philly twist to it. I don't. What the fuck? Yeah. What's not only? Do we need to rep here? She also was trying to eat the eggs before I packaged them. I was hungry.

What is your morning like, Gons? What is she eating? It's right. I was starving. I was holding her off with one arm and cooking with the other one. All right, so let's do this thing. According to Ben Barge, you could use any flavor Gatorade you want. Now, Colleen had tried it with red.

I think Dan used a red. Is that correct, Dan? Yes, that's correct. The red Gatorade. I'm an orange man myself, but I'm going to defer to the two of you. Do you guys want to vote on this? Which one do you want to use, red or? Orange. I would vote red.

Red. All right. So we're going to start throwing this stuff together. Why don't you help me? Everybody in the pool here. Okay. How much of each? One of the ratios here. Nobody knows. So I asked him that same question and he said just throw it all in, even if you want to throw in like the bowl that it's in, we can put the towel in there to. You really did gain 70 pounds from all of this. Okay. All right. So we've got

the cottage cheese. And we've got the oatmeal and the eggs. Yeah, just dump that in there. here's a spoon I can't It doesn't look It doesn't look great gang I'm not gonna lie to you A Haley's pour

For those of you just listening at home Steve just poured Eggs and the Gatoratorator On top of some red Gatorade I'd like to inform the listener That it is 930 in the morning And this is gonna be my whole day How about some cottage cheese guys

Keep in mind that Ben Barch gained 70 pounds By doing this Oh good That's what I want If you're looking for a balking season recipe This is this is for you This is what you want. How much peanut butter should we have?

A lot. A lot. You're going to need a lot. All right, all right, right. So I'm just dumping in. I need to counteract this cottage cheese. A whole thing of peanut butter here. Oh, my God. Haley is looking away to avoid vomiting, really.

Which I think is frankly pretty smart. Honestly, I thought that it would smell worse, but it doesn't. I was really upset with myself because I didn't ask Ben Barge, like, what didn't make the cut? Like, how many iterations of this did he try before he landed on this specific smoothie? I don't know. The answer is still trying to find out. I would love to know that as well. I do. I am excited about the peanut butter part. So Dan and I share a love of peanut butter as people who frequently write from home. A little peanut butter on a spoon goes a long way when you need a little snack fix. But I don't generally mix it with my cottage cheese eggs and gatorade. Yeah, my good news here on the snack fix is that I made an irresponsible amount of this blend and shake. And so there is another thermos of this waiting for me at home. give somebody your wife. The girls would love this.

Yeah, Chabon's going to love this. All right, so here we go. It's time to blend. See if we get this. Never been happier to not be where you guys are. Never been happier to not be where you guys are. All right. Let's see if this thing will work here. All right.

It's very particular. Here we go. It is blending. The color looks right. Color's looking right. That doesn't look. Nothing looks right about this. Don't say this is right.

As an expert. I think it's all coming together now. It's an abomination, frankly. I brought a bunch of glasses. I brought some, so we're videoing this, and you guys will be able to check this out on Twitter, social media. It'll be all over to...

I'm worried about fixing this in post. Probably. But maybe... All right, so here we go. It is blended about as well as it's going to be blended. It is very chunky. Well, it's just a thicker. It's a very thick shake.

So it's almost like the frosties from Wendy's when you had to like eat it with a spoon because it was too much for the straw. Well, luckily, I brought extra spoons. Great. You could lay out. Oh, man, it is so chunky. All right.

So we've made the Ben Barch smoothie. That's a bad call. We're going to try it. Cheers, everybody. Cheers. Cheers to heat check. Cheers to Ben Barch. Dan.

Mazel. Yeah, on the hatch. Cheers to all of you. All right. It's got to take a minute. It's so much chunkier than when I had it at the combine. This is not good. Guys, I need to take a little bit.

take a second sip to see if I'm into it. Hang on. It's, uh, there's a lot of peanut butter. You have some on your face, Steve. It is extremely, extremely thick. Steve is covered in it. It's honestly, it's honestly not horrible. It's not horrible. I'm not going to lie. I just had a tiny bit, but it kind of tastes like banana. That's it. I also wouldn't describe it as good. There's no world in what, there's no world where I would recommend this to anybody. I don't recommend you putting it together. I don't recommend you trying it. I don't

recommend you being covered in it. Steve and I are going to have to be hosed down. The table is. Maybe in a hazmat suit? I'm not sure. This room's going to have to be quarantined. It's all Colleen Wolfe's fault. One final round of good call or a bad call. Colleen, you lead us off. Normally, it's Haley, but we're going to go around the horn.

I'd say this was a bad call, very bad call. This is a bad call. I'm never making good call. Bad calls hung over again. I think only for the precedent you set for more bad ideas to be said. This was a good call. Oh, yeah. Question marks.

Sort of not. Dan Devine, what did you think over there? This is a good call. I'm going to finish this. No, you're not. Oh, he is. Oh, my God, he is. He's loving it.

Dan's bulking season. Straight up bad call for me. Next time I come up with a dumb idea, I'd really like you guys to talk me out of it. In the interim, thanks everybody for listening to this ridiculous show. Steve Alman, great job by you, Dan Devine, Haley O'Shaughnessy, Colleen Wolf, NFL Networks, Colleen Wolfe, everybody. Really killed it. Please rate and review us, read all of our great content on The Ringer.com, listen to the Ringer NBA.

show on the Ringer podcast network. Heat Check will be back next Monday, Sands Smoothie. Thanks for listening and watching, everybody. Bye.