The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Woj on Beal, Lillard, Harden, Zion, and Who Will Go Second in the NBA Draft. Plus, Ryen Gets Into Yoga.

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Russillo is joined by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski to discuss the futures of big NBA names like Bradley Beal, Damian Lillard, James Harden, Zion Williamson, Chris Paul, and Kyrie Irving (0:30), as well as the upcoming NBA draft, the craziness of draft day, and more (25:07). Then Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (53:40). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Adrian Wojnarowski Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

we've got woj that's right we're gonna go over it all peel zion lillard heart kairi phoenix the drought and something else is going to be doing for this draft that i actually think is pretty interesting on the broadcast uh did a day of yoga. We'll also talk about that. Not with Woj. Life advice. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats.

What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine? That's no. A bottle of wine? Yeah. And a snow day? Again, no.

But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping? Total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN joins us this morning. We're a week out from the draft, all the free agency stuff. It's good to catch up, man. Good to see you. How are you? Ryan, it's great to see you. Great to be with you. All right. So let's get through as much of this as we can.

We know that you reported that Bradley Beal and the Wizards appear to be working on a potential trade for him going somewhere else. We both know Winger in charge now. Not a shock to see them kind of change course. What's the latest with Beal? Yeah, so I think since Michael Winger took over, hired Will Dawkins as his GM, and get a new front office in Washington, and kind of especially with Kyle Kuzma, Chris Epps, Porzingis,

both of them having the player option, I think it's more likely Kuzma, Chris Sepps, Porzingis, both of them having the player option. I think it's more likely Kuzma goes into free agency. Porzingis, we'll see what he does. He could opt in at a pretty big number. He could opt out, become a free agent, etc. It's a little bit of an inflection point, too, for what you want to do with that roster. And I think, well, the conversation is among Beal, Winger, and the Wizards, Ted Leonsis, who he's been close to since he's got there 11 years ago, and Mark Bartleson, his agent, is

if the Wizards want to rebuild, if that's the direction Michael Winger wants to go in, does it make sense to look out there, see what might be there in the trade market? Teams are certainly interested. They've been calling to see what that would all look like. And so because he has the no trade clause, you really have to work together. And because trade's got to work, obviously, for both sides. So Beal gets to decide where he goes or more so he gets to decide where he doesn't go. He doesn't necessarily get to decide where he goes. And Washington has to find a deal that makes sense for them. And with four years left on that deal, they don't have to

rush in. They don't have to take a deal that they don't want to. But I think the interesting part of this is going to be with a new collective bargaining agreement, that second apron, which most teams are treating a little like a hard cap and Beal's contract is massive. You know, those, it gets into the fifties, it gets into, uh, I think it hits 60, right? Before it's 57 million. Yeah. It gets into the 50s. It gets into, I think it hit 60, right? Before it's... 57 million. Yeah. So how does that fit for a team? Are you going to get a bunch of assets back?

Are you going to get multiple firsts and a good young player? Are you going to hope to get one first round pick back and treat it like you're glad to get clear the cap of the money. I think it'll probably be somewhere in between. But yeah, that's, so I think this is, I don't know that there's a deal imminent. I think it's going to take time. And I think it's really going to take time for teams to figure out what the asking price is and then what they would want to give and then is that a place Beal wants to go? This isn't an easy one. What do you think Beal wants? What I think Beal wants, what I think he's always wanted is to win in Washington. And if Michael Winger can show him a pathway the next year or two where he says, hey,

I think we can win. I think we can be a contender if you hang in there with me. Then I think he's all in on that. If Winger tells him or is telling him, I don't see how we can do that, then it's where can I go that we can win? Because he does love DC. He's loved that market and living there. He's been connected to that community. But you're approaching 30 years old. This team has missed the playoffs for the last five years without a winning record. I think even in the year they made,

they got in. So I think if that's the direction the wizards are going to go, and then I think then there's a conversation to be had on, on where, on where Beal might want to land. Yeah, because as you talk out the Beal thing, and granted, there's more money, but he's younger than Lillard, who's 33 in July. Lillard's got over $90 million on the next two.

You think of the stature of the players, and I would look at Lillard as a higher level than what Beal has done. But in a vacuum, you go, okay, I'd want these kinds of players, but because of the second apron stuff that we're touching on here, um,

because the age factor may be more so with Lillard, the length factor with Beal, because the market, if, if the public knew what the market really was for these players, will we be underwhelmed? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to be really interesting as to, you know, people got a little conditioned last year by the Gobert deal, by the Durant deal,

but it's just, it's a new CBA and it's going to look different. And I think anybody who's taking money on with players and it starts with a four and it starts with a five annually, you got to be really, really sure about health and productivity because you're not going to be able to do a whole lot else with a cap, if that's your second best player, now if you've got two guys in the 40s and 50s, it's going to limit you. And so I think, listen, if you're trading for Beal or you're trading for Lillard, hypothetically, Lillard's not available, you believe you're a team that is, you're trying to get over the top,

you think you're a contender. I don't think you're trading for those guys because you're in a rebuild. And so I think how much do those teams want to give up? How much are they going to give up? And then if you're Portland, hypothetically, or Washington, you know, you get one swing at getting value back for a player of that caliber. And you just can't. Lillard doesn't have a no trade.

Obviously, Beal does, so he has more say. Beal has more say on where he would or wouldn't go. But I think you're in a position where, for those franchises, you've got to maximize that deal. And sometimes it takes time for that to all play out. We're not there with Lillard now, and I don't know that it does get there, but I think for Beal, I'm not sure this would just happen in the next week. It could, but I think that they do have time on their side and Beal's not dying to leave. He's not, he's not asked for a trade. He's not said, I want you to move me. But I think if you

are Washington, you're trying to weigh everything. If we brought back Porzingis and Kuzma on deals we might like as an organization, or we keep Beal, we start the season with Beal? What is it all going to look like? They don't have to unravel this thing all at once. They have time. They just got there. You said something, I think almost a couple different times about Lillard there that makes me feel like I want to follow up. Are you saying he's not available? It feels like this is in a different category than at least whatever we're in with Beal right now. Is that fair? Way different. Yeah, they're not talking to teams.

Portland's not trying to trade Damian Lillard. Damian Lillard's not asked to be traded. He's around the facility every day. He's engaged with that front office and organization. Listen, I think they're going to try to do everything they can here at the draft and a free agency to build around him certainly there's a lot of attention at number three on is there a big time veteran player that they can flip the third pick for I don't know that that player is out there for them that pick has a lot of value and if it's going to be Scoot Henderson, you know, you can argue the fit with Damian Lillard, but if you think that's the best player, you know,

really talented guys can figure it out. If you're in Portland, you hope Shaden Sharp makes a big jump and you have every reason to believe that he can do that. He showed flashes last year. He's going to be really good. You know, you're trying to re-sign Jeremy Grant. Are there some other moves you can make? Now, I don't know if any of that makes them a contender, but Damon Lillard signed back up to retool this roster around him.

It's hard to do it overnight. And I think the value for Portland is in the pick. And I just don't know that there's a player out there that is available that justifies moving out the third pick in the draft, rookie scale contract on a player you think has a chance to be maybe an all-star. Well, you better get a lot back. And I don't see it right now. I don't know that they see it out there right now. And so whether that's a disappointment to people or not,

I don't know. But I think right now, a week out from the draft, I think they're using that third pick on a player. Okay, I have other draft questions, but I want to run through some of the other headline guys. And the next one in line here is Zion. He's played in 114 games since he's been drafted. And again, that's five drafts ago, 29 games this past season. The off-court stuff, it's embarrassing and it's certainly a conversation.

I don't know that any of it would really matter. It would never factor into an evaluation of a player if you're actually healthy and playing. He's got the contract coming up five years, 194 million on that extension. There's some clauses there, including one I saw that he has to be like under 295 pounds. You know, I just, I was looking through it this morning and I was like, okay. I think if you're a team, despite how disappointing the Zion experience has been so far for the Pelicans, that you're, and I don't even mean this specific to like zion and new orleans but still somebody this young that yes there's major concerns but it it's almost like this haunting feeling like what if we actually do trade this player despite a lot of evidence that tells you it's not getting off to a great start i i wouldn't and this is just me kind of

like theorizing on it as much as all of them stuff right now is the noise is really negative about him i'd imagine there's still massive hesitation to pull the trigger on something like this i agree 100 ryan i i think if you were going to trade listen it's hard to trade a player when maybe he's his value is a little bit of a low. Like he said, played, what, 20, 29 games last year. Certainly, they wish he played more. They need him available more. They need Brandon Ingram available more if they're going to really contend. But unless you're getting in at two or three in the draft,

and I don't think they're going to get in at two or three, and I don't know that they've offered Zion to anybody, I would be surprised. I would be really, really surprised if they moved off of him. Now, teams can quietly test the value of what a player is. Team GM president who's close with another GM and doesn't think it'll get out can make the call one-on-one, hey, would you do player X for player Y? And I think that happens more than people know.

You're seeing what the value, you might suspect what their player's value is, but you can get it confirmed by calling around a little bit. Sometimes that can get out or sometimes I would be shocked. I'm not saying that the Pelicans have done any of that. I don't know that they have with Zion, but it does happen. That doesn't mean you're looking to trade a guy. You just want to know what he's worth. That happens all the time. I would say outside of, I don't know, six, seven, eight players in the league, it probably happens with almost everybody else at some point. But he's too talented. He's still too young.

You saw in that brief period last year, they had the best record in the league, right, when he went down or close to it. He's unstoppable when he's on the floor. And so I think you give it at least another year or two. But I don't know that right now is the time to move off of a guy when, again, if you're moving off of him hypothetically, if I'm another team and I'm asking for another young all-star player, I'm saying to myself, they know that player better than I do.

They know way more than I do. And the fact that they're willing to give up on him, why should I trade for him? I think that is some of the thought. Now, different organizations are at different places in terms of risk, risk reward. And then, of course, what are you giving up for him? All that being said, listen, I won't rule anything out. You can't rule anything out. You can't in this league.

But I would still be really, really surprised if Zion Williamson is not on New Orleans opening night roster. Yeah, I like how you framed it with a surprise. Because I think that it was weird being at the combine where you're just talking to guys and you're catching up. And I'd always ask, hey, what do you think about Harden? And it was pretty overwhelming that so many people thought that he would leave for Houston. And there are times too where I think you probably could relate to this. Like sometimes I'll ask like, okay, but what do you think specifically? Like what makes you think that?

And sometimes I'll think like, is everyone just repeating what they heard from the guys two rows over? Because it never feels specific. So every now and then, you know, I'll be a little annoying and be like, okay, well, what specifically makes you think that? And I, there was only one person that, that told me something that made me feel like it was specific, but I still think that that was kind of a guess. So despite whatever I think about Harden, I still think it would be a really tough look for him to go, you know what? I'm good. I'm just going to go to Houston, get my points, not contend when, you know, whatever think of Philadelphia, with Harden and Embiid and a tweak here, tweak there, it's still a good roster.

It's still something that if things were to break their way, they could get to an Eastern Conference Finals, maybe beyond that. I don't think any of us are watching Harden feeling like it's prime Harden. Houston has to spend the money on somebody, but I wonder how much of this message has been just leverage, hoping you can get the extra years from Philadelphia. Yeah, you're right, Ryan. And I mean, I reported back, I guess it was Christmas, our Christmas Day show about that Houston was going to be a real factor. And it was true then, it's true now. It doesn't mean he's going to go there. But the fact was, it was on his mind. It's been on his mind. It's been a factor. Philly knows it's a possibility. And so they have to compete to keep him. And there's

always a measure of leverage. He wants to get the most years and the most guaranteed money he can in Philly, and he needs someone to help him do it. Now, that also means there are a lot of things that draw him back to Houston. Family there. He's just comfortable there. An ownership group, a front office that he's very comfortable with. But you're right. It's a very different career decision. And it says something about his ambitions.

If he were to walk away from a contender in Philly to go to a rebuild in Houston, Houston's got a lot of cap space. I think they can be pretty creative with all of that and bring in some veterans and pay some guys above the mid-level that they might be able to get elsewhere because of the cap space they have in Houston to complement their younger guys. Emei Adoka is a coach guys really want to play for. He is well-respected among players. That's a draw for people, for players. And so is it going to be straight dollars, Ryan? Is it going to be straight dollars in years? I'm going

to the team that offers me most. He's made a ton of money. There's got to be somewhere in there, if the numbers are comparable, fairly comparable, where you're making a decision on, it's more of a personal lifestyle decision of going home. Well, it's home to an extent. I mean, it's become a second home he obviously grew up in southern california or staying in philly and trying to run this back um with a new coach and nick nurse and and a team that maybe if joelle mb was 100 healthy and the conference semifinals might have might have broken through houston has all this cap space they've got to spend it on somebody it reminds me a bit of like when chicago gave out a jabari parker deal that was like really big have broken through houston has all this cap space they've got to spend it on somebody it

reminds me a bit of like when chicago gave out a jabari parker deal that was like really big annually but it was short and i you know it's not a great free agent class if they miss out on harden uh if you're a houston fit like i'm not even sure it was i thought it was really revealing when jalen green was on with paul george it was like he didn't seem like he was in a hurry to be adding Harden to it because it feels like a team with a lot of picks. There's at least, and this is, you know, sort of something off to the side of some of the worst teams, where a lot of the worst teams

have spent a lot of resources on really talented guys at the top the last couple of years. So there aren't a lot of rosters that are just void of any kind of foundation or at least guys that you want to continue to build and kind of see what you have. Where if Harden were to come into Houston, it maybe derails some of the development or maybe we already know the answer to some of it. But Houston has to spend that money on somebody. And if it's not Harden, I wonder if they just go shorter term, bigger money stuff to kind of fill out the rest of the roster and then what that does to the other young guys that they've spent picks on.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at Houston and it's going to be players like dylan brooks like potentially dylan brooks bruce brown could be a candidate there brooke lopez those are all among targets um you know you're going to target more people than you can sign you can't sign them all so and then and then of course Harden, but they do have a ton of, they have a ton of cap space and they want to be improved. They want to be better. You know, it's funny, you look around the league, Ryan, and last year you kind of knew going in, there were a few teams, they were not trying to be good, right? They, there were a few teams that was clear. They were still very aggressively tanking Houston

San Antonio um Indiana you thought right Indiana you thought and then it got off to that really good start and you know you thought in the early that they were going to dump Miles Turner and um and uh

but he healed right and then they kept him and all of a sudden got off to this really good start. And Halliburton was just playing great. And they're like, we can't do this with this guy. This guy, like, you know. So, whatever. So, all of a sudden, these teams were...

This year, I don't know who the one team is where you go, like, they intend to be really bad. Like, Detroit wants to be... Well, Detroit wants to be much better. They may spend some money in free agency. They get Kate Cunningham back. They hired Monty Williams for a ton of money. In Houston, again, like they want to, they're going to spend in free agency here.

So listen, there's no Victor Wimbenyama, obviously, awaiting in the draft lottery. Utah last year, although they were much better than anybody gave them credit for early, but you thought they were, even after the Gobert and Donovan Mitchell trades, they were way better than. Will Hardy just did an unbelievable job and they had such a group that they, you know, they were in no rush to trade off all the pieces. They eventually traded a bunch, a bunch off and they were still competitive. So this year is different. Like there's not that one team out there where you go, yeah, I think they're intentionally trying to be, they're, they're building this to be really bad.

And so people are using their space. They're going to spend some money. You know, in Indiana or Detroit is a threat for like, you know, maybe a big restricted free agent, like a Kim Johnson, you know, does somebody throw a big offer sheet at a Kim Johnson, potentially Houston, again, one of the point guards, they'll get mentioned with the point guards too, because they have cap space, even for like a Chris Paul, they wanted to pay him more than somebody else who could pay them one of these one of their exceptions hypothetically they could pay more money so i it makes for a different summer than we had last year yeah the chris paul thing in itself is kind of interesting because phoenix um you know there's definitely because you've

touched on the apron um you could talk about philly feeling like they might be stuck i want to get to kairirie with Dallas as well. But Phoenix, I just don't know how they would know what they were doing with Chris Paul last week. And you reported on that, that, yeah, waving him is certainly a possibility, and there's different versions of waving him. But what are the options for Phoenix?

And I guess it's a leading question, but I don't know how they would know what their options are until other teams, other plans fall through and then come back to Phoenix. Yeah. Listen, if you're going to trade Chris Paul, probably a team who would then waive them, get the savings, right? You waive them and, or you don't guarantee his deal. Same difference. By June 28th and you pay 15 million, you pay him million instead of the $30 million he's guaranteed.

I guess it depends how many contracts you stack up to trade for him, because it takes probably a couple. Or he gets waived, and then he's a free agent. He can go play where he wants. I think the hard part for Phoenix is right now, DeAndre Ayton's market is lean, and they have to be prepared that they is right now with DeAndre Ayton's market is lean and they have to be prepared that they're going to have DeAndre Ayton back. They want to be able to have their mid-level exception, the use of it. And so that's part of the thought of, of, um, moving off of getting off the money they need to. Um, I think that what'll be interesting to me is if DeAndre is back without Chris Paul,

Chris Paul was such an anchor for him. I think both on the court and play that two man game with him and then off the court. I will be curious what that all means for them without if there's no Chris Paul there, but he's in his back and they have to prepare for the very likely possibility that they've gone through the marketplace. And I don't think there's an obvious deal for DeAndre Ayton out there. So it's going to be interesting. They've got to build up the rest of this roster.

They've got to be creative in putting some depth around Durant and Booker. Okay, Kyrie, Dallas. I feel like there's some similarities there to Philly and Harden where if you're Philly and you're going, all right, do we really want to give this guy a fourth year? The answer is always going to be no, but sometimes you're stuck. And I personally, I don't know that I'd get into the

Kyrie business in the first place, but now if you're Dallas, not that you've given up an overwhelming amount of assets, but it's hard to go back to Luca and say, hey, we just let them walk. It doesn't really make a ton of sense. There's been different rumors about landing spots, some other rumors that I don't know that I ever believed, but maybe stuck is the wrong word, but that's how I feel about Kyrie and Dallas. Yeah, I think they need each other. I think they need, you just said it, Ryan, they can't let them walk.

They just can't. Not if they're going to try to continue to give Luke a reason to be hopeful. And they can pay him the most. He can get the years, he can get the money. And as you know, in this league, it just means you're guaranteed the money. It doesn't guarantee you're going to be in Dallas. And if you are Kyrie Irving, your chance to maximize the years and the money is with the Mavericks.

And so I think in the end, it's just a matter of what a deal looks like, how many years it is, all the guarantees on it. But I think the two sides find their way to each other here in early July. I don't know that there's another place that is out there for Kyrie Irving unless Dallas gave him a lot of help to get there. And again, I just think they need each other. Yeah. For now. For now. I want to get to the draft here,

but I want to ask a question about your role. Look, we've known each other a long time. You're really one of the most powerful guys in sports media. And teams, players players agents know that how do you balance the information part of your job with hey is this guy just trying to use me to get his message out there when it's not really even it's not a report it's just a preference how do you do that well i think ryan over time, you understand the people that you're talking, you're dealing with a lot of the same people over and over for a very long period, especially me.

I've been doing this a while. And you learn over time, track records of people with you. And sometimes you learn lessons the hard way, like very early on, you go, Oh, okay. That's, you know, decisions I would have made in my first or second year or third year at Yahoo are different than ones I make now at ESPN after having covered the league on a full-time basis for, I don't know, however long it's been a decade and a half. So, uh, your judgment is you're always making judgments. Every day you're making a lot of judgments on information, what rises to the level of being reported, what is not quite ready to be reported. That's always the hardest decision you have to make. What's a real conversation going on? What's a cursory thing that isn't really actionable? That's how you're

always trying to measure it. Being able to talk to a lot of people around a situation gives you a better sense of that than trying to base it off of one person with one agenda. It's important. You better have relationships at all the levels. So if it's ownership, president's level, GM, coaching, player, league office, union, agents, all of them together create a prism to see situations through. And looking through any one of those prisms can often be trouble. And so, but again, different people have different, you know, their track record. And a lot of these people that you're talking to, you're talking to every day or virtually every day or very often all year long when things are happening,

when things aren't happening. And so, you know, you, you rely on your ability to trust people, trust the information, and, and then just do the best you can. Nobody's track record's perfect on it. I'm certainly not perfect, but you, you do the best you can, uh, because you're going to be judged on, in the end, you'll be judged and rightly so on the information that you report. In the Woj book years from now, I want a chapter on the top five guys I stopped listening to. You probably won't do it. You probably won't do it. I'm just, as an editor, I'm just giving you. All right, so let's talk draft. We know with Wemba Nyama going number one, this is special stuff. It's felt like Miller to Scoot three, but there's a couple of quicker draft questions I have here.

Do you have a good sense of two, three? I think if it was today, it's Miller to Scoot Henderson three. It can change. I know Scoot Henderson three can change. I know Scoot Henderson had a good workout in Charlotte. He was impressive, and I think he was impressive in Portland. But Brandon Miller, I think for most teams, if they could get up to two, it would be Brandon Miller. I don't have reason to believe.

Again, I don't think it's in Kenya but in pencil I think it's Miller Scoot 2-3 right now after that I don't know I think it's still pretty wide open and I don't think that's I think it's hard to trade out of those spots no matter who you're being offered

at 2 or 3 if you think there's three potential all-stars in this draft, I mean, Victor's a whole other level. He's a different level. But we know this. Like, Cam Whitmore may end up being the second-best player in this draft or the third-best player in this draft. History tells you, as sure as everybody seems,

it's Brandon Miller, Scoot Henderson. Maybe it ends up being one of the Thompson twins. Maybe it ends up being Cam Whitmore, because history tells you that's how it usually goes. Now, it's your job as an organization to figure out who that might be, but the consensus right now, I think, are those three, one, two, three. I didn't think i was going to ask a san Antonio question because there's not much drama to it but you know when you look at one one yama and obviously i'm concerned that i almost feel like he's going to have to go through an injury you know i think younger guys um that haven't filled out enough although reading about

some of his workout preventative stuff i'm like well at least they're put together it feels like a really good plan here. It's fascinating what he's done and how he's Jeremy Wu had a really good piece on ESPN about that. And he's been so prepared for the injury, the preventative, like European. I think where a lot of the American medicine with teams, they were,

they started to bring in the, some of the guys with the European from Europe was the feeling was, you know, it's funny, I want to say RC Buford was one of the first people who described it to me as this a long time ago. So it's ironic with Victor, I guess, or coincidental that the view internationally was to be preventative, right? To be preventative with injury. And that's where you saw a lot of organizations start to channel some of that thinking and they're hiring from Europe and Victor and his team and his family, they really prepared him because that's

seven foot five and that body, that's what you worry about. But he's done a lot of unique things that might give him, you might look at him differently than some others who've been injury prone at that size. Yeah, because even like the way I think about it, you know, because it's, I don't, I'm not ever going like, oh, hey, I'm certain he's going to be hurt because the bigger guys that move a certain way,

they don't have a great track record. But it's like, okay, look at all the Durant's injuries. And even knowing every one of those, you would still take him number one. If someone said, hey, this is what he's going to be, but this is how often he's going to be hurt. And you'd be like, okay, here's the cart. I'm taking him number one. So I think that's, not that there's any hesitation on San Antonio side. I think the more interesting part of it is that he's so defensively ready. He's so skilled offensively. I like Keldon. I like Sohan a lot. They need some help with the guard spot. They obviously have some flexibility with the summer. I wonder if they can sell this as

a competitive team a little bit earlier than we're used to with a team taking up number one pick. Yeah, I agree. They don't have to slow. It's not their style to try to go too fast with this, but he's going to be really good really fast in the league. Wait till he's in space. Wait till he has all that space in the NBA that he doesn't necessarily have in Europe. People have to guard him in the open floor. It's funny, the guy we don't talk about when you think of the comparisons,

I haven't heard his name as much, Yao Ming at 7'5". And I remember doing a podcast with Yao at Hall of Fame weekend. It was in Toronto. And I was surprised at how forthcoming he was about the injuries and some of the causes of them. And you look, listen, this was a player who I think if he was healthy, he would have been an MVP in the league. I really believe that he would have been an MVP. He would have had an MVP season or two. But it was so different with him because of his responsibilities with the national team. I remember the Olympics in Beijing and he was coming off a significant leg injury in Houston. He wasn't ready to be on the floor, but he felt such an obligation to be there for the opening ceremonies and then to play against the United States in that first game for China. And

he was literally dragging that leg up and down the floor. One of the loudest arenas I've ever heard was Yao making like a 16, 17, 18 footer on the first trip down the court against Team USA with Kobe and Chris Paul. And I remember those guys after, like they felt the gravity of it. They knew what Yao meant to them. But he talked to me about just like, yeah, I cut my career short because of how, what I had to do with the national team. And I had to play through injuries I probably shouldn't have played through. And it was a very different... Victor Wimonyama won't have any of those challenges. He'll be protected.

And he doesn't have those issues. It was just different for Yao. And so when we look at these other seven foot five, seven foot four guys, I understand the concern about injuries, but I also think this is a very different situation and a player who's in position to be, he's been prepared for it to be different and he'll be protected in a way that as much as Houston wanted to protect him, they weren't allowed to because of Yao's national team responsibilities. Whenever we'll talk about the draft and you go, okay, could Orlando get aggressive here?

Could Oklahoma City just pick their guy with all of this capital? Utah, same kind of deal. Factor in that next year year everybody's telling you 24 is going to be one of the worst drafts in recent history although I guarantee like the first week of June in 24 you're going to hear guys saying you know what I kind of like there's some guys I like but as like I would say two years

ago people already were telling you if they don't change the rule the entry rule like 24 is going to be terrible so factor in the apron where it's like okay I've got all these picks like I'm not going to be terrible so factor in the apron where it's like okay i've got all these picks like i'm not going to be able to pay all these guys but the math the pricing of moving up whether it were three to scoot and if you want to give us more perspective on portland there on this answer that'd be great too but the nfl comp of like oh we'll move eight and 16. Like that really moves you up.

In the NBA, it doesn't. And I always kind of think back to that Eddie Griffin trade of over 20 years ago with the Nets. 2001, Houston moved 13, 18, and 23 to take Eddie Griffin number seven. And when I think about that trade, I'm like, that's actually a rarity.

Richard Jefferson, Jason Collins, and the guard from Pepperdine. Brandon Armstrong. Brandon Armstrong. I have a great story about that pick. You want to give it to us? I was at the Bergen Record. Okay.

And I was a columnist at the Record. And I had covered a lot of Seton Hall that year. And I knew Eddie Griffin was a very talented player, but I knew he had a lot of issues. And Rod Thorne had just taken over as the Nets GM. And I remember sitting with Rod after his press conference, and he was talking about, I made a lot of mistakes in Chicago character-wise and putting players around Michael that I learned I am not going to build a team that way. I made mistakes in Chicago, and I'm going to do it very differently here.

And the Nets were coming off of some questionable guys. They had felt like they had to clean it up a little bit, a lot. And I didn't own a cell phone then. I don't know if everybody had them, but I didn't have one. And it was just different. Again, I wasn't an NBA. I was a general columnist. I wrote a lot about the nets

anyway so they draft eddie griffin seventh and i was like oh my god i write this column just ripping rod thorne and i just said this is everything rod said he wouldn't do i know eddie griffin's talented but he was in his backyard he knows the issues here like this is a real mistake this is is everything Rod Thornton said he wouldn't do. And all of a sudden, it was just, again, a different time. We get to later in the draft. I send the column into the paper. And all of a sudden, it was, we have a trade.

And I'm like, wait, what? And then Nets had traded the pick for the three guys. And I think Houston had taken Richard Jefferson, but now he was going to, yeah, Houston and however. Right, it was the three Houston picks, right, moving up to get in. And so, and I'm like, and I liked it. I thought Jefferson was a good pick. I think he'd averaged 13 points a game,

but people were high on him and stats didn't matter. He was young and on a really good Arizona team. And now it looked like a pretty good pick, at least having Jefferson. And so I remember I called the paper and I'm like, you cannot run this column. You got to kill this thing. You cannot run it. And they did. It was back then you would just plug. It was called a plug. You just put an ad in there. And then I wrote a new column for the second edition. Thankfully, the column never ran in first edition. And then the second edition, I wrote, hey, this was a great trade. This was smart. They got some depth here. Eddie Griffin, this is not. There's some concerns here.

And so I think Rod Thorne actually got criticized for it because people just saw Griffin's talent, especially around New York. He was the number one player in the country who went to Seton Hall. I remember going to his press conference at Roman Catholic in Philly when he announced for Seton Hall. It was huge. And the next morning, I think I went on the fan WFAN that night, talked about the trade. And the next morning, I remember Rod calling me again. It was on like a landline at home and said, hey, thanks for, basically, I appreciated you understanding what we did with the trade and being fairly supportive, something like that. Rod's a super nice guy.

And I said, Rod, if you saw what I wrote about you before I knew what the actual trade was, you wouldn't be called to thank me. And I remember he said, I'm not going to do my Rod Thorne impression, my West Virginia tang, but he said, Adrian, if I drafted Eddie Griffin, I would have ripped me too. And so, and I, listen, rest his soul. Eddie Griffin was a talented kid and certainly some issues. And I don't mean to make light of Eddie. But you're right. Those trades don't happen very much anymore.

No, they don't. And I'll never forget, you know, again, somebody who wasn't even in the media then. That was when I first thought, like, maybe I could work for a team. It was the Tate-George draft pick where I was like, what are they doing? That was when I was really young. And then Richard Jefferson, I liked him so much. I was like, why is he not going? And then, of course, you pair him with Jason Kidd and it's just, it's game on.

He was perfect. He was perfect to have him run along. But yeah, back to the point, like Houston packaging all of that stuff to move up. I think we play this game. I guess the thing is, it's a really hard thing to pull off because the team with the higher pick is always scared of what could come back to haunt them. But we don't know how to price it. I've never liked the value chart in the NFL because it doesn't make any sense to me. Each year, the picks are worth something different based on the talent of the draft.

So just to add up the numbers, I've always thought that was stupid. But in basketball, it's really hard to price it. I just wonder if some of these teams with all of this capital would decide to get really aggressive. I don't know if it's this year, next year's draft doesn't feel like it's the fit, but just going, hey, we can't. Although then other times I've been told that Oklahoma City's looking at like quarterbacks where just keep taking one until you get it right, where they may say it's not about packaging it for the next star that doesn't want to resign here. It's not about moving up and manipulating the draft. It's not about flipping the pick year to year Belichick style back in the day,

where it always felt like he had extra draft capital because he was always willing to move down. It might just be, let's just keep drafting guys and they'll fight it out. And that'll give us the best chance for a roster, but then it becomes a really difficult roster to pay for. Yeah. You look at teams like Utah this year, 9 and 16. Where could that get them to? Could it get them to 4? Probably not. 4, 5, 6? And if all of a sudden, hypothetically, let's say they love Kim Whitmore and he's there. Same with Oklahoma City. And those are teams, not just

two picks in this draft, but if you want to shuttle picks or other assets from future drafts, that's the great thing about having, when you have all these picks, you can try to overwhelm a team. Now, Oklahoma City wanted to do it with Evan Mobley a couple of years ago. And with Cleveland and Cleveland, they weren't trading out of there. Now trading out of the top three is a lot harder to do than when you're at five or six. And so, but even then you're right. It's still fairly rare. You're probably not going to see a team give up three first round picks to move up five or six, but those are really good organizations in Utah and OKC. And if they have

a belief in a player, if they are sold on a guy, you could see them trying to, but again, you're right. It's a little different than the NFL. You don't see it as much, but I know we'll, I think there'll be a lot of talk around all those picks are there some veteran players that let's say houston might look at and orlando might look at i think orlando again they could package and move up or they can just say we're going to just keep taking swings at guys here and orlando's is we don't talk enough about them they're putting themselves in position to be really really good and they've got another chance at free agents or at the draft here to get another impact guy potentially. And then, um, you know,

keep building around bank Carol now. Yeah. I think Orlando's in a really great spot. Cause they could say, okay, we just do the opposite with six and 11. You know, maybe we take one of the Thompson's and hope they figure it out. The athletic profile is certainly there. The passing and some of the playmaking, I think, separates them from just the sick athlete who, you know, isn't the greatest shooter right now, although Arsar is the better shooter of the two. And then maybe go safe at 11, you know, and just go, okay, yeah, we know we're getting a little crowded. That's the other thing too, is like some of these rosters, you're looking

at it going like, man, I like a lot of your players, but it is getting a little crowded here. But knowing the history of it, like there's a good chance six or 11 is a complete flame out and never gets an extension. So look at it that way. Like no one would no one want to say that to their owner going, we're likely going to get one of these completely wrong. But let's just let's just do total ceiling guy and let's go safe guy and see who wins or maybe both do. Yeah, right. And like, you know, as teams have these lottery picks and working out, you know, a player like Jarrett Culver is going in and working out for teams. He was the sixth pick in the draft not very long ago when he's trying to stay in the league, trying to get back in the league as a regular, you know, on a roster.

So there's a lot of risk, obviously. And you know you're not going to hit on all these guys and going to miss out a lot. That never changes. You know, it's interesting. I think coming out of the COVID years where scouting was limited, it'll be interesting to me to go back and look at kind of the couple years that were really impacted by COVID in terms of being able to get out and see

guys, bring them in for meeting, work out, bring them in for workouts and interviews, everything was Zoom. Will the different, will there be much of a difference on hits and misses versus years where you've been able to really get up close with guys? I'm, I'm kind of, especially the top part of the draft. I'll be curious when curious when Jonathan Gavone and those guys are doing studies on that in a few years.

Okay, last thing. I love the broadcast as far as the anticipation. It's seriously still my favorite day of the entire year, and we do our own thing here. And to watch you on the desk, and I can't even imagine the information you'd even get to. Like all of this stuff is flowing in, the stuff that could have happened that didn't. And I don't know how much of that you can share while also trying to get the pick on Twitter before everybody else does.

Does the mechanism of making sure you're getting the tweet out, does that take away from more that you could share with us on the broadcast? You know, I found it has, it's funny you asked that. It does. And it has. And going from Yahoo to ESPN and sort of seeing what the responsibility is on the broadcast and feeling like I probably, not probably I need to be more fully engaged in the show. I it's funny to ask that I'm not doing the picks this year. Now I'm now that doesn't mean yeah.

At the top of the draft, if all of a sudden something weird's happening at two or three, yes. If a team trades up, we were talking, right? Let's say a team with two or three picks trades up and somebody's moving out of four, five, six. Yeah, you say they're, hey, they're moving up because they're targeting Cam Whitmore or one of the Thompson twins, sure. But the pick-by-pick, I don't think it has value anymore for me or for ESPN. They've always let me do it. Since I came, I changed the verbiage to focused or targeting. Just couldn't say they're exactly taking him. Somebody had a funny line once. I don't know who it was i think i that there was like t you know tv woge was making believe he didn't know what twitter woge just tweeted

that you know somebody traded up and hey they're targeting colin sexton or whoever it was um it was some truth to that actually uh but you know it's fine i was talking to malika andrews about this who's hosting the draft again this year for us and And she's been awesome at it. She's doing it again this year, her second year. And we were talking about it. I ran it past her. And I think she agreed. And yeah, listen, I started this a long time ago. Whatever it says on my Twitter, when I started Twitter, it has the date you enter Twitter. It was the day I created the Twitter account, the day of the draft. I think it's 2009. And it was just, I had all this information on Yahoo that I was getting in real time.

And I'm like, by the time you put it up on the site, it's a vapor. And I said, Hey, Twitter, this is a place for it. Um, but I think now for me, it's important to stay on top of the trades and the movement and be able to do a little more storytelling of what's going on. Um, what's going on on the board in real time in the draft, instead of having my head buried, trying to get, you know,

New Orleans pick at 14, that obviously is going to be out momentarily on the show. So yeah, I'm not going to do it. I just, listen, you get a hundred and I don't know, four hour draft. Is it a four hour draft? You have 120 minutes minutes you got to decide what's the best use of that time and i think the best use of that time is not getting the pick out right before and you know what's funny too and i've learned this twitter's a little bit more of a mess now for some reason for various reasons the last year maybe it's as messier um as a site i guess but you're talking wait messy are you talking about the functionality you talk about yeah yeah it just feels like it's hard to tell you know you get you have your feed but what's in your feed is not what you've signed up for it just is a little

more of a confusing place in terms of what's appearing on your feed. And it's different than it was. But what also happens is, at least I found happens, is when you have a lot of followers on Twitter and you're... Listen, the more followers you have, the more retweets you get. It's just math. And so if you're tweeting like every two minutes, for me, my screen freezes up. It'll freeze up because

the amount of retweets just freezes. And so you're always sort of having to reset. You're doing it on the laptop. It's a little bit, the phone, it is a little slower typing on the phone. Anyway, there's just a lot of reasons to stay focused on the big stuff, which is the trades, the deals on the board, what did happen, what almost happened. I think that's a better use for me at this point. And so, yeah, I'm not going to tweet out the picks, pick by pick. Now, again, there might be some moments where there's some inflection points where you need to explain why someone's doing this but um yeah someone approached it a little differently yeah my two senses i want to hear the stuff that almost happened you know i love i love that there are times you can't do it

all the time you know i mean the amount of stuff that goes on that you're like oh this almost happened did you hear about this like if we all knew it it's the most entertaining stuff but there's also you know a line of journalism integrity you know like that you have to you can't be sharing everything just because you heard it uh but the stuff that you can share in the broadcast i do think that that's more interesting than at this point i think we're desensitized to oh the pick is out the pick is out you know i just it's it's not the same man it was unbelievable. It was like crack in the beginning.

You're like, I can't believe I'm getting this now. And I wonder if people will listen to this. I wonder if they'll believe you. Because I think there was always this feeling they were like, oh, does this mean ESPN finally got to him and got him to stop? Because the value of the broadcast is they have the pick. And if he's beating the broadcast and all this,

I mean, look, I know you. I know the deal. I would be shocked if you weren't allowed to kind of do what you want to do i just i wonder how many people are actually going to believe you after they hear you say this i mean i'm on my let's see i've been here will be my fifth draft at espn or my sixth this is my i've been here i came in 2017 j 1, so I didn't do that draft. So, yeah. Again, there was a little change. Again, the verbiage was a little different, but you got the point. I mean, if I put the name out ahead of a team who was about to draft,

whatever I said before the name didn't really matter. You knew I'm telling you this is what they're going to do. I get it. I understand people. They're allowed to believe and think what they like. But yeah, for me, I've got to make a decision, I think, based on... And I should have done it last year, the year before. And it's this kind of thing where people expect it.

And so you kind of keep doing it. But you've always... You know this, Ryan. These jobs evolve and your role evolves. And you've always got to be thinking, just because I've always done it, does that still make it the best thing to do? Is that what's right for me? Is that what's right for ESPN? And I can't honestly tell myself that it is. And again, there's just a better way to use my time and gather information and share it on the show than to be engulfed in just tweeting it out moments before, you know, sometimes it's a little further ahead. Sometimes it isn't. Um, sometimes you don't get it in time and you see the commissioner walking up to the

stage and you go, yeah, I just got it, but it's going to look, it's going to look, it may not land on Twitter until after he said it, then it looks like I took it off the stage and I don't want it to look like that because whatever. And you just, it's again, not a great, not my best use of time. Well, I appreciate your time on what I know is a busy week leading up to all this stuff. Looking forward to the draft and make sure you check out the Woj Pod,

a really good conversation with Wizards owner, Ted Leonsis, some good stuff in the most recent episode. So thanks as always, man. We'll catch up soon. Ryan, always a pleasure to be on with you, man. You want details bye i drive a ferrari 355 cabriolet 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 life advice get your emails in life advice rr at gmail.com we'll probably do a couple all life advice episodes so uh you know we'll start start sifting through there's a few left ryan's taking time off right yeah i hope so at some point i'm still trying to map out the plan your favorite try to line that up with bill so i could just fuck off it's rudy too well bill's taking five weeks off or something right yeah i don't the problem is i don't know that i well whatever do you want to talk about our vacation schedule hey that was the best part the woad stuff was good but when you guys started talking about yeah i feel like the most i could hope for you is two weeks and that seems like you'd be getting a little antsy.

But that'd be great. If you could find two weeks in Bill's four weeks. No, I have more time built up than that. It's just... Would you actually do it? That's the question. I just don't want the pod to go dark for a month. I just don't.

For me. No, we've been talking, Allison. I don't think I can. We've got some authors. I think we're going to do a little more book club stuff. We've got something we're brewing with one of those potential. We ask a bunch of guests a question and we piece that together. It's funny.

It's funny. The salespeople were asking me about your vacation schedule recently. And I was just like, I know he's probably going to take two weeks off somewhere, but I'm probably not going to find out until a week before. And he's like, oh, yeah, I just booked my trip to Mykonos. Two weeks, there you go. And it'll be on like five days notice. I'm like, guys, just be ready. This is what's going to happen. And it's fine. It is what it is, but we'll be ready. Yeah. The Switzerland one was like all time me. I was booked for France and then there was some COVID stuff that was happening where I was like, eh, I might get stuck in a town.

Seriously, I don't think it was clickbaity. If you go to Nice, be prepared to never leave. But it was weird. I think that was a Sunday and I was supposed to fly out Monday. I was like, I'm not doing it. They were like, you just planned this whole thing out. What are you doing? Plan is loose definition of the term plan with me. Then I got even more pissed after I canceled it. I was like, are you seriously going to do this? What the fuck?

Go somewhere. Then I looked. I was like, you know what? Switzerland, it's on. It looked like it was pretty laxed in comparison to some of the other places. I just booked an afternoon flight to uh zurch just burn yeah no no no no i did go to burn but no i you're right i flew into zerk um and that was its own covet adventure getting out of there because they were

like no wait you have to do this to do this to even get out and that was after i'd already been to lucerne i'd been to basel i went to burn i i trained through i mean it's so fucking awesome traveling through switzerland because you land at the airport and then you just go like which towns do i want to go to and you grab your bag and you're at the train it's so awesome and then as you're rolling through switzerland you kind of want to be like maybe i check out this town and play darts and have a couple of pints, you know? And then you're like, all right, but yeah. But then what? Yeah. Right. So I, I hit up the bigger cities and it was cool. Nothing was better than Luzerne. Uh, and Zurich, when I came back through the, it was so rainy and shitty. And then I had like one of those 3am, 4am wake up deals. So you're just like, all right, you know that

you're not going to do anything tonight and Sunday in Zurich is very it felt very traditional like the restaurants are open and stuff despite the weather but it was uh everything was closed every store everything was closed but it was still like in the weird how do I get out of here COVID thing and then when I went to the hotel I was like I've I had researched it to make sure I get the quick test. And they were like, no, no, you're outside of the window. You're outside of the window. You're not going to be able to leave. You're going to have to leave another day. And I was like, that's not going to happen. I'm like, I have to get out of here. And so you're taking it. I'm an American, damn it.

No. Right. But I had asked around. I kept asking, hey, have the requirements changed? What's going on? Because that's what traveling was like back then, especially internationally. And again, every place was different, which is why. But the funny thing about the first flight from LA to Zurich is that I actually got to LAX, the international terminal, and I stopped to get something to eat. And then I didn't realize how far the gate was. There's some gates that are so far away from like the main concourse area. And so they started calling my name.

And I'm like, uh-oh. And then I look on my phone and it's like, are you not an athlete? It's a 12-minute walk. And then the iPhone hasn't updated for athletes. And I was like, all right, it's not going to take me 12 minutes. for athletes and i was like all right it's not gonna take me 12 minutes and then uh i'm walking through i'm i'm not running because the least cool human beings have ever looked throughout time is running in an airport no one's ever looked cool doing it maybe oj but it's kind of tough to compliment him uh i i was actually like going you're not gonna make the flight like you're

minutes away from either going to switzerland or going back to your couch and i was actually like going, you're not going to make the flight. Like you're minutes away from either going to Switzerland or going back to your couch. And I was just like, whatever. Like maybe I'll go to Spain tomorrow instead. Like I was like, whatever. So yeah, to Rudy's point, it sort of sucks because I never quite know what I'm doing until the very last minute. And then honestly, on the way back, the whole Switzerland thing is just a money grab. The whole thing was a joke. It's like, well, no, if you want to get out of tomorrow, you have to do express testing.

What is that? Do I get an extra fucking Kleenex? Express testing is this, and this one is this, and then you're not going to be able to get through it. I showed up. The place was empty. Tested. Boom. Here's your thing.

You're good to go back on the flight. But yeah, wild times. Wild times back in the day. So two weeks, huh? We'll get two weeks? Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bounce. I won't be live, I would imagine, for multiple weeks, but we'll have shows banked, and then we'll see what happens.

Kyle, I think there's a killer behind you in the window. There's my whole family's on this porch, and they're just like, it's our favorite place to be. We don't care that you're working down here. My brother's shirtless walking around. I don't know. All right. Speaking of shirtless, did yoga.

They make you keep your shirt on for the one that I went to. I did not do hot yoga. I mentioned it briefly on Tuesday. And, yeah, I can't. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to go, you know, probably 10 times. I can't go next week. You bought a pass? Because we're doing the – I didn't buy a pass. Shout'm going to go probably 10 times. I can't go next week. You bought a pass?

I didn't buy a pass. Shout out to Soho Yoga, though, Hermosa Beach, right near the pier. Our instructor, Anastasia, great energy. I'm not just saying that in a yoga way. I think Richard Jefferson has a piece of that one. We're keeping it in the NBA family, too, on top of everything else.

I just said, fuck it. My back is just... After basketball, I'm I'm like you're not gonna peak out here this is how you're playing after two games and I just said all right enough of this I should have done it years ago I should have done it years ago and even after just one session I was walking around light as a feather 20 minutes later I've literally never seen you. I think you called me and you were just so pumped about life. And I'm like, this is like a new Ryan, like yoga. Ryan is, it's just like, he's relaxed. He's, he's fun. He's making, he's cracking jokes, but no, I mean, I love it for you because you know, it's one of those things where I know how good yoga is. My wife does yoga a lot and I'm just like really intimidated because I'm so not flexible that I don't want to go.

And I'm afraid to embarrass myself in front of these other people. But I do know that if you go, it's probably awesome. And it's really fucking good for you. So I'm happy for you, man. Yeah, maybe we're a yoga pod. We branch off into that. Is anybody doing yoga, health, wellness, and all that kind of stuff? Like mental health focus?

Is anybody in that space? Because that might be a lane to get into yeah content definitely uh especially on instagram yeah that's the thing is you walk in you you're you know none of us like going hey it's new i mean it sucks that we all have that hesitation about so many different things where it's like oh i want to do this but i kind of don't want it because i'm going to be terrible at it i mean i've done that plenty of times like i'm starting to golf again and the reason i didn't do it forever is because I knew I was going to suck forever. And then, you know,

I'm certainly frustrated with a couple of things, but I feel pretty good in the first couple of rounds out. But I'm like, that's it. I'm not going to watch these because I'll look, I'll look at some dudes and be like, this guy's a single handicap. Like, come on. All right. Like, just get out there and play. The surfing thing has definitely been the most frustrating thing. Surfing is

so fucking hard. Especially where I am. And I'm it's i thought i was going to be like a local legend at this stage of my life but i well now that your boys are kelly slater i mean you got an in to kind of well it's supposed to go up to that surf ranch but it just depends on when i'm taking the time off so okay all right so real quick were you were the only were you the only dude in there how many guys were in there uh it was two women uh two men and then female instructor it was great it was great for me honestly like i said what do you have that's beginner to beginner like i want intro to intro i want i want before the syllabus whatever the cover sheet is that's the level of yoga i want to be doing right special and i think she just said

like oh we have this new thing and i get like we were in it. I was reaching back, grabbing one leg, balancing on the other. I was sweating like a crazy person 15 minutes into it. My knees hurt so bad because they just were like on the ground. And then I even had a little tricep thing where I was like, whoa, what's going on? Like the tricep pretty good. Now they're getting burned out a bit. So maybe there's some muscle endurance issues there but it was very relaxing it you know if you can't if you don't know what to do or you're not nailing the move do a lesser version of whatever the instructor

is doing you know nobody's going hey dickhead humble your warrior better right nobody's nobody's saying that it's a very accepting place so yeah one session in i think i there's other reasons i called saruti other than just hey i mean i call you a lot buddy but i don't know that i was like hey i did yoga and it's the only thing i want to talk about so it was a big chunk of the conversation though and i was again i was not i was not mad about it i was very happy are you gonna are you gonna buy a namaste t-shirt maybe spiritual gangster that seems pretty cool yeah it's a good one I was very happy. Are you going to buy a Namaste t-shirt? Maybe Spiritual Gangster.

That seems pretty cool. Yeah, it's a good one. Not a lot of people have that. Get in early. You get to see people. That's great. I like it. Maybe go out for some kombucha later.

Yeah, I don't know if I'll make any yoga buddies. But yeah, it wasn't. I was definitely like, what am I rolling into? Where do I put my mat? What's the protocol with that? Like, is it six inches? You know, what's, what's the deal? Is it going to be Musquamish at beach where it's blanket touching blanket, you know, where there's just no extra space, you know, what's going on as far as the music, like how, and

I would say it didn't feel intro to me. It was hard. I sweat, but it was probably the best stretching that I've ever done in my life, which is saying something considering all the other shit that I've put my body through. So there's your yoga update. I love it. Anybody else in Kyle, I get your pass. I get you that for your wedding gift. You know, I'd probably, I mean, I'm still terrified with the golf thing. Like I I'm to the point where I haven't, I'm not even keeping score. I'm just picking up balls and dropping it. Cause you know, I see like a bunch of like old dudes just like with their hands on their hips. I'm like, I'm not going to be the one they're mad at. So, uh, I mean, I haven't even gotten to the point where I'm keeping score. I'm just keeping track of the balls. So, uh, I think yoga is something I could probably, you know, YouTube on the big TV and see if I can get a, uh get at least a basic grasp before I show up in a room full of folks. That's fair.

Yeah. And I don't know. Yoga pants, is that really all you do? Nobody's doing loose shorts, right? That could get crazy, right? If you got loose shorts, doing some of those. Yeah. You're probably going to need a compression.

You just showed up for Legends compressions or something? Yeah. I didn't go compression yoga deal i i wore some pants over the pants okay yeah this shouldn't be surprising though but a good man legging is actually an awesome it's it's very comfortable uh i've only got one pair but got some weird looks but it's it's fun i enjoy it throw a pair of shorts over those. I'll follow up with that. I'll start looking around. Chalamet checking in. Okay.

All right. Again, the email address here is lifeadvicer at gmail.com. Okay. This one, I think, yeah, whatever. Some of these have been covered, but we'll hit it again. 6'2", 195, 290 bench, 315 front squat, athleticism declining fast. Sounds like somebody needs some yoga. 39-year-old slow starter who overindulged in the bartending life throughout my 20s and early 30s before maturing into a successful legal career. All my friends have moved into the get married, have kids stage of life while I've remained a bachelor.

I've had several serious relationships over the years. It all ended with some sort of self-sabotage. I've always enjoyed the single life, but as I approach 40, I'm starting to look around and wonder whether I'm missing out. I never thought I'd stay single and I'm confident I could still find someone interested in that type of relationship,

but I'm not sure I'm cut out for it. On the other hand, I don't want to wait too long and risk missing out. Ryan, what is your perspective on this? Did you, do you experience these types of thoughts are they transient or should i expect them to continue love the pod uh i feel like i've covered some of this stuff before especially when we talked about like not being a parent all that

kind of stuff so i'm not going to do that again but i do think that we all kind of default to what we want and what we like. So yeah, like Van Lathan came over one night, we were watching football and he was looking at my place and he was kind of like laughing. And, uh, his, his girl was like,

when's the game over? You know, like that kind of stuff. And, and we were chuckling a bit and he's like, you don't ever deal with that, do you? And I was like,

yeah, I don't know. I think I just kind of landed on, I'd rather be alone than annoyed. And he was like, you need to trademark it that like trademark that. And I was like, whatever, you know? So whatever thoughts I have about my deal or anybody that's out there, I guess I ultimately still end up doing what I want to do. And I would ask anybody that's,

you know, entering their forties. and i'd say the good thing is it's like if you have friends that are already established that are married and whatever and it can get a little weird like yeah like when i go visit my buddies and stuff they've got all these kids like i get super into the kid thing i bring gifts i like want to hang out with them like i'll even watch them and then the couple like bounce they're like you sure you're good with this i'm like yeah i'm like actually kind of fired up to do it and then i you know i just i do really like kids and that kind of stuff but your friends are definitely going to be like oh he's filling that void by like coming over and being like super uncle you know and so well you could do whatever you want as long as you clock

out there's nothing like clocking out after a six hour kid shift and you're like all right good luck see you guys uh yeah your next birthday that's for you could you could be as into that as you want i love that i mean my buddy's kids i was like i mean i didn't do it but i was like i want to start like a bank account for them try to get them throw some college money when they're 18 but that's crazy but just only because i mean i like i love so much i'm like a you know one of those fake uncles but i mean but that's how jazz you can get when you know you can just clock out out. I didn't do that by the way. Don't, don't have that much extra floating around, but it's just, you start, you start to, you start to think of how, like, I see what you mean by getting so jazzed because when you, when you're, when the clock out is when you know,

you're done soon, it's, you know, you do some pretty cool shit. I think for anybody that's going through that, you have to be like like really really honest with yourself and ask yourself like why past relationships have led you to this point um for me it wasn't even so much about like oh that didn't work out that didn't work out so i'm gonna do this um you know some have argued i've become like like too awesome right like? Like, you know, like he's, he's got to make sure he picks the right person because he's such a catch. People are saying that.

Yeah. Now, there's, there's, there's been, it's just hard being so hot. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Have you seen his place and his arms? Like, you better be careful about who he picks

because, you know, sometimes, yeah, I would put the emphasis on sometimes. So, place and his arms like he better be careful about who he picks because you know sometimes yeah yeah i would put the emphasis on sometimes so uh i just i look here's the thing is is i don't know how long it kind of depends on how much you are in your own head i don't know that they go away. I don't know if there'll be this arc for a few years. I think it's on the person where you're going to start.

My guess would be if you're starting to think about it now, you're going to start thinking about it more. And then you're going to start doing the math in your head. And you're going to start thinking about stuff. And then you're going to be like, all right, how old? I remember Van Pelt one time. He was like, I just didn't want to be a hundred out back trying to throw a baseball. I was like, yeah, that's, that's actually, it can sound silly, but that's like a really good part of the math on all this.

And then I imagine it's, it's likely a circle of events where then you're just kind of like, all right, whatever. Like, this is, this is my deal. And what you have to probably ask yourself is like, what you're actually kind of like, all right, whatever. Like this is, this is my deal. And what you have to probably ask yourself is like what you're actually willing to do. Like, what is your relationship compromise? And for me, it always had to have been something where that other person has something that's so important to them that it, it fills the void of me not being about the relationship every single day and then ultimately a family and all that kind of stuff. So I think those are the things, you know, I don't know how honest we all can be about these things with

ourselves. And yeah, I'll admit like some days I'll be like, I'm serious, dude. And then I'm like, yeah, I guess I am. And then that's it. Like it's a fleeting thing in my head and then it's kind of gone. But if it starts to become obsessive, then maybe you give it another shot there. Um, it is a very, as I mentioned on the part of my take life advice thing that we did, kind of a special as PFT was honoring his father passing. So we did kind of an evergreen one with you tape weeks ago. You definitely have to ask yourself some really, really hard questions and you might be making a mistake. You know, you could be making a mistake. You, you, you can pretend you'll be able to predict

exactly how you'll feel at an older age, but it's going to be kind of hard until you're actually in the situation. If you're by yourself, you don't have a family and then everybody else is married and then you're like 50 something. And then you're okay what are you doing now like i already have my boat license so i don't even know what's next yeah yeah like i kind of pilot i've got the 50s covered i don't think the pilot thing uh i did one lesson and they fucked with me pretty good with it which i didn't love but i kind of did because it gave me like the full scope of it. I just, I don't know if I would ever actually be comfortable enough. Probably would be

if I did it enough. Like if I did 10 hours with somebody else. everybody that I know. Start hanging around the firehouse. Everybody loves a fireman. I think it would be

like a youth basketball coach in an underserved area of the country. Yeah. Perfect. Right. I think I would try to do something

where it was, you know, an area of the country yeah perfect right i think i would try to do something where it was you know uh an area of the country where kids are not given the resources that they need and just volunteer something like that but i don't know i mean i'm saying it and i might be like no you're just gonna watch wizards game does any girls listen to this podcast i mean come on no it just got better i'm kidding we don't we don't that. We don't need that. Okay. Anything else to add to that? I mean, I'm trying not to make that one a bummed out thing, but I'm just trying to throw the widest net at the topic in that really it's kind of up to you. But the thing you have to figure out is, am I doing what I actually prefer or am I taking too long to get in a situation that I'm actually going to like way

better that I'll look at my current situation and I'll be with somebody and be like oh my god I can't believe I did that and I think it's a really hard answer to be honest about with yourself yeah this was directed squarely at you so I'm not going to try to say all I know is you know a lot of folks are on their second marriage at 45 50 but just nothing I mean it's done it's not like wow that's weird they're getting married let me ask you guys like what do you think you would be like kyle if you were by yourself i don't know uh i'd probably be i probably have a lot more friends to stand out a lot later um i'd probably be awesome i think um you'd be more awesome i'd be more awesome yeah i think so well listen to kyle so party yeah the age the age gap between you and i we're answering two

completely different questions so i probably shouldn't even ask you and the same thing with saruti like you guys are so much younger than me that um like saruti did you think you would get married were you in your 20s being like i expect to be married and i want to have a family yeah i grew up in like a town so i i had a girl i dated a girl for like six years in high school into college and whoa it was weird because it was like the first it was like the first girl i ever you know was with that i really liked i thought i was in love and i was like oh this is it like we're good like 21 we'll get married i'm a couple kids but 25 like i don't know that's just kind of what you think about.

And that would have been a horrible decision. No, but I do think about it. So, like, I think we ended up, like, fully breaking up maybe my sophomore year of college. So, wait, we're talking 14 to 20? Yeah. On and off. On and off. And she didn't go to the same school as me so that that

kind of got complicated but honestly it we weren't even really that compatible great girl we just weren't compatible it's fine but it was your first experience so you didn't know that you weren't compatible yet and it's weird when you're young too you're like horrified to lose that comfort level with that other person man like i remember having one of those where i think i was 20 i was breaking up with somebody and i was like oh my god it's never going to be the same. I'm never going to be like, I'm never going to have this comfort level. And you're just too young to realize how stupid that is. So yeah, I remember just being like, all right, cool. Like I figured I'm going to get married. This is, this is what's going to happen. And you know, then I went to

college and I don't know, I just, you just kind of like, it's like an awakening, I guess, of, of, of things. And you know, we broke up. And then I started doing stuff career wise. I did some internships. I went to DC for a bit. Like I knew I wanted to get into sports kind of thing. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And my, and I look back now, I'm like, my life would be so different. Like I would not have, I would not have worked at ESPN. I wouldn't be here with you guys right now if this happened, because like, I would have just kind of settled down faster, but it took me a while to kind of figure that out. So kid would be 15. Yeah 15 yeah exactly i'd be like going to almost high school graduations here which is

incredibly strange um so i just say that to say like i you know things like periods in your life are very different you think that you want something and you don't now as you get older like obviously you have less time and you're like hey i've all my you know there's all this peer pressure and all your friends are are married, having kids. Then it's on YouTube. But at the end of the day, it's like what you said, like, what's going to make you happy? Are you going to be bummed for the rest of your life? Like, you know, I don't think you just get married to get married or find somebody. Just I wouldn't say that's a good call, because as Kyle said, that's probably how you end up in getting divorced in your 40s. But I don't know, like if it's a real if it's a real priority to you and you know that you're going to end up in getting divorced in your 40s. But I don't know.

Like if it's a real, if it's a real priority to you and you know that you're going to be bummed the rest of your life, if you don't find somebody, then, you know, get on the apps and start doing your thing. I'm sure you are doing that,

but I don't know. It's a difficult, it's a difficult question, I guess. Don't married friends always want to set you up to? Like if you got a bunch of married friends, aren't they like, I mean, I'm not sure if that's how,

I think there's something cool about meeting somebody that old fashioned. My married friends don't. Not on the apps? No, no, no. Well no well you're a little i'll meet a new couple and then the wife will be like wait like i have somebody for him and then the guy will be like don't don't now yeah trust me don't even bother it's basketball season don't do this let's wait till august i've said straight up i'm like i'm going to get in front of this and pre-favor you. I'm just going to do you the favor by not having you in three months

have you have to be on the call with your friend being like, what is this fucking guy's deal? So, you know what? I think there's one little small part to this that we've already spent a lot of time on this, but I think it's, you know, at least because there's a bunch of different ways

you can go with this. The finality of being older, of thinking like the next person you meet and it's like, all right, I guess this is it. Like it makes it, you can make it harder on yourself, harder than it certainly needs to be. Like what's wrong with, I don't know, dating and then figuring it out, you know, the way you do when you're younger, but whether it's the pressure you're putting on yourself, the pressure, maybe the other person would be putting on you, the collective pressure of the age and wondering, and then the clocks and all that kind of stuff where you can make the next relationship decision that you're about to enter. You can make it a way bigger deal than it needs to be. Um, and it is a little tougher than the age thing. Cause you know,

the people are going to be like, look, I'm not here to like waste time. You know, I'm not here to just fuck around like I was when I was a little bit younger. Start hanging out with 30-year-olds, right? That's the answer. Yeah, or you could do that. But like there's nothing wrong with just deciding like, hey, maybe I'll get in a relationship and I'll get the answer that it seems like you're seeking. Maybe you'll be in another relationship going, okay, I guess this really isn't for me. And that'll mean a different version of events

that are cool because of the freedom, but they're not all cool because you're going to miss out on a lot of the really cool shit in life. The selflessness of having a family and thinking about other people, which I think is another one of the benefits that's overlooked when parents are freaking out

about their kids driving them crazy the whole time. And then the teenage years where they all of a sudden decide that you're the worst. Or you could be like, I'm glad I did this. When you're older, you shouldn't go into these relationships with this idea that this is like the last stage of the video game. But unfortunately, I think we do that way too often. Well, the other thing too, I think is that, and this isn't directed at you specifically ryan but i have some friends who are you know in their late 30s 40s who are single and i think it's like they see the relationship with their friends and like you know a lot of them are like good marriages and relationships

right and so in their head they're always trying to look for the perfect person and every little flaw is then like oh i can't marry like they just start crossing people off and not to say that you should settle but like not every not every you know couple is perfect you know and i think you sometimes what is it good is the enemy or perfect is the enemy of good right i think sometimes like people get in their heads way too much about they i have to find the perfect person and that's just that's whether you're young or old that's not even always true so sometimes i is the enemy of good, right? I think sometimes people get in their heads way too much about, I have to find the perfect person. And that's just, whether you're young or old, that's not even always true.

So sometimes I think people get in their heads too much. So don't let that, I would just say, don't let that happen to you. Like, you know, obviously, the pressure is going to be there. The timeline is there. But just date people.

I don't know. If you really want to find somebody and you really want to find a long-term partner, then you have to take the first step. You got to start dating somebody. You got to find somebody. You got to put yourself out there. So do that.

Don't get in your head about the timeline of it. And I think things will kind of take care of themselves. Right. Or at least find the answer to the original question of like, how is this going to feel? Well, you're not going to know

unless you try it again. But as far as the other part, like, does it become, like, as you enter your 40s, you're going to start kind of thinking about it a little bit more. You just are.

Even if it's not your preference, you're going to start thinking about it a little bit more. But it also depends ons you're going to start kind of thinking about it a little bit more you just are even if it's not your preference you're going to start thinking about it a little bit more but it also depends on how you're wired and maybe it's fleeting and maybe you kind of cycle it out or maybe it gets worse and haunts you and you're going to be 55 or bertucci's so there you go nothing wrong again yes was i at bertucci's once when i saw this old guy eating by himself and it was super depressing yes i did and that's why I bring it up all the time. Alright, speaking of depressing, our guy followed up whose girlfriend dumped him but he's still living with the mom. We'll make it quick because

it's a follow-up. It's 100% real, unfortunately, because I'd be hanging everyone with a dropped lease. Her dad has already been on me about paying up. Oh, jeez. The dad is involved? Wait, why does he not live with them? Yeah, how about the dad gets involved? why is he why does he not live why does he not live with them yeah how about the dad because maybe the mom fucked him over yeah right and why does he care

why is this the second generation scheme uh he says caps but her dad doesn't know she's moving out either so it's all just built on lies at this point i probably let her walk all over me for too long so i think that's how i got in the situation. Thanks for admitting she's a shitty person who needs to get bleeped. LOL. It honestly helps to hear another opinion. The mom never liked me from day one has always been a bit of a, let's say, witch, but my ex

was never like her until all of this happened, but her complaints with me for context is that I wasn't as romantic as she'd like. Lack of pet names. Dude, just buy a thesaurus. Getting flowers. So once another guy started calling her pet

names and the flowers, she was out. Hey, happened to me once too. You know, everybody's like a really good partner when they're pursuing somebody. It's like heavyweight fighting, you know. When you have the belt, a little harder to keep it. Appreciate the read. By the way, she's taking all the dogs that I've had for six years with her also.

Travel light, my friend. I mean, whatever. Travel light. Yeah. This guy. This poor guy. They're his dogs that she's taking? Yeah, she's taking his dogs, too. You think you let her walk all over you a little bit, buddy? I mean, look, we're not trying to... I know what happened here because you referenced it in the first

one, right? She's hot. She is really hot to you. And what happens when you know that other person is like... When you think somebody's kind of at your level, you're yourself pretty quickly. It's like Mangini, right? Like Mangini was in his first head coaching job. He was... No, he was dating a hot girl, right? Because all of a sudden you're like, wait, what's this Mangini, right? Like Mangini was in his first head coaching job. He was,

no, he was dating a hot girl, right? Because all of a sudden you're like, wait, what's this Belichick impression? And I didn't like Mangini at all. And I didn't know him. I was like, this is a joke. You'd be kidding me. And then he got another job. I was like, why are you hiring this guy? The second I got to know Mangini, I was like, okay, not only is he awesome at the football stuff, he's like a really good dude. And I, once I got to know him, I completely liked him. But what Mangini did is what a lot of us do is that if we're dating somebody that we know is just way hotter than us, you Mangini it in the beginning. You pretend you're going to be something that you're not. And then it's like really stressful. And then you kind of expose yourself. And then that could be why it breaks up. Or it should be like, I can date somebody hotter than this dude.

But when you're with somebody who's kind of at your level, right? You're just yourself. Same thing with coaching. You're just yourself. And if you're yourself, it's a little bit easier. Break the other person in on your stuff. You don't have as much pressure on yourself because you're not at risk of losing it as much as you are with the person you think is completely out of your league. So I know what happened to you, man. It makes you feel better. She's attractive. For you, you had said it's kind of beyond what you'd done before. So you ended up doing stuff you wouldn't normally do. You weren't yourself.

And even that wasn't good enough. And so, look, the dog kidnapping on top of everything else, like just you got to remove yourself from this family dynamic as painless as you possibly can. And, you know, it's a bit like retail therapy, right? All of us can tell you what to do. Like I can tell you don't buy something to feel better, but i'm also not the one who gets to pick out the thing put it in the car order it check the tracking and then when it shows up you open it and there's this dopamine rush of like cool i bought a thing and more often than not a month later you're like why

did i buy that again but when somebody says says, don't do that, well, it's easy for them because they're not getting to experience all those levels of temporary pleasure. So for all of us to tell you, get out of there, get out of there, get out of there, there was something at one point that was worth it to you. What we're telling you is that it's going to be an item months from now that you're going to go, why did I do that? And it's hard for you to understand that at this point. It's hard to get out of the feeling, but like the quicker, I'm not saying go on Tinder today. I'm not saying like, fuck the world today. I'm just saying you have to extract yourself from this because eventually you'll get over it. Yeah. Get out, maybe get a gold chain.

Gold chain. That takes you. So I think Kyle's suggestion of hooking up with her mom seems to be off the table too. She doesn't. I don't remember saying that. I think you guys got that somehow. I said, move a guy in who would off the table too. I don't remember saying that. I think you guys got that somehow. I said move a guy in who would make the mom uncomfortable. Moving a guy who's down to sleep on the couch and be gross and just be like, wait till she's like, I can't do this. Okay, let's do a little lighter one here.

Facebook marketplace blunder. Greetings, gentlemen. I'm in the process of selling my house and decided to offload 300 bricks that I had in my garage to avoid moving them. I think that sounds like a great idea instead of moving 300 bricks to the next place. I listed them on Marketplace and instantly had multiple offers. Ultimately, I sold them for $50 to a guy who lives 35 minutes from me.

He showed up in a minivan and began helping him load the bricks. It became evident during the loading process that this minivan might not be up for the challenge. His back bumper grew closer and closer to my driveway. As we were wrapping up, I felt a pit in my stomach. There's no way this guy was going to make it home. I asked him if he'd prefer to make two trips, but he declined. He said, I'll be good, bro. Don't worry about me.

Here's my question. Did I do a bad thing? Should I have insisted on him making two trips? Should I have followed him home to make sure he was safe? I attacked some pictures and a video showing this guy leaving my house. All right. First, for the audience, these bricks are terrific. Really nice patio bricks.

Probably not even outside, right? They're probably inside a garage or something. Yeah. Dry, cool area here. This is a nice set of patio bricks. And that's why you had multiple offers at 50 bucks. As somebody who's been known to have to just haul shit, especially when your dad is like, don't worry about it. The number of don't worry about it that I've had in my life as a kid, like we had pressure treated like two by sixes out the

back of our F-150. and he actually would have me sit on the ends of them in the truck bed if it felt like they were a little loose yes that feels like medieval warfare but you know we'd put a spare tire on it i'd sit on the spare tire and then you know we didn't even afford he couldn't even afford the slider on the back that was back in the day when the slider was like a big upgrade. And he'd just go like, are you good back there, Ry? And I'd be like, yeah, no problem. Hanging on.

Fine. As the two by sixes are flopping all over the place from the lumberyard to the job site. So people, a guy that is willing to drive a minivan to your place to load up 300 patio bricks and know that he scored it for 50 bucks. And I'm not saying you underpriced it. You did as you get the multiple offers, but you avoided this headache. This guy's been loading shit and moving stuff around for a good chunk of his life. So, yeah, I'm sure it looked really dangerous. And apparently there's another email following up to his own email saying he followed up with the brick guy and the brick guy he was like hey did you make it home and the guy never got back

in touch with him so now he's even more concerned with it he said he started looking up traffic incidents between his point where that guy was coming from i think you're worrying about it way much guys that buy used bricks know the game and their their risk aversion like they will put anything in anything just to make it work right yeah yeah they they'll do whatever it takes to do the job in one trip these guys don't know about second trips they don't to them that is like i'll retire from the game of hauling shit, especially used shit, if I have to do it a second time. One trip is everything. Their whole life revolves around, their mission statement would be,

I can do it in one trip, no matter what it is. So don't feel guilty. He may have fucked his van up. The van's probably already fucked up. I was going to say, it has to be like a i could just picture like a 2004 chrysler town and country the thing is just seen astro shit and like it's it's i'm not worried about bricks in that van we got a good six months out of this thing and uh and then we'll figure it out yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't tell anybody who you're selling something to. I wouldn't make a statement like,

I'm only giving you half these bricks. I wouldn't do that. Yeah, you need the whole box. To anything I'm selling. To anything I'm selling. Selling you stuff online, man. You're already rolling the dice. That might just set the guy up like,

who are you to tell me? I wouldn't do that. Right. He may come back, looked around and see if there's any more bricks. Yeah. You might check out your garage. Yeah. Just poke around.

I sold some monster tires and the guy used monster tires without the rims. And I think did a thing online. And this is like I was 21 or 22 and the people that showed up to buy those used tires and the shit that they were trying to pull like you know I was like look it's firm here's the price it's a good price they were bald as hell I don't even know if they're going to pass inspection anymore but again these are you know, expensive RC car type tires for like a real truck. So to get four of those at like 50 bucks is still a decent deal because I don't know what the hell a guy was going to do with it. I mean, half the town's Vermont. I don't even know how often those cars are even street legal to begin with.

But that was my first experience with it where I was like, whoa. begin with but uh what that was my first experience with it where i was like whoa because you had to be wired a certain way to be like wait four heavily used monster truck tires for sale for 50 bucks let's get over there wait we gotta get to his house right now we don't have time right my roommates are like wait what's the deal and of course like you know you live with you live with whether six of us there's going to be some guys that completely understood it and then there's going to be some other uptight dude usually yeah oh we're just gonna have strangers show up to our house dude yeah go tires i'm like dude what do you think's gonna happen you think we're gonna get robbed

like we're not getting fucking robbed maybe tires are out front yeah maybe later but you're not gonna want to rob anything from that house when i was uh when i was between jobs uh after i left left esbn and then the thing with scowl and whatever didn't work out i had like a summer where i just you know i just didn't have a lot going on so my dad was like why don't you just like put a put a patio on back i got all these bricks and like he kept the bricks from their old patio and whatever so i was like all right cool like i'll pick them up and And I was like, yeah, I'll just bring my Jeep. It's fine. And my dad, my dad is a plumbing, heating, air conditioning guy, like knows his shit, but he's also has access to all these trucks. And I was like, yeah, I'll just

bring my Jeep over to be fine. He's like, no, like idiot. Like, and we're getting the rack body truck. So we got this like huge, huge rack body truck just to, I mean, it's only probably 12 by 10. It's not even that big. Uh, probably can't. I don't know if that fit in a minivan or not, but the notion of me putting that in my actual car, he was like, you're an idiot. That's not what we're going to do. So I don't know. Maybe this guy's just built different,

but he definitely fucked his car up. Sounds like we got a little one-trip Steve here. Yeah. Like I said, I moved myself out of college with that rack body truck. I'm not afraid to load some stuff up, but I just figured I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal.

I'm like, yeah, it's a Jeep. I just pay first, whatever. It's fine. It was apparently a very stupid decision by me. Okay, there you go. We covered a lot. Bricks, relationships, and yoga. That's Life Advice. Again, lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Thanks to Kyle. Thanks to Steve.

Next week, live show, Gramercy Theater, New York City. So I think we're still a little like on the fence about what we're going to do because then on Thursday, we're going to be doing like three or four different draft pods pre, during, post.

So that means I'm not, we're definitely not going to have a Thursday episode, but we're going to figure out how we're going to like do the Tuesday thing with a very, very special guest for the live show. And I promise the live show episodes, normally

they're not everybody's favorite, but we're going to do something that will make it worth it. So there you go. Alright, please subscribe. Ryan Russell Podcast for English Podcast. Outro Music you