The Ryen Russillo Podcast - A New NFL Season With Kevin Clark. Plus Bobby Marks on Giannis’s Options in 2021

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

Russillo shares his thoughts on Game 6 of the Raptors-Celtics playoff series (3:25) before he is joined by The Ringer’s Kevin Clark to discuss the unprecedented NFL season that kicks off tonight with the Chiefs and Texans. They talk expectations for Tom Brady in Tampa Bay, the Rams‘ playoff hopes, Jimmy G and the 49ers, an exciting Cowboys team, Super Bowl picks, and more (12:35). Then Ryen talks with former Brooklyn Nets GM and current ESPN insider Bobby Marks about Giannis Antetokounmpo's options once he reaches the end of his contract with the Milwaukee Bucks after the 2020-21 season, stories from the war room, and more (59:50). Finally, Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:17:38). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I almost went for it last night. I almost went for the bad food. I was excited to do it. And then I didn't do it. But anyway, it just can be a bad call. Because I knew today I had a really exciting workout. I can't wait to tell you guys about it on Instagram, personal records left and right. But, uh, yeah, I just went with, I just didn't do it.

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Just tap, tap, tap. Boom. Delicious footlong. Okay. Let's get on with the show. What is the show today? Kevin Clark from The Ringer. He had a great sit down with Jeff Fisher. Probably not going to spend a ton of time on that part, but we're just going to talk NFL, get his Super Bowl picks as well. And a

really interesting piece from one GM on something that is going to change the way he drafts because of everything that's going on. And Bobby Marks, former front office guy office guy cap guru also with ESPN I wanted to ask him straight up all the different money options for Giannis and then kind of the unwritten rules about how you handle calling the Bucks GM John Horst about Giannis because do you have to call or not Bobby knows this well he was in front of us for a long time so that's what we're going to do and we'll do a couple life advices at the. But I want to start with game six, Raps Celts. Double overtime win for the Raptors

and a really competitive, gritty game. All of those things. It also had moments that I didn't necessarily love. We're going to get to those in a little bit. But this is what this series should be. When Boston was basically an inbounds away from being up 3-0, that felt a little crazy. I would tell you now through the course of this series that I feel like Boston's a better basketball team. When Boston was basically an inbounds away from being up 3-0, that felt a little crazy.

I would tell you now through the course of this series that I feel like Boston's a better basketball team. It feels like when they get their looks going on offense, it's better. But then there's game six where Tatum was, I know he's 9-21 for 29 points. He had some really bad possessions. Jalen Brown, despite hitting threes early on, he was 11 for 30. And remember, Kemba had nine shots in the previous game saying that's unacceptable. He was two for 11. Kemba's second field goal was so late in this game. I think it was in overtime.

He ended up with five points. So the starters, for the most part, and Smart got it going from three early on. He's six of 11. You thought Boston may close this thing out, but I feel like a game seven is a better example, a better way of really representing where these two teams are at, even though going into it, I thought without Hayward, Boston would struggle a little bit. I think that's been part of the issue for them in having to play smart more and more minutes, but smart's so good defensively, we get it. But there we go. Game seven. We have a game seven. I'm going to do one more Lowry thing, and then I think I'm retiring this whole thing. He wasn't very good in the playoffs earlier in his career. That's not debatable.

You can go back and look at box scores. You're going to find some games he was actually pretty good in. It doesn't mean every single game, when I say somebody wasn't good in the playoffs, it doesn't mean that I think they were terrible in every single game. And then you go back to last year, game one against the Orlando Magic, when that NBA championship team lost game one of the Magic, and you're like, what the hell's going on here? Lowry had zero points in it.

So yes, to go up. Here we go again. Lowry, like, where are we at in the playoffs? I think with what he did in game six of the NBA finals was so impressive. And then again, last night, like, he's had better games. He's a guy I trust more. He's the best player on the Raptors. It's not Pascal Siakam.

And we should stop talking about Siakam because he's been an absolute mess in this whole thing. But Lowry is better now than he was before. Both of those are true. I respect Lowry's game. He's not a top 10. I don't even know if he's a top 20 player. But for all the people that come after me on this, and usually it's people with Canadian flags in their bios, you think that there's this thing that's happening where Canadian

players that represent Canada, not necessarily from Canada because you know he's a Philly guy. Okay, fine. You think we're ripping him because it's Canada? So does that mean that we never rip any players that are American? I mean, give me a break with this stuff. So I'll say it one more time. Lowry, I respect.

I respect his toughness. He was the man. He's the reason this series is going to a Game 7, despite not great numbers before. Yes, I don't think he's a Hall of Famer, and I don't think anyone would ever bring it up if it weren't for a ring that Kawhi won for him last year. That's okay, but guess what? He's going to get in, so that's fine because the recency bias somehow erases all the stuff that happens

before. You can have a bad playoff resume, and then it just kind of disappears. If James Harden were to somehow have this miraculous game where he eliminates the Lakers in game seven and puts up huge numbers, then the public is just going to react to that and be like, well, people said he didn't do this. They're like, well, because he didn't do this. I don't understand why this is so complicated for people. And separate from that, yes, I think it's gross to watch Lowry play the entire game, despite the respect that I have for him and the fact that he's changed who he is in the playoffs. I just don't like it.

I don't like watching guys fall down the whole time. I don't like watching guys complain the whole time. I also don't like watching Marcus Smart do it. He just doesn't have the ball as much um lowry's playing on jalen brown earlier that i tweeted out a video of so filthy and dirty and gross it sucks it sucks that you would want to do that to another player in the league for no other reason than just frustration unless there's some beef between he and jalen brown that i understand i don't think there is because they didn't pad it out a little bit later but jalen was up in the air he took his legs out from

underneath him he knew exactly what he was doing and you know that's the thing you could be thrown out for but they don't even review that stuff and we review these in um these these accidental elbows that happen all the time and that's not because I grew up in the Massachusetts area it's just because I watch probably more basketball than most people you know and guys that do this to another level as much flopping as there is, and there's a ton, when I think somebody's doing it at another level, I know I probably watch more than you have, and I can't stand it. And some of these refs that fall for this stuff,

these guys would buy phone cards from Michael Scott. They would. It's just, you know, and this is to Lowry's credit, when it's that time of the game where he needs things to change or the smart players that make sure they get fouled to get into the bonus late and then get fouled again because they're in the bonus, there's a play in the blowout game of game five, I think it's towards the end of the first half,

where you knew what he was going to do. He dribbled into Tyson, the baseline, and just fell down. And the ref fell for it. You're like, I knew he was about to do this, and you guys do it all the time in the moment. And that's the stuff I can't stand. And plenty of players do it. I just don't think anybody does it as much as Kyle Lowry. So that is my position. I'm not revisiting this anymore because I actually do think he's a really good player and I would love having him on my team now because I think he's that kind of competitor. I just wouldn't love

watching it all the time. All right, there you go. Boom. Um, coach of the year, Nick nurse, love Nick nurse. However, the Siakam thing, at the end of regulation, it was a second-to-last possession, so not the prayer with a second left where Siakam had to throw it up in the air. He went iso Siakam against Jalen again, and actually wasn't too bad of a look. I just can't believe you would trust Siakam.

So every time Toronto wants to try to get Siakam going, for the most part, you're doing Boston a favor. And then he went Norman Powell at the end of the overtime for that iso dribble step back and Lowry wasn't even engaged in the play to almost I don't know what was going on there where it was like okay well we already know Powell's taking the shot so I don't need to do anything but Lowry just kind of stepped off to the left side and I don't know if that was frustration there but these are two really good teams I don't know if they're great it still feels weird that either one of these could win an NBA title. And despite Miami just thrashing the Milwaukee Bucks, I think all three of these teams are still very much alive here for the East. One last thing,

Denver and the Clippers. This is not surprising. None of us think it's surprising. You know what I did think was interesting, though? Michael Porter Jr. saying afterwards, he's getting crushed for this, about they're going to yokich and murray a little bit too much i'm paraphrasing essentially he's like hey i think we need to get other players involved not a big deal this is the first time someone complaining about their job or their workplace was not supported on social media he's getting crushed and that's because of a carryover some other things he said you know what's funny here and funny here? And I know people don't want to defend Michael Porter Jr. right now. I don't think he's wrong.

I think they are really predictable. And when Jamal Murray's hitting 9 of 13 threes against Utah Jazz off the two-man game, it looks really, really good, doesn't it? But when he's not, and he's regressing back to Jamal Murray that we know is somebody that exists in other games, and the defense is a little tougher and all those deals, that two-man game does become really predictable.

And those are times where I haven't always loved the Nuggets because I think they can be that predictable. And one last thing too, like Jeremy Grant, somebody was texting me the other day, like, you know who I kind of like is Jeremy Grant. I'm like, just keep watching. He's 26.

He's headed to the Jeff Green support council room here pretty soon. He was two of seven last night, one of six from three, and he had zero rebounds in 34 minutes. Jeremy Grant playing 34 minutes for the Nuggets in a must-win playoff game, two of seven, one of six from three, zero rebounds. Zero rebounds. That's hard to do.

Can you imagine being 6'8", running around for 35 minutes and not getting one ball? And from three in this series, one of six, one of six, 0-5, three of six. I think he's eight for 28 overall from the floor. And it's really great when Jeremy Grant hits some shots like he did in game six against the Utah Jazz. He scored three points in game seven. So Denver, every time they win, depth, depth, depth, depth, depth, actually, they're not that deep. You just know who the players are. They aren't. And the

Clippers' second unit hasn't been good at all. They've changed some things up on the substitution. That's where Denver should be making their money, but they can't because they're not as deep as everybody always keeps saying about them. All right, let's talk some football, and we'll do some hoops at the end. Hey guys, footlong season is that subway. They make it easy to make a good call on food. So here's a little segment called bad call. Good call where we'll look at some of the good and bad plays from last week. Here it is. All right. I thought a bad call would be, yeah, Pascal Siakam ISO to win the game. Bad call. Good call. I thought it was a good no call on that Kemba drive.

See what I did there? I didn't defend the Boston player. I just didn't think Kemba got fouled. I think he just fell down. He's having a rough night. Another bad call from last week would be... What would be a bad call? You make any bad calls this week, Kyle?

Oh, yeah. You're just a bad decision walking around in sneakers. The chicken wing over-order. Oh. Okay, so here's perfect segue right now. So this week, why not make a good call instead? All right? Don't do the over-order.

Don't do all the fry stuff. A sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich from Subway. Another good call. Getting a free footlong when you buy two at participating Subway restaurants. All right, guys. Let's make some good calls this week. Order and pay contact-free in the Subway app for quick and easy pickup or delivery on game day or any day.

It's footlong season at Subway. Eat fresh, freshly prepared in front of you. Kevin Clark, ringer, NFL writer. I was excited to have Kevin Clark on. I didn't know how excited I was until I saw what he was going to look like today after the slow news day with Jeff Fisher, which I think we want to get to at some point. You're about a month away from joining Franz

Ferdinand here with this look, with what you got going on today. I'm growing some scruff underneath the mustache. I felt I'd gotten a little feedback on the initial mustache look that had me a little too close to Val Kilmer and Tombstone. And now we're just pressing pause. What's wrong with that? Yeah. Um, I, I don't know. I mean, I, I'm just kind of throwing different looks out there and seeing what sticks. I mean, it's preseason for everybody. And so I'm going to, I'm going to have some scruff under the mustache. See how that goes for a little bit. If i'm okay listen if the baseline if the baseline is val kilmer and tombstone we're doing okay that's all i'll say about that a lot of guys

have been trying to achieve that for years but yeah you have kind of uh with i don't know if it's the shirt and the hair today but it's a bit of a killer's look like maybe the killers if you were in a band the killers may show up and go this guy this guy's a little too much what's he trying to do it's about the music buddy okay let's talk about the football uh your slow news day which i encourage everybody to watch it's one of the best uh things that we do here at the ringer oh thank you it's a great point and it's a great point when the point is that there is no point and the expectations of what this nfl season is going to look like to suggest that anybody knows, like I have a couple of theories,

but what kind of feedback are you getting back from the people that you trust that actually do this for a living in this league? The folks I talked to have either wildly different expectations for the season or just don't say anything, like the Socratic wisdom thing, right? I don't know anything.

That's my knowledge, right? And that's what a lot of the smartest people are saying. There's some nuances there. I think everyone is universally worried about like special teams tackling, stuff like that, little small things. But from a big picture standpoint, I don't think anyone really knows because they haven't even seen anybody. I mean, they've been looking at the same defense and the same offense for a month now, and they haven't seen anybody else. And I think there's a real sense of unease. And I think that that probably hasn't been stated publicly a lot by coaches and gms but i really do think they're

worried you know kevin colbert the stewart's gm told me last week he said we've got young guys who've never seen the speed of an nfl game and they're gonna have to find out what the speed is like on monday night football in front of 20 million people. And there's something to that. And there's some real like, uh-oh, like what if we throw out the rookie slot receiver and he doesn't really know what this game is about and he's got to find out with Steve Levy and Louis Riddick looking on, man. I mean, I think that there's a lot more questions

and answers at this point. I think that there's a lot of people who are seeking comfort in the 2011 season because obviously there was no offseason activities. But there were preseason games. There was just a little more, I guess you could say, activity in the month of August because the padded practices were throughout the month and all that. So I think that there's, I don't know, a sense of, I guess the word is unease. I wouldn't say panic, although some coaches default to panic.

But I would say that there's a lot of worry you know i think that nfl people are warriors in general remember tom palacero was in my podcast a couple months ago and he said that when the pandemic set in there were gms who were getting upset because they couldn't set their draft schedule for april 2021 like these are just micro managers who want everything dialed down to the second they don't get to do that right now they've lost control and i think that's probably maybe a good experiment for some of these control freaks and i'm excited to see what how that kind of plays out because these guys are not used to uncertainty at all and when i think about basketball relaunching

like okay well what's it going to look like it actually the product looks way better and guess what it just kind of defaults to basketball it looks like basketball again uh baseball despite them not having a bubble approach and this is something that i just find personally frustrating where i feel like people would rather you not try than anything um where it's like wow that's not going to work look at the marlins okay the marlins had games postponed okay the cardinals had some games postponed they lost some games they did double headers it looks like we're going to get to 60 games here and have expanded playoffs like it looks like it's going to work was it an a plus no but if it's in the high b's like what the hell's the problem and it feels

like there's this resistance like ah a bunch of guys tested positive this whole thing's a mess and i had people constantly telling me oh baseball 50 50 shot maybe less than 50 50 they even pull it off but with football as far as the play like i just imagine like the other, it's going to default to football that I could sit here and say, our rookie is going to be better because there is no crowd noise. Well, that's stupid. That doesn't make any sense. Our offensive line is not going to be able to pass protect as well, or run block it.

Like run blocking is easily conceptually than pass blocking. So does that mean that more teams are going to try? No, they're probably just going to pass the football all over the place. The only thing I feel like I can say is that the quarterbacks that have good relationships with the receivers are going to look nasty the first few weeks of the season. That feels like an actual real thing that could happen.

But then again, was Pat Mahomes not going to look nasty in normal settings in 2020? So I feel like for all of the stuff that is interesting and worth talking about it just eventually kind of defaults to hey this player is playing well because he's pretty good and this guy isn't playing as well because he's just not that good it doesn't have anything to do with the atmosphere and everything else going on yeah that was the funny thing to me when i was thinking about the season talking to people kind of like what you said and it's like oh there's

not going to be some there's not going to be good tackling, and so guys like Lamar Jackson are going to run wild. Oh, I'm sorry. What was Lamar Jackson doing last year? He was spinning guys around. That'd be a good tweet. Talk to a source. You know what I'd love from you for the rest of the week? Just bad source stuff.

Like when a team takes a guy in the third round, and then there's summer, people are like, you know what? They're like, Tennessee liked this running back at a, at a, at a Hobart. But man, do they really like them once they've had them in? They just drafted them. Obviously there was some interest in this guy. So I would like, if you did sourced out, like talk to an NFL advanced guy, he says, Lamar is going to be a problem.

Yeah. This is, this is going to be the year of the quarterback. Every single guy who has a pulse has a hundred rating now, but I can see a lot of, I can see a lot of PI calls guys, just corners, just playing it wrong. Okay.

There's going to be some, some coaches who just aren't ready. Like that's it's every single year, every single year we get the same storylines we'll just i mean listen and there will be certain things i'm like freddie kitchens was an nfl head coach last year he made massive mistakes if freddie kitchens were a coach in 2020 and was making these sort of mistakes every time he did it it would be well you know short off season i mean just a tough time to establish a culture.

Well, no, he was Freddy Kitchens. Like, that was the problem. But yet we're going to ascribe things to the COVID offseason that probably don't belong to the COVID offseason. Absolutely. And I said it for the draft because the draft, when somebody has an absolute flame out on their first rounder, there will be somebody who writes a story that says,

you know, guys around the facility said he just didn't just the the lead up to the draft there was a lot going on there that's why we missed with the 12th pick um okay give me give me some brady stuff only because i feel like every time i read a piece i love this number there's only been seven games started in NFL history by a quarterback 43 years or older. So he's going to try to double that one up here in his first season. I look at some accuracy numbers

that have him in the 30s out of like 38 qualifying quarterbacks. Then it gets back to the weapons. Is there any part of you that you go, the end was already happening and it's going to be even worse in Tampa for Brady? Do you allow yourself that thought? Everybody I talk to just destroys his skill guys last year

and kind of separates that from whatever dip in production Tom Brady had. I think it's funny, like you do, that no one has been this old playing quarterback, so every time he throws a pass, he's just breaking a Vinny Testaverde record for my 2006. Like, oh, he just passes Vinny Testaverde. Didn't he pass Vinny Testaverde in something else last week? What the hell? As far as oldest quarterback. So George Blanda is obviously in the mix there. But I am actually, the more I come around, the more I look into this Brady thing, the more I come around to it. And the more that for the first time in a couple years, he will have weapons that accentuate him. I had some of the PFF guys on. They said that the Patriots skill guys may have been the worst equipped

to make Brady better last year. That team just wasn't built for him. And now I look at Tampa Bay.'s gonna have safety valves he's gonna have guys who just just I mean that they get open and I don't really think that there's much more um it's much more complicated than that and I I you know there certainly are questions about Arians and and kind of the hits that a quarterback might take. We saw that with Carson Palmer when he was in an advanced age. But I think there's a lot of optimism. And I think that from the more I think about it, the more in March and April,

I was just picking the Bucs to make the playoffs because I didn't want to count out Tom Brady. And now I'm picking them to make the playoffs and compete because I think they're a legitimately good team with a very good roster okay last year when I was sorting through the NFC I was like this is unbelievable how deep this is the AFC felt a little predictable um because we still all like the Chiefs you still have a lot of benefit of the doubt stuff for the Patriots which ended up being you know accurate assessments of that league but or excuse me, conference. The NFC this year, I don't know that it's the depth. There was depth where I felt like at team nine,

I'm like, I could actually see that team winning a game in the playoffs. Is it still that way to you a year later? Yes. I just don't, because I think about the AFC as the Chiefs and the Ravens are going to play on January 27th or whatever the AFC championship game is. And that's settled, in my opinion. But the NFC, I don't know. Are the Vikings contenders to play in the NFC championship game? Yeah.

Are the Eagles? I had the Eagles last week. I started our prediction show thinking that maybe i'd pick them to go to the super bowl by the end of the show i had them out of the playoffs okay and so that's just sort of how it goes in the nfc right now seattle and san francisco and i think we've kind of memory hold how close seattle was to to winning the division last year because san francisco looks so good in the playoffs but there's a depth in the nfc that i think is really intriguing when the when no one no one except the rams is hyping up the rams that's pretty significant because they still

do have talent and they signed jaylen ramsey to the biggest defensive back contract in history yesterday and sean mcveigh is still a really good coach i mean i like the rams is a good one that like stay on the rams for a second though because as quick as we fell in love we were even quicker to just turn the page on them and now it feels like oh wait instead of a three-year run oh no this team's a huge disappointment i don't know there's there's plenty of stuff out there and i don't know who we had on before i forget who it was but it was like don't don't rule out golf on having like another good year um i actually think it was Danny Kelly when we were doing Fantasy. I'm not 100% sure.

There's a lot of podcasts going on here, but give me more on the Rams. Peter Schrager, who did a Hard Knocks pod with them and interviewed different people from the organization every week, was on my pod last week and said that their expectation is Super Bowl, and they're not recalibrating it. McVay made remade the coaching staff in his own image. He came in and had, you know,

your Wade Phillips is, and obviously everybody loves way to great defensive coordinator, but he hires a new OC in a DC. Maybe he's a little more comfortable. Golf, I think is still capable, you know, in the same way,

Jimmy Garoppolo with Kyle Shanahan can be a great quarterback. Golf with McVay can be a great quarterback. I don't know in a vacuum how that works, but I do know that Jared cough is, uh, we we've seen it. I think the running game can be a little more stable. And I think that we've had this problem now where, because the running back doesn't matter. Generally, we now dismiss it in every situation. The Rams really relied on a type of running game. And they need that this year. And not having Todd Gurley is probably addition by subtraction in that regard.

So, listen. The offensive line is where it started last year. And everything flowed through that. And obviously, the Gurley problems or whatever. But if they can get steady offensive line play. If they can get just the principles they had in 2018, I think that they're definitely in the mix for double-digit wins. But again, the problem is that everything they do, San Francisco does better. Seattle's probably a more talented team. And then in the wildcard mix, you just have a lot of good teams.

So I think it's a bad year to be a fringe nfc contender and they are that let's stay with the seahawks then i brought this up with long this week and when i was looking at the jamal adams stuff i was surprised to kind of be reminded maybe i knew it in the moment but this is a long run now seattle being pretty average as a past defense which is just something it's almost like the Steelers for years yeah because they were so good defensively and then all of a sudden they were just chucking the football everywhere and giving up points and people like you know come late in the season Steelers could just lock you down you're like actually it's an offensive team

but because their brand wasn't that and I think the same thing has happened with the Seahawks a little bit but what is funny is to see this almost national momentum people have written about it Cowherd's been doing it now lately too where it's unleash Russell Wilson how realistic is this for again it's still Pete Carroll so I have a hard time believing that they're just opening it up on first down despite how great Wilson is would you imagine you followed college football for a long time you followed the nfl obviously pete carroll has now inexplicably become underrated in the last two years because he's been painted i am a huge let rust cook guy huge okay and that's the phrase the hashtag that everybody uses for for russell wilson and you know letting him open it up and

treat the first quarter like the fourth quarter all that stuff but i kind of feel like we're painting pete carroll as like the new jeff fisher and i just i i don't i think that there's there's a solid middle ground there i agree with you uh about the defense and kind of the identity of that team um the seahawks were 24th last year in net yards per attempt. Jamal Adams hopefully will help that. But this is a team that Russell Wilson has to just put the team on his back. And it's a different identity. I think I've always compared Russell Wilson to Dave Grohl

in the sense that he was just playing a completely different role in Nirvana and with Legion of Boom. And then one day he just became the absolute star, and everyone just has to adjust to that. And I think that Russell Wilson is the third best quarterback in the NFL, and I think that they do. They do. I will concede handicap him and hamstring him in the first quarter,

and they need to just get more aggressive onstring him in the first quarter and they need to just get more aggressive on early downs in the first quarter um but i i don't think there's going to be a huge philosophy change because pete carroll is pete carroll brian schottenheimer is brian schottenheimer who's taking his orders from pete carroll and so i i think this team will be kind of what it was last year kind of double digit win teams maybe they they're in the hunt for, you know, in week 17 for the division like they were last year. I just, I think, I think that they're just not as good as the Niners. And I think it's as simple as that. I think the roster talent, there's a pretty sizable difference,

in my opinion, and then the offensive coaching. It's not even a contest. So I think the Seahawks are an intriguing NFC contender. I think they'll make the playoffs, but I just don't have them on the elite of the elite. Okay, that's a good transition there to the Niners. More with Kevin Clark, including a Super Bowl pick. But first, by now you've probably heard about FanDuel Sportsbook,

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you'll probably get it do you want to guess how many games j Garoppolo started in his career? 16 last year. Two the year before. 18 plus 3 and 6. 27. 26. Wow. That was impressive. You just did that.

You just did it. He went 6-0. He had three starts two years ago. Three starts with the Patriots. Three starts. 16 last year three in 2018 so you said two that's where that's where i screwed it up okay three he got hurt in his third game he went six and oh the year before and then he played three games with the patriots when he was the the flight gate starter yes right yeah okay i have have been i don't know i feel like

i've been right about this one because I watched the Pats games. I know, me, shocker. Guy with a podcast thinks he's right. But I feel like the Niners tell us who he is. Now, the question is, do the Niners continue to think he's the same guy or do they do something where they actually do know he's the same guy or do they do something where they actually do know

he's the same guy but they try to prove that he isn't because teams will do that sometimes like hey everybody's saying how we don't trust our quarterback well because we don't yeah but let's trust him a little bit more okay why so that everybody's wrong about because they're right and we're right they're right and this is somebody that I don't think they think can win them games even though they had an amazing, amazing run. And I know that his starting record now is 21 and five. And I think he's kind of. So let me ask you this through 2022.

He has a cap hit of 26.6 this year, 26.9 next year, 27 in 2022. So that's because they paid him a billion dollars the first year. That's right. That's right. That's right. But, uh, do you think he made $41 million in 2018 in cash? $41 million for a guy who at that point had started,

uh, nine games, right? Yeah. Uh, it's good work if you can get it. Uh, do you think he's the starter in 2022?

No, no, I don't. I don't. Okay. No, I okay no i i am not against that i think kyle shanahan the the book i've heard i don't know kyle shanahan that well the book i've heard on kyle shanahan is that he kind of thinks he can do it with anybody and And he has. I mean, when you look at some of the production with some of the, you know, the C.J. Beathard, Nick Mullin year, I mean, that was, they punched well above their weight offensively. C.J.'s just, though, he's prepared every week.

You could just see he hot reads. But I think that he's done it well. I mean, the miracles he worked in Cleveland now just retroactively look much, much more amazing and letting him out the door is one of the strangest decisions Cleveland's made. Um, even though he wanted to go,

I love that by the way, every time I point that out, Brown's fans like, well, he wanted to go. Well, okay. Like what,

did that makes it better that you drove him out of town? Uh, anyway. Yeah. So I, Brown's ran over rant over oh excuse me oh wow you uh you were such an incompetent franchise that he wanted to leave so that makes it better that the best play one of the two best player callers in football just wanted just got out of town got out of his contract was let out of his contract anyway that's right that's neither

here nor there the browns are in a better place now. Okay. So with Garoppolo, I've always, and I don't know this. I think that the contract structure saved them in so much that $27 million in 2022 is not the worst cap hit in the world. But, and I also think that if you're Jimmy Garoppolo and they keep winning, doesn't there get to be, and I've heard this argument from teams that have paid average to above average starters, this kind of money. I have not heard it from the Niners,

but I've heard it from GMs or coaches who say, you know what? Maybe this guy is worth $25 million, but you know what? I, I don't want to find out. I don't want to pay to find out. I don't want to pay the tax to find out because there are so many,

this all goes back to something remember we're talking about with the falcons where they signed matt ryan to 30 million dollars a year now obviously matt ryan is much better than jimmy garoppolo but remember dimitrov saying you know we could have shaved that money down and gotten him under 30 just for the statement but at some point it becomes why because having a franchise quarterback or having a quarterback you know is set or you know what you're getting it makes a difference in the building like it everything people's shoulders slump in the building when you don't have a quarterback because it's the problem you're trying to solve and so i i'm kind of two minds on somebody like garoppolo where okay if someone

better comes along yes you know if tom brady wanted to go to the niners in the offseason at 45 oh no no i meant i meant i meant this year then yes you take him but unless i'm not gonna draft some guy in the second round and try to figure it out are you no this is as i say i don't think he's gonna be the quarterback my rule immediately it's the same thing as a trade in the nba we're like well well, you got to trade him. Be like, you got to tell me what's available. You got to give me a ballpark because I can't just be a GM. You're like, hey, guys, this team sucks.

Let's start trading dudes. Like, OK, do we care? We get. Nope. We're just making trades. People want change. Let's do it. So, yes, at that number with the cap going in the other direction in the mid 20s for starting quarterback, you could argue oh my gosh this is incredible value now again we'd have to figure out what the long-term economic ramifications

will be from everything that's happening this season in all the sports but by the way for everybody that keeps writing those articles in all sports about how the pandemic is going to affect spending when because it's not happening right now it didn't happen when people were trying to say Mookie Betts was going to be a hundred million dollar player wrong all the basketball guys are going to get maxed out that probably don't deserve to get maxed out but they get maxed out because that's the market and football between deshaun watson and not even watson but the rams who love spending money more than anybody with jalen ramsey that's a massive deal for jalen ramsey and there's nobody that is scared off of this. So just remember next time a CBA is being negotiated and the owners go back

and point to this time and say, we lost all this money. We do it. Well, you didn't spend like it. You didn't spend like it. So that's why I usually always take the player's side. All right.

Everybody. I want to add to it on that rant. I want to jump on that rant. I think that, and this goes back to kind of everything about the pandemic off season and and draft and free agency or whatever you going forward gms are just taking the knowns and are not worrying about the unknowns to actually a degree i've been shocked by and what i mean by that as far as by. And what I mean by that, as far as roster construction, and what I mean by that is they're saying, okay, the cap is $175 million next year.

Now that's $20 million less than it is this year. That's the minimum it can be. But when I talk to guys, they're saying, all right, we're planning for 175 and whatever happens happens. And we know how you can move money around. It's going to be fine. Is the middle class going to be squeezed out? Probably. If you're making $9 million to be fine is the middle class going to be squeezed out probably if you're making nine million dollars to be a pretty replaceable linebacker is your job at stake yeah but guess what your job was already at stake because you were a nine million dollar guy who's not very good okay so i think that there's i think teams are going with the knowns and this goes to the draft too every time i've been talking to guys last couple of weeks and I've said,

Hey, what are you going to do? I keep bringing up Joe Burrow because Burrow this time last year was just not anything. He, you know, maybe he was draftable, but he was certainly not the first overall pick.

He was not, he's not an elite prospect. I said, you know, what if, what if the Joe Burrow of 2020 didn't actually play this year? And it's interesting thought experiment. I thought I'd get better answers.

Uh, most GMs have said, I don't't care like they don't the the the i guess you could say the all of the thought processes that would go into finding that okay what are you going to have tryouts that are going to be five times as big to see if there's a quarterback who got better whatever like i just don't i think that they're going to say there's going to be tape from 2019 and 2020 we're going to watch it and we're going to see what happens but we're not going to change the entire approach because there might be a guy that slipped through the cracks and i've been a little bit surprised by that player you know kevin colbert this is completely separate kevin colbert the steelers gm said to me that that if two prospects are close, he's going to take the guy that played in 2020. These guys don't like uncertainty. And so I think that acquiring

the most knowns you can possibly have is the key in this next year for people that run teams. And I would say with spending, teams are just going to spend as if they have $175 million to spend and anything else is a bonus. By the way, that's a really big nugget there. Colbert told you that straight up. If it's close for the 2021 draft, they're taking the guy that played this year. That's correct. Yeah. And I asked him for clarification.

He said, no doubt that if there's two guys who are equal or close to equal in talent, he wants to be with the guy. He wants to go with the guy who played football most recently. And he expanded on that and said basically that they have to have the most info they can possibly have. is a problem or that they think that they're going to draft a guy who their very selection is giving them the information they don't need or not enough information, then I think that they feel uncomfortable with that. That was in the story. It ran this week on The Ringer. And I think that he's not the only guy that feels that way.

These guys want certainty. And when they have it, they will do everything they can to take advantage of it. That's really... I just love the NBA GM listening to that and being like, what? You want to see him play? That's weird.

Well, I think there's different levels of it. There's huge differences, by the way. No, but also, like, so Quincy Avery, you've had him on your podcast. Friend of the pod. Friend of the pod, friend of some of my articles that I've quoted him in over the past year. You know, I talked to him the day the Big Ten was postponed, and he said, listen, starting in late September, he's going to start getting guys in different areas in Florida and in Georgia, I think in Texas and then maybe in California. I don't remember the actual geographic schedule, but he's going to get guys together and they're going to start playing seven

on seven type games for, to get ready and then eventually show NFL scouts. And if you play for Purdue and you're a wide receiver, that's going to be your best bet. But I think unless you can transfer immediately or whatever, I don't even understand the rules of that or whenever the big 10 would play. But I think there's going to be different levels. If a guy just didn't play football in 2020 versus did he go to one of these

camps or did he go to an all-star game to show he was in shape? I think that there are probably once we get around to April, there will be more nuances than we anticipate right now. Okay. Did a guy not play because he played as a backup tackle in Minnesota, but he actually went to an elongated senior bowl and looked pretty good? Those are the nuances

that will pop up in the next six months. Dallas. A lot of people picking him to play in the Super Bowl. I'm not going to do the... Well, everybody's picking him, so I don't know. I can't figure in the Super Bowl. I'm not going to do the... Well, everybody's picking them, so I don't know. I can't figure out the NFC. Like everybody, I just have a hard time.

Like, I think the Chiefs will be even better this year. I just do. Does that mean they get to the Super Bowl? Nope, but I'm not picking anybody against them. The NFC, I've had a much harder time with, as we alluded to before. Give me your Dallas take,

and then give me your Super Bowl winners or Super Bowl participants. Yeah. So my Dallas take is they win the division. That was something that I didn't want to do because I'm betting against everybody who's doing something new this year. Everybody, I'm just throwing it out and saying it's not possible. But then I start to look at the Eagles who I love as a roster and as an organization, as a coaching staff, as a front office, they lose Brandon Brooks, who pro football Focus had as like the fifth best player in football last year. And that was one of those things. They lost him, you know, a couple of months ago. And it wasn't, you know, I remember complaining to someone. I said, you know, no one's really

talking about this Brandon Brooks thing. It's like, yeah, dude, there's a lot going on in the world. No one's going to care about Brandon Brooks. Okay. But that was a huge, huge injury in the field for him. Then they lose Andre Dillard, who Schefter said was being dominant in camp. And by the way, quick rant real quick, and this is not about Schefter. Every time a player gets hurt now because it's behind closed doors, it's just this

guy was just, he was ready for a career year. He was just unstoppable in camp. Doing stuff you've never seen before. Unblockable. Von Miller, i actually believe so oh of course well he's one of the best players in football yes yeah but anyway uh andre dillard was was deemed dominant in camp and i think that that's i there's probably something to that just for how athletic he was or is but i the injuries start piling up they have jason peters but then

what do you do about the guards and i just i couldn't do it so dallas wins the nfc east in my opinion by default i like that they kept kellen more people around dallas really high on him so the fact that there's going to be some continuity with the offense there and i think dac prescott is really freaking good and so cd lamb i love my my favorite story of the offseason was michael er comparing C.D. Lamb going to the Cowboys to Kevin Durant joining the Warriors, which we'll put a pin in that. We're going to put a pin in that. Kevin Durant, my new neighbor. He is?

Yeah, he's right down the street. Have you seen him? Yeah, you didn't see the video of him playing catch? He was throwing the old, not the piggy, he was playing baseball. Who says baseball isn't back? Kevin Durant durant was playing catch the glove and the whole deal on the beach and there was a video of it that went out and i just saw dudes walking up to him because it's kevin durant like that's a big deal it isn't it isn't kyle kuzma it's kevin durant and so guys are trying to do the how do i approach him and how can I be cool about it? Duran is, is more normal than,

uh, than another group of guys at that level. Like he just is. I mean, everybody has their stuff, right? But he's, he's like more normal,

but yeah, I'm not going to go. There's a guy in the area that was like, Hey, do you know him? I go, no, I don't.

He goes, he's your neighbor now. And I go, okay, there's a lot of neighbors here. It's a bunch of tight knitknit group it's a very small community he goes well we gotta head over there like to do what to do what what are we gonna do do you feel that in that community that people are more okay with just like approaching random

celebrities because it's the beach and everybody's just vibing yeah i think it's a big time protecting the vibe and i think people are just used to it people are just used to it they just because i feel like when when there's a celebrity in los angeles proper or west hollywood or hollywood people just like keep their distance it's cool to not say anything it's cool that's right right that's the difference with la is it's cool new york i think people don't care boston you actually kind of get mobbed because i feel like the boston guy likes to say joe's you remember that night we were hanging out with jason patrick yeah remember him from sleepers yeah he's a fucking good shit i'm kind of surprised his career and it kind of it kind of like it hit a brick wall there for a bit but yeah he was at the uh

where was he at where he was at the met was he at the met yeah jason patrick sleepers damon was in that that was fucking good it was creepy movie though kevin bacon huh what a widow i once heard a story i once heard a secondhand story it's joe flacco told somebody this is the ravens he basically then i already love it flacco is a huge tipper and the i think it was flacco and some of the other ravens were explaining to this guy that essentially everybody who meets someone like a joe flacco or ray lewis or an ed reed they're going to be around him for five seconds and they're going to come up with a story and it's either going to be he was the greatest guy in the world or he was just a huge jerk.

And it is so easy to be the greatest guy in the world in that story. Just tip 40% or ask somebody what their name is or pat him on the back or call him killer or whatever. And you know, Hey champ, what's going on? It's so easy to be, be a good celebrity interaction for those guys and i think

that some of them are just really really good at at doing the five second i'm a great guy thing last year i was at the super bowl and uh that's not the brag but i was cool yeah that's my job yeah and i was in uh in the lobby of the hotel and there's this guy walking around, and he's with his kid, and he's saying bye to the staff. And I look, and it's Conor McGregor. And I've never seen this. And it's funny because I heard Mike Tyson talk about this on The Rogan Show last year or two years ago when he was on it, where wherever he is, people sprint. Joe Rogan? Yeah.

Yeah. Joe Rogan? Yeah. Wherever he is, people sprint whatever they're doing to go meet him, right? And so I saw that with McGregor. There's a Starbucks. It was in the Marriott Marquis lobby. There's a Starbucks, and everyone just left the Starbucks line, including, I believe, some Starbucks employees to go meet Conor McGregor.

So he gets mobbed at the door. And I'm kind of standing there just to see what's going on. And he takes a couple of photos. And then he looks at me. And he kind of gives me a, come on, let's do this. Look. And I said, Oh, no, no, no, I don't want a photo. I'm a journalist. And he just walks up to me and he puts his arm on my shoulder and says, you're a good man. And then just left. But that's your moment. There's your five seconds. And you'll tell... That's it.

You'll tell your friends, your kids, your grandkids. Let me tell you about the time I met Conor McGregor. It won't be the time I met him. Let me tell you about the time McGregor and I went to the Super Bowl together in Miami. We spent a week. Yeah, we went. Actually, I was, you know. We drove to Charleston after that.

We spent the week together. It was great. It was really good. He said I was a good man. And now I'll text him later and we'll talk about it. So how the hell did this start? Oh, yeah. Manhattan Beach.

Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant. It started with cd lamb going to the uh it did it did i love it it's my favorite segment i may actually put this i may re-edit the entire interview put this at the top um i've already kept you longer than i thought you wanted a super bowl pick i'm going pure chalk i'm going ravens over niners ravens over niners okay i'm gonna go chiefs over saints is it the same chalky type thing that you just don't think anyone can can make many leaps this year i'm just that in love with my homes and the chiefs yeah i mean i got shit for saying that i thought that there's a real chance that the saints might just be like a

nine or 10 win team and still make the playoffs. I just, by the way, that also is something I was looking at a simulation the other day where they did every game. And I felt like, so wait a minute, 20 teams are nine and seven.

Does that mean the simulation was too big? Like what happened here? But you're right. Every outcome, the first, the week one outcome, it's going to right. Every outcome, the first, the week one outcome, it's going to be Monday of like,

you know, the Chiefs put up 40 or whatever. Maybe it's not the Chiefs putting up 40, but there could be some kind of game. And I just love what you said

in the beginning. You're like, Lamar Jackson, tackling is going to be a problem this year. Like, no one can tackle him now. No one can tackle him now.

Okay, last thought though, because I got to let you go. You had Jeff fisher on again check out slow news day he was talking pets with you and he said something very philosophical i don't know if he came up with this on his own but it's apparently going to be his now scholars will argue fisher was the first to say say this or better to have said this i was watching succession the other day you watch succession right i do do i was watching the scene again where greg is at the hearing and they were like are you greg

whatever he's like yep yep and you work for you know whatever and he's like so it shall be said yeah remember that yes in the center it's like what he goes if it is then so it shall be yeah and they're like are you okay like i just god greg is so great he's just so great amazing great okay have you seen it have you seen his uh quarantine music videos no but i now not all right i know what i'm doing this friday yeah it's all i'm gonna check this out What exactly are Greg's sprinkles? Fisher said that when you buy a dog, or was this pets in general? It doesn't matter.

I asked about puppies and dogs. Right. He said, just remember, you're acquiring a memory. Wow. Wow. I remember him saying that, but I didn't see it as profound until just now. Am I wrong? No. Fisher is correct. I mean, it is profound. You are acquiring a memory. I'm not a big pets guy. Are you? I don't like to... I'm fine talking about taxes and local taxes publicly, but I'm not great about pets.

I like to keep that private. I have never acquired a memory. I've had this reptile thing. It was pretty stupid. I had a nice run my senior year of college where I was hitting a lot of games. And so I just started buying stuff left and right. It was weird because I, you know, I, for the most part, hadn't had any money and I had a really good run and I bought a, um, terrarium. I think that that's what you call it. Kyle, we get it on this. I want to

make sure I get this right. Yeah. Terrarium. It had a waterfall in the corner that went over this pre-tracked waterfall thing into these stones. It had a little moss that I put in there. Then it was into a little water deal. It wasn't a full aquarium. It was a terrarium hybrid. We had fish. We had newts. We had a coconut crab in there. By the way, the coconut crab looks so great at the store. It dies immediately. And then I had a snake in there that escaped. And then we found it, I think, three months later, just dried and dead in a hallway.

So that wasn't a good run for that snake. But yeah, that's really the only... I say this about dogs and cats. If I say like, yeah, I don't really want a dog, you're like, oh, you're a cat person. No, you know what I really don't want to do is have something that I have to take care of. It's that simple.

I'm doing the dog a favor. I'm hooking the dog up by not buying it, and especially when I'm traveling all the time, to then be like, hey hey here's the kennel so i wouldn't do that i get that i get that you're doing the dog a solid yeah you don't have time i'm no one's more pro dog than me i won't get one because that's how great i think dogs are think about the memories you haven't acquired though is all i'll say about that that's going to be a song that sounds like an elliot smith jam or something jeff fisher uh the whole thing i recommend it listening to it just

the jeff fisher part he was just very good on every like the steve mcnair stuff did you hear the steve mcnair would only watch gun smoke and andy griffith like my dad that's crazy i i love the TV viewing habits of guys. Like when I met Andrew Luck at Stanford, like, is it true you don't have a, like he was stuck, he was stuck with us basically and he was still a quarterback at Stanford.

That's why he was there and we got a chance to interview him and I was like, what's the story with you and no TV? He's like, yeah, I have, I didn't have a phone forever. I finally had to get one. I don't have a cool phone tv he's like yeah i have i have i didn't have a phone forever i finally had to get one i don't have a cool phone and he's like and i watch um the office at at was it griff

whalen he's like i watch i watch the office at his place he's like that that's it but then i was reading about brennan the kid for lsu is taking over borough he has never been to a movie he's never been to a movie all right is that a choice or is that just like he never got around to it it's like us with dogs he just doesn't that's just he likes the idea of movies but doesn't have time i don't know if it's even that they're saying he just can't sit still like he's never been able to sit down like he doesn't watch any tv shows and he doesn't and he spends all of his time outdoors because there's a real concern. Could you imagine in like 10 years

when he finally sits down to watch Jurassic Park, and he's just like, oh my God. Star Wars? Is this real? No. He better not start with Inception because then he's just going to go, what is this?

Luck told me he will not watch Game of Thrones until the books are done. That's another level. Luck also invited somebody that we know to watch a game and he thought it was like NBC in the morning and he was like, nah. And Luck was like, all right, cool.

And then Luck came back and he was like, oh oh you missed a hell of a game and he flew there to go see it he was inviting somebody to jump on a private jet to go yeah and the guy was like what i don't know i don't even i'm not even sure if that story's true but definitely aggregate it okay i've heard there's some legendary andrew luck stories we can do this another episode but there he is just like anyone who's kind of come in contact with him has a legendary story. Yeah,

that's, that's pretty much what I hear all the time on this. I feel like we, we definitely ended up going a little slower at the end of this podcast than we wanted to, but that's all right. What do you have? What do you have what do

you have this week and then coming up next week because we can recap the whole first season so promo all the kevin clark stuff for me because i'm not gonna do a ring around nfl show sunday we have warren sharp who's joined the team uh so he's every week with you he's not every week with me he's every week with joe house uh they're gonna talk about gambling we're gonna have chris vernon as well uh ryan chazier has joined the team. Him and Cole Wright will have a Tuesday player show that I think is going to be really, really cool. To get Ryan Shazier's player perspective is awesome.

A guy like Cole Wright, who I've had a lot of respect for at the NFL Network and now with the Cubs, I think that's going to be awesome. And, yeah, Nora and I will be with you every Sunday. And then on Thursday, I'll also have a show. This week on the Ringer NFL page on the website, a column off of my Kevin Colbert interview. I have a Browns thing running on Friday

and had a little thing on Deshaun and Mahomes running on Thursday. So a ton of stuff. Slow News Day. I believe we have Joe Buck next week. So get excited. Boom. Joe Buck. All right. Thank you, Kevin. Bobby Marks is going to give us the full details on all the different money options for Giannis and what he could do this summer, do next summer. What's the cap going to be? Different options, shorter extensions. I just want everyone to

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look good because of the cut? All right, here's how you're going to do it. Go to MackWeldon.com forward slash Ryan Russillo. Enter the promo code Ryan Russillo, R-Y-E-N-R-U-S-S-I-L-L-O. That's MackWeldon.com forward slash Ryan Russillo. Enter the promo code Ryan Russillo, R-Y-E-N-R-U-S-S-I-L-L-O. That's macweldon.com forward slash Ryan Russillo and the promo code Ryan Russillo for 20% off your first order. Bobby, all right, let's have some fun here. Giannis, we know what he's eligible for. We also know the projections of what he's eligible for may have changed now because we don't know what the projections are. So I think we need to do a couple of things. Give us all the Giannis options with the money.

And then let's talk a little bit about how it plays out when you're another team, even trying to kick the tires on somebody like Giannis. So let's start first with his money options, what he can do this off season or not do. Yeah. So we're, we're based in the Ryan off of a one Oh nine cap. And that's basically where we are right now. It's it's with the, with all the money that's

being lost here. Uh, the likelihood is that we could see the cap stay flat for the next two years. So on a one Oh nine cap, um, his super max is five years, 221 million. Okay. The first year starts in 2021, 22. He's still under his rookie contract right now. Compared to another team on his extension, compared to another team that has cap space, let's say Miami in the summer of 2021, the offer would be four years, $140 million. So you're looking at an $80 million difference between what Milwaukee can offer him with the five years compared to what a team with cap space can offer him. With Milwaukee, it's all or nothing, right? So it has to be five years. So if you're Giannis, it's not, you know what, I want to do 35% of the cap and it's going to be a

three-year deal. It's got to be a five-year contract. So that's where you are looking at the options. Why the difference is because he's hit the supermax criteria, 35 percent of the cap. Signing with another team is for 30 percent of the cap. Here's the interesting part is that this summer, he only has seven years of service. So we'll have the NBA breaks it down. There's three different criterias. He will not hit that 10 year service mark until the summer of 2023. So there is some, there's some leeway now between now and, you know, two or three years from now, but a $80 million difference between what Milwaukee can offer

compared to what he can go out and get from another team. Okay, so let's review a couple things there. The cap, as you say, the soft cap is $109 million for this season. The projections were that we could be in the mid-teens to maybe 125, 126 in two years under the normal growth of the league. Those are some of the early projections. And now with the uncertainty of the pandemic, 125. 125 okay it's two years from now right okay so now we go it's at 109 how come they're losing money and staying flat it's staying flat because they don't want it to go down and then dip back up right so we don't want another kevin durant thing is essentially what the league is

hoping to do by keeping it flat even though you could argue the cap should be lower based on the cba split correct that's correct they do not want another flat, even though you could argue the cap should be lower based on the CBA split, correct? That's correct. They do not want another Kevin Durant situation, but here's the catch though. If you leave the number at an artificial number for two years, right, for 109 and 109, now what happens in the summer of 2023 when revenue stabilized? 23 when revenue stabilized. So you've got to be careful that we don't see it shoot from 109 to 125 again. And that's where it would hurt Milwaukee because if you're Giannis, right, I'm going to go maybe a two-year deal, two-year deal with a player option. And then I get my years of service back to 10. And then the super max basically goes out the window and then you can sign for that 35% number with Milwaukee, with another team, and you're going to earn back basically kind of what you left on the table here. Right. Okay. So now, as you said, the only thing

he can do this summer is the five years, but he could just play it out, become just straight free agent in 2021. And then he can do the LeBron deals or the Durant deals where it's the one and ones, or like we just had with Kawhi and Paul George, where they were two and ones. So he could do that with Milwaukee or do it with anyone else to get to the 10, the 10 years and the 35% of the cap that you were talking about after the 10 years, correct? Yeah, he could do that. And if I was his agent, Alex Retz is from Octagon. That's what I would recommend.

I wouldn't recommend committing right now when free agency starts to sign that five-year. I know it's a lot of money. It's $220 million. I would play out the year. Let's see where this roster is in 2021 and go from there. I think people would say, well, wait a minute. Let's think about the injury factor. think people would say, well, wait a minute, let's think about the injury factor. But Ryan,

you've seen, I mean, Kevin Durant got a max contract coming off and Achilles Clay got a max contract coming off an ACL. There's always a market for franchise players with even with an injury. And I do not put a guy like DeMarcus Cousins in that situation there. No, I mean, you're perfectly right on this one. I mean, Paul George got maxed after his leg broke in the stanchion. Kawhi Leonard, people think, is going to be hurt the rest of his life. And if you give him a 10-year max, he would get a 10-year max.

So that's just the way it works. And I agree. It's not about injuries and the players to figure that out. The other thing, do you think the unintended consequence of this was like, all right, super max, some of this Derrick Rose rules and this stuff, let's curtail player movement. And yet the money's become so insane and i always think

it's something to point out like if you look at the 80 million dollar difference on the five-year extension versus the four-year but then you add the fifth year with the new team it's not that far off it's really five years for five years that the money's become so insane with the spike in the cap that all the rules they put in place to limit player movement has had zero impact, if not the other way around, that the money is so much that guys are like, who cares, I can just go wherever I want now. Well, I think it's had two consequences. I think it's made teams lukewarm

as far as committing this type of money to guys. I think certainly we saw it in Sacramento with the Marcus Cousins that Vlade was not committing supermax money with the Marcus and then eventually makes you trade the player. And then the other thing is that players have figured it out where they know that where they are with age, that there's always going to be, I always say, another crack at the apple, right?

So if you're Giannis, who's 25 right now, and three years from now, he's still going to be in the prime of his career where he can earn back that money. And you're right. We look at 140 versus 220, but we don't take into account that fifth year where he'll get that back.

Even we projected out that the money will actually even itself out by doing that, that short-term contract. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I think it was so different back in the day. And you know, this as well as anyone, when it was the seven year max, when it was 12%, it was 12.5% raises annually that that money felt different because it was like, oh, I'm going to make 78 as opposed to 55 or something that, that were what, however the math works. And I know people listening, they were just rolling their eyes, but that felt like it was so different because of the percentages. But now when you're going out to 20, one 80, whatever, you know, I'll figure it out. It just doesn't seem to have the same kind of impact, even though

it's actually a larger dollar amount. Well, you're right. I mean, there was a trend. I mean, if you go back and study the late 90s, right? There was max contracts coming off the board. I mean, even in New Jersey with Keith Van Horn and Marbury and Kerry Kittles, I think Jason Williams, I think we signed four max guys within a two-year window, right? Like, and like there were so many. You liked your core. And that's why, yeah, we got them. No, but back then, back then the rule was like, who takes the most shots on this team? All right, this guy, here's your 70 million.

Like, here's your max. That's right. The rule became, it wasn't max player. It was who's the best player that doesn't have a max deal on our team. Well, and especially when you had David Falk back then controlling the market like hey you want steph marbury it's going to cost you 70 million for kerry kittles or a max contract for keith van horn that's that's just kind of how the business worked back then you know what can i just i didn't prep you on this i don't know you don't care but i'm always amazed how many times I hear stories about agents doing this,

where the deal for this player is this, because this is the most you can pay them. But to actually make that work, like you got to take care of this other guy or the players, I guess back then, I don't know. Like, I'm not going to be naive enough to think that it doesn't happen now,

but do the players understand this over the years? How often the agent, it feels like it's like yeah yeah whatever you're just going to pay my guy but i want to make sure you pay my other guy so he's using one of his clients to get his other client hooked up i i think the player is probably just worried about his bottom line as far as what his number is as far as not what the other consequences are but yeah i mean like we would do contracts with agents and be like, all right, we're going to see, this is the deal. But, you know, I need two summer league guys, right?

Like you're going to have to take John Smith and, you know, Joe Smith as summer league two players. Like, all right, bonus. Or, hey, I need three. I need three. You got to bring three of my guys in for draft visits. Yeah, done deal. No, you're right.

It happens. I had a GM tell me a story a couple years ago where he had two guys that were going to get close to max money. They weren't max players, but it's what was going to happen. They were younger. If they were free agents or restricted, they were going to get offered that kind of money and they were going to have to match it anyway.

So the agent essentially was like, get it over. And the GM didn't want to do it, but he knew he kind of had to. And basically the agent was like, look, just give me the total and I'll split it up between the two guys. So the agent was telling, yeah, it's the Morris that's happened in Phoenix with the Morris twins. I wasn't even using the Morris twins. The Morris twins one people have always felt was dirty because the Morris twins agreed to that because they were told they were going to stay together. And that's why they were so upset. So even though there's some more stuff from time to time that I don't love, I took their side on that one. Yeah. If you want to expand on that one, go ahead. No, no. I mean, I think what, where,

where it gets dicey is basically where, and when you have two, when you have an agent who has the same player, I mean, a good example is, you know, Joe Harris and Doug McDermott a couple of years ago. And, and you have a team like Indiana who says, Hey, this is, this is what we're going to offer, you know, and first come first serve, right? Like whoever calls first, you know, is going to get that offer and McDermott you know, I think he agreed to that deal and, and Joe wound up going back to Brooklyn. I think that's where it's hard for an agent when you have two the same two players who are you know in one team competing for that

guy i know that's tough you'd have to get on a facetime with both guys and be like all right who wants to say yes first so you don't feel like you're doing anything wrong okay let's uh let's do this then because maybe a little story time here as well but you're working in a front office yeah you know you don't want to have to like you have to call about Giannis what are the unwritten rules what is the understanding among thieves here when it comes to trying to figure out how you call John Horst with the bucks and go look I mean especially with some of these rosters that have nothing that's enticing whatsoever but you also have a job to do how How does it really work?

Well, I'll tell you one thing. Bob Myers is not calling John Horst over the weekend about Giannis. He isn't. Okay. He is not. And if he is, shame on him. No kidding. That's looked down upon. Especially for a guy like Giannis, franchise level player, has not given any inclination that he wants out, right? I mean, I think it's a little bit different maybe if you were AD. The AD situation in New Orleans was pretty – it was well-known. But for Giannis, I guess we can call them the Giannis rules. You are not calling to see what his availability is. I think it's offensive to do that.

I think if it's anything, it would do that. Um, I think if, if it, if it's anything, it would be John Horst making the phone calls. And I don't, I think knowing John, when you have this type of player, you're not going to do that, but yeah, you, you let this play out. Um, does that change, um, you know, during the season and they get off to a slow start maybe, but for right now, um um i don't see there's blood in the water for you to go up and and make that phone call like you know we i've had that situation before where in new jersey or brooklyn um you know with uh with darren williams who um you know we basically had just committed to a max contract i think five for 99 and didn't get off to a good start. And we had built a team around him. And then, you know, like teams call for him. Right.

Like, you know, like there was a story with and I don't want to throw Griff under the bus here, but I love David Griffin where, you know, Griff would call him like, hey, is Darren Williams available? I'm like, Griff, like we're 10-10 and we're 500. Is Kyrie? Do you want to flip Kyrie? Do we want to do that type of deal? I think you have to make calls on certain guys, but in a case of Giannis, I don't see anybody doing that. I don't know, man. You know this league better than... You know this league well.

There's somebody out there who's going to be like, you know what? I'm just going to bust John Horse balls this weekend. What do you think? Is he going to commit? Would you ever put him on the marketplace here? I know one guy. I know one guy for sure.

I don't know maybe maybe not now hinky would have hinky would have already written a 12-page manifesto on why why it was actually a good deal for milwaukee um but i look the the myers thing is because you could say well wait a minute you have the second pick in the draft like you got eventually the call has to be like a kick the tires but you would probably if you were myers of respect to Horst if you wanted to do it that way and again you know better than I do but I would think at some point at least has to come up as a conversation you have somebody under Myers call someone underneath Horst I don't know I mean I don't know that well that's usually that's usually how it goes too is that like you know that in Brooklyn and New Jersey, I had a handful of teams. Frank Zanin had a handful of teams. And basically, we were kind of the filter to Billy King. And we kind of laid out the groundwork for him and said, this is kind of what we're hearing. This is what teams will do.

the draft whenever this is going to be and i guess in maybe mid-november now that you you know you you start to have that you know cursory calls where you're just saying like hey we've got number two this is what we're thinking of doing um is there anybody that you know you you just kind of you probably make that call but i don't think it's happening in the second week of september right now did you ever have to make a call on somebody? Did Billy make you or would it be Rod or over the years? Not in the Giannis level. No, never in that stratosphere here. You go through the exercise of doing these three and four team type trades in your mind and you put them on the board and then you look at it. It's like sometimes it's fantasy GM, right? And you're

like, I'm not making it. Who's going to get the short end of the stick? I'm not calling that team on this one. But never in that Giannis situation. All right, Bobby, you're the best. Thanks a lot. See Bobby Marks' work on ESPN, ESPN.com, and we will get you his handle out there as well. Thanks. Thanks, Ryan. Bespoke Post checking in. As we settle into this new normal version of summer,

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What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the south fork i have every toy you can possibly imagine and best of all kids i am liquid so now you know what's possible let me tell you what's required all right life advice a weekly uh deal here but it's been it's been bi-weekly lately um lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. This guy's checking in to give somebody else advice. That was our Nashville guy that basically was telling us

how awesome he was, but he was upset that his girlfriend wasn't an 11, even though she was rich. I'm being a little sarcastic there because I did like that guy's self-awareness that he was admitting these things, and I said, I think, hey,

you're cheating on her. Yeah, so we have another guy. I don't always love doing this but kyle knows how to pick him you know so kyle was kind of like look if another guy wants to chime in with some advice that i like i don't know maybe that means kyle doesn't like my advice and kyle's like this guy's advice is better we have gotten a few of those i'll admit hey this advice is better than the stuff you gave out i'm not telling you i'm perfect here i'm just telling you that i'm the i'm the guy with the show so i don't know i don't know what to do there. A lot of requests about finances, a ton of financial stuff.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it because I don't want to present myself as somebody that has it down because I don't. I mean, I'm still going to have financial mistakes that I've made, but maybe I'll just go through the financial mistakes I've made and the things that have actually worked out. But I think everybody is different. Risk assessment, what are you willing to lose?

How aggressive do you want to be? I mean, usually younger. That's why our insurance premiums are so much higher when we're younger. We get our license because we're just a bunch of guys running around with testosterone. I think guys invest that way as well. I mean, for me to just say, hey, just make sure you do the 401k if it's a matching 401k because you're losing money. I mean, that's an absolute basic one. But then I was reading about it the other day and some guy was trying to say like 401ks are stupid so it's like yeah this is just like sports perfect so let's do that um okay so let's uh let's make these quicker because kyle has some stuff to do so i'm not going to use this guy's name it goes i felt inclined to write in and offer my advice to the nashville guy on yesterday that's

tuesday's pod first off 32 so i know i don't have the answers but i just got divorced so i feel like some good experience here all right our stats are very similar not the number not the consensus number one pick at a bar but certainly a first rounder i was a four-year starter at corner you had a solid d2 program all right and pretty much maintain my physique minus a few pounds i do not make six figures but i am doing all right i'm just kidding by the d2 thing you played most of us never had the chance or not good enough so yeah absolutely shout out shout out to the real ones. My ex-wife and I finalized our divorce in April. She was basically my dream girl and looks tall, blonde, long legs, athletic. No guy would turn her down. I ended up overlooking a lot of red flags because of it. She wasn't a bad

person, but I think you sometimes overlook certain personality traits anticipating you can change people. You can't. I say this because you really can't expect to have a great lifelong relationship with the level of attractiveness being the main contribution. So our man is saying attractiveness cannot be number one. My advice, you will 100% cheat on this girl if you haven't done so already in a roundabout way. I agree with that. Meaning you DM some IG model drunk one night when you were out with the boys just shooting your shot. Trust me, I've been there um you need to realize that if you have something really good now then the outside noise doesn't matter you spent two years with this girl already uh the 10 with a huge rack at a hotel bar in austin on a work trip isn't going to give a shit about you the way your current girl does get off

instagram for a little any other social media where they're incredibly attractive females at every click that you'll never meet side note on this my man is on fire with tell me about austin dude yeah uh which bar um which hotel but i i gotta tell you he's he's right about that because you will trick yourself into thinking that just because like oh this do you know how many dms are being slid into with some of these girls like you can my buddies have no clue they'll be like hey you could just dm that girl right now can't you i'd be like no i can't i'm i'm a hundred like yeah i think i have some good nba takes but are you kidding me because you know what you know what kind of fish are out there right now they're not over 40 you know they're playing on sunday i can't just dm that person are you nuts like yeah but you have a blue check the blue check doesn't mean

that every smoke show on instagram just dms you back do you not get that the guy's like i don't know thought that's what i heard that's i thought they're looking at me like i'm the one that doesn't get it so yes um almost every one of these girls isn't going to talk to you like almost every single one of them so there you go get off instagram he says he also throws a uh lay off the porn too we don't know what anybody's habits are so why don't we just we're just gonna go ahead but i like what he's doing here he's doing like a mental cleanse of the mind of thinking about different um partners i guess give yourself some time to focus on her in your relationship like real real time, two, three months. See how you feel.

If you still feel like there's something better out there for you, then you aren't really ready and should probably have that conversation. All right. Also, we're at the age now where a woman is done in the relationship. Excuse me. This is a good point. Also, we are at the age now where when a woman is done in the relationship, then that relationship is done. It's not like college where girls that age are a little more forgiving

and probably a little more apt to believe our bullshit so they take us back. That I would disagree with. I think everyone actually like, I just did, it's a good point and it sounds really good and there's definitely examples of it, but there's also examples of you can be 30

and somebody will take you back to. All right, just saying. right love the party yeah i those guys that one i those guys are just getting taken back all the time this was uh god that was pretty funny okay um okay i got a quick one i'm gonna do this one and then i i got a quick just check in update from new zealand so that one's not going to be any life advice, but all right, this is, um, this is Justin. He goes, all right. Spent labor day at my brother's house. He and his wife had a new baby about two weeks ago. Baby boy is healthy and doing well. Uh, it's the first time I'd gone anywhere other than work Walmart or my home since COVID started. It felt really cool to

be out and about with people. It made me start thinking about my life as a whole. It hit really hard that even pre-COVID, I don't have friends that I go out with. Aw, man. I would say that I have friends at work. I get along with basically everyone. We joke, talk about news, things in our lives, have solid conversations. However, once I leave the office, the relationship disappears.

No messages, no parties, no movies together or anything like that. I also go to church church and I feel about the same with everyone there. I talk with them and we are friends, the chapel, but past the parking lot, I don't do anything with them. I help run the super smash bros e-sports scene in my area. And even that, while I get along great with everyone, once we were not playing smash bros, the friendship ends. I feel like I'm getting a friend zone by everyone. So this isn't friend zone by a girl. You're getting friend-zoned by your community. Everyone likes me, but once they're not forced to be with me, they no longer care.

This leads to my question. How can I get out of my imagined real work friend-zone, or is this just what adult relationships are like? I want to address something that I think you may want to bring up. Yes, I'm a homebody. Monday through Thursday, I usually want to go home, run errands, and I have get ready for work the next day. On Friday, I would love to go out and do fun stuff outside of the house. I realized this issue maybe because I don't put in the social work Monday through Thursday

that I don't earn it on the weekends. All right. So good, good observation about yourself there. I'm not looking for a romantic thing here. I'm just really looking, um, for friends that care about me, any advice you can give me. All right. he says thanks and the whole deal oh he included an appendix here 30 612 30 40 percentile and looks college graduate medical school dropout low five digit income loves frisbee golf very shy when meeting new people but i open up a lot i would say after a month um okay all right uh look man. Uh, look, man, it, it definitely, honestly, like this one, this one bums me out. Cause it, it, it seems that now I look again, I don't know you. I mean, we could do some real simple, get it out of the way. Uh, bookkeeping here. Like maybe you're just,

you have no idea that you're not that likable. Okay. I mean, that's, that's a reality of this. Maybe you're not, not super likable and that's why no one likes you, but let's not do that. Let's stay, I probably should have ended with that, but you know what, let's build it up a different way. One thing you always have to remind yourself is that as you're wrapped up in your own little world, everyone else doesn't really care as much as you think that they do.

So there's no active friend zoning you. It's more likely that you haven't made enough of an effort and that's what's happening. I've had to do it at times where I'm like, hey, make sure because I will, especially when I was in Connecticut, man, I would go like two months where I go, oh my God, I haven't done anything except wake up, ESPN show, workout, cook food, watch games, repeat. And I'd be like, okay, wait a minute. What's the last night you, you interacted with somebody? And it was bad. It was really, really bad. But I just kept feeling like, well, I want to be the best at my job. So I'm going to put all this time in, but you got to, you can't do that. You can't be like a hundred percent,

a hundred percent in your twenties. Fine. Trying to, but even then I think it's stupid because that's when you should be going out all the time. So you are going to have to make more of an effort. You're going to have to check in a little bit with people and try it. It's essentially like asking a girl out, but you'll be asking friends out where instead of waiting for this thing, this could be as simple as they think you're a homebody, you admitted to being a homebody, and maybe you're a little shy, as you just said, and maybe they just don't think you're interested so do this over the next couple weeks ask somebody at work hey are you guys doing anything on friday hey you're gonna watch the thursday night game i mean how hard it is for people to go we are but we don't

want you to come man like nobody's gonna do that and then in that moment like i again i don't know your personality i don't know if there's there part of you. Maybe it's just being shy. But then you just kind of hang back, observe, maybe even Costanza it, write a couple observations down that you're going to want to share with the party. But you need to be proactive about this. If it's bothering you this much, you're going to send an email here. Be proactive about it and force yourself to ask guys what they're doing. And hopefully it's not a Michael Scott after improv deal

where you're like, oh yeah, it's a private party. We're all going to the same bar. Okay, cool. You're going to have to do that. You can't wait around because the likelihood is that it's as simple as you've never made the effort. So nobody's going to make the effort for you. And this applies to a lot of stuff.

But all these times where you're going, oh man, this person is going to think this or or this person is going to think, no one really can, like people have families, people have stuff, people have to go home to whatever their challenges are all the time. Even if they're happy, there's stuff that comes up where you're not going to be the priority as this casual acquaintance at work. So you need to be proactive and be like, hey, are you guys doing anything? And again, again, going out to a bar during all this stuff for a football game is not a possibility maybe you invite people over man maybe you invite people and i know you said low five figures but maybe you step it up and and you know six foot sub it's not natural light yeah right maybe you know maybe you step it up a

little bit with with some of the uh i don't know apps uh that didn't really come i was looking for something better there but it didn't happen so yeah you you've got to decide you can't just sit back and wait for everybody to invite you to their thing that's all you got to be more proactive about it all right uh one last thing it's it's not even life advice this is from jake he goes guys uh live live in New Zealand, big NBA fan for a long time, podcast listener. Problem with the whole Steven Adams thing,

is basketball is a relatively minor sport in this country and everybody just assumes he's a massive star, not a decent, overpaid role player. The media will always jump on anything Steven Adams related

because he's the only NBA player we have, considering it blasphemy. When he's criticized, you're not the only one this has happened to. Personally, I think he played like shit as well.

He's never been a player you dump the ball and you get a basket. He's just quiet on both ends of the floor. It will be headline news again if he gets traded as part of a potential rebuild, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're in – oh, anyway, he's saying I'm still welcome in New Zealand. So that's what I – thank you, New Zealand, because it's one of the three places – it's in my top three of places I would like to go. But I don't think they're accepting our applications right now. Thank you.