← The Ryen Russillo Show
The Ryen Russillo Show
NBA Limps to the Finish, But Does It Matter? Plus Frank Isola Talks Playoff Matchups & Season Awards
01:49:12
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- [00:00]
Ryan Rosillo
Hey Priscilla listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:08]
Kyle
Trust no one and accuse Everyone and
- [00:10]
Ryan Rosillo
who's the Bad Guy? The official Barstool sports social deduction game
- [00:14]
Kyle
from the brilliant mind of Nick Torani. In what's quickly becoming the most popular
- [00:18]
Ryan Rosillo
new party game around, players are secretly assigned unique roles with the good guys
- [00:21]
Kyle
trying to expose the bad guys and
- [00:23]
Ryan Rosillo
the bad guys doing everything they can to stay hidden in.
- [00:26]
Kyle
Each game unfolds under alternating day and
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Ryan Rosillo
night phases with roles like the cool chick, the shy guy, the gambler, El
- [00:33]
Kyle
Presidente, the mentalist, the planner, the funny guy, and more.
- [00:37]
Ryan Rosillo
Every round is unpredictable, chaotic and ridiculously fun. Who's the Bad Guy is great for parties, pre games, family gatherings or groups who just love deception based games. Game night will never be the same.
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Kyle
Shop now on Walmart.com.
- [00:56]
Frank Isola
Foreign.
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Ryan Rosillo
The Ryan Marcillo show is presented by DraftKings. On today's show, I'll put a bow on what was a tough stretch of the NBA regular season and some other thoughts. Fair and unfair arguments about where the league is positioned. And I promise putting that bow on it then means all positivity playoffs. A really cool thing we're going to do with top 10 players. So all of that is coming. We have Frank Isola on that and even more he's going to MVP vote. Obviously votes for everything else like I do. So we'll go over that. He had the Knicks in the NBA Finals. Does he still believe that? And some just some really good NBA stuff and some stories from back in the day. We do recap some of the masters questions that we all had after round four coverage. And we've got life advice. The NBA playoffs are here and DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, boosts every game day the whole postseason. 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Minimum odds required for additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see sportsbook.draftkings.com promos Limited Time Offer here's the plan for this week. I'm going to be excited. Positive playoff breakdowns. Go back and watch some of the regular season matchups where both teams are full health. I have talked to about 20 people in the NBA. Not a brag. There's an exercise here, front office and coaching staffs. So I don't know how many teams will be represented. I don't know what the final number be, how many people. But I just wanted a real simple exercise. I wanted the guys that do this Give me your 10 best players in the world and then I'll put together composite rankings depending on how many votes we get back on this whole thing and then a couple real special quotes from this. So I'm going to do that on Wednesday. So we'll get a lot of positive stuff that we're building towards. It's going to be an awesome week because the games matter. Because I will tell you, the last six weeks or so fucking sucked. All right. I had a hard time with it. Like a different level of a hard time. We knew after the trade deadline we're like, this is going to get ugly with the tanking. And it did. Third of the league was tanking. Tanking became a big time issue. Tanking became a bigger reflection of what the overall NBA product is. And I don't know that that's entirely fair. But the problem is is that these marquee games that are supposed to be like, hey, these teams are worried about the outcome. This team wants to win this game. This team wants a higher seed. Yesterday sucked. Friday sucked. You know, all the teams that basically wanted to win their game other than the Orlando Magic, because that's the most 25, 26 Orlando Magic thing ever to lose to that Celtics team. Although Baylor Shireman, Max player, I don't know might be a little early. But of course Orlando loses their game, but everybody else basically won whatever they needed to win. So that last day of all the suspense that was gone. I've referenced all sorts of like headline heavyweight fights, even going back to super bowl week San Antonio okc. Okay. I can't wait. OKC sits like eight guys. Okc, Detroit. Detroit sat everybody. That game actually went to overtime. It was an entertaining game, but it was number one seed. Number one seed. Let's go. So, yeah, there's health, there's real injuries. There are also some, I think, pointless mind games that the coaching staffs play with each other. You had what Denver, OKC Friday night. Nope. No, you didn't. Denver, San Antonio yesterday. Should Denver, like, should San Antonio want Denver to lose that game if the, if the Lakers have to tiebreaker again? You would think so. No, we're good. So the problem is you had all this tanking going on and you just have a lot of really bad basketball for a stretch. And as somebody who loves basketball, I think, I think if you listen to me long enough, can I almost wish I had a kid just to prove the point, be like, hey, I can have a kid, but like I'm going to tell you he sucks at some stuff. Right? That's how honest I want to be with you. But I don't have that kid right now to prove that point. And it would feel like a little, I feel like I was using the kid a little bit. I was like, I wasn't sure that I was ever going to have kids, but I really wanted to hammer home this point I was doing on some of these monologues. So that's why I decided to have you. And I hate your mom. All right, so this part of the season, this is inevitable, but it felt extra bad. Okay. And because the stretch of the season happens and it's kind of happening like. Well, it's not kind of happening. It's happening post this football window, right? It's happening while the NCAA tournament is on a really nice two year run. It's happening while you had World Baseball Classic and all the momentum of baseball kind of shifting is that some of it's fair, but some of it feels a little unfair that this awful stretch of basketball. And again, as somebody who loves the NBA, I'm having nights where I'm like, you're not really paying attention. Like you're not excited, you're not having a good time. If I'm not having a good time, then that probably means there's a lot of other people out there not having a good time. But should we focus so much on this bad stretch and say that it's dragging down the entire product? All right, let's run through fair and unfair. Let's do a little exercise here because I Spent some time. I had some time today. I want to go through some of the arguments about where the NBA is positioned as a product, looking at history, but then also comparing that to history, some other things as well. All right, because one of the arguments that I hear that is very anti NBA, that when you share the numbers, you're like, well, how do you argue that one, Rossillo? But the NBA's lost more than half of its audience since the 1990s. Start focusing specifically on some of those NBA Finals ratings. If you go to the Bulls, Jordan second three peat, 96, 98 NBA Finals viewership by year, 25 million, 25 million, 29 million. If you go to the 25 NBA Finals, OKC against the Pacers, that did 10 million viewers, that's an average and that's with a game seven in there. Obviously the game seven number jumps up significantly. It does all the time historically. All right, so that's not great. But if we dig in a little bit deeper here, 98 to 99, when it was Spurs, New York, that went from 29 million to 16 million. All right, there's a Detroit, San Antonio Finals in there in 2003 that did 10 million. I think the overall number is actually like even worse than in 2025. But then you have Golden State Cleveland, that did 20 million viewers on average for their first three Finals matchups. Apparently people are a little over it. Too much domination in 2018. That includes a 31 million viewer number for game seven of the 2016 matchup.
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Frank Isola
So
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Ryan Rosillo
what that tells me is like, man, when you go Jordan against the 25 finals, that is a really good way to make a point. That's true, but I don't know that it's. That it's like telling the entire story. You could very simply say, hey, look, it's Jordan. And then you had Curry, LeBron. And then you have today, where we're kind of in this uncertainty, like OKC Indiana, there's no way that that's going to hold up against any of those other numbers. And so if you make that argument, that's a fair argument. Nothing I can really do with that. I can tell you markets which is true, but the raw number against the raw number, there's. Look, it's a drop off. It's significant. However, I never hear that about the World Series or at least not now because baseball's hot from 95 to 98 over a similar period of years as the Jordan Bulls years. World series did 29, 25 and 25 million viewers. So it's the same numbers in just reverse order against those Jordan's finals matchups, right? In 2023, our World Series matchup was Texas against Arizona. Five game series, 9 million viewers, worst World Series rating ever. Ever. Then they had the Dodgers and the Yankees. Ever heard of them? Then they had the Dodgers against an entire country. Canada backs its baseball. We know this. Look at some of those early Toronto Blue Jays numbers back in the day. So baseball has real momentum right now. But 30 fucking months ago we could have done the exact same thing to baseball that we're doing to the NBA and going like, oh, look at this World Series. The worst World Series ever. This sport sucks. You watching, you watching a lot of baseball in May. And look, it'd be the right number, but it would also be like, hey, I'm able to knock this sport because of their championship matchup. NCAA tournament. The last couple years feels like it's a much bigger deal. It's been awesome. I've loved it. I love the tournament. I can like multiple things. So there's real spikes the last couple years. When you look at the ratings for that, it's still significantly off from what it was. When you start playing the same game of comparing decades, which again gets into a bigger thing of like we just have more options, right? And people back in the day, I think one year there was a Dodgers, Yankees, world series in 78 that I looked at that had like 45 million viewers and the population of the United States was 220 million. Like, I don't think, I don't know that that's ever going to happen again. But the NCAA tournament, of course, when you're asking like tournament questions during the tournament as opposed to watching tanking teams in the NBA or resting good teams, it's probably not necessarily like apples to apples with that. When Rick Pattino was asked specifically why college basketball popularity was at an all time high while the interest in the NBA is declining and he said, well, it's because of St. John's and I'm paraphrasing a bit and got a little bit of a chuckle. And he was just having some fun with it and everybody laughed. Look, one, it's not accurate because college basketball is not an all time high of popularity. It's not even close to its peak numbers. Two, it was a leading question, likely from somebody who just wanted to continue the shit fest on the NBA. Three, I noticed that this question was not asked after a January regular season. College basketball, St. John's Creighton, maybe they weren't covering it Then. So there's a lesson here, and that is that we should stop comparing anything to the 90s. You want to do it with other stuff, I could do it all day. I'm not going to friends. Season two. Going to give you one. Ran from 95 to 96. That's season two. It averaged 32 million viewers an episode. Do you know what the number one network show is on TV right now? Tracker cbs? Seven million viewers. And I think there's even a way that the more modern numbers are pumped up to look even better with the way Nielsen's changed some of this stuff. But I didn't feel like doing that segment because I'm still not 100% sure. By the way, the worst anecdote here, the worst performing Friends episode ever based on share, not total viewers. The one where Chandler doesn't like dogs. If you needed more evidence that anti dog content does not work in America. All right, I know what you're waiting for. It's like, okay, we'll do the NFL now. Rosillo, if you're telling us that decade to decade isn't fair, you win. You win, NFL fan. There's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do. Now. If the super bowl were best at 7, it's probably not doing 100. 120 million viewers would be my guess. There's a lot of math stuff. I've covered it all before. But there is something here that I think continues. The lesson is that in 2016, and that's what I'm doing daily radio every single day, we're coming off of the Kaepernick topic. Be as neutral as possible on that one. The Kaepernick topic. He started taking a knee during the anthem in August of 16. Or he was sitting down on the bench and then he took a knee and whatever. You also had peak concussion awareness throughout society. Concussion, starring Will Smith. Tell the Truth. Tell the Truth. Child of Truth. That movie came out in 2015 and everybody just kind of like, was like, yeah, I guess that's what happened. Even though when you read about the guy after the fact, you're like, there's some holes in this story here. It was leading to real discussions because in 2016, viewership was down across the board, 8% season over season for the NFL. There were some Monday Night Football numbers in there, man, that just were a abysmal that I was looking at, like, oh, it's down 20% year over year or whatever. Also, I think there was a stretch where ESPN was getting some of the Worst Monday Night Football games ever was just like the league was like, yeah, here you go. Get ready to learn Titans, buddy. But there were real discussions as somebody that was doing it every single day back then about the future, the viability of the sport of football. I don't know if it was just the coastal elites, but it felt like it a little bit. I remember one coworker saying that he felt, quote, complicit, end quote, while he watched football because of the health of players. Stories all over the place about football and what kind of parents would let their kids grow up and play this sport and that, like, football was in the crosshairs. I would, at the time defend football and say, hey, have you ever been to this place called the South? They seem to still like the sport. It was so bad, the momentum against the NFL at that time that that's when, in response to all this stuff, the NFL released its Football as family campaign that celebrated super bowl babies being like. People like football so much, they bang as soon as our games are over. And here are their babies. Check it out. Now, were these things real? Were people turning it off because they were worried about concussions? Maybe you know, someone, I'm sure you know a person that turned it off because of the Kaepernick thing, or was it kind of the way a business works that's this established, it's been around this long, that's like, it's not new technology. And these are fairly established entities here where there are these kind of fluctuations, where if you want to pick a point on the data line and go, boom, this thing sucks now, because look where it is now compared to there. When I think a lot of the times you just kind of go through some of this stuff, even though I would be the first as a defender of the NBA, at times be as willing to criticize what I just had to sit through the last six weeks as anybody you're going to listen to. So I think one or two things are happening here, right? That there are unfair comps that completely ignore the same trends of other sports because you have some kind of inherent interest in talking about the NBA as a declining product while ignoring similar factors with other sports that you're propping up. Or number two, this is, in fact, a declining product that has numbers to back up that argument, which, again, I've already shared with you. And that if you spend any time watching the NBA, even if you like it, there's nothing that you probably enjoyed all that much the last six weeks now, I'm sure, like if you love the trailblazers. Hey, these clinging minutes. Hey, scoot. You know what I mean? Like, we can make some examples, but. But the overall part of it, like, this just isn't good. And that's why I'm willing, like, you know, I don't want to spend a ton of time on tanking and all this kind of stuff, but I'm willing that willing to have the NBA just change it and then get it wrong two or three times. Like, I don't care. Try to find a way to fix this window of just some awful basketball and lack of motivation by so many teams. Like, even if you get this new overhaul wrong, that's fine. At least you're trying something. Fix it again in a couple years. So it might be both. You know, it actually might be both. I mean, there was even a time where I remember hearing this argument in 24 about how bad the season got off to, like, a really, really bad rating start and recovered. And then I wasn't. I wasn't hearing from anybody about it anymore. And I was like, well, look, there was just Trump part three, and it was going up against Dodgers and Yankees. Like, that might not be fair. It was when I was going back and reading about the football drop in 2016, down 8%, I saw somebody write about how. Well, look, it was a presidential election fall, so of course the ratings are going to go down for the NFL. Look, if it's OKC Detroit, it's going to be a bad number. It's not going to be a good number. And then you'll be able to put that number and stack it onto last year's NBA Finals number, and you'll be able to say, here we go. Rosilla was back to back. Look how bad the Finals numbers are. But what if you get San Antonio, Boston? What if Wemby actually is the solution? What if the solution for this momentum and it's that mom rule, right? Does my mom care about this game? Because she didn't care about almost all of them. But does Wemby have the kind of power attraction to get your mom to go, hey, I'm going to. What the hell's. Like, not. Who's that? What's that? That could be the kind of number. What if it goes. What if it's 15? What if it's 16 million off of last year's number? Is anybody that's telling you over and over again with pretty selective arguments that the NBA is a massively declining product, will they go, hey, look at all this momentum. The NBA has. If that number jumps up from 25, well, of course we already know the answer to that. Boost your credit score instantly with Experian Boost. Experian Boost is completely free and can instantly raise your credit scores. Add everyday on time payments like phone, utilities and even rent payments to your Experian credit files so your positive history can count. It's fast, secure and free and built for people whose credit doesn't tell the whole story. See results quickly. Many customers get instant score uplift. I know it. I'm feeling you. You've been in this credit score doldrums here for a couple years and you're like, you can't do anything for me, man. That's not true. Today is the first day of the rest of your credit score life. Download the app and get started for free. Results were varied. Not all bills or subscriptions are eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid partnership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details. Let's get in some hoops. I can't wait to talk to my guy, Frank Isola from NBA Radio. Lineup. Starting lineup with Brian Scalabrini. I start my day with it. He knows that. I know you just got done. How are you?
- [20:37]
Frank Isola
Good. Really good. I like your little humble brag with the ocean in the background. We still have a little bit of like one more day of winter here. It feels like in the New York area, but you get the beach. I like it. Pretty cool.
- [20:46]
Ryan Rosillo
All right. No, I'm happy. I'm trying to bring joy to the world. The backdrop here. Who did you pick before the season started for the NBA Finals? Do you remember?
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Frank Isola
I think I picked Oklahoma City in the Knicks. Those were my picks. That's still in play, right?
- [21:07]
Ryan Rosillo
It is still in play, yeah.
- [21:09]
Frank Isola
Well, I mean, I have less confidence now in the Knicks just because, I mean, their matchups are tough. If you look at it on the final day of the season, you can make the case. The Knicks, three biggest rivals in the east for obviously for different reasons. Boston, Miami and the Nets. So you have Boston with a skeleton crew. Beats Orlando. How Orlando's losing that team is ridiculous. You had Miami beating Atlanta and then you had the Nets losing to Toronto. So that meant Toronto, that went 5 and oh against the Knicks, jumped into fifth. Atlanta, which has a lot of long defenders. I mean, I think the Knicks should still win, but that's not going to be an easy playoff series. Now the Knicks get the much tougher. I think the much tougher draw. Toronto was not a good matchup. The Knicks were not A good matchup for Toronto. And I do think that, you know, Atlanta should be a little bit tougher. And then if you win that, obviously you get Boston, you think, and then you'll probably get Detroit. So that the road to a finals for the Knicks is not as easy. And maybe you thought it was going to look, you know, before the start of the season with no Tyrese Halliburton and of course, Jayson Tatum. A big question mark. Yeah.
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Ryan Rosillo
It was kind of interesting there, though, how Atlanta played it, though, too. I know they didn't want to. You know, they Both end up 46. 46 wins. Toronto has the tiebreaker over Atlanta. And it was pretty clear that Atlanta was like, we'd rather play the Knicks than even have a chance of playing Cleveland in the first round.
- [22:36]
Frank Isola
Unless. Unless they thought incorrectly, so that Boston, because they had already clinched second place in the east, was going to rest all their guys like they did. And they knew Orlando was going to do everything in their power to try to win the game. And Orlando had all their guys. I mean, if Franz Wagner and Ben Carroll played it, what was that? Maybe the first time they played together this year, it feels like. So Orlando was doing everything it could to win. So maybe they were thinking, you know what, let's just give our guys, you know, the last day of the season off. We'll get ready for Game 1 of the playoffs because Orlando's going to beat Boston. But that was not the case. I mean, look at. Look at the eight guys that played for Boston. It's incredible that they were able to close out the season with a win.
- [23:19]
Ryan Rosillo
The Orlando thing, I mean, I mean, I can. Let's actually give it a couple minutes here because I don't understand it. I watched Mosley's postgame presser where he was like, look, we wanted to rest was important. So they play Bane and then they sit him out in the second, third quarters. They get steamrolled in the third quarter. So then Bane has to come back in, and Franz has been playing a bunch of games here in April. So they had other guys. They are the most disappointing team in the NBA. I don't even know what else would be in the conversation. And of all these teams that closed out a really boring Sunday because it was kind of like everybody that was supposed to win one or whoever wanted to win ended up winning their games. Orlando on top of maybe the worst two for one decision I've ever seen in a game where Garza gets the inbound and takes a turnaround three with a body all over him. That goes in with 21 seconds left on the shot clock. I hate 2 for 1 bad shot decisions.
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Frank Isola
Yeah.
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Ryan Rosillo
So it was sort of. It was sort of fitting. Not only is Orlando going to lose this game, that matters to them, they're going to lose a disgusting fashion, and then they're going to lose by like trying to rest guys but then realizing, oh, no, we actually need to kind of win this one. They're a mess.
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Frank Isola
I think you nailed it. And they got outscored 42 to 20 in the third quarter of that game. And again, you know, the Celtics played eight guys. You would know the three guys that came off the bench for them. It was amazing what they were able to do. And Orlando's been a mess all season long. The injuries to Franz Wagner have had a lot to do with it. A lot of people you talked around the NBA, those two compatible, Paulo Banchero and Franz Wagner. I'm not exactly sure that they are. I wonder with the situation with Giannis, if you were Orlando, would you ever roll the dice? Could you do some kind of deal? Maybe Paula Banchero and Jalen Suggs for Giannis? You know, this way, Anthony Black, you get him there, you get Giannis playing with Franz Wagner, you could maybe sell it to Milwaukee. Now I know that Orlando doesn't have any more draft picks, but I wonder if something like that could be in play, because I'm just not so sure those two guys can play together. Franz Wagner, Paulo, Ben Caro.
- [25:17]
Ryan Rosillo
I would jump at that if I were Milwaukee because I think it's the by far the best talent that you'd be getting back, even with everybody being down on Paolo. And as much as I like defend Palo, there's just stuff even in that game I can't defend. Not getting back on that Gar is a fast break, stepping out of bounds and a huge possession. That lazy pass to Franz in the baseline, which is like a huge possession, there's just little effort stuff with him. And when I think about the Giannis market, even with Suggs injury, if I'm Milwaukee, I don't even have to check with ownership on that. I go, are you serious? Like, I can. I can get. Because I still believe that Paolo's far too young and has been so good and so skilled that all of a sudden it's just now he's this terrible, like, inefficient guy who's like a net loser for you, a net negative whenever he's out there, despite putting up the traditional numbers, I'm just I'm sorry that I'm not going to do it. And look, whatever happens in the playoffs, you fire Mosley first. Bring in another coach before you trade.
- [26:11]
Frank Isola
I think. I think that's probably how they would go. But, you know, Suggs, and I like Suggs a lot. He plays hard, but he's always hurt. And then Valcaro, Ryan. There was a game this year in Brooklyn. He had nine turnovers, and each one was more mindless than the next. He always gets himself in a position where he's jumping and doesn't know what to do, and he's throwing the ball away. He had a terrible game. He shoots a lot of fadeaways late in the clock. He dribbles the blood out of the ball, and they ended up winning the game. When he hit, when he banked in a three.
- [26:38]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah.
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Frank Isola
At the buzzer, so he hit. So he had this terrible game, but he salvaged it by hitting a huge shot at the end. I agree with you on him from this standpoint. He's still really young, but it sounds like something's going to happen there. If they don't get out of the first round, I mean, it's going to be tough. Number one, they got to go on the road to play Philadelphia, and if they don't win that, then they're going. They'll be home for that 8, 9 game. But you're either getting Detroit or you're getting Boston in the first round. So I think for Orlando, when you look at them on paper, to your point, it looks like they should be a really good team, but it's. Something just doesn't work. And again, Wagner being out for most of the season was big.
- [27:16]
Ryan Rosillo
Can I ask you. I didn't want to start with this, but I just. We're hanging out, so let's just go in whatever direction we want. I used to always defend Melo because I was thinking about Paolo again yesterday and the effort in those big possessions I can't defend. He had a game against Atlanta a couple weeks ago where they got, like, trucked in the first half, and I was watching what he. The stuff he wasn't doing, and I'm like, man, what are you doing? Like, are you going to become one of these guys? Like, hey, I had 2812 and took a million free throws, shot 31% from three. And like, those. Those hustle plays, those little winning plays that everybody needs to, like, be a guy who you're like, I don't care what your stats are sometimes. Like, do you. Do you have Any awareness of all this other shit that you're supposed to be doing, and there's just too much of that with him. And then once you become that, I usually am pretty out on you as a player. Melo. My defense of him was he's basically unguardable. And when he loses in the playoffs, he's almost always losing to a team that his team is supposed to lose to. Other. You can make the argument that Knicks Pacer series when he was there, that that wasn't like a guaranteed. You know, that they were close. But then when you look at, like, some of the stats and you dig in on Mello, you go, why are there so many negative on off numbers for him? You covered him. Because if you were to say, hey, what if Paolo becomes mellow? I think in today's discussion, today's world, people would be like, oh, that's bad. Yeah.
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Frank Isola
And remember, too, Carmelo came into the NBA having won a national championship as a freshman, where he was great. He did go to a conference finals relatively early in his career with Denver, where they lost to the Lakers. And how good was he, you know, in the post? You know, that turnaround jumper along the baseline where, you know, he was a bona fide scorer? I always felt the problem with Carmelo was, you know, if you ever got all those players, whether it was Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, even Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, and if you ask him, who's your favorite, who is your best friend, two of your best friends in the league, and everyone would always say Carmelo. I always felt like he was everybody's friend. And when he got on the court against some of these guys, he didn't always have a killer instinct. At least I didn't feel that way. You know, you look at Michael Jordan, he wanted to kill guys out there. Same thing with Kobe. Like, Carmelo had a tendency to be friend. You know, he's friends with LeBron, he's friends with Kobe, he was friends with Chris Paul. I mean, how many people could say they were one of Kobe and LeBron's best friends? And that was always Carmelo. But. But you mentioned that series against Indiana, if you remember. I think there was a big moment in the series where Carmelo drives baseline and Roy Hibbert comes over and snuffs him out at the rim. And then Lance Stevenson goes off over the next, like, four minutes. I think the Knicks would have gone up seven if Carmelo had converted that dunk. Lance Stevenson has, like, the last, you know, had this great three minutes. The Knicks get Eliminated. And you basically didn't hear from Carmelo or the Knicks again for basically a decade. That Roy Hibbert block at the rib, like, changed everything for Carmelo in New York and certainly for the Knicks.
- [30:18]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, that's, that's, that's a good point because it's also like, hey, this is. Imagine like saying, hey, this is going to be it. Like this whole thing, his celebration here coming back. Because I, I like to do this exercise where I'll look at like current players and go, hey, what if you have, what if this is who he becomes? And for Paolo again, what I thought he would be a couple years ago with his size, with his playmaking and the fact that he was going to live at the free throw line the entire time. And now you look at it and go, hey, there's some real efficiency stuff here. That's just damning and you can't really defend it. Let me, let me stay with the Knicks though. The Knicks right now. Okay, I think I picked Denver over New York, and I wasn't going to pick Boston. They win 56 games, they go 30 games over.500. It feels like the national NBA part of this is all circling back to Boston. Going like this might be inevitable here, but New York, it's a deeper team, maybe because they play more people, but they are deeper. They are deeper than they were before. Tom had the team last year. But the cap part of this, I think his defense has been better, but it's kind of shocking to see how iced out of the offense he can become. And just shot attempts alone, they've gone down dramatically here.
- [31:33]
Frank Isola
Yeah, well, you said they're deeper, so Jordan Clarkson, they added, he plays Landry Fields. Last year they had to cut him before the season because he was having shoulder surgery. Then he returned and Mitchell Robinson only played 17 games. You know, the same Knick fans that were clamoring for Tyler Kolik to play last year, more into Tom Thibodeau, he didn't play this year. You know, it was much different. They had campaign playing who just recently got cut from Philadelphia. You had Precious Achua who was, you know, on a, what, 22 win Sacramento team. So I think the big difference with the Knicks is Mitchell Robinson. He played 17 games last year. He was on a minutes restriction when he came back. He makes all the difference in the world for them. If they're going to go to the finals, Mitchell Robinson is going to be a big part of it. How many huge baskets. And we saw it in the NBA cup final against San Antonio when the spurs decided not to play Luke Cornette alongside Wembanyama, where Mitchell Robinson was eating them alive with offensive rebounds, which a lot of times lead to wide open threes, usually from Jalen Brunson. So that's the big factor for the Knicks. The one thing that's going to hurt the Knicks. There's been a, you know, you could just tell. I don't think the chemistry there is that great. How about the quote from Mikhail Bridges after they beat Memphis and he comes out, you know that game, Jalen Brunson didn't play and he's talking about how much the ball moved and everybody got involved. You didn't beat Oklahoma City, you beat the Memphis Grizzlies. He's, you know, Mikel Bridges last year was pretty passive aggressive with Tom Thibodeau. I thought when they recently beat Memphis, I thought he was being passive aggressive again. Listen, teams don't have to all get along to win a championship, but there does seem like there's some stuff going on. And the other thing too, Ryan. I don't need any more NBA players, former players giving Karl Anthony Townes advice on what he should do and shouldn't do. I mean Carl Anthony Towns needs to tell players like to back that, you know what up enough telling me what I need to do. He. For a guy that gets criticized as much as he does, he's been the back to back conference finals in different conferences. He was an All NBA player last year. This year he played in 75 games. His scoring average was way. He had less points. I think it was four a game between four and five and I think one rebound less per game. But he still does a halfway decent job. But every night that they play, you're hearing some former mbi. I talked to Carl. I told him he needs to do this, he needs to do that. Carl needs to tell these guys, leave me alone. I'll. I'll figure it out on my own.
- [33:51]
Ryan Rosillo
Well, that's, that's a good point. I also think the Bridges won because I watched that Memphis game and I. You want to be like, so you enjoyed all the Jose Alvarado possessions where you dribble it like crazy.
- [34:03]
Frank Isola
You beat Memphis, they're trying to lose. You can't. Anything that happened over the last weeks, six weeks of the season really doesn't count. No offense. That includes bam out of bios 80, 84 point game. None of that stuff really moves me that much. What was happening the last six weeks of the season.
- [34:19]
Ryan Rosillo
So are you picking Boston then? If you had to today, or are you doing the. Hey, I picked this team in October, so I had to.
- [34:25]
Frank Isola
I mean, I'll still stick. But I do think and spoken to a lot of people on the Knicks about this, too. They felt last year when they went into the playoffs, there were two games they had against Boston during the regular season that could have gone either way. Boston won those two games. So they go 4, 0. When you head into a playoff series, you'd rather be the team that lost all four games because everyone was telling the Celtics, it's a fait accompli. You're going to be in the finals. You're going to play Oklahoma City, the Knicks. How you beat the Knicks four times during the regular season, the Knicks felt like they went in there with, with a bit of a mental edge. Now, were they down 20 in both games? The first two games of the series? Yes, they were. But I always felt there was an arrogance about Boston. It was like, all right, we got up, we're up 20s now. Now it's your turn to just give up and stop fighting. But that wasn't going to be the Knicks under Tom Thibodeau. So they ended up, you know, they, they came back in those first two games, which changed everything. What did Boston shoot? 25 of 100 on three pointers. So when they were struggling, they didn't change the way that they played. When they had a chance to bury the Knicks in both of those games, they didn't. I felt like their arrogance got in the way, and I don't think that'll happen this year if they play, because now they'll hear how the Knicks beat them last year in the playoffs. And I think when you got guys like Tatum, Brown, Derrick White, Peyton Pritchard, those guys are mentally tough players. There's no way Boston's winning that many games during the regular season without Tatum, unless it wasn't a mentally tough team.
- [35:49]
Ryan Rosillo
Do you think Detroit has a good chance better than Cleveland?
- [35:53]
Frank Isola
I do. And I think where there's, you know, not having to. Having. Not having to beat both Boston and the Knicks is big. So that's. I always like when the number one seed, you should have some kind of advantage. And sure enough, here they only have to beat one of those teams. And look at what Detroit did with that, Kate. I think they were 13 and 4 without him this year. That's. They won 60 games and their best player missed 17 of those games, which it's. It's amazing that they were able to do this. And I think Jalen Duran has shown you how much of a stud he is. He's a great passer, you know, as physical as can be. And I think Detroit, even though this group hasn't even won a playoff series, I thought what they did last year in the playoffs against the Knicks was really good. That was a really fun series for a first round series, is outside shooting still. Does it bother? Does it worry me a little bit if I'm Detroit? Yeah, it does. But I got a lot of faith in Kate Cunningham and Jalen Doran. I think those guys are just wired a little bit differently.
- [36:50]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, I love that Cade got back here for a few games and give credit to Detroit, even though there's other games during the regular season. Like I mentioned the OKC Detroit thing, which is a bigger question I'll probably ask you about here. But for them to close and play all their guys, I just, I like that they're like, look, we haven't had Cade for a really long time, so can we please get him out here for 20 plus minutes in one of these games, even if it's game 82 here, just so everybody can start to feel like the version of us that we hope can get out of the East?
- [37:19]
Frank Isola
Yeah. Let me, let me ask you this. What do you make of. And I know you have the whole 65 game rule, but it is amazing. Cade did play in 65 games. And that game against Washington, the guy dives for a loose ball, he takes a knee to the back, suffers a collapsed lung because he only played 5 minutes and 30 seconds. That doesn't count toward the 65. You know, Bill Duffy, the agent for Luka, you know, he's a great guy. He's trying to get, you know, say that Luka went to Slovenia for, you know, missed two games for the birth of a baby, which is great that he did that. But Cade was in uniform. He played in the 65th game. He would have played more than 20 minutes. He got hurt. Doesn't it seem like a little unfair that Cade is going to be left off the ballot?
- [38:00]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, it sucks. And I just, I mean, you know how this works, right? This is the precedent setting thing that they don't want to have to have like the Cat of Appeals under Silver or then remember like the old transfer thing that used to happen where you had to have some sort of argument to be made to be able to transfer, and then it just got so ridiculous that the lawyers were running circles around the NCAA and they just said, fine, screw it. Like, everybody can transfer. Like, we didn't even care anymore. I know it's not the exact same thing, and it's incredibly unfair to Cade. But whenever, especially with this year where there's all these guys that aren't going to be eligible that we'd all love to vote for, what if it's just, hey, remember what happened in 26? Like, what if we're five years from now and for the most part, the rule feels like it's doing the right thing, which has felt like it's been doing the right thing here for a couple years. Could we just have a really unfortunate set of circumstances in 26 where you're just going to go, oh, yeah, that was really bad. And that was. That felt unfair, but it's still the right rule.
- [39:04]
Frank Isola
Yeah, it's like jokic getting the 18 minutes last night because they let you have two games where you play between 15 minutes and 19 minutes and 59 seconds. So when Benyama has two of those. But if you look at, you know, if you look at Wembanyama's total minutes played, he played 400 less minutes than Luka did this year. So, yeah, Luka's at 64, Cade's at 64 in terms of being eligible for awards, and Devin Booker's at 64, and they all played a lot more minutes than Victor Wembanyama did. But Victor Wembanyama's got the 65 games.
- [39:39]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, maybe it's the minutes thing, you know, and I've seen other people bring up, what is it, 58 games to qualify for, like, the scoring title or something like that, you know, 58 seems low. Look, there's a reason they did it. Something had to be done.
- [39:54]
Frank Isola
You're right. You're right. I don't mind that. I just. I do, like.
- [39:57]
Ryan Rosillo
All right, so it sucks for Cade, and it also needed a change.
- [40:01]
Frank Isola
Yeah, you're right. And I do think, like Luca's argument from Bill Duffy is the two games to go to Slovenia, the games he wasn't in uniform and the game was in. And he was in another country. He also conveniently leaves out that the guy did get suspended for a game because of 16 technical fouls. That would have been game 65. This my only argument for Cade, which seems different than everybody else's, was he actually was in uniform for what would have been the 65th game. Got hurt. So basically they should tell him, don't die for any loose balls until you get 15 minutes under your belt, and then it counts as a game towards your 65. One seems. And then he missed 11 games after that, it wasn't like he didn't feel that great. Ah, take me out. And then he was back. The next game, he missed. He missed 11 games. That was a serious injury. The guy suffered.
- [40:47]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. I didn't know what to do.
- [40:48]
Frank Isola
Don't hustle, Ryan. That'll teach you. Don't hustle. How about that?
- [40:52]
Ryan Rosillo
I can't. I can't live that way. This episode is brought to you by Raising Canes. Raising Canes has one love. Craveable chicken finger meals. It's all they serve, so they're focused on doing it right. They're served hot, fast and fresh. No heat lamps or holding cabinets. I'm a huge cane's guy. The crispy chicken fingers, the crinkle cut fries, grilled Texas toast, and of course, the cane sauce. I also go way back with Cane's founder, Todd Graves. We've hung out in Baton Rouge, gone to LSU games with him, and he's always a great time. That's in the script. It's also true. Whatever sport you're watching, make sure you're watching with a box combo from RA Canes. Raising Canes, Chicken fingers. One love. Who would you vote for mvp? Do you have a vote? I forget.
- [41:40]
Frank Isola
I do. I do.
- [41:42]
Ryan Rosillo
Do you know what you're going to do at mvp? I don't know if you can share it and be definitive. I have a vote. I've explored it.
- [41:48]
Frank Isola
Or do you have a vote also? Right.
- [41:49]
Ryan Rosillo
I do. Yeah.
- [41:50]
Frank Isola
So I know exactly where you're going. You're going to go. It's hard. I mean, Jokic is a triple double.
- [41:56]
Ryan Rosillo
You know exactly where I'm going. We don't talk that much.
- [42:01]
Frank Isola
Well, it's. I think you're going to go shakeless Alexander. That's where I think you're going to go.
- [42:06]
Ryan Rosillo
I'm struggling with it a little bit, but I. I would say there was a stretch there where after Jokic came back from the injury, I don't think he played to the standard that SGA was at in closing some of those games. You know, I watched a lot of those games. I mean, I'm being really, really nitpicky about some big turnovers and having stretches where he wasn't able to hit threes. And I don't know if something was going on his wrist, but I mean, this is. This is what it is. They did turn around the clutch part of it. I think they finished nine and three in their last 12 clutch games after having one of the worst clutch records in the league, which doesn't make any sense because it's just not who they've ever been. So I still have to do another, you know, full autopsy on all of it. But it felt like it's SGA for me and I just have a hard time. I have a heart. Look, because I'll say this, I don't think SGA is better than Jokic. Yeah, I don't. But that's not what the award is all the time. If it's perfectly tied, then sure, I can let that be my tiebreaker. But I mean, that's a tie in my interpretation of it with other people. There's nothing even close to a tie, which I kind of understand.
- [43:15]
Frank Isola
So when they started keeping basing league leaders on average goes back to the 6970 season. He's going to become the first player to lead the league in rebounds and assists. Of course, I'm talking about Nikola Jokic. And he's going to have a triple double to be the second time he's had a triple double. And he's probably not going to win mvp. I mean, I think for, you know, for me, I think it's pretty easy from this standpoint. The three for me or Shay, Nikola Jokic and Victor Wembanyama. Jaylen Brown obviously has to be in the top five. Like, you know, Luke and Kate Cunningham. That would have been. That would have been interesting keeping maybe one of those guys off if, if both of them had reached 65. The funny thing about the 65 and the guy that's going to qualify for these awards, it'd be great. It'd be like if Kawhi was a ball breaker and he's not, it'd be pretty funny if he came out with a statement. If you did not play in 65 games, you should not be eligible absolutely. For any awards because of all people, Kawhi made it to 65 this year. How about that? Which probably makes him an all NBA player, second or third team, I would think so.
- [44:19]
Ryan Rosillo
I, over the weekend hit up a bunch of teams. So I don't know what the final tally is going to be, but it's GMs, it's assistant front office people, it's head coaches, it's assistant coaches. So I think I'll have like maybe 18 or 20 votes. And I just want to do something really simple like the 10 best players in the world, not the 10 best players for 25, 26 or whatever. The Kawhi votes are impressive, like how high he is for some guys that are working in it and how consistently he's in everyone's top 10. It's, it's not that like the top five is kind of easy. Six through 10 is a little bit more consistent, maybe than I expected it to be. But the amount of respect for who Kawhi is is even stronger than I thought it was.
- [45:06]
Frank Isola
Yeah, I saw them in person in Brooklyn, I think it was in January, and I thought they were the best team I had seen in person because Harden was still on the team. Harden dominated the first half, and then in the second half it was like, all right, Kawhi take over. Kawhi was unstoppable. It's crazy how good he is and for them to be. I mean, you think of, you know, there's a lot of negative this year in the NBA with tanking and everything like that, you know, just the competitive integrity of the sport this regular season. But one of the better stories has been the Clippers. They started out 6 and 21, for crying out loud, and they finished above.500. Like, it's like a 42 and 40 is a. Is a just an okay record. But when you start out 6 and 21, that's pretty darn good. And most of that is because of Kawhi Leonard, how he played this season.
- [45:57]
Ryan Rosillo
What would you do at rookie of the year, do you know?
- [46:00]
Frank Isola
You know, I mean, I'm probably going to get influenced by Brian Scalabridi, my radio partner, who, you know, was training Cooper Flag, I think when Cooper was in eighth grade or seventh or eighth grade. So I, you know, he's been talking about Cooper Flag for a number of years now.
- [46:13]
Ryan Rosillo
The better Cooper gets, the earlier that training started.
- [46:15]
Frank Isola
Oh, yeah, that was a three year old. It was a three year old. Good call. He. He identified him when he first started walking. He said, this guy, this guy will be a Hooper. I gotta start working.
- [46:25]
Ryan Rosillo
This guy's gonna be able to finish with his left hand.
- [46:27]
Frank Isola
But I mean, I love Concanipple. I think what he's done for the Hornets, you know, all those guys, whether it's just a coincidence, but it seems like Lamelo Ball, Brandon Miller, Miles Bridges all, you know, finally started to round into form at the same time that Concanipple showed up. Vijay Edgecomb obviously had a really solid rookie year. But I, I do understand what Brian says. You know, Cooper Flag's going to a team where he doesn't have Kyrie all year long. You walk into a situation where they're chanting fire Nico at your first few home games of the season and you're the guy. And if you look at when they play, there were a couple of games where I watched this year where you could tell the players are like, okay, Cooper, what should we do now? For a rookie that's a lot on him and I thought he handled it really well. There were a couple of times where he got hurt, went to the locker room, came back and played maybe not at 100%. So I tend, I think shading toward him. Even though Concanipple did play 81 games this year and he led the league in three pointers made, it's pretty good.
- [47:32]
Ryan Rosillo
I don't have a problem with anyone voting for either of the two. I have a problem with the idea that it's not close because the advanced stuff for con and I don't understand this. I was even talking to an analytics department this weekend about it and I was like when you look at some of the on off stuff, like don't you have to factor in just everybody else that's playing around? I mean there are certain players where I'll know that their box score plus minus is going to be better because I know how they're staggered. Like there's certain players, it's like, okay, but he's always in kind of in that whether they take out the starters at the end of the first, they take out their main two guys at the end of the first, he's always got the overlap first in the second quarter and then it's hey, end a third, start the fourth. Like there's certain players that if you watch consistently enough their substitution pattern will show. And so then, and this isn't to. To make this just about knipple against Cooper flag here, but Cooper's asked to do all of this on his own with a terrible team around him.
- [48:33]
Frank Isola
Yep.
- [48:34]
Ryan Rosillo
And I've, I guess I'm okay with like, hey, Cannibal did this for a team. Then these games matter a little bit more. Like I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I don't think it should be the defining thing the way it is for a lot of MVP vot that happen. And the other part of the Cooper conversation, which is actually a little bit more pro canipal here is this, hey, but we're going to look back in five years and Cooper's going to be the much better player. We're going to say, how did he lose rookie of the year? That's irrelevant. Like, so you're going to start projecting who he's going to be and have that influence of 26 votes. So I'd say that part of the argument is probably unfair towards Knipple. I think Knipple is going to get it because it's like winning. I think winning seems to influence the rookie of the year voting in a way that I didn't expect. Like I look back at the Scotty Barnes Cade vote that year. I voted for Kate. Not a lot of people did. Scotty won. One of the arguments was Scotty's games for and I looked at Cade being like this guy's being asked. It's kind of my, my Cooper flag argument. Cade is running the entire team as a rookie. Everything is on him and therefore the efficiency is not going. He's going to be t like imagine being Cooper flag and going, hey, here's five left on the shot clock, buddy. Figure it out. Yeah, like possession after possession. Like no, there's no chance that some of your numbers are going to profile as well as another guy who can kind of flow in and out of of what is asked of him.
- [49:56]
Frank Isola
I always say this about the voting. So there's a hundred voters, correct?
- [50:00]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah.
- [50:00]
Frank Isola
And the only criteria that the league has is, is whether or not the guy is eligible if he played 65 games. Everyone is entitled to their own criteria. So I put a lot of stock in the record for MVP for rookie of the year. Traditionally I really haven't done that because a lot of times if you're a high pick, chances are you go to a team that's pretty poor overall. They don't have that much talent. Now the two best players on Dallas, you know, Anthony Davis, barely a player got traded. Kyrie didn't play. But if you go back and look at that draft from last year. So Cooper goes first to Dallas. Dylan Harper joins San Antonio.
- [50:34]
Kyle
Right.
- [50:34]
Frank Isola
So think about the situation he walked into. Vijay Edgecomb walks into. Yeah, Philadelphia's got issues and stuff, but he's walking into a pretty good team. And then obviously Con Canepa, who I think has done a lot to elevate that group. I love Con Canepa. I said it all year long, like my three favorite players this season I'd always change. It was Concanipple. I love Nikhil Alexander Walker and I also love Jaime Haquez because I think his sister's great, that plays for ucla and when you watch him play, he can't shoot three pointers. So guess what, Ryan, he doesn't shoot them. He actually goes to the basket and score. I love a guy that knows like I'm not really a three point shooter. Absolutely. Just play hard and go to the basket. So when I'm starting a team, I'm starting with Con Canyeple. Nikhil Alexander Walker and Jaime Hawkes, you could take. You could pick any three players you want. I'm okay. I could live with those three guys. How about that?
- [51:22]
Ryan Rosillo
Get ready to learn playing, buddy.
- [51:24]
Frank Isola
I don't care. I know my dudes are going to play all the time because I think haquez was at 75. Nikhil Alexander Walker last year was at 82. I think he was at 78, 79, and Khan was at 81. I could count on my guys. I bet you can't count on your guys.
- [51:41]
Ryan Rosillo
No. I would probably go with a little bit shinier objects. Who knows? Maybe Knipple. Maybe Knipple would get you into one of those seats. You know what's funny about Aquez is that he goes 18th because he's not athletic and he kind of can't shoot. And then it looks like he's going to shoot a little bit better. And then it's like, no, he's not. He's not. So now he's not taking those shots. But he's playing again, which is also something that seems to happen with SPO's teams where like Duncan Robinson is in the rotation.
- [52:10]
Frank Isola
Yeah.
- [52:11]
Ryan Rosillo
And then he's. You're like, hey, is he still on the Heat? You're like, yeah, he's over there. And Hawke has looked like in his second year.
- [52:18]
Frank Isola
Yeah.
- [52:18]
Ryan Rosillo
I mean, his first year, you're like, here we go. He culture again. Like, they nailed it. This guy's going to play for 12 years and he's pretty good. And maybe you don't want to start him, but to get a rotational guy that's going to play this long and he can handle the ball and, you know, he fit a lot of boxes for how a guy would drop in the draft. Was in college too long. Not a great athlete, doesn't shoot it well. What is his position? And it's like he's actually just a good basketball player. But to see this, that when it's happened a few different times, maybe Kendrick, Second to none was also. That's not his nickname. Was a boxer's nickname. Do you remember the boxer whose nickname that was?
- [52:55]
Frank Isola
No.
- [52:55]
Ryan Rosillo
Michael. Second to none.
- [52:57]
Frank Isola
Ah, there we go.
- [52:58]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. Yeah.
- [53:00]
Frank Isola
Let me just give you this. I think when you. You talk to a lot of coaches, the one thing that they always talk about is guys that are competitive and, you know, you know, you look at like the players that the Celtics have You know, and you, you, like, Kate is like that. Jalen Doran, look at. Even Peyton Pritchard is like that. And it's funny, today we were, you know, we were talking about how many guys missed the second to last game of the season. It used to always be the last game. Everyone said now they're sitting out the second to last game. And ESPN did destroy, I think it was 168 guys missed games because of injury or illness. And I remember being at this game, it was the end of the 96, 97 season. The Bulls, coming off a 73 win season, had 69 wins. On the final day of the season. The Knicks went into Chicago at 56.
- [53:47]
Ceruti
Right.
- [53:48]
Frank Isola
All the guys that you would expect played. Patrick Ewing played. And the game didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things then. Patrick Ewing played 40 minutes. Jordan played 39 minutes and 39 seconds the final day of the season. And when I think of, like, guys that I covered, mostly covered Patrick, I was at all of Jordan's finals games. But you talk about, like, competitive dudes. Those are the guys that you want on your team. 40 minutes and 39 minutes in the last game of the season. And a game that, in the grand scheme of things didn't mean anything other than the fact that they were getting paid to play 82. So they figured I should play in the 82nd game of the season.
- [54:24]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, I did. I spent a lot of time on this in the open today. And that was about these last six weeks. I mean, you can even go back further with the tanking part of it. But, okay, so we've got a third of the league tanking. But then whether it's the lineup yesterday, which was, you know, it was something I was looking forward to. And then you start checking the lineups and who's going to. And you just go, okay. Like, I've had nights, Frank, where as much as I love this game, it's on. And then I realized, like, hey, you're in glaze mode. You're just. Your eyes are working and you're. The basketball is on, but you're just. You're kind of like mentally tapping out. You're losing focus. You're not paying attention enough to what's happening, and just eyes are glazing over. And, you know, technically you're sitting on your couch watching NBA games. But this is not the same thing. Because I just get so frustrated with what the product is this time of the year. But then I wonder, like, okay, is this just the window that the NBA is in the NCAA Tournament's coming off of all this momentum. You've got opening day right after the World Baseball Classic. No one in May is going to start, at least nationally, bitching about some one sided night of results in Major League Baseball. That segment's not going to happen. So the NBA kind of falls in. This is post football, college basketball, baseball, momentum stuff. And it's like, okay, but let's talk after the playoffs. Like if we get OKC in San Antonio in the Western Conference finals, isn't that far more important than this horrible stretch of basketball? Which felt really especially bad this year because the best teams were also sitting out everybody. And you're like, well, hey, like you're supposed to be the reason I'm even watching this kind of stuff. I don't know if it's just the recency of sitting through it again or if this is, you know, a dangerous downward trend that the league should try to avoid, even if it's rewarded with a great set of playoff stories.
- [56:12]
Frank Isola
Yeah, so back in 2019, we heard all about how great that draft was going to be and it was zion yet to play in the playoff game. John Morant, who knows where his career is right now, and then RJ Barrett, who been a good role player for Toronto, they went 1, 2 and 3. So we're hearing the same thing this year. And it does seem, I mean this was going on before the All Star break and that's why the league reacted, because Adam was, Adam Silver was going to have to be at All Star weekend addressing tanking at the All Star weekend, which he's not going to want to do. So it's been a significant problem to me. There's no question about it. And there were too many nights this year where Brian and I would go through the schedule, especially the last six weeks, and it would be. There were, it was very rare when you were getting two teams that are either going to be in the playoff or at least the playing. It was always like one playoff slash playing team against a lottery team. There were all. And then you almost knew the results automatically. And how many of these games, you know they were giving up 140 points, 130 points. And you're seeing some of these like crazy results that were happening. I just thought it was a bad look all the way around. And that's why on May 10th you're going to have the draft lottery. And I've said this before, I know these teams, they turn it into like a party. Oh, it's the draft lottery. Let's wear our good luck pins. And let's get our celebrity fan to sit at the dais. All the GM should be there. All the guys that, you know, you made your coaches tank and your coaches got to take all those losses. Have the GM sit up at the dais. I don't want to see, you know, one of your rookie players up there. I don't want to see whatever would be the equivalent of Spike Lee for some of these other teams.
- [57:48]
Ryan Rosillo
Have the machine gun Kelly.
- [57:50]
Frank Isola
Exactly. You know, Jamie Gertz, Remember, she sat up there for the, for the Atlanta a make. If it's not going to be the owner, have it be the general manager. Sit up there and like, you know, and take those losses because this year there's been too many people trying to lose. And I don't know. How good is the draft going to be? Nobody really knows. To be fair, you don't really know.
- [58:09]
Ryan Rosillo
Nobody really knows. But it feels a hell of a lot better than going into the 24 draft. I could, I can say that with certainty.
- [58:15]
Frank Isola
And last year's draft was good. Like we mentioned those top four players.
- [58:18]
Ryan Rosillo
But see, what drives me crazy is like, okay, all right, fine, like, all right, 10 teams are tanking instead of seven. You know, is it that big of a deal? Is the NFL fan that's bitching about the Sacramento Kings, like, were you watching Kings games the other years? No, of course not. But there's also something like, hey, I don't have to be an NBA fan to criticize the lack of competitive spirit and whether it was that OKC San Antonio game. I think it was Friday before the super bowl where I'm planning my Friday around it. And then all of a sudden you go, oh, so OKC is not going to play their top 10 guys. And then you have a Denver, San Antonio rematch this weekend, and Jokic is playing to try to keep himself eligible for the mvp. I think Fox and Harper played. So, you know, there was a couple guys. Detroit is the other game that I referenced in the open, too, where they sat everyone and still took OKC to overtime. So it is, in fact an entertaining game, but it wasn't what I was hoping to get with the two number one seeds. And now I'm like, so are we at a point now where these coaches are going, we can't give them anything? Or if they beat our five, that means they're going to have some mental edge, which would actually run counter to your entire Boston, New York thing of like when Boston took four straight from the Knicks in The regular season. That actually worked against them because they were just assuming too much. Like, it drives me really crazy that there's. And I think it kind of starts from the Popovich thing. And LeBron used to do it against Golden State back in the day, where he would sit out a Golden State game because it was like, oh, I don't want to give anything away. And it's like, what do you think they're going to do in the playoffs? Like, holy shit, what are they doing? They're setting. What is this? A screen. They call it at the top for the ball handler.
- [59:56]
Frank Isola
What?
- [59:56]
Ryan Rosillo
Wait a minute. I do think we may have figured it out.
- [60:00]
Frank Isola
I do think Jalen Brown sitting out last week against the Knicks was a little mind game by the Boston Celtics because Tatum was going to play at
- [60:09]
Ryan Rosillo
Madison Square Garden to get that mental hurdle. Exactly.
- [60:13]
Frank Isola
So he was going to play. And then Jaylen Brown doesn't play. It was a win for the Celtics. You win the game, we didn't have Jaylen Brown. We win the game, we didn't have Jaylen Brown. Either way, it looks really good. Now. I don't know what San Antonio was doing yesterday, because if San Antonio had beaten Denver, the Lakers move into three, and then that would set up a second round series with the Lakers. Why? You know, they. It's weird. San Antonio could have manipulated that by winning and set up a better scenario for themselves in. In the second round. I mean, you tell me, as things sit right now, who would you rather play in the second round, the Lakers or the Denver Nuggets?
- [60:50]
Ryan Rosillo
It's not even a contest.
- [60:51]
Frank Isola
Like, so why didn't they do that?
- [60:54]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, why did we spend 40 minutes getting to it? Because it's a great point. Because you're going, all right, well, what about la, with all their injuries, it's like they're still playing Utah. Okay, Utah's desperate. And they were. They were able to match Sacramento's record with that loss yesterday because of what they've done or not done historically in the lottery. So they're trying to stack as many chips. Even though you've got three teams in the east, we're worse records than those two teams in the West. But San Antonio should be thinking, we need to do everything in our power to get Denver into that fourth spot because that, that helps us avoid it. And then it also means that OKC is playing Denver, which is the team right now, the fully formed version of Denver, which I think is always a nice little reminder when I'm watching these games. And it's really hard to learn anything in these last six weeks. But you go, is there a fully formed version of Denver with no back to backs, more Jokic minutes, getting, you know, everybody back here? Is there a potential mistake to be made to just assume that it's San Antonio and OKC and San Antonio, who's actually Wembanyama, said a lot of the right things, like okc credit to them. SGA talked about it going, hey, Game seven matter. Game seven mattered last year against Denver for us being at home. Game 7 of the NBA Finals was at home for us. We've got to keep pace here with San Antonio. So they're pushing each other. And then on that last day to have San Antonio go, we don't care. We don't care that we may have to play Denver instead of OKC on the 14 vs. 2 3, when the Lakers had the tiebreaker. This is stuff that I'm talking about. If everybody, if the third of the league is tanking, and then that's also happening on the last day, like, what the fuck, guys?
- [62:27]
Frank Isola
How about like, if you're Denver now, I mean, either way, it's a tough road, but now they got to go. Minnesota beat them. Chances are you'll have to play San Antonio the next round. And if you win that, chances are you'd play Oklahoma City. So how about having to beat Minnesota, San Antonio and Oklahoma City just for the right to play for a championship? How about that? Those three series, if you're Denver, not going to be easy.
- [62:52]
Ryan Rosillo
Greatest team ever. I'll write it down. It's a potential topic.
- [62:57]
Frank Isola
Why not? If they do it. Hey, I don't. You know what? Aaron Gordon was hurt last year. Michael Porter Jr. Was hurt last year, too. They still went to a Game seven against Oklahoma City. So I don't know.
- [63:08]
Ryan Rosillo
I feel way better about this Denver team, I do, than last year's. And then when you're watching that OKC series, you're thinking about Dallas in 24 going like, hey, are these guys kind of not ready? But there's always something to be said. And it's even like the Denver and Clippers series, like when one team that's not supposed to win the series steals one of those early ones, like the way Aaron Gordon does. You're like, okay, like, yeah, now, you know, I know it sounds like real simple math, but just stealing one of these in a Game seven series, it can. It can kind of change. Change things in a big way. But going in that Game seven where that one there's still A bit of, like, I wonder what we're going to see from Jalen Williams after the game six performance.
- [63:45]
Frank Isola
100%. I also think what would be nice if you. Let's say you got Denver and Oklahoma City. It would be good for the league to have a series that has a little bit of an edge to it. You don't want to see anybody get in a fight. You don't want to see anybody get suspended. But you almost need, like, that kind of, you know, competitive back and forth. Fourth after the regular season that we had, which thankfully is over.
- [64:06]
Ryan Rosillo
How bad do you think the NBA needs Wemby to go deep here?
- [64:11]
Frank Isola
I think. I think he's the biggest or the best story in the NBA. I don't think there's any question about it. I think him getting obviously out of the first round would be big. I think if he plays in a conference finals against Oklahoma City, I think that would be huge for the league. You know, during the All Star Game, it was interesting that I thought they did a really good job. They told Kevin Hart not to show up. We're just going to focus on basketball. And at halftime of the game, they actually did a feature story on Victor Wembanyama. I thought it was really smart of NBC because you're getting. Maybe you're getting some casual fans, and everyone's looking at this guy. How does this guy. Where did this guy come from? How was a guy in a league where everyone's big. How is he that much bigger than everyone else and he's that skilled? I thought that was really smart of them to do that, where you're introducing a lot of people to the backstory of Victor Win Benyama. I thought NBC did a really good job. They could have done that, or they could have done the Kevin Hart roast where he's making fun of players at the All Star Game. I thought it was smart what they did. Choosing to do a nice feature story on Win Benyama.
- [65:22]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, that's probably people going, hey, we need. We need this to work because Wembanyama has the chance. The Way of LeBron, based on his level of fame. Curry for pushing the limits of the game. And, you know, as I. Again, I'm referencing my open here, but it's kind of the mom rule. Like, if your mom's going, oh, yeah, I know who that guy is. Like, that's. That's the goal. All right, last thought here, because it does play in a little bit of, like, hey, is there some Max version of Cleveland that we're going to Be sitting here in a few weeks going, huh, we should have seen that coming. The look on your face tells me that's not the case based on one player's history.
- [65:57]
Frank Isola
I just don't like, you know, how many games they all miss. And they never played together. They did this, you know, they went through this last year, and then they got absolutely smoked in the second round by Indiana, and guys were sitting out games. All right, so in game.
- [66:12]
Ryan Rosillo
Well, I'm kind of on your side of it. It's like, yeah, so you're a continuation of what you were the entire time.
- [66:16]
Frank Isola
All right, so when guys.
- [66:18]
Ryan Rosillo
They smoked the regular season.
- [66:20]
Frank Isola
Last year, though, when guys sat out in the regular season, we would always say to the players, if this were a playoff game, could you play? Oh, yeah, of course. It was a playoff game. I could play. So game two, they had already lost game one to Indiana. Darius Garland wasn't going to play in game two. DeAndre Hunter, who got fouled in game one that hard. Foul. I think it was Ruben Nemhard who did it. And nobody on. Everyone on Cleveland was like, oh, wow, look, poor DeAndre Hunter just got destroyed. Let me help him up. Nobody said anything to ruin them. More like, you know, there was no pushing and shoving, which to me spoke volumes. Then Evan Mobley sat out the game, and they're all sitting there on the bench for game two in their street clothes. It's like, guys, you realize if you lose this game, there's a good chance you're not going to win the series. And all I kept thinking about was, whatever happened to if it was the playoffs, I could play. Now all three of them played game three. What happened between two and three that they weren't available to play in two, but they could play in three in the playoffs, for crying out loud. Why not put yourself in uniform where maybe at the end of the game Evan Mobley will go in? Because I think it was Tyrese Halliburton was at the free throw line or somebody missed a free throw late, maybe they would have gotten a rebound. Or maybe they could have had somebody inbound the ball. Remember, they had a turnover on a late inbounds pass. Like, why are you guys in street clothes? Just show up? I don't know. Stay in the back. Like, work out, get loose. But keep yourself ready. Maybe we'll need you. I just don't have to me, it's frustrating to me. They're a little symbolic of where we are in the NBA. They're trying to kind of, oh, got to make sure. Everyone's healthy before we get into the playoffs by not playing. Guys in the playoffs roll around. You want your starters to play big minutes, and they're not ready to do that. So I don't.
- [67:57]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, the. The 19 Celtics did a lot of that chirping all year long, and they still had a good record and everything. And they were like, you don't need to worry about this. And it was like the second round against the Bucks. They're out in five games. Okay, last thought.
- [68:09]
Frank Isola
Yep.
- [68:10]
Ryan Rosillo
Because that knicks team in 99 and they made in the NBA Finals, we're 50 game season, 27, 23. This is again, the. This sport. Normally, this is not what happens. We had it with Miami in 23. When you were around that team and covering it all the time, were there any signs. Was there any Jeff part of this, Was there anything that, like, you then after getting the result were like, hey, there was some stuff here that I should have realized that this team had it in them.
- [68:38]
Frank Isola
Well, it was the classic, like, New York media thing where you had. Some of the media guys were like, so called team check. It's. You had some guys that were team Ernie Grunfeld, some guys that were team Jeff Van Gunny. If you're on the beat every day, you're around Jeff like, you're kind of, you know, reporting everything that Jeff says. So Ernie Grunfeld, if you remember, got fired late in that season. And, you know, the Knicks finally started playing well because, you know, they had made the trade for Sprewell, who had been suspended the year before. It took Marcus Camby a while to get acclimated to playing in New York and to being, you know, understanding kind of the physicality it takes in the NBA to go far in the playoffs. So, you know, they. They started playing well right toward the end. Then as the eight seed, they got, let's face it, they got lucky in game five. From the standpoint of the balance of the ball, Allen Houston shot first of all, with replay review, they might have said the ball went off of Latrell Sprewell and not off of Terry Porter. I remember seeing Terry Porter the next year in Syracuse, of all places, for a preseason game. And I didn't know Terry Porter from a hole in the wall. And I walked up to him, I said, that ball definitely went off your leg. And he started yelling like, you know, bull. You know what? That did not. We got. We had like a fun argument about it. So Houston makes the crazy shot. They go to Atlanta. Right to Atlanta. They win the Two games there. Camby has a huge dunk over Mutombo. It's at the Georgia dome. There's probably 30,000 people there. 20,000 of them are rooting for the Knicks. They come back to Madison Square Garden to close out the series. So they win game three and four, but in between three and they win game three. The crowd is chanting for Jeff Van Gundy, myself and Mike Wise, who was at the New York Times at the time. The story had come out that the Knicks are pursuing Phil Jackson. So we asked Patrick Ewing about it. Ewing would always do his thing with everyone. He'd wait for everyone to be in the locker room. He'd have his feet in ice, he'd have both knees wrapped, and he'd wearing that blue terry cloth robe, and he'd answer every question. But he was done. He was done. But if you got to know Patrick a little bit, you could kind of hang around and get something from him. So I got him to say. I asked him about the whole thing with Phil Jackson. What are you talking about? I said, well, the Knicks are apparently talking to him. He said, well, tell Phil to take his ass back to Chicago. So I said, can I write that? He goes, yeah, you can write that. I don't care. Now, this is. Now this is pre Twitter. So that's the kind of thing where it's a big win for the Knicks and they weren't going to practice the next day because it was going to be in between games. And I remember saying, I'm going to hold this one. And I held that story. That was pretty good to have Patrick Ewing tell Greatville Jackson to take your ass back to Chicago. The Knicks sweep game four, and then of course, they play Indiana. Patrick gets hurt in that series, but Allen Houston had the great Game six. I still remember writing if. Do you remember the game where Allen destroyed Reggie Miller? Because, you know, I know that they like to treat it like Reggie Miller has dominated the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. That's not the truth. He actually has more losses there than wins. But Allen Houston, they just kept feeding the ball to Allen. No, Patrick, Larry got hurt in the first half of that game, a knee injury which hampered him in the finals. But Alan Houston was on. That's the greatest game that he's ever played for the Knicks under the circumstances. I still remember writing to get to San Antonio. The Knicks went through Houston, which is exactly what they did. And he torched. I mean, Larry Bird. You love Larry Bird. He was standing right next to us. It felt like saying, my man you might want to double team Al Houston. He got the ball out of his hand because he destroyed Reggie Miller that day. That year was a lot of fun. Long, but a lot of fun.
- [72:03]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, it was a lot of fun too. And there's also like a little good reminder there because the season was so condensed that even as the eighth seed, the Knicks were only six games behind Miami as the one seed.
- [72:13]
Frank Isola
Yeah.
- [72:13]
Ryan Rosillo
So it's, it's not, you know, when you think 8, 1 seed now granted, more games in a normal 82 game season, but even then it was like, okay, if this team can because there was a lot of talent on that team. And then of course you had Jeff and then Jeff got to stick around a few more years after that, that run.
- [72:28]
Frank Isola
So now we, we Jeff. Let me tell you something. And you know this from Jeff being with the Clippers. Jeff was a lot of fun to cover. He was you. You learned a lot about the sport. And the thing that made Jeff great to cover was was he read everything that everybody wrote and he liked to debate you on it. Never in a nasty or disrespectful way. And a lot of times his famous line would be, all right, turn off your recorders. And then we'd go back and forth with him over stuff. And he was just great to deal with. A lot of fun.
- [72:59]
Ryan Rosillo
You and Brian are great. In the morning, check out Frank Isola. Starting lineup. High production. It feels like radio. I love checking. I love when I'm like, oh, I'm up early enough to check it out. But it's usually replays on the car.
- [73:14]
Frank Isola
Replays. 10 to 1 for all you LA people who live near the beach.
- [73:17]
Ryan Rosillo
There you go. Exactly ten to one west coast time. Thanks, man. Let's do it again.
- [73:23]
Frank Isola
All right. Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate it.
- [73:26]
Ryan Rosillo
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- [74:31]
Kyle
Fine.
- [74:32]
Frank Isola
I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet.
- [74:35]
Ryan Rosillo
What's up?
- [74:37]
Frank Isola
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.
- [74:48]
Ryan Rosillo
Let me tell you what's required. Life Advice lifeadvicermail.com We've got a birthday to celebrate here on the podcast. Kyle's confused right now. Hallie one year old Halle, yeah.
- [75:04]
Ceruti
Had the birthday party yesterday. Her birthday was last week technically, but we did have the big shindig. Yeah, yesterday.
- [75:11]
Ryan Rosillo
It was good.
- [75:11]
Ceruti
You know, Masters was on Rory, everybody watching so it actually kind of worked out well. She was good. Enjoyed the cake.
- [75:18]
Ryan Rosillo
Were you confused on 18 at all?
- [75:22]
Ceruti
I'm glad you brought this up because I said this to you last night. That was unbelievable. Like I just feel like are enough people talking about the fact that he hits the most important shot of the tournament and nobody on television knows where the ball is?
- [75:36]
Ryan Rosillo
Doesn't feel like 20, 26, that's for sure. Kind of blew my mind.
- [75:38]
Ceruti
I was shocked and I don't want to like criticize. I don't know if it's a CBS thing or it's a Masters thing. And I wasn't really like fully. You know, we had a lot of other things going on at the time. So like I was like, wait, do they not know like what's they're not really saying or showing the ball. And I was like, maybe I missed something. And then I watched it back on, on Twitter or whatever. I was like, no, they didn't know where the ball was. Pretty amazing.
- [75:57]
Kyle
I forgot to watch it. I was ready to watch it at like 10 and 10 in the morning or whatever and it's like 2 o'.
- [76:03]
Ceruti
Clock.
- [76:03]
Kyle
I was like, Jesus Christ. I cleaned my car, did a puzzle. Did actually I did a master steam puzzle. New York Times has sick puzzles and I did it all in like a day and a half.
- [76:13]
Ceruti
Oh, I thought you were talking like a, a, like a, like a piece puzzle.
- [76:16]
Kyle
Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. 500 pieces. Big guy took a picture of it. I could send you guys later.
- [76:21]
Ceruti
Yeah, okay.
- [76:22]
Kyle
But yeah, I was ready to go, just in my LA brain. Because last time I was. I was in California, was starting much earlier, and I was like, two o'.
- [76:28]
Ryan Rosillo
Clock.
- [76:28]
Kyle
That seems crazy.
- [76:30]
Ryan Rosillo
Do you think anyone in the world did a Masters puzzle day of the final round of the Masters and didn't watch the Masters?
- [76:36]
Kyle
Probably not. I mean, I checked in. I just didn't. I didn't, like, watch the ending. Cause I just. The day got away from me. Car is absolutely spotless, by the way. Hell, yeah, those Armor all wipes. I mean, I drove it this morning. I was like, whoa, you went a little crazy yesterday. Hold on to that steering wheel, buddy.
- [76:51]
Ceruti
You just get the winter out of your car. Yeah, it's a great feeling. There's just. There's just salt stains everywhere. It's like, now I'm. Rub those out a little bit.
- [76:58]
Kyle
Yeah, man.
- [77:00]
Ryan Rosillo
You didn't watch a stroke?
- [77:02]
Kyle
No, I did. I did, but it was like. I checked in probably like three or four, but I was ready to go at 11.
- [77:10]
Ryan Rosillo
It wasn't ready for me then.
- [77:13]
Ceruti
You had other stuff to do. What else did you do?
- [77:16]
Kyle
Well, the puzzle was pretty big in the morning. I woke up early. I didn't want to wake people up, so I just started doing this puzzle. And then. Yeah, I mean, it was a big, long car clean. Some yard work, receded the grass a little bit. Yeah, it was just a very full Sunday for me. And then I was like, oh, shit,
- [77:33]
Ryan Rosillo
we gotta go check on this. I went.
- [77:35]
Kyle
You know, then the. The car mats were out in the yard. Like, you still gotta finish that project. So then, yeah, kind of before I knew, it was over.
- [77:42]
Ceruti
Just too many tasks. Yeah, yeah. Been there, brother.
- [77:46]
Ryan Rosillo
Shout out to Mesa verde Shake Knapp, 11th.
- [77:49]
Kyle
Yeah, hell yeah.
- [77:52]
Ceruti
The Rosillo Bump people were calling it. Although he didn't bump. He was playing well anyway.
- [77:57]
Ryan Rosillo
Fucking dude. Master's a little harder.
- [78:00]
Ceruti
Houston.
- [78:01]
Frank Isola
Hey, do we. Do we.
- [78:03]
Ryan Rosillo
What was the Keegan Bradley bump?
- [78:06]
Ceruti
Fair question, though, because did you guys see the thing about Rory, how he played like the chorus a billion times in the last, like two to three weeks?
- [78:15]
Ryan Rosillo
I spent a half an hour researching it last night. I don't know what is true because people were saying he played 23 rounds and I don't know. I don't know where that number came from. I know it'd be shocking to know that somebody threw it out there. Then everybody just kept saying it over and over again because he's one. He's allowed to, I guess the rules. And again, these are fairly vague rules, which I Was told they do it on purpose. But if you win the Masters, you're allowed to tee times and then multiple tee times after that if another member invites you to play. Okay. So he would take a private jet from Jupiter, Florida to Augusta and played practice rounds instead of playing, I think, the three prior tournaments. Because he was like, it's a better use of my time. Somehow that number got thrown out there. That was like, north of 20 rounds in the last few weeks before the actual tournament. I didn't find anything close to any record of that. It sounds like he played a few. It was almost sold in some of the.
- [79:15]
Ceruti
More said that he. He. What did he say? He said this place feels like my home course because I haven't played anywhere else in the last two to three weeks.
- [79:24]
Kyle
That must be nice.
- [79:26]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. So maybe it was that many rounds. I just couldn't find anybody that was like a real golf person that was saying that he played, like, a documented 23 rounds. Like, if he's taking a jet there, he would say, drop his kid off in the morning, play around, and then we'll be back home for dinner. Kind of life is right.
- [79:44]
Ceruti
One of the Masters is sick.
- [79:45]
Kyle
That guy's not doing puzzles.
- [79:46]
Ceruti
Awesome.
- [79:47]
Kyle
That guy's got no time for puzzles.
- [79:49]
Ryan Rosillo
I asked somebody last night that I know, I was like, have you been invited to play? And he said yes. And he said that he's turned it down. You want to talk about, like, a flex?
- [80:01]
Ceruti
Well, how about this off of our question last week that got a lot of people talking. Would you rather win the Masters or be the Finals mvp?
- [80:08]
Ryan Rosillo
Finals mvp. No, no, no.
- [80:11]
Kyle
Selfishly, Masters.
- [80:12]
Ceruti
Yeah, it's the Masters.
- [80:14]
Ryan Rosillo
Finals MVP means I've dunked on somebody and told them they were a.
- [80:19]
Ceruti
Have you thought about the Masters?
- [80:21]
Ryan Rosillo
If you want, could.
- [80:22]
Kyle
Have you thought about your Master's dinner?
- [80:26]
Ryan Rosillo
No, I haven't. I haven't really thought about it.
- [80:29]
Kyle
Are there constraints on that dinner? Or some guys just, like, good with chicken breasts and green beans?
- [80:34]
Ryan Rosillo
Like, no, you don't want to do what Fuzzy Zeller did and criticize somebody else's layout.
- [80:38]
Kyle
Well, you don't want to do that. But I'm just saying, are there constraints to where it's like, hey, listen, we're not trying to blow anyone's minds here. Just like, what poisonous do you like?
- [80:48]
Ryan Rosillo
Blowfish? Northern Japan? I don't know.
- [80:53]
Kyle
Yeah, I've just seen a couple of those menus. I'm like, man. I mean, sometimes that last meal exercise is fun. It's like the Master's Dinner is pretty close. And you guys didn't. Doesn't seem very high on people's lists.
- [81:05]
Ryan Rosillo
Priorities. All right, let's get to life advice.
- [81:10]
Ceruti
Well, real quick, back to the I bring up the Rory thing only to say, doesn't that feel wrong? He just gets to play the practice a billion times before.
- [81:20]
Ryan Rosillo
I need to know there's a number I have in my head that feels unfair, and then there's a number below that that I'm like, rory, by the way, happy one.
- [81:27]
Ceruti
Last year's Masters was one of the best sporting events I've ever watched in my life. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Not like I'm saying something crazy, but it just. I was like, oh, that kind of feels wild. Like, our guy Jake Knapp didn't get to do that, you know?
- [81:39]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, it's an advantage, but like Scheffler, as I was researching this, he had the same opportunity, and then he didn't. It's like some guys don't want to do it, but I. I'm with you, Saruti. Like, even though I suck, like, when guys are playing their same course all the time, like, clearly they have an advantage.
- [81:56]
Frank Isola
Yeah.
- [81:56]
Ceruti
There's a reason, I don't know on your. On your. You know, if you're using 18 birdies or whatever thing you're trying to figure out your handicap on until it asks
- [82:02]
Ryan Rosillo
you what your horn coaster is.
- [82:03]
Ceruti
Because it's easy. It's. You know, it.
- [82:05]
Ryan Rosillo
You score better there.
- [82:06]
Ceruti
So listen, I'm not taking anything away from. It's awesome. I just was like, no. That's kind of interesting. That feels like a pretty big advantage.
- [82:12]
Kyle
How'd you golf this weekend, by the way? Because after my 18 holes, I'm really not. I'm really nervous about this Golf league
- [82:17]
Ryan Rosillo
starts in May, and I'm like, man, I'm a good. What'd you shoot?
- [82:23]
Kyle
I don't want to say. It's bad. It's real bad. You break 100, and I brought two guys with me that. I'm like, you guys are going to be my golf buddies. We're going to get you in. And they might have done better than me.
- [82:32]
Ryan Rosillo
I don't know.
- [82:32]
Kyle
That's how demoralized I was in the back nine. But it was really a wake up call. I was like, man, we are counting down the days to maybe one of the bigger embarrassments in the last decade for me. We'll see.
- [82:42]
Ceruti
Did you break 100?
- [82:45]
Ryan Rosillo
No. Okay. I mean, there was a pause with that delivery. Was it like a 120 or something.
- [82:53]
Kyle
It was bad. We'll leave it at that. It was really bad. It was windy.
- [82:57]
Ryan Rosillo
I played Saturday.
- [82:58]
Kyle
It was super windy.
- [82:59]
Ceruti
And I will say that did screw me up. I'm usually the guy who's good the first round of the year, though, because, like, I don't think as much. I shot 85. I was pretty happy with that. I went birdie. But I went. I birdied.
- [83:11]
Kyle
The first hole group is not a safe space for me.
- [83:13]
Ryan Rosillo
Never mind.
- [83:13]
Ceruti
Sorry. And then I went double, double, double. So I was like, okay. Like, not great. And then I kind of figured the back nine. I played pretty well, but, yeah.
- [83:21]
Ryan Rosillo
All right.
- [83:22]
Kyle
Well, I'm happy for you, man.
- [83:25]
Ryan Rosillo
I'm happy for him. It doesn't sound like Kyle's actually at all.
- [83:28]
Kyle
I'm just like. I was really excited about this. Like, oh, my God, I'm in a league. Things are falling into place, and I'm like, dude, this league might be the most stressful part of my week instead of the best part, but we'll see.
- [83:37]
Ceruti
Do you feel like you'd rather be in a pickup basketball league because it's easier?
- [83:41]
Kyle
I think my ankles are safer on the golf course, although.
- [83:44]
Frank Isola
Although,
- [83:46]
Kyle
there are some real divots out there you gotta watch out for.
- [83:49]
Ryan Rosillo
We have a golf basketball email I hate so much that I don't know that I can even read it. Did you read it, Serti?
- [83:55]
Ceruti
I did, yeah. After last night you told me. I got halfway through. I was like, I don't even want to finish this, to be honest with you, because it was just so not the argument.
- [84:04]
Ryan Rosillo
And it was incredibly condescending. It's really condescending. So I may lose it while I read it. I'm not going to yell and scream like a local talk show host, but I'll probably say some cutting things, and maybe I'm just better off not doing that while we're on activities. I checked out Team USA's beast. Oh, yeah, I saw that. Handball team.
- [84:25]
Ceruti
Yeah.
- [84:25]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. So that's right there, huh? Right on me. Yeah. I mean, the indoor guys want me to go to Germany. I don't know if I'll be able to do that during the NFL playoffs, But the beach guys send an email into life advice. And then I got done with the gym, and I go, you know what? Basketball is going to start later. Everybody's fucking sitting. Anyway, I'll catch up on Rory here a little bit. Maybe I'll catch up around Amen Corner. And I was like, let me just go down to the beach. So they were in Redondo. It's not that far down there. And I sat around and then no one said anything for like the first 10 minutes. And I go, is this a prank or are they looking at me going, does this guy think it's pickup? Like for Team usa? Because I was in my gym stuff too. And then they finally came over and they were awesome, Said hello. There was a slight mention of like, hey, do you want to like run around on a couple possessions? And I. In the way it happened, there wasn't like a moment to say emphatically yes, emphatically no. And then we just immediately shifted off to something else because I guess their next match is in St. Kitts. And I was like, this is the life. How about this? St. Kitts. And so then it was never handball. Beach handball.
- [85:42]
Ceruti
It seems like it's cool.
- [85:43]
Kyle
Like funded by the US Government. Or do you have to get yourself to St. Kitts? Because it sounds pretty sick. Until
- [85:50]
Ryan Rosillo
I'm going to guess that funding isn't awesome, right? Yeah, I think they're probably not a major priority, but great group of dudes. And then once I kind of figured out, I was like, all right, it always looks like it's four on three. And then I kept trying to figure out why guys were doing 360s. But that's a spectacular play, a spectacular goal. Those are worth two instead of one.
- [86:11]
Kyle
No way.
- [86:11]
Ryan Rosillo
So that's why you do that stuff. So it's either an alley oop. Yeah, it's like an alley oop where you catch it and then throw it down, but off to the side. I couldn't figure out. I'm like, what are these guys like on the beach day? Just showing off. And then he was like, no, that's actually. Yeah, it's kind of like twos versus threes. Is that you were going to try to take a spectacular shot for the two points versus the one.
- [86:30]
Ceruti
Just do a 360 spin and shoot. And that's a two.
- [86:33]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. But they were pretty sick at the 360 stuff. I was trying to figure out, like, which NBA player would just walk out there. Like if Kevin Garnett peak. Kevin Garnett walked out there, he probably pretty good at it, I think by the rest of the day.
- [86:50]
Kyle
Good email.
- [86:50]
Ceruti
Is he too tall for handball, though? I feel like you need like a.
- [86:54]
Ryan Rosillo
I don't know, beach handball.
- [86:56]
Ceruti
Does the length help you there?
- [86:58]
Ryan Rosillo
Be cham ball appears to be a much smaller playing area. Unless this was like a drill specific thing. And I'm I'm totally wrong, but if somebody had asked again, I mean, 40 year old me would have just been like, yeah, where's, you know, which team am I on?
- [87:14]
Ceruti
Give me the penny.
- [87:15]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, yeah, like, let me know. I didn't want to bring it up again because I was like, did he kind of invite me to do it? And I was like, then I'm going to feel kind of like a dick. And it's like, then what do I. What happens if I score?
- [87:27]
Kyle
Just walk over and pick up one of the balls on the side and just start like palming it, see if they catch on.
- [87:33]
Ryan Rosillo
I think if I had asked again, they would, they would have been fine with it. But then I think some of the other dudes have been like, who's this fucking guy? Like, what is he doing? He's. He's just playing. This is Team usa. Yeah.
- [87:42]
Kyle
We only get so many snaps here, dude.
- [87:44]
Ryan Rosillo
This isn't Nate's landscaping. All right. Took a little while, but we'll get there. Okay. It's all right.
- [87:53]
Kyle
No, it is all right. I thought it was impressive.
- [87:56]
Ryan Rosillo
I love just hanging out with you guys and catching up for a little bit. I don't know why there's a position amongst listeners that somehow it takes forever to get to life advice. Get to it.
- [88:09]
Kyle
We didn't even talk about my G unit shirt. So like, dude, we gotta get going.
- [88:15]
Ryan Rosillo
What's going on?
- [88:15]
Kyle
Maybe what am I gonna do after the Masters?
- [88:17]
Ceruti
Yeah, I remember dudes. I remember dudes had that as their like text ring ringtone that was ring back. What a literal time to be alive. I had a. Do you know I've ever told us on the pod. We're just going now.
- [88:34]
Ryan Rosillo
Go.
- [88:34]
Ceruti
Yeah, my text ringtone for like a good chunk of high school because you know how you used to be able to like record it on your phone and then just like, you know, use it so it's like obviously pirated. Was Maximus Aurelius. Are you not entertained Gladiators.
- [88:48]
Kyle
Oh, was it Jay Z? Maximus Aurelius.
- [88:51]
Ceruti
It was from the Jay Z.
- [88:52]
Kyle
What more can I say?
- [88:53]
Ceruti
Yep. So. Because that was the easiest way to get it. So every time I got attacks for like a good couple years that would play. Which in hindsight, not a great. Not a great move.
- [89:01]
Ryan Rosillo
Not a great dude.
- [89:02]
Kyle
My ringtone right now is Boyz II Men, the vibing remix with Craig Mack. You call me right now. I mean, it'll probably could put this on Netflix, but right now it's that.
- [89:10]
Ryan Rosillo
I love Craig Mack. Me too.
- [89:12]
Kyle
He never got the Fair shot.
- [89:15]
Ryan Rosillo
Didn't get a fair shot. Now that we learn.
- [89:17]
Ceruti
Yeah.
- [89:18]
Ryan Rosillo
Now that we know even more.
- [89:19]
Ceruti
Yeah.
- [89:21]
Ryan Rosillo
Did he, Bad guy. I mean, obviously you're supposed to be mad about the main thing, but I was just below that. Mad about Craig Mac. Yeah.
- [89:30]
Kyle
Rest in peace, dude.
- [89:32]
Ryan Rosillo
Oh, that's good. I could listen to flavor in your ear, all 700 versions. I'm going to do it today. I'm going to get shots up today. I'm going to listen to Craig Mack. Deal.
- [89:42]
Kyle
Awesome.
- [89:43]
Ryan Rosillo
Just made a deal with myself. Yeah, I guess whenever there's a late getting to life advice, it's like you're in control. It's a podcast. You'll get there. We can put in the notes. It's 1542 and it comes up at 6:12. It's going to be okay. Yeah.
- [90:02]
Ceruti
Just thought we were hanging out.
- [90:04]
Ryan Rosillo
In control. All right, maybe I just start with this one. I don't find women funny. 28.59, 160. No impressive gym stats, but I can rip 50 push ups at any given moment. I'm a single guy looking to hopefully build a family one day, but I find dating just absolutely exhausting. My main problem, I just don't find anything that women say to be funny at all, especially when they're all caps trying to be funny. I've even tried watching some female comedians comediennes to try to get into the habit of laughing at women's comments, but it's actually had a worse effect. Dude, need some help from the trifecta? Am I going to be alone forever if I can't force myself to choke out a laugh at just the absolute brutal things women try to claim to be jokes?
- [91:01]
Kyle
Dude, I think the sad thing is, is you just haven't met anyone that
- [91:05]
Ryan Rosillo
can make you laugh.
- [91:06]
Kyle
And I guess maybe you have a
- [91:07]
Ceruti
high threshold or you just suck.
- [91:09]
Kyle
You're looking in the wrong places. But, dude, it's not like we're not. We're not looking for punchlines. It's more like something just happened. Can we laugh about it? You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be like, you don't need to find your Bill Burr in woman form. Like, I don't know, like, I feel like his threshold is like looking in the wrong places, you know? Do you. Do you want to joke about golf with her and stuff like that, or is it, you know, I don't know. It seems like his radar is up. I don't, I don't know what's going on here.
- [91:36]
Ceruti
Yeah, I'd love to do, like, a. Just like, a idea board of, like, other things that this guy is interested in, because I feel like we'd be able to nail that pretty quickly.
- [91:44]
Kyle
I know what he's saying, but I just don't.
- [91:47]
Ryan Rosillo
I don't know.
- [91:48]
Ceruti
I think there's a certain type of female comedian that I don't.
- [91:52]
Ryan Rosillo
Who's your favorite female comedian, Steve?
- [91:57]
Ceruti
I think Nikki Glazer's funny, man. We had her on the pod. I think she's really funny. I don't always.
- [92:02]
Ryan Rosillo
She's great at life advice.
- [92:03]
Ceruti
She was good. She was actually probably the other than maybe passing, but, yeah, she was very good.
- [92:08]
Ryan Rosillo
She was better than passing. Passing will be okay with it.
- [92:10]
Ceruti
That's fair. All right. She was good.
- [92:12]
Kyle
Robbie Hoffman, if anyone wants to know mine. Robbie Hoffman.
- [92:15]
Ceruti
The Roast. The Roast. You don't think Nikki Glaser's funny in the Roast of Tom Brady, like, that. She was so good in that. So good in that. So I don't know. I mean, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I'm, like, the connoisseur of women's comedians. I don't watch a ton of stand up to begin with, but, like, you like Margaret Cho. I don't know who. I know who that is.
- [92:35]
Ryan Rosillo
Sorry. It's got some stuff. It's not for everybody, but, yeah, like,
- [92:39]
Ceruti
I think you go with the. Like, I understand, like, if you don't find, like, the Melissa McCarthy, like, yelling thing, but that's.
- [92:45]
Ryan Rosillo
I also don't.
- [92:46]
Ceruti
Like, we also talked about this. Like, there's plenty of dudes that do that too, that I don't find funny. So it's not even like a. A male female thing, but women are funny, dude. My wife is funnier than I am. I mean, a point of you. Like, hey, you don't have. You're not funny to begin with, which is. Sure, I'll own that. That's fine. I'm not the funniest guy there is, but my wife genuinely is funny. Like, she's. She makes me laugh. So it's like one of those things where, like, I think you feel like. You kind of feel like a bit of a downer dude. Maybe people don't. Sorry, I'm just. I just know what the comments are gonna be. It's like, hey, dude, you're not funny anyway.
- [93:13]
Ryan Rosillo
All right, cool news flash.
- [93:14]
Ceruti
But, yeah, but I don't know.
- [93:18]
Ryan Rosillo
Like, Cerutty's funny, though, with his observations of, like, what. He'll be like, this is stupid. And Then I laugh because I think it's funny that he figured out why something's stupid. So it's a little different. I don't know how it would do on stage, but I don't.
- [93:32]
Ceruti
I'm not like one liner funny, I guess I. In the rest.
- [93:34]
Ryan Rosillo
Who's one liner funny, by the way? Sometimes to me, if somebody's funny. Yeah, but I'm saying, like in your friend group, if somebody's just killer with the one liners, maybe he's from Massachusetts or maybe he's practicing them, which then I'd be like, what are you doing?
- [93:48]
Kyle
Takes the shine off a little bit.
- [93:49]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, yeah, These are too good. What are my hobbies? Yeah. I think the best advice is keep this to yourself.
- [94:06]
Kyle
I mean, he is. It seems like this is the only place he could let this out. Unless he had some, like.
- [94:10]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah.
- [94:10]
Kyle
Friends that really want to talk about stuff like this. Which. That's why I was saying, like, I know what he's talking about because I've been in circles. I don't. I. I don't know if I'd call the woman haters, but those. They're woman hater tendencies. Maybe when we're talking about stuff like that. So, like, I know what he's saying, but it's definitely not the way you
- [94:29]
Ryan Rosillo
want to go through life because I just want, like. What are you looking for? You looking for a good 5, tight 10? You've never met anybody. That's clever. You know, whenever you're with a girl, like, all the different things. All the different things that are amazing about girls, right? Like just the stuff that you're gonna feel that you're not gonna ever fucking feel with dudes. No, I'm not even trying to be like those of us refined, Kyle, Those of us that are interested in women.
- [95:01]
Kyle
No, it doesn't matter.
- [95:03]
Ryan Rosillo
I know it doesn't matter, but I already knew, like, the holes or attacks. That was so stupid. Sorry. No, it wasn't stupid. It was kind of funny, I think. I think you're funny, pal. Thanks. Too bad you're not a woman. We introduce you to this guy. Like when. When I'm trying to think of, like, I remember there was somebody I was dating and I just. I didn't expect this clever callback. I didn't expect it at all. And I didn't even catch it. And it was like a reference back to something else. She actually mulaneyed it a little bit and it was so impressive. And it's psych when you care about somebody and you're finding out these new things. And so it wasn't that she was hilarious. It wasn't like she had me in stitches all the time. But there was this cleverness to her. She was always, like, ahead of. Of, like, wherever something or conversation was going or some sort of comment, equip some of those. One line. I was just always, like, consistently impressed. It was something that I always, like, loved because it felt very unique to her personality. Right. So I wouldn't necessarily describe this person as funny. I wouldn't say that she's, like, commanding. You know, if eight people are out at dinner, she's just rolling and telling these stories. So I would say again, this guy seems fairly closed off. You got to figure out, like, okay, so, all right, you don't like any comedians. I mean, the fact that this guy's sitting here watching YouTube videos, trying to just decipher the code, doing prep. Yeah, just prep. You may need to change what you think you're looking for here. And sometimes those qualities don't show up in first dates, those things that make you really like somebody else. That's kind of the cool part about dating, is that you can, especially if you're heading down the road of really wanting to spend more time with these people, is being surprised by these different versions of a personality. Although you. The personality differences are. There's not too much of a variance day to day. That's kind of the joy, that journey of getting to know somebody else, to then start to realize all these other things you like about that person. And I don't think sitting down to dinner after a hinge match, that's. Whatever you're talking about, is probably not even going to reveal itself, because that's a really hard ask.
- [97:39]
Ceruti
Yeah, that's because they're both bullshitting on
- [97:41]
Kyle
your first two hinge dates anyway. I mean, we don't even get to see.
- [97:45]
Ryan Rosillo
You know, I don't even use my real name on hinge.
- [97:50]
Ceruti
Most. Some of the funniest people that I feel like I know are funny because, like, as you get to know them, they're, like, kind of weird. And. But you can't be weird to begin with, because then it's like, well, this guy. This person's kind of creepy. Well, something's wrong with them, you know, but it's like, you know how bad
- [98:04]
Ryan Rosillo
my sense of humor does, like, the first time I hang out with somebody. I mean, there's some people I'll never be with because of how bad my first impression is with somebody. And then there'll be Other people that'll be like, no, you have to like. So I'm just backing up Surudi's point here a little bit. Like, a lot of the material that I have does not fucking work.
- [98:26]
Ceruti
Right. And the other thing too is, you know, like, chances are, like, if you're. If your friends. Group chat is so funny. Like, hey, my guy friends are so funny. It's because you all have, like, hung out together for a long time and you have the same sense of humor. You know, what memes to send each other and what, you know, YouTube shorts or whatever to send each other.
- [98:42]
Ryan Rosillo
You.
- [98:42]
Ceruti
You don't like that. I would argue that my. The stuff that my wife and I said is just as funny as the stuff in the group chat. But again, you have to, like, get to a point where you're. You've been know. You know that. Know your audience, been dating them for a while. Like, it doesn't just happen overnight.
- [99:00]
Ryan Rosillo
I think we covered it. I think that was. I think that was good by all you guys.
- [99:05]
Ceruti
Best advice, though, is that to keep that to yourself.
- [99:08]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, don't. And stop telling people that. You ever notice none of you are funny? We're gonna get the spinach dip. What's up with that? What is he looking for? She walks in.
- [99:29]
Ceruti
I wonder how funny people think this guy is too.
- [99:31]
Ryan Rosillo
Like, you know, like, what if this guy's hilarious? Like, just a killer? Then I would say, well, then that
- [99:37]
Kyle
could be a real problem.
- [99:37]
Ryan Rosillo
Mics. Yeah. Maybe he should go to a ton of open mics and stand ups and whatever and then see what not. No, just put up the shots. Go see 100 female comediennes in the next two months and then figure out what you thought was funny and then search for that.
- [99:58]
Ceruti
Well, you just saw Sarah Silverman, right? Well, I mean, you put me on the spot. What are some of your favorite female comedians?
- [100:06]
Ryan Rosillo
There's this girl who's not super popular. It comes up on my Instagram feed all the time, and I think she's unbelievable, but I can't. I don't remember her name. But now her things pop up all the time. Nikki Glaser's awesome. All right. Whether it's the roast, whether it. When she came on with us, whether it was some of the standup. Sarah Silverman is really good. But yeah, I would have a longer list of male comedians that I like better. Same as basketball players. So I don't. You know, what is that? Maybe. Maybe I'm the dick. Don't know.
- [100:39]
Frank Isola
All right.
- [100:39]
Ryan Rosillo
One night stand with a weird thief. 611 90.
- [100:45]
Kyle
The subject line, sometimes they're awesome. You really got to stand out somehow.
- [100:49]
Ryan Rosillo
That's great.
- [100:50]
Kyle
Amongst the golfers, basketball, and that's just a killer. It's a killer subject line.
- [100:55]
Ryan Rosillo
On a slower day, I'll read that golf email. I know I can't. I'm not going to be able to help myself. Or maybe I'll forget about it forever. All right. 611 90, no notable gym stats. Player comp. Hakeem from the ankles down. Unreal. Pivot foot. Side note, Calling Sirti Roots is kind of like calling Ryan Sil or Silly. Yeah,
- [101:22]
Kyle
Silly is fucking crazy.
- [101:24]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, that's funny.
- [101:25]
Ceruti
I will say every time I. I just.
- [101:28]
Ryan Rosillo
Silly. I've never been called Think Silly's ridiculous. I would cut it off. I think right there. Hey, we're not doing that.
- [101:34]
Ceruti
You go to Silly's.
- [101:43]
Ryan Rosillo
Oh, that's good.
- [101:44]
Kyle
I love this show because that was awesome.
- [101:52]
Ryan Rosillo
Silly wants to have a house meeting about something.
- [102:01]
Ceruti
It's like, weird. It's like Bizarro Sully. Oh, Silly.
- [102:04]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah. The problem is, it's so bad. I feel like the next time, I don't know, next live show, somebody's gonna be waiting in line for a picture. Thanks, Silly. I mean.
- [102:14]
Ceruti
Oh, everybody. Dude, I posted that picture of my daughter for my. For speaking of her birthday. And like, half the comments are just people being like, what's up, Roots? You know? All right, thanks, guys.
- [102:23]
Ryan Rosillo
It's awesome.
- [102:24]
Ceruti
Listen to the show.
- [102:29]
Ryan Rosillo
Kyle's losing today. I love it.
- [102:31]
Kyle
All right, Water in here.
- [102:33]
Ryan Rosillo
Probably not going to stick, but thought it was a fun mention. Who knows? Anyway, here's the dilemma. I had a one night stand recently, and when I woke up, she was gone. And so were three of my hats. Three I noticed immediately because they rest on my dresser and it looked empty. I thought that was bizarre because who steals three hats? I can understand one if it were Sunny and she needed it. But three most weren't valuable, but one is a special edition 17 times championship Celtics hat, so it's a bummer. She also left her purse and was about to take a flight. Well, what is she doing? I could steal these hats and I'm going to leave my purse. She also left her purse, was about to take a flight home to D.C. so she DM me, asking me to bring it to her. I did, but not before asking if she had taken my hats. It sounded crazy coming out of my mouth, but she promised she didn't and I let it be. So he brought her the purse. She denied the Hats. I started to get paranoid about where the hell they could have gone, so I asked my neighbors if they saw her on the ring cam, all caps. They did and sent me footage of her walking past the door with the hats. I immediately DMed her asking why. She said it was quote, for the bit. When I said I didn't understand, she called me, quote, unknown. What an asshole. Oh, it's for the bit. We just. You old guy. How old is this guy? I don't think he says. All right. I just don't understand the humor behind stealing things. So pointless to someone. Sure. She's younger than me. Oh, okay, Here we go. 21. I'm 27. She's calling this guy unk and he's 27. It's like, no, you just. Misdemeanor theft. Yeah, but the dumb jargon just kind of pissed me off even more. We're pissed with you, buddy. I asked her to ship them back. She said she would and hasn't blocked me or anything, has continued to answer. But what do I do if she doesn't send me tracking info soon? I know I should just quote, chalk it up to the game Kyle and assume I'll never see them again. But the hats are cool. I wore them often and mostly just feel violated. What should I do? Is this ultimately just proof I need to settle down? Oh, man, this guy. No, dude, this one hit him hard.
- [104:54]
Kyle
No way. If you guys don't mind, I had a friend who basically was sort of like, in high school. It was like, wow, that guy's crazy. And like, Paulie Piff Shout Out. It's not his real name, but eventually I was like, am I just being friends with him so he doesn't fucking do this shit to me? Like, I'm like, I'm on this side, like, the safe side, and just. I'm telling you, after spending a bunch of time with him, Lord Daelish type
- [105:16]
Ryan Rosillo
shit, we were roommates for a minute.
- [105:18]
Kyle
Yeah, it was just like. Like, he would have me pick him up from somebody's house. And it was back when I was first, like, driving, and he'd come running out of their backyard with, like, a weed plant that, like, he would stalk this guy for months and, like, be his friend. And then all of a sudden, this
- [105:31]
Ryan Rosillo
was all just to go steal a
- [105:33]
Kyle
weed plant that he let him grow. And it was just like, a bunch of stuff like this that, like, this was the game for him. He couldn't stop doing it even when he had, like, a decent job and it'd be like the one thing that could fuck this up if somebody brought some charges against you for something you didn't need to steal, he couldn't stop. She can't stop. She's. And she's denying it. He would like steal your phone, then help you look for it and then like find it for you if you was like, all right, I'm not going to be able to get away with this one. She can't help it, bro. She tried to say it wasn't her. Once she got caught, I don't think she'll send it back. Honestly, this is something that she cannot help. I can promise just by hearing the story. This is something some people person that is not, has not changed. I'm not saying she can't change, but right now there's no reasoning with her. You didn't do anything wrong. It's not, there's nothing you don't get get about this younger generation. This is a polypif grade A. Yeah.
- [106:19]
Ceruti
It's kind of awesome that you like did catch her with the ring cam thing and actually like, because I'm, I don't know, she probably doesn't call it out for this a ton. I don't know like on a scale of like, you know, zero to Winona Ryder where she is. But like I, I, I. There was a girl at my wedding who. Some people just get off on this stuff though where like I only know this because other friends the story but you know, we did the Polaroid thing and you know, there's the cameras around and everybody takes pictures, yada, yada yada. We, we had two of them and we only ended up with one.
- [106:43]
Ryan Rosillo
At the end of the night it
- [106:43]
Ceruti
turns out like we found out who took it and her excuse was basically just like, well, it's not that big of a deal. It's just a camera, like, whatever. And we were like, yeah, but like we bought this for the wedding and we weren't arguing. Our friends were arguing on her behalf and she like could not be convinced that it like she was in the wrong at all about it. It's like you don't just steal stuff that's not yours.
- [107:00]
Ryan Rosillo
So.
- [107:00]
Ceruti
You're right, Kyle. Like some people just, it just does not register for them that this is like something wrong or they're just doing it for the content. Which could be the case too. For a girl here.
- [107:09]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, I mean she's low intelligence. I think it's safe to one is she stole your hats. And then the verbiage here is doing it for the Bit. It's like, well, what are you talking about? You just took my shit. And then to call me unk when I'm 27. And then she also, when she stole your hats. I mean, people take shit. I mean, if you're a guy, the number of fucking shirts and hoodies and hats. Yeah, well, that's because they're in the wild.
- [107:34]
Kyle
That's because they're cool.
- [107:35]
Ryan Rosillo
But, like, I've had girls just go, straight up, I'm taking this shirt and you're never going to see it again.
- [107:41]
Kyle
That's worked for them in the past. She's on a hot streak of saying that and it working out.
- [107:45]
Ryan Rosillo
That's like, one of my favorite shirts ever. I was like, 23. I remember it specifically. And she was like, hey, just so you know, like, I'm keeping this. It's sick. And I'm stealing it. I was like, yeah, but I'm never going to see you again.
- [107:57]
Ceruti
She was like, yep, I'll always remember you through.
- [108:00]
Ryan Rosillo
Man, you could not take this shirt. Is there any way you could not take it? You're just sitting there and you're like, all right, whatever. So look, and then she stole it and she forgot her purse. So the. Hey, I'm just going to steal stuff. You're right, Serdi. It was wild. I remember there was a roommate wedding. I don't know, maybe it's 15 years ago now, and somebody else in the mix had been married to this other girl recently. And I brought my girlfriend to this wedding or whatever, and, like, a couple girls, a couple of wives pulled my girlfriend aside and they were like, hey, we all live out here. And like, this guy's wife sucks. And just like, what do you do? She's like, she just sort of randomly punches people. And then she also steals shit. So we're, like, horrified. And then, of course, she randomly, like, sat down next to us at our dinner thing because she didn't know anybody, and all the other women kind of knew each other, and my girlfriend didn't know any of the guys at all. And so we were, like, on edge the whole time, just being around her, going, like, not only she randomly punched people as a joke, she just also steals everybody's shit. So I don't know. I don't understand the thief thing. Clearly, there's some weird stuff where I think everybody has a story about whether you worked at a restaurant with somebody, and it's just like, oh, they just had to do it. They couldn't quite figure it out. And I don't know what ends up happening but I think you have every right. Like don't start beating yourself up. Right. Our guy's 27. The hangovers aren't going to be bad for another year. You're having like sort of a big post Vegas reflection on all this and you did nothing wrong at all. And of course she was going to deny it. No one's going to go, yes, I did steal him after she's left. I mean, she left before you woke up too. So
- [109:50]
Ceruti
crazy.
- [109:51]
Ryan Rosillo
Yeah, he's probably she probably wasn't funny enough for him anyway. All right that was a long, long show covered a lot. Yeah, we did come that much longer
- [110:03]
Ceruti
than normal life advice.
- [110:04]
Ryan Rosillo
We're all right. All right, thanks. I'm wrong. All right, goodbye. Abruptly silly it says here on the script silly Kevin, Tom, Ceruti, Kai. That is a staff the Ryan Rosilla show. Please subscribe Barstool Sports. La.