The Ringer NFL Show - Worrisome QB Injuries, NFL Rule Changes, and Investigating All 30 NBA Team Names

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

LIVE SHOW in Los Angeles on July 30: Click below for tickets! The guys recap some of the biggest offseason news stories so far, including major NFL rule changes, Darren Waller’s official retirement, Anthony Richardson and Joe Burrow’s lingering injuries, and more (2:09). Later, they go team-by-team to investigate names, logos, and mascots across the NBA (18:04). “You guys want to do some emails?” (62:24) Tickets: https://www.theelrey.com/events/detail/564772 Check out our 2024 Ringer Fantasy Football Rankings here! Email us! [e-mail] The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Hosts: Danny Heifetz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlbeck Social: Kiera Givens and Jack Sanders Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executives on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. I'm joined by Danny Kelly and Craig Horlebeck. We have a lot of offseason news that we have missed since we last recorded. We have Little NBA Finals and also just a general investigation of like what's up with NBA teams. Yeah. If you like the NFL team named Investigation, you're going to like today. We have more emails, including follow-ups on all the essentials. There is animals who served in combat

What was up with the porn video that used during show music A lot has happened if you're chin in and you're probably super confused But first, we have a live show in Los Angeles, July 30th At the Lerate Theater in Los Angeles, please go Theringer.com slash events Craig's 30th birthday, July 30th We don't need to make that a part of it, my third That's not a part of this whole event

Okay Come celebrate The ringer.com slash events Get your tickets, it's only I think they're going up It's like $800 now Pressing the rising. You need an Amex to purchase the tickets.

So do what you can. Maybe we should enroll a credit card for the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Now that's, if you get a credit card, it's that's, now we're cooking. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah. Have you, you know what? I was going to ask you whether anyone's ever gotten a credit card after a plane landed, but we could do that later. Well, let's rip through some NFL news. Yeah.

Let's rip through it. Okay. I think this is actually a big deal. Not a big deal, but it's like a big thing. Chain gangs on the brink. extinction. I'm reading from ESPN. At the league meetings in March, NFL owners approved using optimal tracking in the preseason, a system which after the ball is spotted by hand

will notify officials instantly if a first down was gained. Instantly. At the end of the preseason, the NFL will make a decision for a full rollout in 2024. Wait this year? Wow. They're going to see how it goes in the preseason, which I feel like they won't just because, I mean, that's fast for a change. I know. Per multiple league sources. But I mean, that's crazy. So, like, are you guys excited about this? I've developed a reputation as a chain gang hater over the years. Like, it's just so ridiculous. I mean, come on.

What are we doing here? A couple of old guys lazily jog out to the middle of field carrying two sticks with a chain between them. And then there's a pomp and circumstance of putting the chains down. It's like all this suspense. Like, come on. It's so messy. It's like, you're just stupid. Depending on like 260.

seven-year-old guys to see where the ball is. I eyeballed it. I will say, this article did a great job at ESPN, and they won. They started with Gene's territory when they took out the index card. No, God. They were like, Gene's territory declined a comment. But they noted about how the chain gangs work. I'm not going to lie, a little more patchwork that I thought.

The chain gangs are just like... Even more than you thought? Yeah. Yeah, they really are. Pretty terrible to start with. It's kind of just... So I knew they were part-time employees. It's just kind of...

of random dudes. One's like a ref, some college that's been there 30 years. One guy's like a high school principal. And the people they hire, it's just kind of people those guys know. So like there's some high school principal does it on Sundays and like his son. And then like some of his friends do it. And they got minimum wage. We got netpo babies on the chain gang.

Yes, chain gang nepo babies. And they get minimum wage. No shade than minimum wage. It's just like this is a $17 billion a year like league. And they're literally deciding whether teams get to keep the ball or not based on like a high school principal's son is like moving the ball out for seven bucks an hour

and I'm like yeah this is kind of this is kind of wild you know what's still hard though about this situation is even if they can tell like if the ball crossed the first down playing they know it's the first down you know what's still the most difficult thing to make a call on spotwise is like a guy who's running forward

but then gets like hit backwards and you think he's going to go down but then he kind of fights for two more and you're like oh I actually now have no idea where forward progress began or ended and the ref just kind of like middles it and just like, yeah. So that's the thing, though.

We're going to have lasers and shit and buzzers with the rest. The other thing they're testing is, this one makes no, I can't imagine this not being a thing. They're just going to buzz the refs like a little wrist. They're going to like a live strong that'll like buzz when the play clock goes down at zero. So you know how like there's 40 seconds of the play clock, but they have to turn around and watch it be zero.

So it's like, there's no actual timer. They have to look and find the clock real quick. and see the double zeros. The only objective thing of the world are like 40 seconds, the entire game that's objective. They just are like, yeah, it's like an eyeball thing.

So they're going to buzz them. That makes sense. But we're still going to be doing the spotting, and they're explaining that the reasoning is that they're saying that the, what is it, RFID track? I don't know. The little sent chips in the ball.

If you're like holding it, if Derek Henry's holding it in his chest and he's being tackled by like Roquan Smith and then like three other giant defensive tackles are around them, like it's not as easy as you think for the sensors to get through. And so they're saying it wouldn't actually be easy to place, which I don't know, I don't know how that works. That doesn't make sense. But they're saying it wouldn't be easy to just decide.

It'd be funny if like they try it and they're like, actually we're going to go back to just having human beings eyeball it. That's actually the more effective solution. But the chain, so they're going to have guys eyeball up, but then they're going to, the actual chain gang will be. I'd be, I would be surprised if they actually implement this for 2024. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

Or we could just keep having like 16 year old kids. just kind of, you know, just do it for fun. Don't you think, though, it feels weird that a critical play could be decided by, like, a computer chip and there's no, like, human being involved? I don't know why that, that just feels like a worse experience for fans. Who are they going to get mad at, you know? That's the thing. It's kind of like tennis.

We're in tennis, they have the challenges. Right, right. What is Skyview, whatever. But they let tennis players challenge it. But now the challenge system is just the system that originally called it. So it's kind of all just for show. Like, it's just, like, it's literally, like, impossible to win. No one's won a tennis challenge in three years.

Since I was a kid, I remember them having that specialty view where it zooms in on the tennis ball down to like the micro fibers and you can see the shadow of the ball. Like if it was just outside the line or not, I can't believe they have that technology. I like still don't really understand how they're capable of doing that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm starting to question everything. You saw the thing with the Amazon stores where they were like, oh, yeah, you'll come in and track you with a bunch of cameras.

They just had a thousand people they were paying in India to watch the cameras. And like the technology was all fake. And I've kind of started wondering about the tennis tracking That tennis things just fake And I'm like, they had that 12 years ago perfect Or were they just kind of like showing you a really confident looking animation? I don't know We can't get Wi-Fi on planes and yet we're tracking tennis balls going 120 miles an hour?

I don't know. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe they were just going to making it up. I don't know. Other news, Darren retired officially. Oh, thank God. I just feel bad for the guy, honestly. It's a tough few months for Waller.

Kind of a self-inflicted situation, though. not really anything, you know, he just kind of did all this to himself. Self-inflicted or was he stabbed in the back per the video? Good call. I suppose that he got divorced and that is not, I guess, self-inflicted, but maybe it is. Maybe Kelsey Plum did the Ricky Bobby's wife. Like, I'm a driver's wife and he wanted to retire. If Darren Woler just didn't do anything and kind of retired, we'd look back and be like,

great career. Yeah, right. What a guy. And now the only thing we're going to think about is that music video. It's so, it is like, it's the ultimate like, yeah, you build a thousand bridges. It's like Darren Waller literally like overcame substance. He had like 18 catches in his career until he was like 27. And overcame substance issues, got sober, had like 12 hundred yards.

It was dynamic. And we're like, yeah, that music video guy. The all time's like too much, do less. He left 12. Dan do get at the athletic. He does a great job. Noted one. I mean, not that anyone cares about the Giants tight end situation, but Daniel

Bellinger. I do, is their number one. And that the other four tight ends on the Giants team combined don't have, like, have as many, basically have what Darren Waller did last year in their entire like 200 games combined in their career. So the Giants are kind of screwed. Darren Waller left $12 million on the table to not play. The Giants would have kept them.

I mean, think about how nice of a music video you can produce with $12 million more dollars. You could find someone that looks somewhat more remotely close to your ex-wife. You can get a steady cam, some color correction. Someone who won't blink on the water. hits you, I don't know. Crazy. All right. Next though.

Anthony Richardson missed the OTA day with shoulder soreness. Greg, I feel like you're a little worried about these all-season quarterback injuries. I don't like when guys are missing OTA mini camps, whatever, like in June with an injury. It's just like, it just freaks me out. He had the AC joint surgery on his shoulder in October. He said he's 95% right now, Anthony Richardson. And Shane Steichen head coach is like, oh, yeah, this day was unplanned. Like it was not a rest day that we scheduled.

He kind of- Don't like that. Don't love that. Like he's just throwing the football in June and he already needs rest. This just feels so ominous. You know what I mean? Like it's probably nothing,

but maybe it's really terrible. Their generational quarterback talent in Indianapolis, Angeluk, literally just had this mysterious shoulder injury with soreness and just retired. You know the cults haven't had the same week one starter two years in a row since like 2018?

It just worries me. You know, specifically with Superflex, which is our preferred format of playing fantasy football. Quarterbacks are so much more valuable. If you're doing an oxford draft, you're spending like 40, 50, sometimes $60 on a quarterback. I don't know. DKD is it?

Are you less likely to draft Anthony Richardson in a Superflex because there's so much pressure on you needing that quarterback to play 16 or 17 games? When if you're in a one quarterback league, it's like, all right, Anthony Richardson gets hurt. Like you could probably pick up like Dak Prescott off the Waverware or something, like Kurt Cousins. but within it's like man I'm spending 60 bucks on Anthony Richardson and if he like lowers his shoulder in week one like my whole season's over yeah yeah I think I mean that that is the proposition that you come into it's like if you're spending a whole bunch of money on one of these guys that has elite potential and then they get hurt or whatever your whole season is kind of screwed I don't know I'm still gonna probably draft him though I'm still gonna go for him just because I think he has that much upside it's it is a risk or reward proposition with him and anybody could get hurt so obviously we have

have to find out more with what like how he's doing as OTAs and a preseason go along like there's going to be more information um but while this is disconcerting to say the least I am still going to be aggressively going after Richardson. I just think he has that much upside. He's like the Cam Newton upside. Isn't it really weird that Anthony Richardson's two years younger than Bowdox? I saw a video he was on Pat McAfee Anthony Richardson and they cut away to a video of him running in a touchdown and he does did you have you seen the video of him doing like the spin spike? He like jumps in the edge is a 360 and then spikes it like as he's landing.

Left a dent in the field. That was like the most athletic thing I've seen someone do in five years. And it was a touchdown celebration. And I'm like, man, this guy. Dude. Yeah. Also just like in the very small like sample that we saw last year,

there were some incredible play designs that the Colts baked up for him. Like where they would have just one that comes to mind is like they had they were running like a sweep. It was like, it was like an old school. football play where they like two or three different receivers ran to the left and then he like did a naked bootleg out to the right and just no one was in like his vicinity he easily rushed it in like they're doing really cool things with with their run game where he is getting the football

and there's a lot of misdirection and things like that like I don't know man like it's not just like he's he's so big and powerful he's going to truck people at the goal line like they're designing really freaking cool plays for him to score points too in the red zone and he has that you know a dual threat skill set that like truly like I said this just before like Cam Newton you haven't seen this type of guy since like Cam Newton the best time to draft running quarterbacks is in the first two years of the careers before their coaches are like maybe we should ease up and kind of focus on his long term less you're Josh Allen who just doesn't give a shit he's just going to continue being himself but speaking of Joe Burrow another guy missed the practice last week

a voluntary practice that was on the plan that was all part of the plan though this was with the difference was. Still, though, they're giving him one day off every week. And I'm just like, I don't know, the quotes around Burroughs wrist are still just weird. Like there's an interview with Joe Burrow from May. And he's talking about like, this is going to be a challenge and a real process. This has been the hardest, one of the hardest parts of my life the past several months. The wrist is going to hurt sometimes. I want to try to be out there for training camp. I'm like, oh, the alarms are going off when I hear him saying that. He's not supposed to be the guy to say that. I totally agree.

Like there's this quote from Ben Baby, ESPN wrote this story this week. And it was about Zach Taylor, the Bengals head coach said, if you asked Joe Burrow, Joe's going to be out there every day. And that's part of the problem, defending the player from himself. I don't know.

And I'm like, yeah, you want the guys to be able to play. But I totally agree, Craig. Every year of the injuries, we kind of have this assumption, oh, they'll be back, they'll be fine. But like, we're not, it's really odd that there's,

I mean, it's a lightly precedented elbow injury or wrist injury. It's very lightly precedented. That's kind of, they don't seem super optimistic about it. Yeah. And like, I'm, I really want to draft like Jamar Chase this year. But I'm like, do I want to grab a receiver whose quarterback is already taken days off? Because his wrist is sore and it's going to maybe hurt sometimes. You sound like a boomer.

He's already taking days off. No work ethic. It's quiet quitting. They're so soft these days. It is one of those things that, like, look, Tua last year with the concussions, you come into the last season, and we overcorrected on that. All anyone was talking about with the dolphins was can't do is stay healthy, can too stay healthy, and he was fine.

The Bengals is the opposite. Joe Burrow, the season-ending injury, no one's worried about Joe Burroughs wrist. He's hurt every year. I keep saying elbows. It wasn't his elbow. I just, I don't know why I keep saying elbow. Elbows connected to the wrist bone. But he kept at the seasoning wrist injury, what is wrong with me?

I don't know. speak English. Anyway. I mean, this is kind of normal, isn't it? Oh, it's true.

My point, that's far for the course. My point was that Joe Burrow has the seasonning injury. And to your point, Greg, it's not priced into anything. No one's worried about it. But like, what happens when T.J.

What tackles Joe Burrow and he puts his wrist out? Like he's going to do like seven times a game to catch himself. Yeah, and he's getting days off in September because his wrist is hurting. I don't know. It's just, I don't know.

You're right. Like that offer, that story where he asked the offensive lineman and they're like, he's like, how they're covering going. He's like, I don't know. I have to throw a ball. And he's like, oh, cool, cool. Thanks, man. I still have the, it's seared into my memory of like Joe Burrow on the sidelines.

The cameras caught him trying to throw a pass. And he was like, oh, my miss. Like, you know, like he could barely throw it. It's like, it was just like hanging on by a thread. He's like, oh, fuck me. Like, you know, that sinking feeling that we all had like, oh, but this is not good. Yeah. Now, now we're still talking about it.

So again, it's June 10th. But something to keep an eye on. on. He's already in pain. Or sorry, the pain never left. He's still in pain. Yeah. The pain never left. All right.

There's some OTA news. We're going to have more. There's mandatory minicamp this week. We're recording this Monday, June 10th. So if something has happened between now and when you're hearing this, we will get to that with our next recording. You're going to go, right? Hyphids, you're going to some of them.

Yeah, I will be at Washington on Tuesday. I'll be at Baltimore on Wednesday. So let me know if you email me at ring of fantasy football at gmail. You have things you want to ask. I'll see Lamar on Wednesday. Can you ask Derek Henry what it's like to be 30 as an athlete? Oh, fuck. That's a really good idea. Yeah.

That's, yeah, I will. Ask him if there's a difference in his mind, like turning 29 versus turning 30. Does that feel like a larger gap than just one year because he's now in a new decade? You're just projecting your fears onto Derek Henry, like in a question. I give Derek Henry like an existential crisis and ruin his season. Craig, isn't it really weird that we're like the same age as Derek Henry? I feel so much younger than him in my mind, right? Yeah, it's kind of concerned.

I'm like Derek Henry is an old man with old knees. You guys are basically the same shape. Yeah. Yeah. How fast could he run a 40 right now? Derek Henry? Five flat? Yeah.

What, does he double my weight? Triple. How tall is Derek Henry? Six three, six two? Yeah. He's like a six two that feels like seven. He said, true outlier. High Fitz, I want you to do an investigation on how skinny

Lamar Jackson is now. There's all this talk about how he's like slimmed down and lost like 20 pounds. I didn't think he could lose 20 pounds and still be out there, you know, hanging out and taking hits in the NFL. Maybe I'll ask him if he could like grab a suit that he wore last year and see if it still fit him this year. Maybe it would look real bagging.

He looks like 1990s and NBA draft. That's back in. It's back in though. Kind of a looser silhouette is what's in right now. We're going to do a little investigation of the NBA teams. We did this a few weeks ago and we kind of went through all the the 32 NFL teams because someone, it basically began with,

someone pointed out to like, what's a Buffalo bill? Like, what the fuck is that? And we were like, like, this is our job. And we were like, you know what? No idea.

Never thought about it. Thought a bill was a Buffalo. Thought a bill was a Buffalo. And then it kind of, it actually was so like earth shattering that none of us had ever thought about this that we kind of like went down the rabbit hole and we're like,

this should just be a whole show. We were just like, what are these things? What did you pull on the thread? You can't really stop. So it's the NBA finals. And then we are a contraction obligated to talk about the Boston Celtics.

So we figured we go through everything. So I don't know, Dickie, did you even watch the finals on Sunday night? No. I've been tracking it a little bit. The memes with like Luca limping around are pretty funny. Speaking of being 30 years old. Yeah, that's more interesting than the finals itself is the memes. A couple of blowouts back to back.

Is that the gist? Yeah, a couple of blowouts. Mavs, I guess technically made it close at the end. But the Celtics were pretty much winning for the whole. second half. This is a really boring finals. The ratings are terrible. This is on pace to be the lowest NBA finals rating since like 2007. Well, there were two good playoff series in the NBA. Like there was the Timberwolves Nuggets and then there was Nick Sixers. And then I feel like everything else is kind of like no shade. There's been a ton of injuries. I also just, I personally

feel as though the Celtics are, I don't know for how good they are. They're kind of a boring team. I don't think that's incredibly boring team. Yeah, they're not very exciting at all. I everyone's trying to force Jason Tatum to be like a star and he's not whether he's a good basketball player but like he doesn't have it he doesn't have the it factor it's just not there getting word that Craig has been fired I don't give a shit he's good but like Jason Tatum don't have it the second he texted Kobe Bryant I got you tonight bro it was over it's weird that the Celtics are so good yet have such little star power yeah I to be honest with you as someone who doesn't pay attention NBA, I don't know anything about the Celtics.

Like, I couldn't tell you who their best player is. And they're like on paper, like one of the best 20 teams ever. The Porzingis guy, is he good? I don't watch the NBA. I'm sorry. The only thing I know about the NBA right now is that Luca is super fucking good. And Yokic is the funniest human being on Earth. Those are the two things I know about the NBA.

Two chubby euros. Just smoking a pack of things a day. High Fitz, you texted me the other day. I think, talking about how Yokic should play quarterback in the NFL, and I've never wanted to see anything in my life more. Yokich would be the best Broncos quarterback in like eight years since like Peyton Manning's arm worked. It's not even a question. I've seen it make five passes in these NBA playoffs that would have been better than any throws

Russell Wilson made in his entire Broncos career. He's got incredible court vision. I'm way too much work for Yokic. He barely puts him to work for basketball. Yeah, but NFL quarterbacks can come in super chubby. play chubby. Oh, that's true. He'll have a longer career. Jackie's from Pittsburgh, so they don't have a basketball team. So when I'm putting on a basketball, like a series in the playoffs, he usually have to pitch it to her. You know what I mean? I'm like, hey, like, throwing this on. And with the

Mavs, I forget what the first Mavs series I put on. With Luca, I was like, yeah, so this guy, he's like the best player in the world. 17 just drinks like a quart of like sweet tea every day before practice, doesn't stretch. Just loves Arna and Palmer's. Too bitter. too bitter from the sweet team for Kai. Let's get in this. By the way, one of the hooks for this whole thing, and we'll get to right to the Celtics because that's the team of the hour.

But I will say, one of the other hooks for this whole discussion, and one of the reasons we talked about NFL team names is because Hyfitts and I went to a Pacer's game. In Indianapolis, we were at the Combine. We went to a Pacer's game with a bunch of friends. Oh, I don't even think I knew that. You guys went to a Pacer's game. Oh, yeah, we went to a Pacer's game when we got to the Combine a Day early.

And we were at a Pacer's game. And I think one of us turns to the other and it's like, what the fuck is a pacer? Yeah. And I was like, is it a pacer like the pace car at the at the Indy 500? And those are the cars that go really slow and no one can get around them. And they're slowing everything down. And why would you want to be a pacer? Like they're the slowest car on the track.

By definition, they're going slow. But I was looking into it, by the way, for the show. By the way, this is another thing that we did that's different from the NFL show. We actually did some research on this one. Thank you for your feedback. like email, Reader Fancy Football at e-mails. Thank you to the many people who are like, that was cool, but like next time maybe Google stuff ahead of time.

I bet. Disagree. Live Googling is great content. It is, it is. But the Pacers are also a reference. Not only the pace car is sort of one of the reasons they name, they're named the Pacers, but it is also a reference to the horse racing,

the hardest racing, which has a certain, they are like trotting and that's also Harvest racing or harness racing. So like it's a horse with a buggy behind it or whatever. A buggy is probably not the right term. Like a gladiator with the little chariots? The carriage behind it. It's like a modern day gladiator thing.

Yeah. Anyways, the horses are known as pacers, I think. So that makes a little bit more sense. I just thought like being a pace card, that's not very badass. No,

they're known for being slow. They're just like the grandma on the freeway. You can't get around, you know? Wait, so we each divided the, We each divided the research into third. So, like, we each got 10 teams.

And so we only did research for 10 teams. I don't know about the other 20. And we're going to go through every NBA team right now. We're going to be like, why they called this? Yeah. So we just get a little investigation here. So DK with the Pacers there leading us off. I want to start with just the Boston Celtics.

Obviously, a nod to Boston's historically Irish population is the first thing that comes up. But then I'm, so I'm Jewish, which is huge caveat. I was like, what is this Celtic? I just, what is that? And the Celts. Yes, it's a Celtic, a Celtic. A Celtic is someone connected to the people and or culture of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, or other areas such as Brittany, Britanni.

I don't know. I think Brittany is in France. I'm so sorry to, we've already have people explained to us, like the Commonwealth and England and all this stuff, and I'm going to get all this wrong. But all these things are all part of the Indo-European family. And I looked up, history.com. The several tribes make up the larger population of the larger population of

the Celtic people. Indeed, the Gaels, the Gals, the Britons, the Irish, the Galatians were all Celtic Celtic tribes. It can also be relating to the Celts or their languages, which constitute a branch of the Indo-European family of languages, which includes Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Britain, like the crackers, I don't know, Manx, Cornish. Am I going to be quizzed on this? What's happening right now? I don't know, but I didn't know what any of this meant, man, but like, it's crazy. But like, so it's a whole tribe, which is like super different than every other team. It's an actual people. Yeah, it's a lot more historical and complex than the New Jersey or the Brooklyn Nets,

which can we just pivot right into that? Please. So the Brooklyn Nets, I was called the New Jersey Nets, formerly the New Jersey Nets. Like, I feel like the joke was like, oh, ha, ha, they must have just named it, named them the Nets because it rhymes with Mets and Jets. That's right. That's it. That's correct.

That's the whole thing. There's also a net involved in basketball. Yeah. Let me read you verbatim. This is what the Wikipedia post says. The Brooklyn Nets got their name because it rhymes with the names of two other professional sports teams that played in the New York metropolitan area at the time. The New York Mets and New York Jets.

The name also relates to basketball in general as it is part of the basket. It's hanging from the basket. This is like calling an NFL team the end zones. That's even better, I think. At least that name sounds cool. I think the Nets is the worst name in professional sports. Email us at Ringer Fantasy Football at gmail.com

if you have other thoughts in the worst name in sports. I agree, Craig. I think it's so sad. It's so sad. I looked up other words. You see, there's a better rhyme. There's not.

Nets was the best they could do. I looked up. I looked up words that rhymes with Jets. Yes. There's nothing else. Pets was the best I could come up with. People love their pets. It's, that's it.

It's pretty sad. The other one, I'm not going to lie. Nix is pretty bad too. I looked up the Nix. No, Nick's historic. I know, but okay, but you, Nick's short for Nicker Bocker. And I'm like a pant.

Yeah, so here's like, so the story of how they chose it, this old Nix executive told the story about they're in the 50s. And this is a quote from him. The name came out of a hat. We were all sitting in the office one day with like the owner, the publicity guy. Lester Scott, I don't know who that is, and a few other guys in the staff.

We each put a name in the hat, and when we pulled them all out, most of the names people have written down said, Knickerbockers, after Father Nickerbocker, the symbol of New York City. Father Nickerbocker? Who the fuck is Father Nickerbocker? Father Nickerbocker. And apparently, in 1809, Washington Irving wrote his first novel. And to promote the book, he started a hoax and contacted all the New York newspapers saying, quote, well-known Dutch historian

Diedrich Knickerbocker had disappeared from his hotel and this was like a promotional thing for his fake book by a fake author that he was writing and it worked and I guess this guy wore Knickerbockers What the hell? I know. This is like the first guy who understood

how advertising works. That's like the rule of marketing. That's how advertising works. We can put the picture of this guy on Wikipedia on Spotify and they literally like the Knicks are named after this guy's clothes that was thick. What? I know.

Dude, the etymology of names is fucking wild. How did it go from this is a fake guy named Mr. Knickerbocker to pants? I think Dietrich Nickerbocker wore Knickerbockers. Nickerbucker was the name of like a pant. But it comes from Dieter. Then he made up this guy's name.

A fake? The nicks are named after a fake Dutch historian's clothes. Like Dietrich slacks. A fake Dutch historian. 76ers, D.K. The Philadelphia 76ers, this is pretty much exactly what you expect. It was named after the year 1776, which was where the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. The Sixers are actually, they were founded as the Syracuse Nationals, and they're one of the oldest franchise in the NBA.

That was the interesting thing that I found in my research. And by the way, they replaced, this is a Craig-related fact. they replaced the departing warriors who moved from Philadelphia over to California to San Francisco to be the Warriors. They replace the Warriors. And now the Warriors are Craig's favorite team. That's right. 76ers is a great name. It's a good name.

I think I've decided that I like the names of, I like the names of teams of teams that are like related to a year. So like the 49ers, I think is a good, good team name. Are 49ers interested in a year or are people? I thought the 49ers were peoples like like people went there and 49. It's a people named after the year of the goal. Yeah, I think it's kind of weird. It's 1849, right?

Right. While we're on the Golden State, why did they pick Golden State? How did they have the audacity pick an entirety of California when they were like five teams already in California? It's just fantastic marketing. It's probably just Golden Gate Bridge related. They're like, look, we need to get people to the Bay Area. What can we do? Golden Gate, Golden State.

Yeah. That's pretty good. They wanted like the whole of California to embrace the team essentially. But it's a great question. They're the only team in the league that does that, right, where the name is not a city or a state. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I don't think anyone else had the whole thing.

Because the only other plate, like the New England Patriots is the only team that's not. Yeah, that's a region. Right. That's like a, yeah, that's the other comp. All right. Next up here. Wait. We, we have to keep this train roll east.

Raptors. In my research, I noticed that basically 60% of the, of the team names that I looked up were decided based off a contest where they just had fans vote. Boaty big boat face. Boatty big boat face is how all these things happen. I wish a team was named Team McTeepface. This is how... Boney McBoase was the greatest thing ever. This is how Harambe became president.

It's just you allow people to vote for whatever they want. This is why a meme stock is a thing. So there was a nationwide contest and the Raptors were founded in 95. I am assuming this name, this contest was in 94. They picked the Raptors because everybody just loved Jurassic Park. Oh, my God. I did not realize this. Jurassic Park came out in 93 and they were like,

Hell yeah. What's the most badass dinosaur? What are you, four years old? This is literally the question I asked Calvin. What's the coolest dinosaur? That's unbelievable.

You know what I missed, though? I missed the old logo. I don't know. The old logo used to be an actual velociraptor wearing like basketball shoes and gripping a ball. It's like the dolphin wearing a helmet. It's literally like we should be a,

remember when I said I could be an NFL GM. I think we could just run a team. Like how? the Raptors are not just do the Vince Carter dunk, but have a Raptor do it. That's your logo. Now it's just a ball with claw marks. Like, who's that for? That's so boring.

I know. Get a Raptor. The Raptors. Have a Raptor. Jesus. All right. Next up, Chicago Bulls. The Bulls.

This one I did not know. And I was pretty interested to find out. It was named after, it was a reference to the Chicago Union Stockyards, which was a huge, like, business hub in Chicago in the country, really. essentially at one point for like a bunch of decades, that was the biggest meat packing place in the world. So I looked at some pictures of the Chicago Union stockyards, and man, the smell of that place must have been something else

because it was just like miles of just fenced in cows and things. If you drive north of L.A. I-5 is tough. Cleveland Cavaliers, another of these naming competition, The Cavs owner had a name and competition in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the newspaper, 11,000 people submitted entries. They whittled it down to five.

The Cleveland J's, because the owner's son was named Jay. What time? The foresters. I know, right? Jesus. The foresters, the towers, because they have a terminal tower in Cleveland. The presidents and the news, the GnU.

I don't even know what that is. The Gnoos? Ganoo, what is that? Is that a type of bird? That's a terrible name for a basketball team. Hold on. Gano. Now I don't know what a canoe is. A GnU. What is that? This is one of the all-time worst list of names for a contest that I've seen. Forces Towers. Some random guys submitted

Cavaliers. The owner liked it. It's not clear if they even counted the votes. The owner just liked it. And the good story is that the guy was promised, we're not a good story, a funny story. The guy was promised season tickets in a car. Got the season tickets. Never got the car. 40 years later they gave him a signed basketball. Oh, by the way, a canoe is a wildebeest. I was thinking of emu, I think. Why would they name it after a will? There's other willdebeasts in Cleveland?

What? I don't think so, Craig. You're the Africa expert here. That's right. I saw thousands of wildebeest in the Great Migration. Wildebeest can run 50 miles an hour. They're ugly son of a gun's too. Let me tell you.

I don't know if it's a wildebeest. I think it's a wildebeest, I think an antelot, wait, what? What is a wildebe's coming to think of it? Are they in the antelope family? I'm not sure. I think so, yes. They're antelopes of the genus.

But they kind of look like, they look like a spare parts animal. They're in the Bovodei family, which I think is the cow family. Okay, yeah. Which includes antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep, other even-toed-horned ungulates. Ungulet.

All right. Next up, Detroit Pistons. You probably assumed this, that the piston is just named after the car part, a piston in an engine. I like this. I like this. If you kind of think about it, like, we're going to name our basketball team off of like a piece of metal inside of a car in an engine, kind of lame, but the name piston sounds cool. Yeah.

So I think it kind of worked out. I thought because of the logo that a piston was also a horse. Did you guys think that? No. No, I didn't think. Why did you think there was a horse on the logo for all those years? Did they have a horse on the logo? Yeah, forever.

I feel like I blocked this out of my mind. Really? I don't remember that either. It's just the red basketball. I don't know. I'm Googling it. I don't remember this. Look up Piston like NBA horse or something.

I don't remember this logo. Not in that order. I don't think I was aware of the Detroit Pistons until like 2003, 2002. Yeah, like their old retro logo, which was really cool, has like a horse with like a flame main. Anyway, I thought a Piston was a horse, looked it up. They actually chose a horse because of horse power. Hmm. That makes sense.

Which honestly pretty cool. But they originally wanted their logo to look like, what are those things called at the front of a car? Like the little metal, like figure at the end of the hood. Oh, like what they have on boats, but now they have it on cars, the little things sticking up? Yeah, it's like the mer, like the, like the Jaguar and Jaguar?

Yeah, the Jaguar, whatever those are called. That's what the fuck are those called. What the fuck are those called? Hood ornament. A hood ornament. Our generation knows nothing about cars. No. But they wanted it to originally.

look like a hood ornament and all the original designs are really cool because it's like this like metal glossy piston with a horse. Oh, that's cool. All the old logos I found are better than the current ones. That's very cool. We're in such a dark place right now with like branding and imaging. I feel like in society. That's a cool story because like then I think about that one.

I was thinking about the Milwaukee Bucks one and they held a contest with 40,000 entries. The one that won was Robbins is the state bird and they were like, and they were like, nah. And they just went with the white tail deer because that's the official wild animal of the state of Wisconsin. Yeah. It's cool. And their mascots named Bango.

And I'm kind of like, you know what? I like the Detroit thing. It seems like they put a lot more thought into that one. Bango the Buck? Bango the Buck. If we keep breezing through the boring ones, the Atlanta Hawks, they used to be the Black Hawks,

shortened it. Not that interesting. Boring. Just like the Atlanta Hawks. Yeah, they moved around. They were in the Midwest, now they're in Atlanta. I was, yeah, Charlotte Hornets. Oh, yeah, this one, this one was a little more interesting than I thought.

So the original Charlotte Hornets franchise was obviously established back in the day, 1988, but then they moved to New Orleans. The Charlotte team turned into the Bobcats for a while. Then they changed back to the Hornets in 2014. So it was a long, long story. The name Hornets actually comes from, it originates from the British General Cornwallis, who allegedly described Charlotte as a Hornet's nest of rebellion following the Battle of Charlotte in 1780. I had no idea about this.

That's cool. I thought it was going to be another one of those Utah bees thing where I'm asking, is there a lot of bees in Charlotte? Wait. But weren't they the Hornets in New Orleans too? Yes. Yeah. So does that mean that someone just made up a connection between Charlotte and the team?

Like this made up a connection. Someone just had to go and somebody at a marketing firm. No, no, they were originally in Charlotte. But they started in Charlotte. Oh, they moved to New Orleans, became the Pelicans, and then the Charlotte Bobcats took over the name again of Hornets. Right. Got it.

Okay. Originally, the team was going to be called the Charlotte Spirit. But that didn't happen. For ghosts? And then like the Charlotte team retained all of the old Hornets like history. Oh, it's like the Browns. Yeah. By the way, I have a point of contention with you on that one, Hyfitz.

With the like you're so adamant. We can't get into that. Oh, yeah. We can't get into that. That's fine. Teams like keeping their history and all that shit. I'm like to. After a hundred people.

All right. After 100 people screamed at me about. the Browns, I get it now. Okay. The Miami Heat, another name contest, the final two submissions were the Miami Heat or the Miami Vice. Oh, the Vice. The Vice? That's so much better.

How did they not pick the Miami Vice? Dude, because it's referencing sinning, I guess. I don't know. Crime? That's sick. That's so cool. That's so sick. I feel like every step of the way, like these people naming their teams have been wrong.

Like, they're just always making the wrong choice. Yeah. Well, they called it FTX or Rating. We'll get into the Phoenix Suns later, all right? Also, the Miami Heat of a mascot named Bernie, and I just found a video at what point? Like burn, like B-U-R-N. They had a promotional thing where Connor McGregor did a little fake fight

on the court to promote some, like, I wrote it down because that was so funny. A pain relief spray. Oh, my God. And McGregor knocked the mascot out cold. Like, he hit him twice. Like, he knocked them out, and then he punched him on the ground. Didn't the guy sue him?

Probably. They literally had to drag the mascot off like a dead body, like legs. So I'm assuming the Miami Heat were founded after the show, Miami Vice, which is why that name was in contention. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. So it was like late 80s, Miami Heat came around, and early 80s was Miami Vice's show? Yeah.

1886 is the Heat. 86? Man, that would have been cool. Are you kidding? I have it just rights. Are you kidding? Yeah, I just, I can't. The Miami Vice.

It's right there. And then they do the colors. It's the only good City Connect uniform. Like the only elite one is the Miami Vice. Anyway, I think it's funny, too, that the Florida teams are the Orlando Magic and the Miami Heat. I don't know why, but I think it's... And now the Miami Heat lean into the Miami Vice thing. They have those, like, teal jerseys that look super cool.

They're incredible. All right. Speaking of the Orlando Magic. I have a lot of thoughts. I hate this, babe. So, once again, another... name contest the most

popular suggested was challengers which was an illusion to the space shuttle that crashed in 1986 why would you want to name your team

after a crash shuttle that's not a great idea first shuttle crash that human beings died in so anyway they were like no the other entries were Floridians

juice orbits astronauts no juice yeah no Florido Floridians So they can be OJ? Yeah.

I think the Orlando juice is kind of fun. Also, the tropics, which I think is also fun. Tropics is, the tropics is kind of sick. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Aquaman, the heat, and then the magic. So there were over 4,000 entries. Only 11 of them voted for magic. Oh, my gosh.

They picked magic because the GM took his stupid son to Disney World. And he was like, oh, my son likes Disney World. Let's call him the Magic. Stupid son. 11 out of like 4,300. Dude. We got to figure out what the percentage is for that. What's 11 out of 43?

It's less than 1%. 99% of people decided that the Gidopicot. 0.02%. Wow. The Orlando tropics or the Atlanta juice would be so much better. Also, like, do the Orlando Magic have any association with Disney? it's in Orlando. But like, they don't, that's the extent of it.

They don't like, there's no like cross promotional, like anything between them, right? I'm sure there is at the arena. But you think that like, for naming your team after Disney World, they do a little bit more to incorporate Disney into their branding. They don't at all. And we've never thought about that ever again. Like, is their stadium, the Magic Kingdom? Like, they should be doing something.

It's kind of like the Anaheim Ducks where someone told me that they were named after the Mighty Ducks, the movie. And I laughed, like thinking they were joking. No, no, no, really. And I was like, so Disney has named two different teams? Also, the Oregon Ducks, I believe they have Donald Duck trademarked as their logo. By the way, that can't be right. The Orlando Magic play at the Kia Center.

Okay. My son drives a Kia. So crazy. But yeah, Hyvitz, I believe the Oregon Duck is Donald Duck. Did not know that. Emails, we'll have to figure that out. Maybe that's wrong. The college version of this would be out of control.

The Washington Wizards, I mean, honestly, yeah, they were the Washington Bullets, a lot of gun violence in D.C. They changed a wizard really sad. It's like the, but I want to show the logo. Why a wizard? I think that it was because W. And then the other ones that make sense, like Warrior, like they didn't want anything violent. And they just kind of settled on it. Why did they needed, they needed alliteration?

Yeah, they just like they had some DC consulting firm tell them, it's got to be a W and they just kind of rolled with it. I don't fucking know. Wizards. Abe Paulin was old. I don't know, man. And so they want the Wizards. I want to show the altar. logo, which is the letters DC with the D being a hand that's

extended to a basketball. Everyone's favorite part of the game, a jump ball. It's the worst illustration I think I've ever seen in professional sports. Is the alternate logo for the Wizards. It's like, you know how they say hands are really hard to animate in like TV shows? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like this one, you see why, it's like the most awkward thing I've, It's a child's hand.

It looks like a fifth grader. The logo also relates to basketball in general as it is part of the body. I can't believe this is an alternate logo for an NBA team. Somehow it's better than the other logo they have, like the new age, new fangled with like the weird blue and gold colors. Well, I don't know.

That's the old one. There's a lot going on there. Wait, are they now? They're now a different color. Now it's just the red, white and blue Washington Monument. Okay.

Just the wizard still. That's good. That's reassuring. I just love, you guys miss my joke, but I just love the, the Nets on Wikipedia. The name also.

relates to basketball in general as it is part of the basket. Good. That was good. Good callback. Sometimes re-saying a joke does work. Yeah, I'm like, hold on. I need to land this plane. You know, like, actually, fun fact, when I was in Africa, we were in this tiny little

plane, and we were landing in Tanzania, and we were in this tiny little potput, this one pilot. And as we get down close to the tarmac, which is just a strip of dirt, she kind of was just like, not, this ain't right, and just like, take ascends back up again, doesn't Try again. And then lands again. So that was just me with that joke. I was like, it doesn't feel right. Right back up.

Next up, Denver Nuggets. Yeah. This is a good one. Gold. Yeah. So the Nuggets refer to, I guess, both the gold and silver rushes that happened in the area in the 1800s. There was a first of gold rush.

Those people that went to that gold rush were called the 59ers. And after the year 1859, yeah, that's about it. All right. Cool. great Minnesota Timberwolves Another name contest The most popular name was actually The Blizzard but the team didn't want that

Thank God, good job And I guess Minnesota has the largest wolf population in America And they do have the Eastern Timberwolf So that's how they got it This one hits close to home for me Craig Because I think I mentioned this on the show before My high school mascot was the storm And the naming thing

Was between either the storm or the timber wolves it's like, come on. The Timberwolves are so much fucking cruel. Yeah, you have to, that's why there's no, like, that's why there's no nicknames that are like horses. You do have to be more specific. Like, what type of storm? Right.

You know, like the hurricane. Like, avalanche. Like, that works. Blizzard, you know. It should be a generic storm. Timberwolves great name. And great old logos. No, no, the Timberwolves, man.

They used to great branding. Things were better when I was young. Um, um, DK. They were. This is a little too personal. I decided you would. Hyphins assigned this to me, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

First of all, fuck off. They're named the Thunder because Super Sonics has taken, A-Holes. The Sonics got to keep the naming rights and all their history when the team was stolen from Seattle. But that being said, the name Thunder, it's fine. It's in reference to Oklahoma's location in Tornado Alley. Thunder is literally harmless. Right, it's just a sound.

You have to put a vest on your dog, though, sometimes. It's also apparently named after the US Army's 45th Infantry Division, the Thunderbirds, which are based in Oklahoma City. They should have been the Thunderbirds then. That's better. Thunderbirds is so much better than Thunder. Yeah. Anyways, Thunder is bad.

It'd be funny if they all wore it. The fans, you know how they do like, you do like a white out or a blackout? They should do like a Thunder vest day. Wait, speaking of the Thunder and just, did you see the video of James Hardin, his girlfriend, catching the bouquet? at a wedding. He was handing that up for the camera, right? I think he was looking at a specific,

I think he was looking at the bride who threw it, but it became incredible. His eyes just become really wide and just stares into this. And it reminded me of that meme of the dog where they're training the dog not to eat the cupcakes. And the dog's just like staring at the cupcakes. Like, this is my life. Can we talk, can we talk before we move on from the Thunder?

Can we talk about the Sonics, rest in peace? Yeah. And hopefully they'll come back. Super Sonics, I thought, was a good. great name. Amazing name. Supersonics obviously named after Boeing. Not great right now.

Boeing's PR and potential you know, it's not just their PR that's not doing well, D.K. The planes are not doing very well. They're out here. They didn't just send out a couple bad tweets.

Yeah. So anyways. D.K. Careful shouting out the multinational conglomerate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alleging, you know. But the old school Sonics.

Love the old color scheme, the green and yellow. This is not like it's hard for people to capture who's like we're talking on a podcast. Like people know that it's like the three of us. People don't necessarily know which voice is which voice. If any of the hitmen are Boeing or listening, he's Danny Kelly. I'm Danny Heifitz. I don't know if you get a lot of people get us confused. Yeah.

I just took a Boeing across the country. as hell. Great play. It's incredible experience. I got nothing wrong with Bowling. Anyway, Super Sonics, which was shortened to Sonics, which I kind of don't like that.

I like Super Sonics. Was it shortened or was that just shorthand? Well, maybe it was just the way that people kind of started calling them. I'm not 100% sure. Speaking of up there, the Portland Trailblazers. Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. Another name contest. The winning name was actually the Pioneers. But Lewis and Clark College in Oregon was already the pioneers. So they went to Trailblazers, which is also a reference to the Lewis and Clark expedition. The weirdest part to me, Trailblazers is cool name. The weirdest part to me is the logo. You know the weird logo?

Yes. The red and the black with the lines. It's like a recycling sign almost. Yeah. Apparently the logo is supposed to depict 5V5 on a basketball court. What? Five lines of red and five lines of black. like coming into one another.

That's interesting. They've seen a basketball club. But I would say, I think the Blazers have one of the better like overall aesthetics of any. Yes. Like their logo I think is cool. I think their numbering is cool. Like their colors are cool. Their uni's look good.

They still seem to me like they haven't like rebranded off of the early 2009. Like they just kind of stayed there. And that's a good thing. You know what I mean? Yeah. It has like a nice retro quality to it because. it looks like they just never really came up with anything new. They've just kind of stuck with what they had 20 years ago.

They get it. It's a weird logo, but it looks cool. That's kind of all that matters. Different end of the spectrum. Utah Jazz. Can we get Kai to insert the line from basketball in the intro where it says, Soon it was commonplace for entire teams to change cities in search of greater profits. The Minneapolis Lakers move to Los Angeles where there are no lakes.

The oilers move to Tennessee where there is no oil. The jazz moved to Salt Lake City where they don't. allow music. The weirdest name team in all of professional sports, probably by far, the Utah Jazz. It probably took me, by the way, 20 years in my life

to even think about why that was weird. I never even considered it. I was like, oh, Utah Jazz, sure. They got to change it to something related to bees. Well, it's the opposite. I just thought Utah had jazz for a really long time.

Just the heartland of jazz. Obviously, this team was not from Utah originally. They were from New Orleans, which is, of course, very related to jazz. A group of nine Californians bought the team and moved, them to Utah. The team colors, by the way,

purple, green, and gold, which I think they still use mainly are for Mardi Gras. Like, they're the represent colors of Mardi Gras. So again, just doesn't work with Utah. They rebranded. They like recently came out with New Jersey's. They do actually look pretty

cool. They brought the mountains back. Okay. Yeah. There we go. That's huge. Yeah. I guess there's not much yellow in their uniforms anymore. Well, the Nuggets did the same thing and the Nuggets kind of took the rainbow. which is pretty smart. It's a lot of colors in the rainbow. Oh, the Nuggets had the coolest old jerseys.

Memphis Grizzlies were super cool, too. Dude, those old, yeah, it's, oh, my God. Rockies. Man, remember the Vancouver Grizzlies? Yeah. Oh, so the Grizzlies, okay. All right, the Grizzlies. All right, this is a good one.

The Vancouver Grizzlies, so they got an NBA team in 94, and they wanted to name it the Vancouver Mounties, like after the Mounties, like the cops. When the Canadian Royal Mounted Police complained, they did not, in fact, want a basketball team named them. Okay. Okay. They were like, nah.

So they did another naming contest. The fans chose the Grizzlies. They moved it to Memphis, though, in 2002. And FedEx, which is based in Memphis, offered the owners $120 million to rename the team to the Memphis Express. But they did it a year after they had moved. And the teams, the fans were like, nah, we like the Grizzlies. So they just kept the Grizzlies. They turned out of the money.

I feel like it would just be so, like such a perfect thing. Like so, I don't know what the right word is. Craven comes to mind, like to name the team, just like to let some corporation name your team. The Memphis FedEx? Like, that is so terrible. Oh, yeah, if only like Disney World hadn't done that twice. I know it happens all the time.

So it's just terrible. Now, my son love Disney World, so we're going to do that. Okay. Also, just ripping through a couple others are born. In San Antonio Spurs, they were like the Dallas Chapar. I don't know what that is, Dallas Chaparral. They were going to be the San Antonio Gunslingers, and then they changed it to Spurs.

And you know what? Spurs is a pretty good one. San Antonio Spurs is good. Yeah, like another boring one is like the Pelicans is just like Louisiana State Bird. Yeah. Yeah. The one that's not boring.

It's kind of boring. That one gives me, I feel no emotion for that. The ones that are incredible to me are the LA teams. The LA Clippers. Yeah, dude. I believe a Clippers is an old, old wooden ship. Diversity.

That's literally what it is, though. San Diego Clippers. Old, old. What a joke. Yeah, a bunch of old clipper ships in the San Diego Bay, and that's what they named it after. Okay. I was looking at the Lakers, and I knew the Minneapolis Lakers had moved to L.A. and they kept the name landed 10,000 lakes.

And then I thought about it, and I'm like, okay, but like, cool. What the fuck is a Laker, though? A Laker is also an old wooden ship. Whoa. Both the LAT teams. It's not an old wooden ship. It's an old, old wooden ship. It's an old, old wooden ship.

A Laker is built for a, both wooden ship. boat for navigating the Great Lakes and snub-nosed bow to maximize cargo capacity. Both the Los Angeles teams are named after fucking boats. Wow. Moves to L.A. where there are no lakes. Unbelievable.

I think the clippers should lean back into the nautical aspect of the clipper. They recently came out with New Jersey's. I do think they look the best they've ever looked. But still, like, lean into a little bit more. You're a big ship, big old ship. Hold on.

Old shit. Yeah, Craig. Yeah, the Phoenix Suns. Things were different back in the day. Like, we don't do shit the way we used to. Back in the day, the Suns, 1968, they hired a 28-year-old kid, Jerry Calangelo to be their GM, 28 years old. 28? Yep.

Theo Epstein. Moves to Arizona with $200 in his pocket to be the GM of the Phoenix Suns, which now I'm like, I know that's a turn of phrase. He's like, that means he only had $200 to his name. But now when I'm like the phrase, he moved with $200 in his pocket. I'm like, that's not that bad in 1968. I did the conversion. That's $1,800 right now in your pocket. This guy's carrying too much cash.

That is really not that bad. Is he Drake? But also back then, they lost out in 1968. They lost out on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the bucks on a coin flip. Ooh. I just love the way things used to be. They were like, who gets them? I will flip a coin.

What's the most you've lost in a coin flip? It's so insane. But anyway, once again, name contest. And here were the finalists. Scorpions, rattlers, thunderbirds, rangers, mavericks, tumbleweeds, Mustangs, and Cougars. Damn. And Colangelo came from a marketing background

and thought the Sons was the best option. So he went with the Sons over the fucking Scorpions. Hyphitz this whole time I thought it was S-O-N. The Sons. The Phoenix Sons. One, two, three, four, five, six. There's like scorpions, rattlers, thunderbirds, Wranglers, Mavericks, Mustangs, and Cougars are all.

All better. Tumbleweeds. I'm glad they didn't do tumbleweeds. But Sons? The Sons. It's hot, guys. It's weird that they didn't go with Sun. Like, why did they do plural, Sun?

I guess a good question, Craig. You know? It's a good point. We don't ever reference more than one son in our lives. There is one son for us. That's good. Maybe he meant it with the O. Maybe he did.

He took his stupid son to Disney World and then he named it the son. It's an old-timey business. It's Phoenix and Sons. I think the entire franchise is different if they're the Phoenix Scorpions. Oh, my God. They would have got Kareem. Let me say it. They would have got Kareem, the Phoenix Scorpions.

They're not losing that fucking coin flip. with $200 in his pocket a 28 year old moved to Phoenix. He rode the rails west. He said, Lou Al Sinda, I want him on my team. They flipped a gold to bloom. It's like a John Mullaney bit.

Oh, my God. Sacramento King's pretty boring. They were the Rochester Seagrams. Who knows what that is? Seagrams. I know. Isn't that a gin? I don't know. And then Cincinnati, they became the Cincinnati Royals, then they moved to Kansas City. They already had a royal, so they became the Kansas City Kings, which is so much better than the Sacramento Kings. So, I wish they were still the Kansas City Kings.

Dallas Mavericks couldn't believe this. There was a TV show named Maverick. I remember that. That was it. 28-year-old loved the show Maverick. His stupid son. And James Gardner, who played the title character, like the guy named Maverick and the show Maverick was a part of the ownership group and they just like named it after him.

What? But now Maverick Mavericks kind of sounds cool still. A Maverick is a horse, right? I think a Maverick's a guy who does something cool, like different. Yeah, he's like a road. He's like a bad boy. Can't be tamed. I know that's true. Like Top Gun Maverick. But isn't a Maverick also a horse? The fucking Mavericks also have a horse in their logo. Oh yeah. I guess it's a horse. But they was named after a guy. Am I going crazy? All these fucking names are not, they don't mean horse.

Yet they have horses in their logos. It's Pistence Mavericks. Hold on. Is a Maverick a horse? This is why in Barbie, Ken loves horses. Maverick is an unorthodox or independent mind person or an unbranded calf or yearling. It is a horse. The term Maverick is not limited to horses.

It refers to an animal without a brand. So it's like, it's free. Right. It's free to roam about. Jesus. All right. Go west. What else we got?

out here. Is that all of them? Spurs. No, we've got... I did the spurs. It's boring. They were like, yeah, better than gunslingers.

Wow, is that all of them? Oh, the Pelicans. Boring. No, we did that. We didn't do the rockets. Kind of did the rockets. I'm assuming NASA? No, I thought it would be obvious.

Houston is based... Or sorry, NASA is based in Houston, or at least they have a big hub there. So I thought, oh, that makes sense. No, this is what team was founded in San Diego in 1967. Craig, you went to college in San Diego. Did you know? In 1967.

too. Did you know that they named it because of the city's quote-to-quote space age industries? I don't know what that means. Space age industries? Yeah. The rockets. This is perhaps a example of

nominative determination. By the way, I've been calling it nomative determination, which is not a thing. That's not a word. Nomitive is not a thing. I've been calling it that for, I don't know, probably 10 years. What is it?

nominative. I had to Google this like six times and I was like, what the fuck? Was I having like a stroke? Nominative determination is the theory that people are psychologically predisposed to pursue occupations or interests that resemble or evoke their names in some way. So like the Rockets just had to go to Houston because that was their name.

Right. Anyways, I was very disturbed when I found out that there's no such thing as nomative determination. I'm sure the lot of ghosts were probably telling me. So it's not, what is it again? Nominative. Nominative. Nominative.

Nominative. Nominative. That's a nickname. It's like you don't call them the Knickerbockers anymore. They're just the Knicks. All right. There's one more. I do have two thoughts in this name exercise.

One is this whole thing is the Brian Regan joke about the log trucks. It's like San Diego has like the fucking, the rockets. And then they go, it's like if they need logs and they need logs, like these teams should have just stayed put. It's kind of unbelievable how much they. changed. What do you think is the biggest miss out of all these? Is it, is it the Orlando Magic? Oh, that's a good question.

The Wizard? I think it's the magic. The magic is the funniest one, because they literally got 11 votes. I can't believe that the Miami Heat were like, you know what? Yeah, guys, we got to think long term. We can't name our Miami Vice is cool. We can't name it after

a TV show. And they're like, but you know, you know what's never going away, though? How fucking hot it is here. I think the jazz not changing their name has got to be like the dumbest thing imaginable. Like New Orleans, you got to demand they change their name at this point. It's unbelievable.

If you're from Utah, if you're a Utah jazz jazz fan, please email us if you like the name. I'm very curious to know if people who live in Utah like the name or they prefer to be changed. Because there's the new Utah hockey team. Like,

you just want one of those names. Oh, I mean, I want the Yeties. But emails from your fantasy football, It's email.com. Yeah, remember, it's unfortunately the Yeti. Not Yeti's. I think Yeti's cool.

Well, there's only one son. There's like one Yeti. I don't know. Yeti is plural. I don't know. But while we're talking about naming things, I do want to do a quick email here. We got an email. We talked last week about Wojtek the bear.

A lot of ghosts emailed in to say, Wojtek. Apparently, I didn't get the Polish bear's name right. The name is pronounced Voitech. It's Voightek. Voightek. Voightek means you are calling it Wojtechek. Well, that's how it's spelled. Spelled with a W.

Like, like, Adrian. and Woznarowski. It was way off. Yeah, I did call it like Wojtrowski. It's Wojtek. I should have Googled it. Vojtec. Okay.

But Voitek means happy warrior. Oh, yeah. Which is perfect for a bear. The alternative, though, was this term that means the smiling smoker. And it basically translates to the bear like ripping darts. Hell yeah. Ha. Pretty good names to the bear.

But. Just no hands. Just smoking cigs? Just forcing cigarettes on a bear. Smoking and eating them. Bear can't climb a Just non-consensual cigarette smoking If you have no idea we're talking about

There was this bear who got served in the Polish army That we were told informed Before he served the bear Yes served and was promoted to corporal Not only was he in the army, he got promoted He did a good job So we got an email from Brandon Brandon Brandon Brandon

I know Hyfit said that a bear getting promoted to corporal is the best sentence ever But I don't think you guys actually highly the implication of this promotion enough. Right. Voitech the bear would have outranked people. Yeah, yeah. And so they would have needed to salute him.

Imagine getting drafted or transferred into the 22nd company and you're outranked by a bear. I know. I was going to say, this is so like demoralizing for all the fucking privates. We're out here busting our ass, putting ourselves on the line and this fucking bear is ordering us around. Do you think they were just like sitting around at the end of every day being like, fucking bear, corporal.

He's definitely than us. There had to have been an anti-voy tech, like, contingent among the troops. He thinks he's better than us. He's not. He's a bear. Imagine you're out of cigarettes in the trenches and you're like, anyone got a light and you see a bear smoking?

Do you guys remember the really famous tweet where I was like, I can't be the only one who thinks that the army could put together a team, the troops could put together a team and be an NFL team or whatever. Like, imagine if the really did and they had the bear on them. What position would you put Voitek at?

Does it the army? They can run like 50 miles an hour. The Army has a football team. I butchered that tweet, by the way. Somebody pulled it up. Anyway, don't worry about the tweet because we have another email here, DK. From Chris.

Chris. Christopher. You guys speaking about corporal Voitech at the Edinburgh Zoo. I know. Put some respect on his name. I screwed that up. Yeah. It's Edinburgh.

It's Edinburgh. Or brough, right? Would you say Edinburgh? I did say Edinburgh. Edinburgh. That's on me. Edinburgh. Is that offensive?

No. Is that accurate? Is what offensive? I don't know. Did you get it right? The name Edinburgh? I don't know if it was accurate or not. So I can't tell if that was, I don't know, whatever, Edinburgh.

Edinburgh. I learned recently that all the towns in England that end in ham, you don't say the H. It's just like, like Buckingham. Yeah, Birmingham. Burmingham. Oh, Peaky Blinders? I live in Bellingham. I've been saying Bellingham my whole life.

Oh, right. Bellingham. Picky, fucking blinders. Anyway, Chris's email. Chris. Voitek de Bear reminded me of the other military animal still state. There's another military animal still stationed at the Edinburgh Zoo. Major General Nils Olav, a king penguin.

There's a ridiculous Norwegian tradition for honoring and promoting a lineage of penguin. at the Edinburgh Zoo and see the video link to the latest promotion ceremony. There's a YouTube link right here I'm sending it to you guys. Sometimes they do this on this. I got to say.

There is a video and the title of this YouTube video you can look it up is Sir Nils Olaf promoted to Brigadier General by Norwegian Kingsguard. And if you watch this fucking video it is the Norwegian Kingsguard marching through the Edinburgh Zoo

in the rain and you think it's for a person and then if you go like a minute in in, it's a fucking penguin. What the fuck? Just super confused, you know, being a penguin. It's a penguin. Just being promoted in a ceremony. Just being a penguin.

That's why I'm saying like we keep saying served. Like they're aware they're making a sacrifice. They're just being a penguin. Can you imagine? These guys came from Norway to promote a penguin to bring in dear general. Think about how much tax dollar money that cost. Taxpayer money, I should say. Look at these men standing with their guns saluting this penguin.

Do you think everybody in line right now is like, God, what did I? What am I doing with my life? He's not better than us. When I tell, if I tell my grandchildren about this, they'll like, no, no, grandpa, like, that's AI. I'm like, no, they didn't have it yet. The penguin's wandering. No, it was that good yet. It was, it actually happened.

There was a penguin. It's like, they were there, grandpa. He was in the army. I'm at the almost two minute mark. The penguin is wandering off currently. Yeah. The zookeepers are trying to turn it. Shocker, the penguin is trying to head for the,

away from the human being. Head for the ocean, open ocean. It's a penguin. And they're all just laughing at him and watching him wattle. All right, emails or your fantasy football. That's good. If you have more thoughts on penguins and the Norwegian penguins,

and these NBA team names on chain gangs. So Nils Olaf and Vitech. Nils Olav and Voigtek. are rounding out kind of two of the top five most honored animals. I guess we have to add in Commando. Commando the pigeon and the other one who shared their knee or whatever. Mike doesn't make it. Mike's not top five.

Mike did not serve. No purple heart from Mike. He got the shaft on that. He should have got the purple heart. He got guillotined. Jeez. All right. We also got an email follow up on the porn thing.

Email from Aeton. Aton. Wait, haven't we got an email from him before? Possibly. I think we had the Aiton discussion like last year. Oh, probably. Well, it's Aiton. He told me.

Probably because we must be... Because I think you said like Eton or something. It's probably what I told me how to say it. It's Aiton. I remember Aiton. Kai says Hyfitz thought it was Acon. This is the guy who said... He said Aton like Acon.

And Hyfitz thought it was Acon. I skimmed it really quick. And I, I said, took it to literally. Like A-Con. Convick music. Oh my God. I read it really literally.

It's A-Ton. Like, A-Con. I'm like, okay, it's A-Con. Anyway, last week, if you don't know, we were alerted to the fact that there is a porn video out there that the little ad at the beginning of the porn video played our music from our show. And it was like, it's definitely the same music. We told the story last week.

Highly recommend it. So Aiton writes... What do you highly recommend? Highly recommend the porn video. No, the episode. Jesus Christ. The pop... No, good clarification.

The podcast was funny. Good episode of the show. My... Anyway, Aton's email. My son Elijah and I listen to almost every episode of the Rear Fantasy Football Show together. Uh-oh. How old is Elijah?

Yeah, I was going to say. We listened during long drives. Hopefully Aiton's like 62 years old. Yeah. We listened during long. drives to travel soccer games and practices. He co-managed his first fantasy team with me in second grade, but now as a fifth grader,

he has his own fantasy football team. Again, he listens to every show. We are not super clean all the time. Get it. Lock it up. It's going to hear it someday, guys. Lock it up. Yeah. You don't prepare the road for the child. You prepare the child for the road. All right. He's a ridiculously happy kid,

almost never in a bad mood. But on the rare occasions, when he's upset, usually after tough soccer, a flight football game, I immediately put on your podcast and it shows him up without fail. All right, cool. Aton, dad of the year. Well, that was exactly the case last Friday. When his flag

football team, the Cowboys, suffered a gut-wrenching 1913 loss to their arch-rivals, the 49ers in the championship game. I find it really funny that even this flag football league, the Cowboys lose to the Niners in the playoffs. The kids, including my son, nomination, right? Yeah, nominative. Not nominative.

Nominative. Nominative. The kids, including my son, Roll in tears and inconsolable. we got in the car without saying a word I put on last week's episode of your podcast picking up where we had left off listening and after some Mike the Headless Chicken wrap-up the topic of your intro music

and the born ad came up just honked again tying some loose ends on the Mike the Headless Chicken The Mike the Headless Chicken wrap-up Craig's like so it was a kernel and they choked on it and they lost the dropper they didn't know where the dropper was

but he's hungry In between bursts of laughter I would glance at my son in the backseat waiting to see when the inevitable question would come. And then it came. Dad, what's porn? Oh, I was right. Luckily, I had had a few minutes to mentally prepare. So I was ready with what I will call the abridged version of the definition. I said, porn's a type of movie that shows people having sex with each other. It's not appropriate for kids your age. There we go. Thankfully, his class had just studied human sexuality, so he just

nodded thoughtfully and we went back to listening. Nice. And as a contemporary of D.Ks and fellow dad, I'll be curious to think how I did. Most importantly. Yeah. Well done. Handled that very maturely. And now when my son gets on the bus to middle school for the first time in the fall, he'll be armed with this critical piece of post-bebesson information.

All thanks to the Ring of Fantasy Football Show. Keep the great content coming, secure in the knowledge that not only you're dispensing, mostly great and occasionally awful fantasy football games, but also helping to educate the next generation of leaders and scholars about the important topics of the day. What's porn? Oh boy. He handled that as well as he could have. I mean, that was a really straightforward, honest answer, but also appropriate.

What was your guys' first conversation with your dad about porn like? The first one? I'm actually genuinely curious. I can only think of the third. Yeah, what was your top five conversations with your dad about porn? I can't remember all the way back to the first one. All right. Thank you, D.K. Thank you, Kai. Thank you, Kai, for producing this episode. Thank you, Jack for help on the scenes. Thank you to all those people who named all the teams. Shout out to 208-year-old. Shout out, Sond. Shout out, everyone. Emails for your fantasy football at gmail.com. If you have any thoughts on anything we talked about this episode, my God.

How to talk to your child about porn. Yep. Let us know about that. That's going to be the title of the up. So don't worry. Tickets to the live show. Going to be a lot of talk about that at a live show. Keep it quick. Keep it to the point. Simple. The ringer.com slash events also and thank you of course to Sir Nils Olav thank you for serving

Brigadier General Penguin and the Norwegian Kings Guard. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you John Coltrane. Jazz. He's huge in Utah. Utah's John Coltrane. We gotta get somebody at Spotify

to run the stats on how much jazz is listed to in the state of Utah. This is information I want. Yeah, we could do that. Yeah, we could do that. That's one of those things we can answer. Where are they in the rankings among 50 states among jazz listeners?

I have this video of this penguin still up. He's still just wandering around being a penguin. Being a penguin. Just being a penguin and we're honoring him. We knighted him. Now, this is a movie. Have you guys seen there was a video where they interviewed Benedict Cumberbatch because he did a voiceover for a nature show and he didn't know how to say the word penguin?

It was the fucking funniest thing I've ever seen. He starts, like, throughout the show, he calls penguins something different every time. It's like penwinds, penwings, penwangs, penguins. He like can't say the word penguin. You know how I feel all the time. Goodbye, everyone. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Fandall is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC.

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