The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Worst Future NFL Franchises, Lakers Guard Austin Reaves, Plus Author Michael Wolff on Covering the Notorious

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts on the five worst franchises in the NFL (0:40) before he talks with Lakers guard Austin Reaves about his basketball journey, learning from LeBron James and Russell Westbrook, his game-winner vs. the Mavericks, and more (17:21). Then Ryen chats with journalist and author Michael Wolff about his new book, 'Too Famous: The Rich, the Powerful, the Wishful, the Damned, the Notorious—Twenty Years of Columns, Essays and Reporting,' about covering Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and Jeffrey Epstein, about his book 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,' and more (40:02). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:02:42) Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Austin Reaves and Michael Wolff Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Press Box is here to catch you up on the latest media stories. Hosted by Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker, these guys have the insight on the biggest stories you care about. Check out The Press Box on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We've got a fun podcast today, a little different. NFL, bottom five franchises moving forward, we'll do that. We've got a fun podcast today. A little different. NFL. Bottom five franchises moving forward. We'll do that.

Austin Reeves. Lakers breakout story. And author Michael Wolff, who profiles some of the most ruthless people in America. And life advice. Today's open is a little more detailed. And shout out to Sarutiuti who's just terrific with the ideas and what i love about saruti planting the seeds for ideas for opens and different stuff

we do on the podcast back to the radio show days is he can give me 10 ideas i can ignore 10 and i know i'm getting an 11th so um we've had a few that we've kind of kicked around and we haven't executed but this one's really good so as we're ending up on this 2021 nfl season i want to ask a simple question what are the worst five franchises to be right now? I mean, that's it. You can go ownership, you can go roster, you can go staffing, you can do all these different things. And I reached out to a couple different NFL sources over this.

So basically, the premise is what's the rooty? We're looking at the 32 teams and going, which are the five? And maybe we'll throw in a six there. As it stands right now, moving forward the next two or three years which are the five or worse six positioned nfl franchises is that fair is that basically what we're doing i think right now there are six teams definitely five maybe six that are clearly the

basement of the nfl and i was just kind of interested because i i work on the new york podcast with johnny stremski and the idea came from Giants fans like they have, I think, the second worst record in the entire league over the last three years. I think the Jets are the only team that's worse, which is sick for New York. And, you know, they think that their ownership is a disaster. They think their team is a disaster. And basically, they think that they are the most hopeless situation in the league right now. At least you can say the Jets are. They have Zach Wilson.

Like, they're sort of building the Jets. The Giants, like, where are you guys going? The quarterback isn't good. Roster's not good. The GM and the head coach, nobody likes. So my thought was, what is that bottom group of teams? And what are the teams that are the most likely to get out of that in the next couple years? All right. Well said.

All right. So let's go over win-loss records the last five years, because it's the five-year stretch here. The Jets are the worst at 22 and 58. The Giants are only a game better. So the worst two records in the NFL over the last five years are the Jets and then the Giants. Third worst record is Jacksonville. Fourth is Detroit. Fifth is actually Cincinnati. But I think for the purposes of where they're positioned now with their roster and what we all think of Joe Burrow, they're just not in the discussion, although historically Cincinnati would usually be in this conversation

because of ownership. But talking, and I'll get some of the source stuff here as well, because I talked to two national NFL people and then also a draft person, not Todd McShay. I wanted to kind of back up some of the PFF roster stuff because they did a roster ranking stuff right before the season started. So again, one loss record, Jets,, worst Giants, Jacksonville, then Detroit, then Cincinnati, Washington seventh, and a team that was brought up not only by my own observations here, Saruti, but also by the people we talked to Houston, Houston, actually, because they had a better

record with Bill O'Brien and people realize they're only the 11th worst record, but I think they make a strong argument for sort of the directionless place that franchise is right now. If you look at roster rankings, right? PFF ranked Houston's roster the worst out of all 32 teams this summer. They had Detroit 31st, the Jets 30th, Philly was 29th, and Jalen Hurts is,

you know, he's putting up some numbers now, and I'm not going just off the Washington stuff. There's numbers that you can sort and Jalen Hurts shines in some of that stuff. A lot of credit too to how they figured out a better way to work with him. Jacksonville has the fifth worst roster based on PFF. Then it's Carolina, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Cincinnati, which is higher now because of who Burrow is. Chicago's 23rd because Chicago got some mention.

They have the Giants as the 19th best roster. I don't even think PFF would think that that's accurate now as we're through 2021. I just, I don't. So I'm not calling them out for that. It's just what they are. Draft analyst, I asked him, I said, all right, give me the five worst rosters in the NFL as of right now, which again, it's December versus when PFF did these things in the summer.

He had in no order the Lions, Jacksonville, both New York teams again, Giants and Jets, and he threw the Bears in there. I asked, here's one national writer. I said, all right, give me your five worst situations projecting out the next two or three years, who would you not want to be?

He put the Jets, the Giants, Detroit, Jacksonville, Houston, and he said potentially even the Washington football team. And then one other piece that we have on this, another senior writer, he put in Houston, Washington, both New York teams again, and then Denver. If you don't know the Denver ownership situation, it's a mess. For whatever reason, it hasn't been a big national story. It's a huge story in Denver. There's a trustee named Joe Ellis who's been with the franchise, I think, almost 40 years.

And when Pat Bolin died, he was kind of left to oversee the trust. There are children from two different women with Pat Boland. He got married again, so whatever. And then John Elway. It feels like the Elway-Ellis combination has really just benefited from this for a long time. It's not ideal. There's just

no way I can put the Denver Broncos in the five worst. I don't feel that way. So we can get to a bunch of different things here. Here's what's a constant. It's both New York teams. Jacksonville is brought up by two of the three guys.

The Bears are worth discussion. Let me just, before we kind of come up with what we think the final list should be, because there's still some other thoughts I have on this. Where did you lean, Saruti? What do you think some of the arguments here is if we try to whittle this down to five or six? I think you have to look at obviously the last couple of years, and that's where the

Jets and the Giants just dominate everybody else from a record standpoint. And then I look at, you know, because the ownership thing I don't know as much about, right? We can lean on our like insiders and our draft guys about like you know what how easy it is to like get decisions and and turn a franchise around how how bad an owner is and how much they meddle and things like that i don't know about that i'm looking at like cap space i'm looking at what division they're in i'm looking at their quarterback situations and that's sort of how i determine my list so like i'd actually probably have the jags like i think the jags

could be a great job. And I think you could probably turn that thing around. Now, I don't know. Again, ShotKhan, I don't know anything about him. I know that he owns Fulham. I know he does all elite wrestling. And those things have been somewhat successful. And the Jaguars have been a disaster.

So I look at a team like Jacksonville and go, just on paper, with the cap space they have, the draft, they might have the number one draft pick coming up, and Trevor Lawrence. I'd want that job. If I'm a GM or head coach, i could turn this thing around kind of fast all right it's a really good point because you can make an argument that you would have you'd rather have trevor lawrence and jacksonville you'd rather be them you'd rather be them positioned as bad as it is right now getting the number one pick the cap space thing i would i would argue is kind of irrelevant um the division thing can be cyclical i don't think it's necessarily the same as like the sec west and go in there with alabama there because i also think with the nfl cap like if you The division thing can be cyclical. I don't think it's necessarily the same as the SEC West

and going there with Alabama there. Because I also think with the NFL cap, if you want to get creative, you can get creative. It's just not the same way. Whereas an NBA team, if you go, there's two really bad contracts, and this guy's hurt all the time and doesn't even play, that can delay everything you're doing.

But with the quarterback part of it, you can make the argument you'd rather have Jacksonville's situation over the Jets, over the Giants, certainly over Houston, over Washington. If you were the Bears, would you take Trevor Lawrence and Jacksonville's roster and switch it out? Maybe not. I mean, there's still some defensive talent on Chicago's team. I think I would. I mean, listen, this isn't an anti-Justin Fields thing, but I don't take anything that happened this year with Trevor. For Trevor Lawrence, I don't think he's going to be any worse or better.

I think that was a disaster. Urban Meyer clearly wasn't up for the job. They didn't respect him. It is what it is. So I think next year, it's almost like a gap year, and they're starting over again. And I think Lawrence has the higher upside than a Justin Fields does. I feel better about the Bears than I do about the Jets,

even though both of them have their quote-unquote quarterback of the future because I feel better about Fields than I do about the Jets developing a guy like Zach Wilson. But if I just could take Trevor Lawrence on a bad roster and start from scratch, I would do that. Yeah, I think the other thing with Cod is that when I ask people about him, it's not that his track record here has been bad, but he actually wants to win and he's going to spend the money. And so the Urban Meyer thing reminds me a little bit with Dolan and the Knicks, although Dolan's had far more years to be open for criticism. Um, and, and a lot of the

other stuff that he did prior and Phil Jackson, you know, one of the weird things about hiring that big name is, am I getting you, am I getting you, or am I getting you at the end of your career and you want the huge check when Phil Jackson didn't want to do the job over and over and over again until Dolan was like, no, I can't. I can't stop paying your money. I always laugh at Cowherd. I go, whatever your last deal is, I don't want to sign that one. Because I go, you'll be just mailing it in. You're going to have a place in Hawaii. I'm just kidding. I'm messing with Cowherd. But there is a tendency with people with huge resumes when they think they're done and they get one more massive check and they go all right i'll do this for a little while and i

don't know if that's what happened with urban or he just didn't understand the nfl part of it but in a vacuum if you're a shot con and you've gotten it wrong a bunch of different ways you go hey why not just hire a guy who's won every single place he's gone and understands football i'll bring in Urban Meyer and then you don't realize that there's a complete disconnect from the NFL side of it and you've got to hit the eject button on that not even a year into it. So people argued that is even though it was a mistake that Khan and Jacksonville are clearly motivated enough. The problem is like when I look at a Giants team or you can even put Chicago and Denver in this.

Look at a Giants team, or you can even put Chicago and Denver in this. This is my other Alabama analogy. When Alabama's bad at football, it drives them crazy. When Ole Miss is bad at football, it's like, eh, it's still a pretty good time down here. There's just a different standard that you kind of hold yourself to based on your own history. So when I see the Giants get thrown into this, I go, so, all right, the last three coaches are McAdoo, Schirmer

and Joe Judge I don't know what to do with Joe Judge I'd rather have Zach Wilson than Daniel Jones only because I think all of us would go we're still not 100% sure if Zach Wilson isn't any good it's just less time in the league and there's still more hope based on just

a guy being in the league less which is probably a flawed argument but that's how we all work and that's why people would probably prefer wilson over jones but i'd rather have giants ownership over jets ownership i'd rather have the jets coach in front office structure more than the giants coach in front office structure because i asked the draft guy i said hey give me give me the worst front offices in the league and he was like giants and uh everybody nobody likes gettleman yeah right nobody likes gettleman and then the I said, hey, give me the worst front offices in the league. And he was like, Giants. Nobody likes Gettleman. Right, nobody likes Gettleman.

And then the Raiders, but I think the Raiders thing is TBD at this point because Mayock was basically doing what Gruden wanted anyway. So now, you know, I don't know how the structure of that works. So one last thing on the Mera ownership with the Giants. Okay, it's been a bad run. They've got the coaches wrong. Gettleman hasn't done a good job drafting. We don't like this roster necessarily. But what if the Steelers had a bad run for three years?

Maybe they're going to be facing it, even though we all like Tomlin and Roethlisberger, they don't figure out the quarterback thing. Are we all going to suddenly say the Roonies are bad? No. And the Giants at least have a lot of history through this family where they've gotten it right. So I have a hard time putting Giants ownership as low as hell, Washington or Houston or the Jets. Giants, you may not like the product and this record's really bad the last five years and the hope doesn't feel all that great. But I wouldn't start putting that ownership down with some of these other ownerships that we think have, I would argue, have given us far more evidence. They can never figure it out.

So the other thing I'd say about the Jets and Giants is, you know, I think I would still rather be the Giants if I'm if I'm like buying stock in or if I'm taking over one of these teams, because you have to look at history. The Jets do not develop like guys like Zach Wilson, right? You have Mark Sanchez. There's a bunch of quarterbacks and players that have like history have shown us that the Jets and it transcends ownership. I'm sorry.

It transcends coaches. It transcends GM's personnel. I mean, ownership, I guess, has been there and stable, but like they just can't figure it out typically. I mean, other than like the Rex Ryan years when he kind of had the defense going and they didn't have great quarterback play. They just haven't been able to develop that guy. Whereas the Giants, I go, okay,

you probably know that Daniel Jones isn't the guy, but you're probably still a pretty high landing, like a desirable landing spot for a veteran quarterback, say Russell Wilson, if you want to pull the trigger on that. So I actually give them a little bit more hope. And I don't think their roster is good. I don't think they have a ton of talent. I think they spent a lot of money this offseason on some weapons to kind of make or break Daniel Jones' year.

But if Russell Wilson was like, hey, Ciara and I want to come and play in New York, he's going to want to play for the Giants, not the Jets. I would think so. Let's try to come to a consensus on this. And by the way, we haven't mentioned Detroit. Detroit got mentioned by two of the three guys. And, you know, nice win against Arizona, but this is not the exercise. Like, oh, you can't do that.

Detroit needs to be mentioned here just because the run has been this terrible. I think it's the Jets, and this isn't in order. I think it's Jets. I think Jacksonville's still in there because we just haven't seen enough success from them. Other than that one weird stretch where they probably should have been in the Super Bowl, the front office did a really good job

at that time putting that defense together. There was like five or six dudes on that team that were awesome defensively. You had the weird kind of Blake Bortles, is this guy going to be a guy year? And then it didn't really work out. And then it's just dismantled because I think a lot of the guys on that defense kind of had their own plans anyway and didn't want to be down there. So Jacksonville still has to be included in here. But Houston definitely has to be.

And honestly, the Washington football team ownership, do a worse job. Is it even possible to do a worse job than him? And you don't have a quarterback situation. I like their front seven like everybody else, but if it's six teams, it's Jets, it's Jacksonville, it's Houston, it's Giants, it's Washington, it's Detroit. Do you have any disagreement?

Is it that the bottom six? Am I leaving somebody out? The Bears can't be mentioned in that, right? The Bears made the playoffs. What was it, two years ago? Was it last year, two years ago? I know it's not great, but I wouldn't put the Bears in there. They're transitioning this offseason anyway.

I get the Cincinnati one, too, because everyone says that the ownership isn't awesome, but they've actually had some nasty teams over the last couple of years. Yeah, they haven't won anything, but the Carson Pond, the Carson Borrow years with that defense, Borrow now. I kind of like, I don't know. I like that. And that's what I always think. Like the ownership situation, like the Giants, everything's the Giants have terrible owners, but they did win two Super Bowls. But sometimes bad owners also have good teams.

Like Jim Irsay, would you say he's a great owner? And I feel like they've actually been okay the last couple of years. And the way they have put their structure together and built that roster out. Plus, you know, the Peyton Manning years were obviously great. So I don't know. Sometimes I think the ownership stuff and how much that bogs an organization down, I think you can overcome that.

But I think of all those bottom tier teams, I would want to be the Jaguars the most. Yeah, I think the Jaguars because of the Lawrence situation, you would take that over the other ones that we're talking about. But I still don't think you can go 5-6 deep without mentioning Jacksonville. All right, sound off, man.

Let us know how you feel. Probably not read any of the comments. Football wouldn't be the game we all know and love without a few surprises. And was there a bigger surprise, not just in Week 15, but this season with the Arizona Cardinals going into Detroit and losing to the Lions? Now, to be fair, the Lions have been far more competitive than their record would indicate. And I think on the other side of Arizona, they're starting to hit that stretch where it doesn't quite look the same. Teams have injuries, but when you have injuries to your quarterback, Kyler Murray, and one of the best wide receivers in the NFL, DeAndre Hopkins, being out until potentially the playoffs. That is challenging. But you still think Arizona goes in there as a big favorite against Detroit and pulls this off.

And they don't. And honestly, it was Detroit all the way. It was close early when they kicked it off. It was 0-0. But that's not the final score because Detroit pulls this one out. And man, Campbell, Dan Campbell, the head coach. I think somebody, all of us, when we see the videos go, you know what? All of us, when we see the videos, go, you know what?

And it feels like an outdated way to coach to be basically a Neanderthal in the best possible way. That's a compliment. But that's kind of an outdated thing. We don't like, even though it's weird, like football has done business a certain way and there's still a football part of football that has to always be there because we're talking about men running out of a tunnel and running into each other for over three straight hours. And sometimes that has to be about aggression.

And Dan Campbell buys in to aggression. He buys it by the scoop. And I like to see that kind of get rewarded because it's very clear for the 53 guys that suit up every Sunday that are in that locker room and after that kind of win that they care about their coach because they know that their coach cares about him. So maybe it's not as surprising that Detroit still fights,

but certainly a big surprise that they would beat the Arizona Cardinals. Since we're talking about all things surprisingly great, we've got to shout out all the good neighbors at State Farm for offering surprisingly great rates. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Get a quote today. This is going to be fun. We've got Austin Reeves of the Los angeles lakers joining us and you may have

seen mirren fader's terrific profile on him on the ringer and let's start there what's it like austin like there's a bunch of stuff i want to talk about with you this season and get real minutes and closing minutes on top of everything else i was watching the dallas game it's just been fun to kind of see your story but uh how does the how does the process work when somebody from like lakers pr goes or maybe it's an agent says uh someone wants to do a profile on you and make it a big deal what was that like yeah i mean it was it was crazy because i mean you you've got all these guys on our team uh guys that have been in the league for i mean 15 plus years and then they come to me and was like, oh, they want to do a story on you.

So it was weird, but it's like, I mean, that's good. I mean, I don't know if there's such thing as bad press, getting your name out there. So it was good. And Mirren is a fantastic, great person. And I feel like she wrote a really good piece. Yeah, she did. I mean, she's like on a roll here you know yannis mvp in the book and now austin reeves so let's talk about your little town in newark arkansas uh where this all started what's that town like

oh it's just a regular country town uh in the middle of nowhere uh populations uh 1100 1200 um my graduating class was 50. uh so literally everybody knows everybody uh everybody either farms or um usually stays around the town to work but it's very simple um one thing I really look back and love now is that there's no traffic. The traffic out here in LA is something else. But like I said, it's very simple. It's a good place to grow up. Do you like it in LA? I do.

I mean, I love the weather. I'll take the weather any day if I can get a hoodie on and sweat I'm good like I said the traffic is ridiculous but yeah I mean other than that

I think you can't really beat it is it true that you were freaked out by apartments that cost a thousand bucks for one bedroom because that's what it says in the profile like have you adapted now to los angeles real estate yet i mean i i don't know if i've adapted to it but i've kind of accepted it it's not going to change uh it's just the the market's so different uh here than back home. Back home, you can get a place I'm staying now.

A lot less than I got it now. Let's go from Oklahoma to the pre-draft process to figuring out where you were at. What did you think was going to happen after Oklahoma? I didn't really know. I was just on the fly, putting in work and hoping for the best and hoping for an opportunity

to be able to prove myself. It's kind of how, I mean, basically my whole life and basketballs went. High school, didn't know if I'd play Division I, but really just put in the work and hoped for an opportunity. And then there, so on, and got the opportunity here and trying to make the best of it. What was that first Lakers experience? First time on the court, practice jerseys, lacing them up with Hall of Famers all around you.

What was that day like? Put us back to that day. It was probably when we went to the mini camp in Vegas that LeBron was on. Most of everybody that was there, I think the first day, Doe wasn't there and AD just

I think recently got married. He wasn't there. That would have been the first time. It's crazy because there was no practice jerseys or anything. It was literally like all team or all player driven. But it was the first time that I was taking the court with those types of guys. With Braum, Melo, Russ. So it was like a surreal moment. I remember we was just running through actions.

We didn't do much playing, but we was just running through action and Brian threw a skip pass from one of the wings to me in the corner. And I was just sitting there thinking the whole time was coming, like, what the hell is going on? I'm really in a gym with six Hall of famers or every time five um and 10 guys that have been in the league for 12 plus years at that point were you a camp invite like did you know your contract status at that point or was that solidified or still kind of uncertain at that point i was still on my two-way you're right yeah so um and then they had told uh me and

which is with uh Washington's G League team right now on a two-way uh that we were invited like two days before it started so we got a plane ticket to get out there as quick as we could all right so you make the team i mean there has to be look um you know i've you've been playing basketball your whole life you get some of those dynamics i've been watching this game for a long long time there had to be a moment of like who the fuck is this guy to oh wait a minute we might have something here like give me the beginning to when it got to the point where it's like, oh, whoa, there's a little something here. Because shit, I'll admit it, when I watched you in the beginning of the season,

I was like, man, he's getting minutes with them. And then I'd go, wait, I think he's one of their better options. So give me the noticeable doubt to the acceptance. I don't know if there was just one situation. I think it'd come over time in practice, in playing and practice. It was just situations where, I mean,

I really didn't care who I was guarding or what was going on or who was on the court at the time. I mean, I would just play as hard as I possibly could and try to do the right things at all times and be someone that's a sponge and that, I mean, can take someone giving me criticism and really just take the message out of it and get better. And I feel like they've seen that that's all I'm trying to do,

is get better and do the right things to help our team. So I think it was just constantly doing those things over and over again throughout preseason really built their trust in me me have you had buddies come out to visit like did you have to tell guys like don't like not yet not yet because if i were your friend from high school or whatever i mean you'd have a hard time getting rid of me man well no um most of my friends work which uh they can't really just take off. But my mom's been up here two separate times. She's actually coming back at the end of this month.

And also a couple of my friends are coming as well. So we'll see how that goes if they end up wanting to leave at the end of their stay. Okay. I know, look, you're a younger guy you don't you don't want to get in trouble here but there's got to be some lebron stuff or even a russell westbrook like give me give me the story where you tell your buddies about like oh westbrook said this to me or lebron said this to me like the stuff that just kind of like you can't believe that this is actually happening to you i'm not asking for something critical i'm not i'm not doing that but i mean

like help us like share a little bit of what that relationship is like and how it's grown and kind of like maybe the moment where you called one of your buddies from high school like dude i gotta tell you something that happened today yeah i mean the one that stands out to me for russ and it was like it was even basketball related uh we was in Sacramento for a preseason game and I went like one for eight from three like two for nine from the field or something had a good game I just didn't shoot it well and in the locker room he comes up to me and was like way to shoot it. And I'm sitting there thinking, like, what? Like, I shot literally, like, 20% from the field.

And he was like, no, I don't care. Like, I'm just happy you shot it. And I was like, oh, well, that's kind of cool. I mean, I got one of the best assist fans to ever play the game telling me he don't really care about me missing or making. He just wants me to take the shot when it's open. So, I mean, it's just things like that, both of them.

I remember Brian come to me in a game, a regular season game, and basically said the same thing because I missed like two or three in a row. And he was like, look, you're open. I don't care. Like, shoot it every single time. And then on top of that, it's just, I're open I don't care like shoot it every single time um and then on top of that it's just I mean regular life stuff they're they're they're big kids uh they just want to have fun uh which I feel like a lot of people don't um put into perspective uh they're put up on this hill um they gotta do everything the right way, act the right way, which they do, and they're good people and genuine about it.

But at the end of the day, they're big kids that want to have fun playing basketball. What's the funniest thing an opponent's ever said to you on the court? It was the – I thought it was kind of funny, but it was the second game we were playing, I think, Phoenix, yeah. And I didn't play the first game, and then I had a DNP going until like the fourth quarter or whatever, the Phoenix game.

And Jay Crowder made a comment to me about, I might need to play you a little bit. It was kind of like he's saying it as if we made a little run when I got in, but he's like, who the hell are you, basically. That's how I perceived it, but I thought it was kind of funny. That's, I think, the story. I mean, it's not just, okay, the humble beginnings and, you know, hey, he made the team.

You're closing. You're playing closing minutes even when the team is healthy, which has not been the case that in itself, like that's a different level. Like how is everybody handling that? How are you handling that? That you're, it seems to be part of the preferred five when everything's right with this Lakers team. Yeah. I mean, uh, I just continue to tell myself at the end of the day, it's just basketball. You can go back to high school and really just rely on your instincts and playing the game the right way. And I feel like, especially at this level with the guys that I have on my team,

if I just stick to that and do the right things, then they're going to take care of basically everything else. Just play as hard as I possibly can and things will work out in a good manner. All right. So I've asked a couple of different guys that coach LeBron and I go, all right, give me, give me an example of like how he sees the game and everybody,

anyone I've ever asked this question, that's either played with him, coached him or been in the front office like you have no idea like you think you know but you have no idea what this guy sees and how he sees it and i don't really know if that can be a learned thing i think it's kind of like that jason kidd stuff where you have to kind of be born to see the game the way some of these guys see it i don't know i don't know if that ever can be developed what are some of the things that it. I don't know if that ever can be developed. What are some of the things that you've learned from him from a basketball standpoint of like,

oh, okay, so we're in film and then he did this because he already knew this guy was going to do this and that guy was going to do all that stuff. That's where I think LeBron does separate himself from his generation probably. Yeah, no, I agree. I think a lot of the seeing the game in a different way comes from the preparation

and really just being around for X amount of years. I mean, he knows every type of defense that teams could possibly throw at him. He knows schemes of the coaches that, I mean, that he's played in the past or that were playing that night. So he knows schemes of the coaches that I mean that he's played in the past or that we're playing that night um so he knows all that and on top of that he knows where everybody should be at the right times he knows where people I mean like to catch and shoot where people like like to cut and just things like that so I think it really comes off like preparation. He made a pass in the – I want to say the Chicago game,

but he was in the post and he tried to make a bounce pass from like mid-post on the right side to the corner. And it went off of, I think, Russ's foot on like he was pinning in. But I was just like if it doesn't hit his foot, it goes to mellow wide open three corner, like nobody else is making that pass. So it helps that he's 6'10", 6'9". You can see on where everybody,

but I mean, I don't think it really matters because he knows where everybody is on the court at that time. Have you ever played him one-on-one? I have not. Who do you play one-on-one? I have not. Who do you play in one-on-one? Like Malik or something? We don't play a lot of ones. I feel like that's going to be a summertime thing.

We kind of got an older team, so they take a lot of the days off. Yeah, we really just do a lot of skill work uh we probably do like two different sessions of skill work and then shoot um throughout the days yeah some teams it's kind of like a thing although like there's guys that always are going at each other or whatever i can imagine lebron probably wasn't like okay the first thing i need to do this week austin like Austin. We're paired off. AD's down again. You're dealing with COVID. A lot of guys, a lot of teams are dealing with this. I know the loss

last night. You're in Minnesota right now, correct? I actually just got back to LA yesterday. Oh, you just got back. Okay. All right. How do you feel? I know it's kind of a tough spot because these are two different things. It's your own pursuit of like, hey, I'm carving this thing out, but this is a Lakers team with expectations and, you know, they just haven't had the roster, right.

What's your sense of, of what the problem has been so far this year? Uh, I mean, it's, it's been a, I mean, uh, a little bit of a lot of things to be honest. Uh, we haven't been healthy. healthy uh and then COVID's hit us I mean we just right before COVID started like really getting us we had one I think six of seven or six of eight so we kind of got things moving in the right direction and then um it's really like it's hard when you got i mean guys that i mean haven't played in two or three games to step in and play but i mean they've had guys step in and play well so we're just gonna have to need that uh just to keep going around and around and and really just uh get some fuel and uh continue to get better because, I mean, like I said before,

we haven't been together for five months. This team's really new to each other. I think we have three guys that was on the team from last year. So even just the aspects of, like, schemes, coaches' schemes, there's a built-in like scheme that we know will work but it's like you got to know people's rotations and all that so it just builds time uh so on the defensive end we've made a lot of growth um the last month um But we just got to keep doing those things. Eventually, when we get fully healthy,

I feel like we'll take a step forward and then we'll just keep moving in that direction. What was the night like after you hit the game-winner against Dallas? I mean, it was a really good night. You got a smile on your face right now. Did you guys stay in Dallas? or was it a flight out? We stayed in Dallas because we didn't play in Minnesota until, I think, three days later or two days later or whatever. So we stayed the night.

We had some fun, and, yeah, it was a really good day all in all. You got fouled, too. They didn't call that. Yeah, I would agree with you. But once I seen it go in, I didn't care if I got fouled or not fouled. I was just, like, oh, geez. That was a fun game because I was kind of like, all right. I kind of figured out, like, I kind of thought I knew what you were doing,

you know, as a team, like I was, I was watching what you guys are trying to do. And then it was, you know, those games get weird because everybody stays in for overtime and then it can feel like you haven't run a good set in like three or four possessions. Cause everybody kind of knows at that point,

like what you're trying to do, unless you guys completely go off script, you know, and that's, you know, Westbrook hits that corner three, which they're looking to give them. And that's a script you know and that's you know Westbrook hits that corner three which they're looking to give him and that's a huge spot and then you know the way it got swung around to you on yours I was like was that I have to remember the possession so I don't I don't want to make a fool of myself by asking because I think it was just a swing a

reversing of the basketball right was that by design I don't think it was. No. We basically drew up a sideline out-of-bounds play to get LeBron the ball. We had been giving him issues with a little big ball screen with Wayne Ellington because he had been shooting

it well. Wayne was going to set a step up and slipped out because they doubled and I think they had a foul to give so they was trying to foul Bron and so he gave it up quick so we had numbers on the back side and then Wayne swung it to Russ and I was like oh he's wide open he's gonna shoot it so I was like I'm gonna go go offensive rebound in case he misses. And that's when I seen Russ literally stop, look at the opposite goal to see how much time was left, and then put it on the floor.

And I was like, oh, shit, I better run over here. I'm open. I know I'm going to be open. And he made a good pass. And luckily, I made a big shot. Yeah, that's trust, man. There's some guys in the wing over the years have probably seen Westbrook put that shot up.

So I think that was a really cool moment for you. All right, I got a couple quick things here. In the piece, it said that your agents, was it when you made the team or was it your first game and that you actually did pick Denny's as the place that you wanted to eat? Is that true? There's some truth to it.

It was me, one of my agents, and my mom. And it was, I think, like 10. It was probably like 11 o'clock at the time when the game got over. So there wasn't, like, much open. And we were trying to stay around the hotel um that my agent was staying in um and i was just i was so hungry at that point that i pulled up my maps and the first thing i seen was denny's so i was like hey let's go like i don't i'm i've had denny's before and it's good enough um how many times if you're if you're walking around la austin and you tell 10 people

you're on the lakers how many people believe you out of that 10 um i would say the number's growing now all right but before this last road trip i would say like three maybe out of ten so I mean at least it was zero Have you felt like you're comfortable enough to I'm not going to ask where you live because I don't want to blow it up, I think I know where you live but, and I know that just sounded creepy out loud, but I kind of know like you know

the two way deal and I wonder if you're playing for the LA Lakers or the South Bay Lakers, have you have you explored the area and thinking about, like, where you might want to live? I have. I have. I mean, there's a lot of nice areas around.

A lot of people live, I mean, just around in the beach areas. So I've been around in like Manhattan Beach area, Marina Del Rey. I mean, they're all really nice. It's just a matter of where. You should see if Chandler Parsons has any room in his Malibu estate. We can make that connection. That's not an easy commute though. All right. last thought here this is for hardcore listeners of the podcast you may not know what the hell you're not going to know what i'm talking about well i have a friend who played

for the la kings a long time ago his son his name's sully and he was born actually in manhattan beach when he's playing for the kings but they're from Vermont. So he's back in Vermont, and it's a kid named Sully living in New England, and he's the biggest Lakers fan. And actually, Westbrook's his guy, so that's one. LeBron was two, and now Austin Reeves has passed him. So I think there's no way you're ever passing Westbrook with Sully, but you are now number two ahead of LeBron James on his own Lakers power ranking.

So that's a pretty big accomplishment. So I don't want to let that go to your head. No, I love that. I love that. I mean, I feel like that might be the only power ranking I'm above LeBron, but hey, I'll take it. Yeah, his dad sent me a video of him, and he was losing his mind after that Mavs game.

So he was pumped. You're inspiring him and many of us undersized skinny dudes trying to make a name for ourselves. Look, it's a really cool story, man, and it seems like you're really grounded and you're enjoying it. Thanks for the time today, man. Appreciate it. Yes, sir. Thank

you for having me. Michael Wolff is one of the most accomplished writers writers especially when it comes to profiles he's written for every major outlet i know probably a lot of people have read some of the stuff in vanity fair fire and fury the book came out about the trump white house and uh most recently this year two famous the rich the powerful the wishful the notorious the damn and michael wolf joins us now what's up man thanks for doing this thank you for having me so you know i think about your career and reading you.

And, you know, it's always kind of probably weird to be in your position to be like, all right, hey, how do you do this? But I think what I like about you is that you take on topics and you write about some of the bad people that are out there. You write about some of the bad people that are out there. And instead of just saying, hey, the bad people are bad people, what experience do you want the reader to have once you've kind of shared a profile on some of the public figures that their approval rating seems to be as low as it is? Well, I guess I want them to have the experience that I've had. So I generally actually don't come to this with any kind of particular bias, certainly not a political or an ideological bias. I'm interested in the story. I mean, you know, bad characters are often the most vivid characters. And from a writer, well, you know, that's the, that's the, that's the thing that's most, that's most, well, fun to write about. And, I mean, these are, these are, you forget the fact that they're bad people, which they often are very bad people. They are also sort of extraordinary people. Their badness has certainly influenced the times we live in, but it is also often a function of them being different than you and I. So therefore, intrinsically, something fascinating to read about.

What do you think is that common through line then that separates the people that you cover and maybe the average person that can never understand that world? Need for attention, hunger for attention, obsession with attention. So the ultimate bad person may be Donald Trump. And obviously, he exhibits this kind of extreme need at a level even higher than the other people with this extreme need. Yeah, your access to Trump. I mean, imagine that goes back to just you being in New York city as long as you have, right? Like this is somebody you've known a long time, correct? Yeah. I, so I was at New York magazine for quite a number of years and, um, uh, one of their steady columnists and Trump used to call me up

frequently, um, usually to complain about something that were often to complain about something that might have been said about him, but more often to complain when something wasn't said about him. Why am I not in that article? I should have been in that article. That's all about me. And you didn't even bring me up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Endlessly. blah, blah, blah, endlessly.

And that's, I think, what was kind of, you know, retroactively funny about Fire and Fury is that you had all this access because you had the relationship. And then there were so many people that were upset with what you were quoting that, I don't know, the motivation behind, I didn't say that. I kind of look at like, okay, there's two parties here, an author that would have just made this up or somebody that doesn't want to admit that they said this about somebody else. Is that kind of the root of the access and why that book became so successful? That was the root of the access. And then I, then I also had, had a relationship with Steve Bannon

and, and, and kind of other things that sort of, sort of in a random way, you know, I mean, people always say, well, how do you get such incredible access? And the answer is, I don't know. It just is a confluence of circumstances. In fact, most of the time, I don't get access. Some of the time, I into these um um this this great opportunity um and and often when other people are sort of shying away from i don't want to see that person that person's too too horrible but i don't want to get near trump and i was like okay i'm glad yeah and so what i

loved about too famous is that i remember we had back back when I was working at ESPN, we had Larry King on just because every now and then Larry King would come on. And Trump was running and nobody was really taking it seriously. And we were like, hey, tell us about Trump. And Larry King goes, he has no sense of humor. He's like, he has no sense of humor. He doesn't think anything's funny. And I was like, all right. And it was just such an interesting thing.

And yet when I read this book and some of the Trump pieces, when he makes fun of Giuliani, I can't get enough of that. I, you know, this is, he knows something, he understands something, but it is only in that limited aperture. I can make fun of someone else. Giuliani comes off as maybe the least impressive person that you profile in the book. Yeah. Can you give us more depth and insight on his transformation? Yeah. I mean, I think he is kind of a tragic figure. Um, you know, in many ways many ways, you know, Giuliani was and was a good or at least interesting and certainly notable mayor of New York. As a matter of fact, he is the only I believe this is true, the only Republican vote I've ever cast. Um, and, um, um, you know, and I think a lot of people had complicated feelings about him in New York, but certainly they took him seriously in many ways. He deserved to be taken, to be taken seriously. And then, and then, you know, he goes, he, he, he's no longer the mayor.

He tries to run for president. That doesn't work out. Um, you know, he, he yet marries again, another, another person another person with whom he's incredibly unhappy. And he has this, you know, come 2016, he has this, again, an overwhelming need to be at the center of attention, such that he will do anything. He will humiliate himself. He will humiliate all the people around him. He will do things which don't make sense in any universe. He will betray whatever reputation he has had in the past just to be noticed, just to be on television.

So, and at the, at the end, yeah. And at the end, as you point out too, it's, he, he basically was just going on TV, screaming about Trump and then hoping to make money off of it. And yet was, was Trump like, nah, he knows the deal. Like we're not going to pay him. Right. And remember the other, other important point of this, he's drunk all the time. Um, you know, so it is really a, a, a life that has, that has come,

come to that is in just serious overtime in every possible way. Um, you had a relationship as, as far as covering Harvey Weinstein. And it felt like in the book, as he's talking to you, as he's facing these charges, and it's almost I think the timeline is he's almost close to sentencing here. It felt like he didn't quite understand the magnitude. Is that a fair way? Oh, my God. Completely delusional. You know, I mean, I'm sitting with him and he's trying to get me to write a book about him, which I'm not going to do, but that doesn't dissuade him. He keeps going on.

And it's like, well, if such and such, we'll do this and we'll do this. And then it was like, well, what if you get convicted? And then he kind of looks surprised at even this notion. And then he turns to one of his people and he said, well, would I have to go to jail right away? Yeah, you're going to be convicted of rape and all kinds of violent acts. Yeah, they're going to cart you off. Totally had no idea. And this is literally weeks before he was in fact convicted. Did you talk to him once he was convicted? I did not, no.

The end of the book is, I mean this peaks, you know, we build towards something and that's the access with Jeffrey Epstein sitting in his mansion in New York. He's with his lawyer and I think he's with kind of a diplomat overseas. I forget exactly

which. Yeah, the former prime minister of Israel. Right. And then Steve Bannon's in there. And I've read about Bannon a bunch. And I have to admit, every time I see Bannon in the room in a book, I end up more impressed with him than everybody else. And in this case, you basically have the transcript, which everybody's freaked out about, how you even had access to the transcript of how these conversations happened, where it felt like Epstein was trying to strategize with his lawyer and the diplomat as they felt like, if we just tell our story, we can get out of this. And Bannon's on the phone and just being like, you guys are delusional. Can you give us a better understanding? I mean, the book does it perfectly, but for the people listening, the understanding of kind of how this storyline played out is Epstein felt like he had a pivot here, a last minute pivot to somehow get public opinion, not just not on his side, but perhaps neutral, which seems impossible in the face of that story.

Remember, we're still before the crest or the crisis of this. He hasn't been arrested yet. He's still an incredibly bad guy, and everybody is saying he's kind of a monster, but it's not really everybody yet. In fact, at one point, Bannon says, we should test this. We should run a poll among people outside of New York and Los Angeles, and let's see if those people even know who you are. If they don't, and there's this kind of long slide, a many year slide of the increasing rancor against Epstein. And finally, at this point, and really, this is, I mean, the piece is called The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein. And this is in the few months just before he's arrested and then he will die in jail.

And so he's having, you know, in the first part, he's having a meeting with the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, his lawyer, Reed Weingarten, and Bannon. And everybody is trying to tell Epstein that he's in trouble. His lawyer says, this is bad. This is heart attack bad. And then Epstein kind of jokes and says, yeah, but tell me what you really feel. I mean, Epstein is joking throughout this. this. And then they're talking about, well, maybe he has to go on television, possibly on 60 minutes and kind of do a mea culpa. Yes, I was a bad guy, but now I've learned my lesson. And then Bannon says, or then his lawyer says, well, you know, if we're going to try that, you know, we should prepare. This could take, you know, a month. And then Bannon says, a month?

It's like a year. But then they go into preparation. And I have the, basically have the transcript of this media training that Bannon does with Epstein. It's on videotape. It's what a PR person might do with his client. And Bannon is trying to be the tough interrogator. And then Epstein, who has never been on television, never done this before, is trying to answer these questions. And then there's a scene in Paris where, and this is literally weeks before he flies back to New York and is arrested, in which he can't hire a PR firm.

Nobody anywhere. That's how bad Epstein is perceived at this moment. You know, PR guys whose job is to handle, you know, is to help fix people with ruined reputations. Even they, nobody will take him on as a client. But he finds a firm in London that's previously represented, you know, a bunch of dictators, Gaddafi, etc. And they come to Paris and they say, yeah, okay, we'll do this for, and their price is $3 million a month. And then he comes back to New York, gets on the plane, comes back to New York and is arrested. And then the last scene takes place with Epstein in jail.

takes place with Epstein in jail. And the day he dies, he dies on Saturday morning, that Friday evening, he writes a friend and says, you know, telling him that he's still okay. And he says, still hanging around. And then hours later, he is himself hanging from a rope. A sheep, dead sheep.

Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm aware of the doubts of Epstein killing himself. What were the conversations like in your circles of people that are plugged in and knew, you know, I think it was, um, uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, very clear in its absolute lack of clarity, which is to say, there is no way under the sun, uh, a human being not to mention this human being could have, um, uh, could have killed himself in the way that everyone says he would have had to. Essentially, you would have to break your own neck. It just defies physics. At the same time, were Epstein to have been murdered, essentially that would have meant that a half a dozen assistant U.S. attorneys plus another half a dozen FBI agents would have entered into some monumental conspiracy to hide this. So there's no way he could have killed

himself. There is no way he could have been murdered. There's a lot of discussion about, you know, again, we just, we met 10 minutes ago here, um, discussion about just having the access to this transcript. I feel though I've known you all my life. Well, thank you. I look forward to the profile. Uh, it's not a matter of like, you know, how, how did you get it? Cause I know that's, that's not what you're going to be telling me here, but, but this kind of access to have it. I mean, it really, that chapter alone, I mean, the book is great, but when I end on that chapter, I'm like, I'm so glad I read this. Cause I, you know, if I didn't know you or somebody explained the book to me and said, Oh, it's a bunch of

profiles of famous people that are terrible. I'm like, all right, do I want to spend 300 pages on that? But no, it's so revealing and it's so insightful. And then you take on the topics. It's not like, hey, this guy's bad and here's why he's bad. It's just, hey, here's this person and read about him. But to have us in the room as they're prepping these fake media interviews. So does the tape exist or was it the transcript? The tape exists. The tape exists. Do you think we'll ever see this tape? I don't know. Um, um, it's, it's Steve Bannon's tape. So I don't know. He doesn't, I gather want to broadcast his relationship with Epstein, but who knows?

All right. So let's, let's talk a little bit then about the role. Um, because I think, I don't know if it's a generational thing. I don't know if it's, you know, kind of the climate of the, of the last few years and how we, we take on these topics, but I could see younger, and I know you don't like the word journalist, but I could see younger people being like, well, why would you even want to sit down with a Harvey Weinstein? Why would you even want to interview all these different people? And I feel like the, there's been a shift where it's like, well, if somebody's bad, I'm just going to say they're bad all the time. And to me, that's, that's not that insightful. And it's an incredible waste of time. Like if I didn't like something, I wouldn't wake up every day and share with everybody like, Hey, I think this is bad. Like, I think most of us that come from a certain level of intelligence,

just to know that somebody is bad. And then we kind of move on with our own day. Um, do you think there's resistance to you for, I don't know if it's giving some of these people an audience or giving them time. I like what you do, but there seems to be maybe a push. And again, I don't know if it's from a younger generational thing of you being an outlet for some of these voices that are some of the worst people we've come across in the last few years. Uh, I don't know. I mean, on the one hand, I think not. I mean, you know, I've sold a lot of books about Donald Trump. People seem to want to know about that and seem to like the way that I do it. I mean, the way that I do it is I want you to be there as I was there. I want you to have the experience that I have had. I want to put you in the room. So I kind of, I think that there is not real resistance there,

but I think that there is this, we're in this black and white age. Oh, that's a bad person. We're in this black and white age. Oh, that's a bad person. I don't want to know about that. You know, on the other hand, you know, obviously, you know, there's been an enormous amount written about Jeffrey Epstein. People want to know about that. There's Netflix documentaries, there's on and on and on. So people do want to know. I'm just giving a different way to know, I suppose. I managed to get, at least in these instances, closer than other people. I mean, one of the interesting things about the Epstein coverage that I've observed is that nobody knows anything. Nobody knows Epstein. Nobody knows the people who know Epstein. The people who talk about Epstein are people who don't know, and the people who do know aren't talking. Um, and I, I just sort of managed to,

to, to, to slip around all of those, those obstacles and be able to, um, um, to, um, see what has really been happening. So, I mean, I, I don't know if, if, you know, that's what I have to offer. If, if people like it, great. They don't like it, you know, because I read, I read the New York times profile, which I thought was really interesting because the guy that did the profile on you, I think it was just a couple of months ago, admitted that you'd kind of gone back and forth, but it was almost a respectful back and forth. But he had a line that I wanted to close on. He said that Wolf was finally, um, finally affording the lifestyle he'd already been living, which I did. Was that a, was that a cheap shot or was that actually, actually that was my line. He merely, he merely

took my, okay. All right. my line. Okay. All right. All right. So, all right. It's a lot less nasty now that I know that you were saying about yourself, the success of the books recently. The New York social scene, as you reference it through the book, the different people that are involved, whether it's the Huffingtons, whether it's Giuliani, whether it's early Trump stuff. I think most of us look at it from the outside. I'm from Massachusetts. I love the city, but you know, it's not like I'm, I'm a New York city person at all. Uh, I think we look at this New York city social scene with the names and the

politicians and the media, and we see it like, is this, is this imaginary world? What is that really like? Because you're in it. And I think the big part of your access is that you've been, you've been a New York city guy for a long time. For a very long time. Um, yes. I mean, I think that that, that is the point I'm, I'm writing about, um, uh, through writing about all of these people I'm writing about, about the city I live in, the time I live in, um, all the issues that, that, that confront us. I'm just giving them a set of faces, good faces, bad faces, real faces. I feel like the answer is just going to be a simple yes, but that world, is it fun? Is it worth it? Is it terrible? Is it exhausting? Is it necessary? And again, I'm afraid your answer is just going to be yes to all of those things.

But I guess I'm just... Yes to all of those things. But also, as a writer, I mean, you're there in your next to things that are most vivid, most dramatic, most engaged with the moment. So I don't think you could hardly look for more. Yeah, it is a wealth of storytelling. Too famous, Michael Wolff. Thanks a lot for the time. I appreciate it.

Thank you. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Before we get to life advice, I want to share a couple recommendations. That 14 Peaks show movie on Netflix is incredible. This guy Nims, he's from Nepal. He was part of the Kerkas, which I didn't know a ton about. Special military force out of there.

He's just a badass of a guy. He was into mountain climbing. And he was like, what's the best stretch to hike the 14 highest peaks all over 8,000 meters? We're talking Everest. We're talking shit in Pakistan. And he attempts to try to do it all within seven months and everybody's like this this guy's nuts this isn't going to happen so anyway um that was great and then that alpinist which i had not seen and i you know it's not like i follow mountain climbing guys busy over here uh about mark andre those were those are terrific so i went back to the solo guy he looked like the free solo guy in the alpinist one i think the free solo guy is a guest that is

interviewed okay that's why i saw him okay alex is alex the free solo guy because i think that's his name yeah i gotta go now go watch that so i'm not one yeah i'm not gonna go out and buy a rig or anything um i don't see myself i don't think I have the physique necessarily for any of that but man it was motivating and I was watching it trying to go to bed and then next thing you know I couldn't fall asleep because I was like this is sick didn't I just tell Saruti the story

because I just want to make sure I didn't do this on the podcast I don't think so but you're right you're too bulky to be like a free solo you gotta be like a jockey no you just have to be lean you have to be like a free solo you gotta be a jockey right yeah no you just have to be lean you have to be strong and lean um all those guys are like ripped kind of like swimmers but even skinnier way skinnier those guys are little wait so how does chris long get it done he's uh he's like a mountaineering guy so he's not he's not doing ropes he just goes like whatever

available paths are and by the way i've been hiking with chris and he kicks kicks ass like he's just i would imagine is he slimmed down post playing career has he lost some weight is he one of those guys or no he looks skinnier he is a little skinnier but he has like he'll admit to um he's not super pumped about his pec shoulder area just genetically which seems insane when your dad is he's almost like an Arnold Schwarzenegger type but Chris has sloping like shirts off he's not into it so he isn't so it's honestly not even close to being as bad as as maybe he thinks it is. We could trade. I'll trade up his pecs for my pecs.

Yeah. He's a big dude in really great shape. And his arms are big. Like, I don't. Okay, let's keep breaking down Chris Longbody. Let's talk about these pecs. All right. Yeah.

Jesus. So anyway, watch those mountain climbing shows. They're good. They're on Netflix. All right. Life advice. Life advice. RR at gmail.com okay the number of pickup hoops ones that are coming in

are incredible um and this is one that we had i hope this is still the same one all right let me let's let's see what what this one is um what's up personal stats are actually meaningful 61235 a struggle with binge eating has kept me at a higher weight than I desire. I was about 170 one and a half years ago. Wow.

All right, man. That's a swing. That is 65 pounds. All right. Tough year on everybody though, right? So, waver between being heavy and skinny often.

I'm definitely decently overweight, but at least I got some good muscle to show for it as well. I had someone ask me a few days ago if I was a personal trainer and what to do to get my physique. So that made my day. All right, great. That leads to my predicament. I love playing pickup basketball and it's probably the most enjoyable hobby I have. It's great exercise. However, I straight up suck at

basketball. Did he say his age here? All right. More context briefly. I played for an awesome coach in high school at a tiny 100-person school, rode the bench. The same coach had an AAU program who pumped out some serious talent. Most recently, a first round pick. OK, I don't want to give up anybody here, but yeah, this is a first round pick. He bring a batch of ringers to my tiny school every season, so I never stood a chance of playing in high school and early college. I want to be a college basketball coach. My life has been absorbing as much information about the game as possible. I was a student manager for a mid-major team. As a freshman in college under a coach who won an NCAA title, okay, between that experience and learning from my high school coach, I have far more knowledge than your average basketball fan. I would think so. All this brings us back to our pickup basketball and my lack of skill. My background in the sport gives me the insight to know just how bad I suck at basketball.

I know how bad I am more than the other guys in the gym who already know I'm bad. But part of it is due to a genetic condition and it makes me more susceptible to injury. Three knee dislocations and I'm only 23. Jesus, man, that sucks. I'm always the slowest and most grounded guy on the court. Every time I play it, I'm not trying to get a knee dislocation number four, so I avoid contact. Considering I wasn't even good when I was practicing hours each day in high school, I definitely am not good now. I have decent conditioning, a really good passer, and have a really pretty jumper, although I get in my own head too much, forcing a lot of misses. If I miss my first shot of the day, then it'll probably not be a great day.

If I take more than one dribble, I'm definitely getting ripped. Can't guard anybody. A complete liability on D. Now that I'm 235 instead of 170, I want to hoop again because I think it's so much fun and a great way to get in shape. However, I don't want to be that guy that absolutely nobody wants on their team simply because they suck so bad. As a guy who's pretty good at pickup hoops, not anymore, I have two questions. How can I optimize my game?

I try to play the high post a lot, pop out for threes. But other than that, I don't have many options other than standing in the corner. Should I abstain from pickup for the sake of the nine other guys in the court, or should I just go because I enjoy it? I appreciate any insight on the proper etiquette here. All right, man, deep fucking breath first. You are driving yourself slowly insane just thinking about all this stuff. I mean, it's supposed to be fun,

which is crazy that you still want to do it because you say you have so much fun, and this email makes me think you actually kind of hate love it. If the entire time you're like, I missed a shot, now I'm going to do this, or this is going to happen here. I think you love basketball.

It's very clear your young life to this point, only 23, like your formative years have been around basketball, but you're just not good at it, all right? But I mean, I'd ask you this. Is there any chance you could do something else that you might enjoy a little bit more? And it doesn't sound like that's the case,

but I kind of feel bad that you're driving yourself fucking crazy here. Just thinking about your pickup hoops game. Um, as somebody who's obsessed over his own, I kind of get it, but at the same time, like, you don't, you feel bad. Like the first thing you feel like, here are your emotions that you feel in pickup hoop, shame, guilt, you know, like that's not what it's supposed to be about. Uh, a lot of guys that suck just go out there cause they want to run around and they're not thinking about this. So you're an overthinker to top everything else off can't really shoot by the time you're 20, you know, that's that's a hard thing to do. I mean, it's one thing when you're seven or eight and you're fucking cartoons, juice boxes and dribbling a basketball. And that's your schedule.

You know, in your 20s, it's a little tougher to work in ball handling drills to get your game up to where you need it to be. in ball handling drills to get your game up to where you need it to be. So I'd ask you, how much longer do you want to put yourself through this anxiety of these pickup hoop games? And is there perhaps any other thing that you think you could get into, um, where your knee wasn't going to get dislocated all the time? I don't know if kayaking, I know my dad liked that for a while. I'm trying to think what else. What else? Rowing. Racquetball. If your gym has a basketball court, it may have a racquetball court. Yeah, racquetball is pretty intense.

But what I don't like about it is if you're an athlete and you don't know how it works, you get absolutely killed by non-athletes. But you learn. Yeah, but you learn. I just was like, I'm not picking this up. As a guy who's rolled my ankle at north, south, east, many times like that's that's what basketball is a big danger for me i'm fighting a an ankle thing right now from stepping the wrong way carrying grocery bags so you know basketball has always been that for me it was like oh here we go how many how many minutes can i play before i'm going down basketball is just you're picking up groceries no picking up groceries is my new basketball is basically what i mean i just mean basketball was never like my favorite thing and i was never good at it

but my friends were always like we got to play you we need you um and then i just get hurt the other thing you could do here is you could scout out the worst pickup games like go go find some older guys you know there are of all the places that I've worked out and lived and all this stuff, there's usually always an older game. And you know, if you're in your twenties and you're like, I'm going to dominate all these old guys,

you're an asshole. Um, which I probably, uh, guilty of a couple of times, but, um, um,

you know, you could just tell some older guys like, Hey, I know I'm 23, but I've had like three knee dislocations and I'm not that good. And I just I just want to run around with you guys. And guess what? When you when you don't dribble through them and dunk over guys or you're working dudes off some crossover behind your back twice, when they see that you can't do those things, then they're probably going to be fine with it.

So if you still love basketball, I would seek out an older pickup game where it's going to be your speed and you don't have the same anxiety. If you're out there at 23 trying to run around with other 20 year olds that are really pretty good. And this is how you think, like, I'm surprised you even want to do it. You know, I, I remember, you know, back in the day when I was really, really, you know, I was really skinny for a long time and I'd have these, these football games that I was in and this youth football team. And you know, I was on kick return cause, and I would, I was like, trust me, I was not wired that way back then. I was like, this fucking sucks. And like the other guy was just as petrified as I was. And every fucking time the ball was up and it was close, he'd be like, you, you got it,

you got it. And I'd be like, all right, here we go. And then I remember I broke one and I was like, that's, that's way more fun. And then another time I thought I broke one and I ended up like in the bleachers. I was in like my arms and limbs were in the wooden slats of whatever the seats were. Cause I got tackled so far out of bounds. I just got mauled. And I was like,

that wasn't, that wasn't a great time. So anyway, like I can kind of understand the night before the anxiety of, do I want to do this? But you're doing it in the game that no one cares about. Not that anybody cared about any of the youth football stuff that we're doing,

but I don't know. I mean, I kind of feel bad that you, you think this much about a pickup basketball game and you're this frustrated by your own lack of skills. Well, that would be my thought is that I don't think he could play any team sport because it's going to be too much in his head. Like if he picks something up tomorrow, he's going to be a noob at it and he's going to take him time to get, you know, to get good at whatever it is. And he's going to be in his own head. He's not going to enjoy it. So my question is, can you enjoy any team activity if you're going to be too anxious about what other people think about you?

So maybe you guys are right. Maybe like kayaking, some sort of maybe climbing. I don't know. That's probably not great with the knee, but something that you do by yourself is probably your best bet. Yeah, but with ropes. Definitely with ropes. Somebody belaying, correct? Right, right. Look at you, rope guy. You big mountain

climber, surety? No, I have a buddy that is and he it's funny he used to belay like the local y and uh he was like teaching me one day or whatever and he like taught kids how to how to basically belay how to climb the walls right the rock walls and he got dropped 20 feet to his back one time and was like fine it was like the craziest thing he called me up and he was like hey what's going on i was like no nothing just just getting out of work what's up and he's like hey could you uh could you come pick me up from the hospital i was like what he's like yeah i just fell like 20 feet on my back kid screwed up didn't you know wasn't belaying me right and he ended up

being totally fine so it is a dangerous sport make sure you know somebody who uh who's actually you know good at belaying but um i i enjoy climbing. I think it's kind of fun. Kyle, you ever climb? Outside of like some kid's crazy party when I was like 11. I don't think so. Running from the cops? They had a small one at Gold's Gym, actually. They had a small one for the kids in the kid zone where I worked.

But no ropes required for that. So I could touch the ceiling on that, but it wasn't that far to go. All right. By the way, we had a lot of fraternity follow-ups from guys. Somebody emailed in, and I'm going to use the guy's name, the emailer's name, and just let him know. So Doug emails in and wanted to ask if the old person from Nationals was a certain guy's name,

and he knew exactly who I was talking about. So yes, yes, Doug, you are correct. We were talking about the same person, the guy who, with Nationals, stole our house. How do you get involved in Nationals in France? You're just like a four-year-old. You got nothing to do. Yeah, I was going to say that.

It seems like a last... No offense to anybody who's working for nationals around the country who's a fan of the pot. I just can't imagine being like after college and be like, you know what? I'm going to keep doing this thing. This is me for life. I mean, when the national guys came to visit us,

it was... Because whenever anybody said, like, if you don't know me, I always feel like the people that know us the least criticize us the most. And I've had a couple of times like, oh, figures that you were like, yeah, dude, that's not really what we were up to. We don't we weren't really super into it. The Nationals guys came by and they like rented a hotel room to talk us up and get us motivated about everything. And they're like, we want to read now from this part of the book.

And I was like, oh my God. And they're like, if everybody can kind of get up and we'd like to do this circle of trust. And they're like, if everybody can join hands and I'm like, get me the fuck out of here. So there's anything I know you don't like, it's a circle of trust and yeah. Cause the other thing is too, I would say throughout college the the handful of people i disliked the most were probably you know supposedly my brothers which was kind of the funny thing because i was like you know i don't know like you have to have and like older guys are like i fucking hate 20 of these dudes what are you talking about like you know there's no guarantee that we all get along um which i thought was pretty interesting um we had a couple other

people say like hey sophomore second semester isn't that big of a deal it depends on the school you're at so here is an email frat junior year second so this guy went junior spring um hey college roommate john oh shit well sorry whatever that's pretty vague that's that's i would say there's a lot of jobs yeah there are there are probably more than one or two Johns who joined a fraternity. He joined a fraternity his second semester junior year, and it wasn't a loser move.

All right, you know what? Congrats on whatever your odds were that it wasn't. It's still pretty stacked against you that if you do it, you're juniors. It's unheard of. And apparently everybody liked this guy. They all got along. They smoked weed.

I'm sensing this one wasn't super intense, this fraternity, and that everybody just sort of hung out, and that's great. And I'm glad it worked out for that guy. I really am. But it's just pretty rare. And junior spring, we were talking sophomore spring. Junior spring is kind of unheard of. All right.

We got one here. Let's see. Okay, there's one I want to read that's not a total life advice one, but I'm going to share it anyway because I do like the email. All right. 26. This is a life advice. 6'3", 240.

Big. Very proportional, so I carry it well. On a hot scale, 6.5 with a high ceiling. So this guy's a couple shirts and maybe some golden goose away from a 7. Hey, guys. Recently left a job for a better opportunity. I was getting pretty burnt out at my last job. Unfortunately, a recruiter reached out to me about an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

On the downside of leaving is I've got really close to the people in my department, specifically one girl, just to put it simply. I'm infatuated with her. We get along great, always make each other laugh, view the world very similarly, and have moments that feel flirtatious. Plus, she's hot. Wow. Okay. She sounds great. Package. Link, please. All right. One thing that should be stated is she's in a long-term relationship. However, she's shown signs of hesitancy and uncertainty about her relationship. It seems like her boyfriend is ready to get married and start a family, where she does not and has said how she doesn't want to have kids.

She's 25 and her boyfriend's in his early 30s. Now circling back before leaving my job, I felt as if I had to tell her how I feel. So this is straight from the office then. If I didn't, I would have regretted it. On my last day at the job, after I said goodbye to my coworkers, I texted her to come downstairs and meet me in the parking lot right outside of Dunder Mifflin where it all goes down. That's not an email. When she came down, I told her I'm going to miss her.

I have feelings for her. In a hypothetical situation, I wish I could see play out us crossing paths and being single. She was very taken aback, but oddly, in a flattering way. I knew what I was going to say to initiate, but didn't have any plan of attack for afterwards. I wasn't planning on doing the, you should be with me and leave your man speech. So he didn't do that. To summarize her comment, she obviously said she

can't do anything because she is in a relationship, but if she was single, she would take me up. She said, she's also going to miss me and said she loved working with me. Wow. That seemed to get the emailers reaction because we got an eyeball emoji in that sentence. She told me I shouldn't feel weird about telling her this and that she was thankful that I did. So my question, I want to do more, but I feel like I literally can't. Should I reach out and try and slowly build up dialogue or should I just let it be and hope fate falls in my favor? I'm not out here patiently waiting for her. I'm still experiencing enjoying the single life.

But of all the people I met in my life, she's one of the few who I think could be my soulmate. Love the show. The emailer, he said, we're still a segment about The Bachelor and all the dudes claiming to be professional athletes. It's a classic. I am very proud of that, and I would like to say one of the positives of the COVID testing and having all these extra NBA players is now The Bachelor and Bachelorette has a massive pool of guys now that can put can be former nba players that retired on their own you know volition to yeah like yeah you know then i just retired and it's like were you called up during the pandemic three though like what what

were you actually and it's going to be great like this'll be like, this guy was on the Lakers for four days. Still counts, dude. All right, so back to this. I don't know. There's basically a few ways it could go. There's two primarily top results here. Maybe she likes you. Maybe you planted the seed.

Maybe this turns back around. There's a lot of emails, and I'll admit, even in my own life, there's a time where you sort of, hey, throw it out there. And then it's rejected, but the seed is now planted. So now that the girl looks at you entirely differently, because she knows at some point there is an attraction or there was some interest or whatever. Once you do that, it's never the same, right? It's never the same. And depending on who you are as a guy, it can actually work out to your benefit down the road. So doing this, telling her how you feel, if you really, it sounds like you really do like her. Um, like I still think this was the right call. All right. Because you don't know, she will never, you were processed in her

eyes completely differently now, because now you've, you've crossed over and admitting that you have feelings and you would like to be with her. All right. So don't feel bad about that. Um, i guess we could get into some of the workplace dynamic the announcement but the point is people are going to talk to each other been doing this a long time and you actually technically were leaving the job anyway so all right you're in the clear hr wise right right hr not going to get called on this one now the other part of this because we've had this happen to us too is that she's telling you all these nice things because she doesn't have to date you too, is that she's telling you all these nice things because

she doesn't have to date you and she is dating somebody else and you're leaving. So it could be very simple. You know, when somebody who says they don't want to hang out with you is like, oh man, but if I could, I would snatch you right up. It's a really easy thing to say when you don't actually have to follow through on that. I don't know. I'm just the guy reading an email here. But I like what you did. I like that you kind of planted that seed for the future.

And I wouldn't wait around on this shit because you don't know. You know, you could have been the trusted, trusted co-worker. You could have been that Jim Halpert with no romantic threat whatsoever. And she kind of opened up to you complaining about some things. but think about all the relationships all of us have ever been in the people right now that are married and generally happy. You ever bitch about your partner just a little bit to somebody else. You probably do. All right. Now, does that mean that you're going to get a fucking divorce and start dating the pool boy? You know what I mean? Like it's not, there's a big gap between some disappointment in

a relationship. And yes, I'm going to make out with you outside of a chili. So, um, I don't know the answer to those things, but I liked that you did it. But what I would tell everyone, because you get a lot of this email, like, Hey, I love this girl. I'm into this girl. And she doesn't really see it that way. Don't be somebody's spare tire for life. All right? Because that's how they're going to look at you. Now, maybe in this case, she really would want to date you,

but this kind of speaks to anybody that's just after somebody and it's not working out. If it hasn't worked out after you tell the person how you feel and it's lingering, it's going on a couple of years and maybe it's somebody who lives in your neighborhood

or who you go to school with or at the workplace or in the same profession and you run into medical sales so you don't work for the same company, but you're running into this person all the time. If they reject you and you just keep pressing over and over and over again and it's just not going anywhere and then you feel like, well, I need to check in every month. Don't check in every month. Check in every six months, but don't be somebody's spare tire forever because they're not going to really prioritize you if they know that you're always there and honestly nobody likes fucking driving

around the spare tire anyway i don't know if you guys have anything else kyle uh i would just say that um it's yeah text her on her birthday or reach out on her birthday leave all the other holidays alone um you know just new year's is a good one right before the ball drops be like oh man, I miss you or minute before she's going to kiss her boyfriend or husband. If her birthday's in July, maybe. I don't know if you're if you're New Year's is a huge one. That's that's a total mind fuck. Like if

it's an ex, you're like, I wish you were here and then she's just like, what? Yeah, you're going to FaceTime from some weird party in Aruba. There's a guy in the background being like, is that Rosillo? That's funny. Yeah, I think that's it. Don't be annoying. And it's like you planted a seed. I bought 50 shares of MedMen, hoping that it takes off once everything's all good in New York for weed stores. And I hope it's basically the 7-Eleven of weed stores in New York. And that's

what you got. You got your MedMen. Just leave it alone. Don't touch it. You really have? You have a MedMen position? Yeah. I got $40 at like, you know, a great price. So hopefully I've got like 200 shares or something. And if that ever takes off, you know. You got 200 shares at a great price.

You spent, what was it? 40 bucks or something. It was like 40 bucks or 200 shares. It was like 20 something cents a share. I don't know what it was. But it just seemed like a good idea. MedMen's like nice. It looks nice $40 or $200. It was like 20-something cents a share. I don't know what it was. But it just seemed like a good idea. MedMen's like, it looks nice, just like this person. And if everything breaks your way, maybe it works out. But

you're never going to... If you keep messing with it and selling some and buying some, it's just going to drive you crazy. So just let it ride. Yeah, we got some financial advice out of this, too. She'll see you doing you, and that'll be good. That's the best thing you can could do is just do you and continue to be handsome and a seven good for you do we really think that she was so surprised though that's only my like i want my

only thought would be was it sort of like a defense mechanism and i like oh that's cute but i'm not interested because she was like oh i'm happy you told me that but like if she really you know was interested in you or or saw something and i get it's hard to break up something that you've been dating and you obviously her significant other like is talking about marriage and kids and so it's it's pretty serious but i almost feel like her being too nice about it when you confronted her might be kind of a red flag that she's kind of like oh i never really thought of you in that light or maybe i have but i didn't really see it coming and that's why i feel like you're safe to talk to you but i don't actually want to date you that would be my work wife is that what to talk to you, but I don't actually want to date you.

That would be my work wife. Is that what a work wife is? Or is that when you actually do something with someone at work? No, work wife is not kind of casually. If you casually flirt and you guys are like, you know, friends and respect each other and all that stuff, right? It's just, it's just all the marriage without the good stuff. Yeah. So maybe that was his work wife and he was like, no,

I want you to be my wife. She was like, or the bad stuff. And that's true. Yeah, so maybe that was his work wife and he was like, no, I want you to be my wife-wife. Or the bad stuff. That's true. Yeah. Alright, I think we covered that. There you go, left advice. Thanks to Kyle and Saruti. I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, mixing it up a little bit

with Austin Reeves, obviously with the Lakers, but of course, Michael Wolff as well. We'll be back on Friday. We're going to have a Friday episode for you, so a full episode on Friday and we'll talk to you then. Thank you. you