The Ringer NBA Show - NBA Guilty Pleasures | Heat Check (Ep. 358)

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

As the NBA regular season nears its midpoint, we share our favorite guilty pleasures of this year thus far. Host: John Gonzalez Guest: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of Heat Check is brought to you by Yahoo Daily Fantasy. Yahoo Daily Fantasy had such a great year. They're giving you a taste of what 2019 looks like with a $1 million fantasy football contest. Someone will take down $100,000 for first place. One in four people who play will double their money. Not a bad way to end the year. There's a limit of 10 entries per player, so play is fair and everyone gets a shot. Don't miss this contest.

Go to Yahoo.com slash daily fantasy. Use promo code Yahoo 25 when you make your first deposit. for $25 in free play. Welcome to a very special pre-recorded holiday edition of Heat Check. I'm your host, John Gonzalez, joined as I am every week by our producer, Isaac Lee. Happy holidays, homie. You know, people are traveling. They're going here and there for the holidays.

So I'm going back to Philly. Chris Ryan is in Philly. Isaac, I imagine you're staying in L.A.? Yeah, I'll be commuting actually to my aunt's house in Fullerton. That's a 50-mile commute for those who are interested in Southern California. California geography. So a lot of time in the car, a lot of time listening to podcasts, a lot of time listening to maybe reruns of heat check. I recommend it. It's a great show. I think if you have to go 50 miles in Southern California, you should leave now and you might make it by mid-January.

It takes me roughly half the day to get from the west side to the office. I know nobody outside of L.A. cares about traffic patterns, but it's really as bad as you've heard. So I recommend leaving early Isaac, which is not generally your thing. Definitely not my thing. People from California, we do not arrive on time. You're always here like 30 minutes before we record. I get here right before we need to record, which is, I believe, the proper time. I like to get here early. Isaac, Godspeed on your holiday travels. But normally we record to pull down the curtain a little bit. Normally we record on Monday morning, Pacific Coast, L.A. time. And then we push it out and hopefully everybody listens to it. You know, Monday or whatever is good for them. But because of all of our schedules and people moving around, we decided to record. it ahead of time. So we came up with an idea previously on the ringer.com. I wrote a column about NBA guilty pleasures.

And we thought that would be kind of fun for the holiday season, something that we could pre-record and kick out so that you could listen to it at your leisure over the holiday. So we'll get to that in just a moment. I want to thank everybody for listening. And please rate and review us and all of our fantastic ringer NBA shows and pods at your leisure. And of course, we have lots of great content on the ringer.com.

That won't stop over the holidays. You can catch up on all the great stories that you might have missed. For example, Palo just wrote a fantastic piece about one of our favorites here at the ringer, DeMontas Sabonis, so I highly recommend you read that. But we're going to get into guilty pleasures here with Chris Ryan and break down our top five. We hope you enjoy it. Boom, Shakalaka. He's heating up.

All right, joining me on the other line from The Watch, from sources say, from group chat. My favorite Philadelphia, he's returned to the homeland. It's Chris Ryan. Oh, it's a palms me, John Gonzalez. You are there. not come home yet. I'm still in L.A. I will be meeting you in Philadelphia soon. Well, here's what I want to know. How much Scrapple have you eaten so far? Not much. I got to say that it's kind of like coming from the West Coast and freezing. I've just been kind of hibernating like a bear waking up in time

for Sixers games. It always looks like whenever I go home, it always feels like the outtakes from the 89 Batman movie, where it's like, it's super gray, and there's like it's industrial, and there's smoke billowing, and I'm like, why is that factory there? That's right. Why do we have a refinery? I don't think there's any oil in Pennsylvania. The refinery is really just, there's no way to get into Philadelphia from the airport without passing the refinery. And it just is not a good look. It's not a good. Yeah, it's such a great like, hey, and then we got this refinery, welcome to Philadelphia. Have you, in other important Philadelphia news before we get into our guilty pleasures, have you yet visited the new Wawa at Sixth and

chestnut? No, I'm saving it. It's a Christmas treat for myself. I think you and I should make a pilgrimage there. Okay. All right. So we're going to do guilty pleasures. You help to edit that piece that we wrote on the ringer.com. Go and check it out if you're so inclined. So fun little piece where I did my top 10 guilty pleasures, stupid things in the NBA that you might not be as interested in as I am, but I like them and I don't care. So we're going to do an updated version of that and a truncated version where we'll each give our five. And we'll go back and forth. You want to go first? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think guilty pleasures, it's worth saying is a very malleable concept. Yeah. I think that in this day and you're like a shame, if you're like a,

I know a lot of people are Ariana Grande fans. I'm just saying. Yeah, if you're into Bravo shows, maybe you're checking out below deck in between NBA games, that's kind of what we're going for here. Yeah, what are you hiding? There's no reason to feel shame in this world in 2018

going into 2019. That being said, my number one, or the first one that I'm sharing, I don't know if it's number one, but is the New York Knicks and their sense of optimism. Craziness.

Okay, so I think a lot of people have this misconception of the ringer that it's this axis of Boston and Philly sports fans and that, you know, we're just bends through the, that's actually not true. What we are is a New York deep state sleeper cell. We have more New York sports fans on staff. I think that we do Boston, Philly fans. It's just that Boston and Philly fans have more to cheer about.

But once you just get the single bead of light at the end of the tunnel, oh, the Knicks fans wake up. And they just start chirping and chirping on slack. And you know what? It kind of warms my heart. So this first one goes out to Fantasy. It goes out to Nicole. It goes out to Concepcion.

It goes out to Roger Sherman and Noah. And all the Knicks fans, Dan Devine, who are on our staff. I see you guys. And I love it. It's really beautiful. It's like I shouldn't really cheer for any other Northeast Corridor team to prosper. But I just can't help it. I love that this team is won as of this recording, what, eight games?

But every night, it feels like the Knicks are the only show in town on Slack. Do you guys love them? You love Moodyearie. You love Moodyearie. You love Knox. Go ahead, John. Help me out here. No, Devine had some kind of crazy take about Mitchell Robinson and how he'd rather have him than, I forget who he compared him to.

No, it was. There was some talk of Mitchell Robinson versus D'Andre. That's what it was. Sure. Right. Okay. Okay, sure. And, I mean, Mutier, like, he's.

He's resurrected all of a sudden. He's getting heavy minutes. And your boy Frankie Smokes, or their boy, Frankie Smokes, has been sort of like pushed aside for Emmanuel Mudié, who's a retread, and they're cool with it. They like it. I love it. Yeah, here's the thing is that one thing we've learned over the last now

with LeBron going to L.A., chronic franchises, when these foundational teams are doing better. And just having the little bit of excitement at the garden, it makes the NBA better on a night-to-night basis. So it's a guilty pleasure, because I shouldn't be cheering for anything coming out in New York as a Philadelphia, but I do have some guilty pleasure about loving this New York Knicks optimism. Yeah, and good for the New York staffers.

I do sometimes forget how many. I mean, we have an office in New York, and I sometimes forget that we have this, like, massive New York contingent. So good for them if they're excited about the day, because we do, despite your precursor to the conversation here, we do have a very loud and vocal Philly and Boston contingent, I think, as everybody who listens to Heat Check knows. Well, it's like you, me and Bauman screaming at the top of our lungs. And Bill and Joe C.

Kevin, I am not a Celtics fan. I am a journalist O'Connor. Right. We could take up a lot of airspace for a little bit. And they're going to get a good draft bit because they still suck. Finally, something good goes for New York. All right, good for New York. Here's my first one, and Isaac, feel free to join in on this one.

For my first one, I've got Isaac's Clippers roller coaster so far this season because the Clippers, I love Isaac. He's a big part of He-check. And his go-to move is that side that you heard right there. But at the beginning of the season, they got off to a super hot start. He was peacocking around the pod studio. He was crowing about them being the best team in L.A. He was literally tweeting about how they were the best team in L.A.

Multiple times. Whoa, whoa, whoa, no. Back up, back up. They weren't the best team in L.A. They were the best team in California. The state of California. But it's been much rougher lately. And Isaac has been considerably less thrilled about it.

at it. So at the time of this recording, the Clippers have lost six of their last seven games, according to Isaac's Twitter. And he tweeted out the dog in the Burning House meme. And here's some other tweets from Isaac's Twitter. Every breath I take is a precursor to a sigh. He was questioning Doc's decision making. He went at an off-brand Lakers Twitter account that said, we have reclaimed our spot as the Kings of Los Angeles, to which Isaac clapped back. y'all got the best player in the world over the summer and only now have one more win than the clippers fuck out of here iSick's going at randos on twitter that's how how far south this is gone it's really been great even bill has gotten in on the on the action here bill went adam and busted his balls

and said the clippers are now one in five since isaac lee cheated on them and flew to dallas to sing halleluca isa hell of a season for you and the clippers my man listen so regarding halleluca when i went to dallas and saying halleluka it was December 8th my birthday is December 9th so this happened in succession of me singing in front of 15,000 people and then my birthday right afterwards and you know people were asking me like hey you know what a cool thing they got you to sing at american airline center and it was your birthday on sunday how are you feeling and i said the clippers got blown out by miami so i feel terrible this is a horrible thing i do not feel good whatsoever. So my emotional

state is so tied to the Clippers to the point that my personal success and literally the day of my birth had no impact on my mood because the Clippers lost to Miami. That's how attached I am to the Clippers. It's probably incredibly unhealthy and

possibly abnormal. Yeah, Isaac, I got to tell you something, man. It's unhealthy. No, but don't do that, Chris, because it's really great. Like, I love how fragile he is. And he comes in and it's like, He's on eggshells at all times. And I'm like, this is fantastic for me because I'm not a Clippers fan and I'm adjacent to Isaac, so I get to see it all.

It's wonderful. That's on my list. Christy, what's your next one? My next one, I feel bad about this one. What do you feel bad? Because I'm loving this. I'm in. We love pre-agency at the ringer.

This isn't just any old trade rumor. I think what we saw with Kauai is we realized in the past, I think you could see this. You could see with Durant go in the Golden State and the post-Dranst years. Even with Jimmy coming to the Sixers, you can see that it has the least a potential to improve the team from last year's Eastern Conference semifinals finish. You can see how a player Davis moves on from New Orleans. He could change the next five to 10 years of the league with his move. And I like it. And it was to them. Look, in theory, you and I were just talking about this. In theory,

Anthony Davis, who was a transcendent talent, who's a top five player in a city like New Orleans, that's one of America's great cities should be a perfect marriage, right? Like that should be one of those things where we go, oh, this is great. We've got a great player and a great city. Let's all pay attention to the Pelicans. But it never works out that way.

Like, there was a point in a heat check earlier in the season where Haley was talking about the Pelicans and Isaac and I were like going back and forth. And I'm like, it's hard for me to watch them. Even though they have a great player like him historically over these last few seasons, with the exception of last year in the playoffs when they went and like really surprised Portland and the Blazers.

it's not entertaining to me. And I want him to go somewhere else. And yes, it would potentially change the face of the NBA, depending on where he lands up. But I need something different. Like, I need him out of New Orleans. I might even need the Pelicans out of New Orleans. Yeah, and you could just see with, you know,

Toronto was kind of ceilinged out. Managed to hold it together and play excellent basketball. That should show you that if Anthony Davis or Celtics or team unknown that we haven't even thought of, you could just really change everything. And furthermore, if it does happen in a trade, if Anthony Davis gets traded for, you could see New Orleans wind up with a bunch of really interesting players. And you could see a completely different pelicans than the one we've seen over the last six years.

That would be great. A different pelicans would be awesome. I'm looking forward to that. LeBron James has actually asked about it, and he said it would be amazing if he ended up on the Lakers. I just don't think, like, we've all been sort of primed for this for a while. And I think, like, conventional wisdom around the league is that he is going to go somewhere. Anthony Davis, not LeBron. LeBron's going to stay in LA.

But I think that it's not going to happen for a while because in order for Boston to get in on this, they can't trade for Anthony Davis right now because they already have a designated player in Kyrie. So they have to wait until the offseason until they do a new deal with Kyrie. Then they can go and make a play for AD. So it doesn't really behoove the Pelicans to move him yet

because you want to create a bidding war. And the team that could ratchet up the price the highest is probably Boston because they've got all those picks and all those players. So I think we're probably, like, we went out real fast on this one, but we're still going to have to wait. Well, I mean, you know, LeBron saying it would be amazing to play with him. It would be incredible.

Despite that, probably being borderline tampering with his relationship. You know, I mean, that that. I love when the Potsamers, as you know, that's one of my favorite things about the NBA, whenever shit goes sideways, I'm in, which brings me to my next one, Dave Yeager versus the Sacramento Kings, the team the coaches. I love this shit. I can't get enough of it. And it never stops with this team.

So let's just review what's happened so far. Dave Yeager tossed assistant general manager Brandon Williams out of a practice, which is crazy. I don't think I've ever heard of that happening before. That is definitely some shit that you do if you want to get fired. He's maybe been angling for that. It was suspected slash alleged that Williams had leaked to Yahoo about the front office not liking the way that Yeager was using his rotations and not really playing some of the young guys that they wanted them to play.

Then it was suspected slash allege that Yeager went and leaked to the athletic about how leaking is bad, which is just so meta and so perfect for the kings. And then most recently, I really love this, Yeager was asked about Luca Donkich, and he said, perhaps there was an idea that there was a ceiling on him. I don't see it. Unfortunately for us. Unfortunately for us, he said. And he said, but it's great for them and it's great for the league. Now, so of course, immediately, I was like, oh my God, he just roasted not only his front office, but also Marvin Bagley. And he then was asked about it and he said, it's not any veiled shots at any way. when we drafted Marvin at two,

we were high-fiving like crazy, we got the right guy for us. And then he said, five years from now, when we have the next Durant in Westbrook, this won't be an issue. I don't know how you can say, unfortunately for us,

and then immediately pivot and say there were no veiled shots in anybody. So congrats to Yeager and the Kings, they are delightful. I have no idea. This is what I'm saying. If he's trying to get fired. When this happened in Memphis,

I think the conventional wisdom was, oh, he thinks he has another landing. spot. And he wants to either get a power grab and have more control or he's got a place where he's going. And now he's in Sacramento and his rep is pretty high. You got guys like KD talking about how you could tell Sacramento is a team on the rise. And he's getting incredible results out of the roster that he's assembled. He's essentially like he's increased the value on a bunch of bets, you know, like your Willie Colley-Steins, but especially like your buddy healed. Like Sacramento,

if they wanted to try and trade for a disgruntled Paul George type star, has a bunch of a piece is to throw in the pot for it. But what's Dave Yeager gunning for here? Does he think that, like, he can just kind of be the new George Carl where he gets good results over the first couple years and then talked his way out of town? Is that a career plan? New George Carl

is a tough life, man. George Carl was like a gypsy bouncing around the NBA and in the end, everybody ended up hating him wherever he went. Nobody wants that. I'm with you. Like, okay, things aren't going well with your front office. It doesn't seem like you want to be there. But if you do get

bounced if you somehow get yourself fired by acting out like this. Like, if I'm another NBA team or a general manager and I'm looking for a coach, I'm thinking twice about Yeager, he's a good coach. But then I'm like, well, how long until he gets pissy at me? Yeah, I mean, I think what Yeager, if he did leave the king, he'd to jump from playoffs to conference finalist contender. Right. Rather than going to another young group of guys, like he should not go anywhere within

a thousand miles of Chicago. Oh, yeah. That'd be fantastic. Personally, I hope he doesn't go anywhere. I want the Kings and Yeager to stay together. I am available to serve as a crisis marriage counselor. If you would like to bring me in, I will talk to you guys. Do you have training for that? Or is that just you're just putting yourself forward for it? I'm putting myself, I think being on heat check qualifies me. I do it on the side and I'm happy to do it professionally for them because these two guys got to stay together. This group is just too much fun. I don't want to break up the band yet. also it's just and just how great it is to have interest. Yeah. It's really great. You're living your best life in Philadelphia right now. Maybe. All right, give me your next one. I'm going to go with the San Antonio Spurs,

this similar situation where you wind up accidentally watching a team more than you intended to. Maybe they're the game before the game you're going to watch. You watch like the last quarter or the last half of a game. And then also maybe they're playing against a team that you mean. to watch. That's happened with me with the Spurs. I think like seven times the season already. And so I've actually unintentionally taken a deep interest in this terribly boring basketball team. Yeah. Injured, thin, boring, taking a lot of twos. It is a very much like throwback to a

bygone era of pop ball back. And he said openly, he said openly, he hates the three, he keeps bringing it up. And at some point I think it's kind of schick, but it's a delightful stick. Absolutely. And I watched them a couple nights ago against the Sixers, and I watched them just into a corner or have to take a last second shot in the shot clock three. Nobody knows to garden along two, and he would just drill it, and then they went up 20 points. And it's not like they're having a good season, and it's not like it's particularly easy on the eyes. I guess this is guilty because I'm like, I guess I just keep investing time in this situation, and so I feel bad about my use of my personal time.

there's a couple of things I do want to point out, though. One is I'm buying this stock now so that if Dejanta and Lonnie Walker winds up being the back court of the future, I'm like a seed investor in it. Yeah, I like this. And also, I think it's good for me to see this to remind me because sometimes I get a little touchy about Moribol and I'm like, I hate how all teams play the same and everybody's hunting for threes or foul shots and it's just getting a little bit samey out there. And I don't like the fact that big men get played out of the game because they

They can't shoot like Brooke Lopez. I'm starting to get a little annoyed at that, but when you watch the alternative and you watch Marcus Aldridge do turnaround jump shots from 13 feet out, you will learn to love Morrie. I love that you're channeling

your inner pop with that rant. You're really leaning into your 40s here. I'm closer in age to Popovich than I am Lottie Walker. It's depressing. You're depressing me now. I was thinking about this the other day about how like forever in a day

when I first started out in this business, it would be like, I'm younger than everybody. in the locker room. And now I'm much, much older than everybody in the locker room. Yeah, absolutely. I was looking for words of encouragement there. You're like, yep, that's it.

We're done. We're old. I don't know what to tell you about it. It sucks. They're talking about all these quarterbacks who were like ancient. They're like, how is it even possible that Drew Breeze does it at this age? I'm like, we're older than Drew Drew Brees. It sucks. Getting old does suck.

All right, so mentioning Pop here, here's a guy who recently compared himself to Pop. I'm going to go with my next one is the Chicago Bulls versus themselves. Everything I've ever wanted was them firing Fred Hoyberg, not because I didn't add anything against Fred Hoyberg, but because what happened as a result of this, like the domino effect here of bringing in Jim Boylan and making him not just the interim head coach,

but the head friggin coach. And he immediately once scorched earth on his own guys. His very first practice was two and a half hours, Chris, with suicides and push-ups, which I don't think I've heard of that, like, in college. Like high schools do that. That's kind of crazy. So naturally the players revolted.

They didn't want to have a heavy practice after a back-to-back that included a 56 point loss of the Celtics. They had a plan where they weren't going to show up, and then they had a plan where they were going to show up and then leave. And instead they settled on that like players-only meeting, which led to a leadership committee that is roughly half the team. Half the team is representing the other half the team. Very strange.

And then on top of that, Boylan said that he was texting Pop, and he compared himself to Pop and said, you know, when Pop does this stuff, nobody gives him heat, to which his players respond. and you are not pop. Chicago Bulls, I love you so very much. Jim Boyle and Matt Foley,

van down by the river character as a basketball coach. That's pretty much all I got for you right there. I mean, just like watching him against the thunder the other night when there was the brawl and him like putting dudes in his locks

and trying to like muscle his, but before that had like basically been getting like shrugged off by his own players as he was shouting out instructions like telling Robin Lopez to double someone just so that Stephen Adams could get, like,

open tomahawk jams on the bulls. He's apparently, like, a sharp basketball mind. You just come across guys sometimes where you're like, oh, you're not supposed to be a head coach, are you dog? Dude, that's why you do all the suicides and push-ups in case there's a brawl, and you've got to get in the middle of people.

You've got to be swole and you've got to be in shape, right? Like, the other guys aren't doing boot camp on Venice Beach at 6 a.m. Maybe Boylan's on to something. I love this guy. Absolutely, man. I mean, I just, I'm glad that they're... And it's not all egghead bread. Stevens types. He's going to be out before. They're going to mutiny before the season's over.

They're going to be really bad for him. All right, before we go on to your next one, we're going to do a quick NBA watch of the night. There's normally, you know, we'd preview a game in this segment that's happening on the day that the podcast comes out, but there's no games on Christmas Eve. There are, however, five games on Christmas Day. That starts off at noon with Bucks versus Nix. In a Janus presents the new Nut Cracker with Mario Hizonia. That should be fun. But that's not the game we're going to highlight, Chris. And a shock. development, despite what you said earlier on in the program. Sixers at Celtics at 5.30 p.m. Eastern time, yet another Ringer Civil War battle between Philly and Boston. I'm excited.

I don't know if getting smashed by Boston on Christmas Day is exactly how I want to spend Christmas, but I'm excited. This will be Jimmy Butler's first trip to Boston as a Philadelphia. Ye of little faith. You think they're going to get run out of the gym or what? Well, we're recording this a little bit before then, so I hope that they're going to get run out of the gym. The problem with this team, and maybe because we haven't done this in a while, and I think Isaac would endorse this. We should just stop the podcast and make it about the Sixers for a while. But they're super thin now.

They need to add some bodies. I could go on for a while about the shooting that they need. Like, they can't guard anybody on the perimeter. But they're top three guys when they're healthy. Good as anybody. Sure. I mean, on any given Christmas day. And remember, gang, if you want to watch every NBA game,

please subscribe to NBA League Pass on NBA. Amazon or your local cable or satellite provider. Back to guilty pleasures. What's your next one? That's a guilty pleasure? Yeah, so here's why. It's because I know that I should be cheering for them purposes in terms of having four in the final somewhere. Please. But I find that they have just enough going on this season that my actual basketball and personality interest has been rekindled so that I kind of, you know, I kind of am trying to savor it while at last. And I feel guilty because I want other teams to prosper. I want a little bit more variety in my life.

But they're just shaky enough that I want to watch them on any given night. And while they do have going back, it's kind of fun to watch them when it's like the Kevin 40 plus point games a couple weeks ago. And now it's even cooler to watch Steph basically try to win an MVP and want to wind up being about 60 games of games played this season. And they obviously are grinding a little bit. It's obvious a little bit of a tough road for them, but it's been pretty fun to watch them this season,

and I just feel bad about it. I'm done. I want this to be the end. I want KD. to go to New York or anywhere else. I want them to fracture. I've had enough. It's wonderful to watch.

They're super good, but the inevitability of it all, it just kind of like sucks some of the enjoyment out of it for me, although there's a bright spot that's potential to maybe rot the core from within. And you mentioned them earlier, and it's not because I think he's going to be a problem as a personality, but when they get Boogie back, phasing him in on the floor, I think might be more problematic or difficult than they thought. Because I have spent a lot of time watching those workout videos of him trying to get back and get his legs back under him.

He looks stiff as hell. Like he does not look like he's moving well. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, also, I just think that like they are a team that there was a difficult found out. And he is the closer for them. I think we've seen that in the past two finals. but when you introduce boogie to it, it's going to have a domino effect

on the rest of the guys. It's going to affect Ramon's game. It's going to affect Katie's game. And it'll affect Clay and Steph's game. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I cannot wait to see what happens when you introduce a coming off Achilles' Boogie into a lineup where everybody wants the ball. And like,

what about my game? And we've seen that from Boogie too in the past. So I wonder, like, will he be deferential? Will they be deferential? What is he going to have left physically? I don't know. It's going to be fantastic. looking forward to that part of it. Maybe that will save us from yet another warrior's title.

My next one, to get back to a theme here, I like when things go sideways. GM on GM violence. Griz GM Chris Wallace, saying the quiet part loud in public was just fucking fantastic. So in the Suns Gris Wiz trade

that did not go down, Chris Wallace went out and gave the on-the-record quotes that you would normally give as a league source to reporters. He just like stood in front of a bank of camera, and torched everybody. He said our front office didn't have any conversations with Phoenix regarding the reported

three-way trade prior to it leaking during our game. We were floored to learn of the reports involving Dylan Brooks in the reported trade. We never discussed Dylan as part of this trade with Washington, which was the only team we spoke with concerning this proposed deal. Yo, Ernie Grunfeld, come out. He wants to meet you behind the school at 3 p.m. This is amazing. Nobody ever does that, Chris.

No GM goes on the record and torches another G. there's only taking your team out of it, 29 other teams. And when you're going at two of them, like, that's not a not insignificant portion of the league that you're going after. This seems like it's the first time that I mean, I know that the Jimmy Butler problems in Minnesota also were deeply intertwined with the constant leaking of she winding up on Rogers' Twitter feed.

It's crazy. Like, yeah, it wasn't just like we're not tracking the news. You are the news. Like you're becoming part of, the story. I don't work for the grisleys. I work for the rigor. So it's awesome for our purposes. But if I was going to be earnest about it, like I was just sitting there and I'm like, I can't believe this is actually happening. I can't impress upon, like, for people who don't get to like, go and talk to general managers and coaches and players and people around NBA teams, you never

get them to save the super juicy bits on the record. Very rarely. Because they're going to be careful about it, right? They're going to be, ah, you know, this probably doesn't help me, but it might help me if I just give it to you on the side as a source. He must have been so pissed that this whole thing went down for him to go out there and just be like, I don't care. Ernie's going to hear it. James Jones is going to hear it, and I'm going to let it fly. And it might not help Chris Wallace moving forward. Great for us, though.

Fantastic content for the Ringer. Well, and I think that it's actually been a subtle theme to this season of basketball, where you see Robert Sarver reportedly blocking a reason going to the Lakers because he doesn't want to help out Los Angeles. You see Glenn Taylor overriding. I want them out of here. Let's get something for them. And even though you don't have an explicit ownership problem here, what you're seeing in this Memphis, Washington Phoenix situation, it's probably too many cooks in the kitchen. Memphis has had notoriously a kind of divided front office about a year ago. And, you know, I think that they've had some issues in the past with who's actually calling the shots there.

And it sounds like a couple of people may be making phone calls and thinking they were talking to a decision maker when they weren't. That's so great. It's so great. It was so much fun. I hope it happens again. I hope more trades fall through. I hope they involve Chris Wallace. I hope he gets heated, and he does it on the record. It's, it's excellent. It's kind of a delicate line for the NBA.

We love it. I love it. But there is probably a line out there where the NBA is not crazy about this. Yeah, I'm sure. I have to imagine where they're like, we need trades to be what they are. It can't be like there was a trade,

but maybe there wasn't. Ben Falk wrote a story on cleaning the glass where he explained, like when he, he didn't say whether it was with Portland or with the Sixers, because he worked for both organizations, but he said there was a three-way trade where something like this went down,

and it wasn't until they got on the trade call to review the players that were involved, that one of the teams was like, oh, I'm throwing in this other player and the whole thing created. So he says it happens, like, maybe more than we suspect, but it happens behind the scenes. So for it to come to light,

just wonderful entertainment value. All right, your last guilty pleasure of the podcast. This is really reason because I should have more things going on in my life to do this, but I have been in church and sort of enjoying the last chance saloon Cleveland Cavaliers in the absence of Kevin Love.

And they had a really nice game, Larry Nance put back, and there's just a bunch of guys in that team who are basically playing for their NBA careers. I know that you get to see Zion on Cleveland. It's fascinating to watch guys like Alec Berks, guys like Larry Nance Jr., who got traded to Milwaukee. You've seen a little bit

more Colin Sexton. It's not like I'd tell anybody if you're only going to watch one basketball team this week, make sure it's the Cavs. But I do think that it's kind of fun to check them out if you have the time and see these guys really grinding for every win or loss. This is like deep, deep NBA nerdery. This is almost a cry for help that you're like hot on the Cavs. Actually, Danny wrote a story for us on The Ringer.com within the last few weeks where he

spent a week watching Cavs basketball. And I'm like, I feel like both of you need an intervention. Well, it's not like what I build my life around. but I do enjoy sexton and I do enjoy watching Berks when he's healthy. Like how deep are you going here? Are you getting like calves push alerts and shit?

Are you getting T-shirts? What's happening? I'm doing like I'm like shot sharts with Draymons. Like it's just, I'm losing it. I love it. You can have all of that. I spent in the last few years

for us here at the Ringer quite a lot of time in Cleveland proper. And while I wish them well, I'm good on the calves for a while. I've had my full of, just like I've had my fill of Warriors, I'm good on the Cavs for a while. My last guilty pleasure, a team that I can never get enough of with respect to Chris and Donnie and House and all of the rest of our Washington DC

hits here at the Ringer. The Washington Wizards are my absolute favorite team in the NBA, and not for any of the conventional reasons. I don't really like watching them play. I don't think they're any good, but they are the league leaders in drama. For however many years running, they're constantly at each other's throats. Ernie put everybody up on the block earlier in the season after deciding like, hey, this core isn't going to work. And then instead decided to acquire Areza because I guess they're making a push for the playoffs

because why not? And then on top of that, as we mentioned with Chris Wallace, he was involved in this really dumb, awful fall through Keystone cops, three-way trade that did not happen. I want all of the wizards to stay together in perpetuity because they're just too much fun.

They're a shit show. Let's say that up top. Yes, but I do think that they're kind of a victim of the NFLification of the NBA, by which I mean, we put so much emphasis on storylines on a night-to-night basis, and if a team wins a game, it's a team ready to make the leap. Washington Wizards, if you just went by the headlines, you'd think that they, and even though that probably says more about the Eastern Conference that it does about whether or not Washington's any good or not, this is just like the way basketball used to be where a team was

kind of crappy, and then maybe they'd be okay for a while, and then they'd be crappy for a while, and then, oh, wait, weirdly, they made the playoffs. I think, like, you're right that we, I certainly am guilty of this because I love the storylines and I love the drama and like, I obviously really like basketball and the numbers and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I want to be entertained and I want it to be either, you know, good or bad. And the Wizards are constantly in the bad category even when they make the playoffs.

They're at each other's throats. The chemistry is a problem. They're throwing each other under the bus after losses in Sacramento and openly talking about it. And whatever happens with the Wizards, it's kind of like with the Sixers, there's constantly a storyline. but with the Sixers, it could be good or bad. With the Wizards, almost invariably, it's like, oh, no, that happened.

And I love that because I'm not a wizard's fans. It works out there for me. How did they win? I don't know. Like, how is that even possible? I mean, look, Wall and Beal are really talented players. I know that COC thinks that Wall is the least talented of the elite point guards. That might be true.

He's still really good. Beal is still really good. And I think, like, just by virtue of having those two guys, your mileage may vary a little bit on out of porter. But I think just by virtue of having those two guys in the NBA, kind of like what you said earlier, on any given Sunday, the Wizards could go out there and win. The thing, though, is even if they make the playoffs, they're in an endless loop here. They've got to break the cycle if you're the Wizards. I hope they don't. I hope they stay in this loop. But like, if they make the playoffs, where does that get them nowhere? The crazy thing is, I think that that team has so

much potential. They have so much potential as a franchise in terms of the built-in-in-in-D.C. and an interest for basketball in that area. And they've really squandered it with this generation of players and not really being able to build around either both Wall and Beal or making a decision and trying to build around one of those guys with other players. Not just this generation, though. They haven't won 50 games in four decades.

That's every generation. Yeah, I know, man. It's just wild. Well, look, Ernie is in his 15th year's general manager. I hope he gets another 15 more. He's my absolute favorite. it. This was fun. This was our Guilty Pleasures podcast. I'm glad you did it. I'm glad you're in Philadelphia holding it down until I get there.

Off we go to have a logger when I get back, I think. Yeah, absolutely, man. It's on me. Fantastic. Thanks for doing this, Chris. Bye. All right, that was Chris Ryan. It's always great to catch up with him. I want to thank you for listening. And also, guys, we're going to have a very special post-Christmas Day mismatch episode with Verno and KOC.

They're going to break down all the games, right, Isaac? Yep. Fantastic. This is going to be wonderful. I'm going to listen to that. I hope you do as well. We hope you have a happy holiday. As for us, because of the holiday, He-check may or may not be back next week. We're debating if we want to work on a New Year's Eve day.

But if not, certainly the following week, He-Cech's not going anywhere. We're going to be here with you all season. And we want to thank you guys again for listening to the podcast. We really do appreciate it. We'll talk to soon. You know, yo, I've been working on my oath. Here's this thing about the next day.

You know what I mean? Yo, I'm coming home. We'll get some hope. Dogies? I'm married. You got to go see my boy. He's going to hook you up. To all the mummums and pop-ups out there.

Live from the shore. My aunt's got a place in Asian city. We're going down the shore. Going down the shore. We get some mac and mancos. It's going to be great all summer. I got a summer job swinging water race. I'm going down on Sunday and Saturday.

You're going to Borgata? Borgata. I'm going down on Sunday and Saturday and see. You're going to play a little pie gal? Oh man. I fucking love Philly.