NBA Free Agency With Brian Windhorst, World Cup, Balogun's Red Card Suspended And People Are Big Mad At The US, Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce Wedding + Mt Rushmore Of Weapons

18:40PFT Commenter:be the best, we've got to beat the best. He's a one-day goat. He's not the best.

18:43Big Cat:Oh, Ronaldo's a goat, so we have to I want the opportunity to take out the best Ronaldo. You mean Pinaldo? Nice goal you got there.

18:50PFT Commenter:First knockout goal ever in his career.

18:52Big Cat:Like Spain? Spain's not a good soccer team. They don't know how to play soccer in Spain. Portugal, they are the true kings of the Iberian Peninsula. I need Portugal to win. I'm not even

19:02PFT Commenter:worried about that game.

19:03Big Cat:And then we have to take care of business against Belgium.

19:06PFT Commenter:You got to just play the team in front of you. And then, listen, if we beat Belgium, let's say Spain wins, we'll just get Spain's best players suspended. I'm okay with that. We'll just keep doing this. I don't care. Set the trend. Someone put it perfectly. A Michigan fan was like, I brag about Michigan's national championship every day of my life. There's no asterisks. And this also... If your team... If we... We're getting way ahead of ourselves. Just win Monday.

19:35Big Cat:there will be no asterisks in my mind no absolutely none it will be full brags and if we had lost

19:41PFT Commenter:without belgian oh asterisk city oh the most yeah belgium it's very funny that like uh i i don't i don't think the like soccer twitter and soccer online culture is very funny and they have incredible memes and it's been very funny to watch but in terms of the journalists that i've been reading i don't think they're fully ready for like how we can twist the rules and not care no they don't they're not ready for that not at all and and they're not ready for us like we we can be in

20:13Big Cat:meme wars i listen i i got i got deep into the the ugly underbelly of the censor chips that they're putting inside the soccer balls after those games on friday um i think that was the uh that was Portugal, right? Where they had the little graph that showed up for the first time. I'd never seen that during a soccer game before. But they've got the chip in the ball now and the sensor tells you it's supposed to be like whenever even like a piece of hair touches the ball, you get like a little reading on it. So they used that to call a guy on Croatia offsides. Took away a goal. That sucked. Portugal ended up winning that game and I am convinced that they just stole this goal from portugal i've become convinced now that the bump that they have on it right there is actually the header that takes place right after and that the sensor wasn't synced up correctly with all the cameras right and um i i read like all these scientific papers i have no idea what i'm seeing but i did hear that the guy in croatia said it might have hit my hair and then in the fifa rule book there's a part that says hair is not considered for an offsides call in this circumstance this

21:23PFT Commenter:exact circumstance all i took from what you just said is for for the rest of the world be be ready okay because what pft just proved there's nothing more dangerous than when we start to read when we are like hey we're gonna read some shit we're gonna read up on these things you got problems because we don't read as a country but when we do oh boy watch out we don't read books but i will

21:50Big Cat:read dozens of posts oh all platforms except when it says show more i usually don't read it but i still read the post yeah i'll read the start of it i read the post and then i'll click if it's like really long and there's a bunch of different paragraphs i'll just skip to the replies and then i'll hope that somebody in the replies has distilled what was said in the original post

22:10PFT Commenter:into like a picture you know what i'll do is i'll bookmark it and i'll come back to it at like midnight when i'm trying to fall asleep and i'll read half of it and fall asleep to it that's how

22:19Big Cat:much i'll read but i'm so deep into this chip in the ball thing i i've become convinced that uh it's all bullshit yeah the sensors yes they're there and yes they pick up on stuff but there's no chance that it is perfectly aligned with the 50 cameras that are running concurrently in the stadium on live tv at any given time that also is so let's talk about some of the other games

22:40PFT Commenter:the croatia portugal game was incredible like some a lot of these games have just been so much fun to watch because you get a team down and the the pressure they're putting on it and croatia was just like just kept on knocking at the door that was bullshit just by the fact that the it hitting his head maybe even is the hair of his head like i know it's the letter of the law but like how can we not say hey look he's not like it didn't actually change his trajectory of the ball at all and like okay the guys are like that didn't that's what i'm saying that that should just be like hey that was a sick goal to end the game and it wasn't truly off sides let's fucking

23:19Big Cat:count it and go to extra time so that's what i'm saying is by the letter of the law if it hits your hair that doesn't count yeah you're right it does like that should that should have been an allowed goal there's a like a specific rule that says that in the rule book that if it hits the hair that does not count towards offside so it should count i actually you know what i want to see what hank says about the belligan suspension do you think he's happy oh definitely where's hank memes where is hank me i don't know i've been asking that all day yeah where's hank where's hank well

23:49PFT Commenter:you think he's happy he's probably happy i think he might be upset he's got to be no i mean well he doesn't like the u.s the other great game was cape verde versus argentina which was that there's some games in the world cup where it's like hey this team is going to park the bus cape verde was just going for it yeah like to to a detriment of themselves where they're like fuck it we're just gonna keep trying uh that was an incredible game the mexico england game was insane i feel like there was a hundred moments in that game that were just awesome uh you know what though

24:24Big Cat:brazil lost have you ever seen how they used to do penalties like in the in mls when the last came out they had yeah when they ran they had a completely different penalty shot where they give you the ball at midfield it was xfl shit yeah and they'd say okay it's one-on-one you and the goalie just go for it and then they change it i think after like one season these guys would get just like smashed too yeah i actually like they should not do this for a shootout but for for a penalty it's awesome yeah this is a great penalty shot wait are you gonna call hank yeah i'll give

24:54PFT Commenter:him a call give call give hank a call let's see what he says uh but yeah these games have been

24:59Big Cat:insane what's been your favorite game uh today my favorite game just watching holland play Hey Hank It's PFT Commenter from Part of My Take Sports Podcast You're live to tape on Part of My Take We wanted to get your reaction to Balogun's Suspension being suspended

25:18PFT Commenter:It's great, it's great for the country Great for the team, I'm excited to see him play I'm excited he's back Balogun on yellow once again You don't see You say you're excited but your voice doesn't sound excited Are you okay? yeah no i'm good i'm uh i'm trying to figure out how i'm if i'm gonna get to tahoe oh oh i didn't know that you're stuck in new york no i've been texting you guys like the whole night you've been responding you didn't know that for sure oh shit i didn't know that i forgot

25:49Big Cat:cte commenter that i did know that this stuff kind of piles up on do you think max was a little bit of a bridezilla no what do you mean nothing we're just joking well good luck hank hank we did the mount rushmore of weapons for today's show wait but don't say anything because it's coming up it's coming up yeah what would your honorary pick be

26:12PFT Commenter:i don't know i'd have to think okay uzi okay nice nice nice all right uh hank hank hank you said you're going to maybe not get to are you going to miss the game in a while? I'll be in probably in the air.

26:32Big Cat:Oh, okay. But you'll probably be able to watch it on the plane, huh?

26:38PFT Commenter:You'll definitely watch it on the plane. I don't have a plane booked right now, so we'll see. But you're not going to sleep on the plane, right? You're going to watch the game. I don't know. I don't really have no answers for you guys. I wish I had any type of answer.

26:52Big Cat:Do you know where Belgium... Could you point out Belgium on a map?

26:57PFT Commenter:Probably not. Near Germany. Okay. Actually, yes. That checks out. He nailed that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Hank. All right. See you guys. See you. Bye. Yeah. No, he crushed that. Yeah. Right near Germany. Yeah. Right there. It's in that name. Imagino line. He's on the block. Yeah. He's got it. Man, the Belgium is so mad. Belgium. We got him fucking mad, dude.

27:22Big Cat:Yeah, listen. Belgium, just play us. That's all we're asking. We're not asking for any special favors. Just play us head-to-head in soccer. Right.

27:31PFT Commenter:And stop bitching and moaning. Like, getting lawyers? Disgusting.

27:39Big Cat:This is what happened to the game we love. Just put our best 11, your best 11, and we'll see what happens.

27:46PFT Commenter:So the other games. Holland is incredible. That was an incredible performance beating Brazil, Norway, on to the next round. Brazil just, they stink now.

27:57Big Cat:Yeah, I mean, they have not been good for the last several World Cups. Neymar, I didn't realize, had never played any game past the quarterfinals. Yeah. Now, one year was because he did break his back during the World Cup. But I was shocked to hear that. I just assumed that, like every other Brazilian player, they'd played in the semifinals before. Brazil just looked sad. They were like Norway was the better team.

28:21PFT Commenter:Yeah. And Brazil had some Brazil blew it. They had probably three to four chances that were like, how do you they missed the penalty? Then they missed that, like, basically wide open goal. Brazil should have actually won. They just let them hang around long enough that they didn't like they had some incredible chances that they fucked up bad.

28:43Big Cat:I guess I just judge Brazil on a different scale. Because Holland and Norway overall looked like they were the more cohesive team. Brazil, they play like a very sad form of soccer now. But they had so many chances. Which I don't like. If you watch Brazil, you got to watch Brazil doing the Samba soccer shit. The Hogo Bonito. And they don't Hogo Bonito anymore. Brazil might not be Brazil anymore. They're not.

29:07PFT Commenter:They had some chances. So the last five World Cups, they've lost to France, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium. Oh, sorry, six. Croatia and Norway. Yikes. And this also made me laugh from NoEscalator's great Twitter account. He said, so you're telling me that Brazil won five titles many long ago, last made the title game in 2002 and since has largely starred in cartoonish losses, is Brazil-Indiana basketball. They might be. Yeah. They might be. Yeah. Brazil out. What other big, I mean, congrats to Ronaldo. You had a moment where you thought that Messi was going to lose to Cape Verde, and we didn't text during that game.

29:52PFT Commenter:I knew what you were thinking while you were watching it, Zach.

29:54Big Cat:I think a large part of the world thought there was a moment where Messi was going to lose to Cape Verde.

29:57PFT Commenter:You were so excited. Not excited. I texted you right after. I was like, not today, Zach.

30:02Big Cat:In a vacuum, all bias aside, the underdog story there, if they win that game, man, is unbelievable. And it was painstaking because you show right after the last goal, he runs up, meets with the family. It's all smiles. I love you. This is for country. I don't think they should have panned back to the same section after the loss. I don't like when they do that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a tough way to go out. When it went to extra time, it was like, and they got scored against. Everyone was like, okay, this game's over. Argentina might score two more in extra time. and then they come back down the field and just fire that fucking laser beam into the far post that was it was such a cool moment i'm bummed for cape verde because they were right there through the end and they did it by not playing scared like they were they were on the front foot for most of that game um so that i mean that's these games are so awesome that's why this is the best tournament in sports like the world cup is when it's in your time zone and you can watch it at the time that God meant you to watch sports.

31:03Big Cat:There's no better tournament in the world than this.

31:05PFT Commenter:Yeah, it's been so, so much fun. So much fun. Like I said, I know the way I judge it is that, what was it, Saturday? No, it was today. On Sunday, the first game, Brazil, I think they kicked off at 3 o 'clock Central Time. Around noon, I was like, where's my World Cup game? I was like, what do you mean there's a World Cup game right now? I need my World Cup game. I need my fix. So I'm fully addicted. And, yeah, it's going to be. I think Wednesday is the first day we don't have any games. That's going to be a tough day. And it's going to be a real. Let me double check that because that's going to really suck if that's the case.

31:48Big Cat:That's a harsh reality right there.

31:50PFT Commenter:Wednesday. Oh, no. Wednesday. Oh, yes. Oh, shit. Nothing Wednesday. Nothing Wednesday. And then we're on to, like, one game a day.

31:58Big Cat:When's the all-star break for baseball?

31:59PFT Commenter:A couple weeks. Okay. Next week, actually. Next week.

32:05Big Cat:All right. So we will have baseball on Wednesday. Yes, we'll have baseball on Wednesday.

32:08PFT Commenter:Speaking of all right, let me do DraftKings, and we'll talk some other sports and do who's back. DraftKings, we're talking about the Cup and winner go home. That's it. The Cup knockout round is now. And DraftKings has you covered for every single match. The DraftKings app is now available in all 50 states. It includes all markets. bringing the game straight to your fingertips wherever you are from Florida to Texas to California. You're in on the excitement at the speed of sports. I'm actually going to, we're going to be in California. So we're going to try out the predictions market in California this week in Tahoe.

32:43PFT Commenter:Follow every knockout round thriller, every penalty shootout, every stoppage time moment that ends a nation's run. Sweat the matches that matter in real time with a seamless experience built for the world's biggest stage no matter where you're watching. You're always connected and in the game with one app. New DraftKings customers. Sign up with code TAKE. Spend$5 to get$200 in rewards within 21 days. That's code TAKE in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours.

33:26Brian Windhorst:Predictions involves risk of loss. Availability varies. Bet to get bonus bets that expire in seven days. Trade to get$50 in predictions dollars that expire in one year. Issued every seven days via click-to-claim for 21 days. One non-withdrawable reward redeemable.

33:38PFT Commenter:Predictions offer void in New York. Ends July 19th. Terms at dkng.co slash audio. Do we have any? So the All-Star Games have been announced. Memes and Shane. Shane's in the booth. Shane, were there any big snubs for the All-Star Games that you were upset about?

33:52Big Cat:No, I didn't even see the rosters yet. Oh, okay.

33:53PFT Commenter:Great. Soto. No, starter. Yeah, that was crazy. I know. PCA, not a starter, which I know he had a bad month, but he also had the best month ever. But listen, you can't get, I don't know, all-star game. Do you really get that upset? You shouldn't. No. I was like, I think Max was upset last year, and I think I was mildly upset about saying it, but I don't think it's tough to be really upset when half the guys leave halfway through the game. Did they say what the percentage of the fan vote is? I don't know. I'm just hoping that we get the home run derby again, the shootout, and Schwarber does it in front of his home crowd, which would be sick.

34:41PFT Commenter:That would rock. They did the swing off.

34:42Big Cat:Yeah. The guys built for a swing off. Swing off was incredible. And then the home run derby is also going to be better, right? Yeah. Not perfectly fixed, but better. Because they're going back to the outs. Right? It's going to be better. Or is it just swings?

34:57PFT Commenter:I think it's – I can't remember. Shane's going to look it up. Yeah. Shane, what are we looking up here? We're on this. We're so on this. Sorry.

35:04Big Cat:I was looking at how Aaron Judge is on the roster.

35:06PFT Commenter:Yeah. That one's weird.

35:08Big Cat:What am I looking up? I'm sorry. That one makes some sense. What is the format officially of the Home Run Derby this year? Is it swings? I think it's – I think it went back to out. No, I think it's swings. Look it up. Good managing memes. I think it's... What are you going to say? If it's just out, that's a good way to do it. Zach's ready to say something. Oh, no. Also, the fan vote is 50%, it was saying. Wow. 50%. There you go, Zach. That's a lot of fan vote, yeah. Quite a bit of fans. You're on top of it. The fans should not have that much power. That's a lot of power for the seats.

35:36PFT Commenter:Mm-hmm.

35:37Big Cat:No disrespect to the fans.

35:39PFT Commenter:Do you remember old school when you had to fill out the punch-out card? That was cool. Yep.

35:43Big Cat:That was awesome. That was awesome. You mailing those in?

35:46PFT Commenter:I think they actually might still have those. I actually don't know.

35:50Big Cat:I would do mine at grocery store. Did you find it? Yeah. Shane? Yes. It says, instead of trying to hit as many homers as you can during time rounds, participants will start each round with a finite number of swings.

36:01PFT Commenter:Memes, save them.

36:02Big Cat:No, I just don't like the rules.

36:05PFT Commenter:All right, say it again. It swings.

36:06Big Cat:So each round, you get a certain number of swings. I like that. Round one, you get 20. Round two, you get 15. And 15 again in the final round.

36:13PFT Commenter:Why don't you like that, Memes? More home runs.

36:15Big Cat:I feel like this caps on the run.

36:16PFT Commenter:I get it, but remember when it became, the last few years, it became that you didn't even get to see the home runs because the ball wouldn't even land before they were hit the next one. Right.

36:26Big Cat:That's why it's good, but it's not everything it should be. It's better, but we can do even better. Yeah. Major League Baseball. And they get, like, tired. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like putting caps on home runs. That's why I like the outs. So you can just keep hitting dingers until you're exhausted. So in this one, it's like no matter what, okay, you get 20 swings in the first round. And so if your last five swings are home runs, you're still done. I don't like that.

36:51PFT Commenter:We're going to talk a lot with Wendy about NBA free agency, but LeBron's decision is looming. I think it's going to be Cleveland.

37:00Big Cat:Do you guys agree? I think you're probably right. Can you play winter golf outside in Cleveland? No. Then I don't know, man. Rich Paul said if you can't play outside golf, right?

37:14PFT Commenter:Or indoor golf. He said indoor as well. Fair. Yeah. I don't know. You think he, where is he going?

37:20Big Cat:I just think he goes somewhere where it's nice out year-round. Maybe Miami.

37:25PFT Commenter:You think he goes back to Miami?

37:26Big Cat:About nine months ago, LeBron wore the LeBron 9 Elites South Beaches for the first time in like maybe six years. Miami colorway. Ever since then, I was like, oh, he's going to finish out Miami.

37:41PFT Commenter:Damn. Just something to think about. I'm thinking about it right now. No validity, but just something. I'm thinking about it hard. I hate it. I mean, Miami wouldn't be the worst. The Warriors would be the worst. We don't want him to go back to Miami. No, I don't want him to. I mean, I think he's got to go to Cleveland. I think that makes the most sense.

38:00Big Cat:Is he the happiest in Cleveland? Yeah.

38:04PFT Commenter:Yeah, it's home. Sure. You're right. And look, they're traveling a lot. How much golf is he going to do during the... I feel like LeBron's not good enough to be golfing every day during the season.

38:15Big Cat:It doesn't matter if you're good enough. He's just got the bug. You got the bug. I was saying that there's probably a 50 % chance he saw Mad Dog get hit in the vagina with a golf ball. He'd probably watch it. He'd probably just chuckle, bookmark that.

38:27PFT Commenter:You think so?

38:29Big Cat:I mean, I think it's in his algorithm. I think he's just got - Golf everywhere. He's got the all golf algorithm.

38:35PFT Commenter:All right. Anything else? National Sports Podcast, who's back? Reminder, we're going to Tahoe this week. We will be in Tahoe. Max and Hank will be back. They're in transit It sounds like Hank's got some travel issues We didn't know about Yeah, it's kind of a shock

38:52Big Cat:Sucks for him He's going to watch in the air

38:55PFT Commenter:I miss our boys It's going to be fun We've got some great interviews lined up We've got some great content lined up So it's going to be awesome Alright, let's do who's back of the week And then we'll get to our Mount Rushmore of weapons And then Windy Who's back of the week I mentioned it earlier Twisted Tea Summer's here Twisted Tea Summer Party Pack the twisted lemonade is so so good i have one over the weekend i also can't tell you the half and half is my absolute favorite it's so good in the original the original twisted tea is incredible as well so it's summer get yourself a twisted tea wherever you are pool lake beach uh backyard grilling ball game golf all the summer activities are better with twisted tea keep the good times going all day and all summer long.

39:40PFT Commenter:Keep it twisted. Get that summer party pack. Grab it. Get it. You show up to the party. Everyone's going to be like, damn. Has that got that new Twisted Lemonade? Yeah, it does. Okay, let's have some. So grab a refreshing Twisted Tea today and let's have a summer. Alright, PFT, you're Who's Back of the Week. Oh, that's right. Hank doesn't go first.

40:00Big Cat:Yeah.

40:00PFT Commenter:Because he's not

40:01Big Cat:here.

40:01PFT Commenter:Because he's doing travel issues. Memes? You want to ask the question?

40:07Big Cat:Oh, where's Hank?

40:07PFT Commenter:Yeah.

40:08Big Cat:Where is Hank?

40:08PFT Commenter:Did you listen to the show on Friday and you were like, why did he keep it saying that? He was looking for anyone.

40:14Big Cat:No. Yeah. He was just trying to deflect the entire time. Yeah. Well, my who's back in the week is Mitchell Robinson because he signed with the Celtics. So memes, what are your comments about Mitchell Robinson being on the Celtics? I don't want to pull a LeBron, but I kind of figured he was going to go to the Celtics just because he does fit perfectly with how they play. Which is what? Live by the three, die by the three. And if you die by the three, Mitchell Robinson gives you the opportunity to get second and third chances, just nonstop. So he's just going to get it and pass back out.

40:49PFT Commenter:Also, it turns out he punched his truck. He punched his truck.

40:52Big Cat:As a family member had gotten into an accident, he was upset, hit his truck. You should see the truck. Yeah, it actually rocks. The truck is awesome. They're all so good. I know how much he loves his truck. he would have to be very upset to ever hit his truck yeah he didn't get apologized to the truck after yeah mutual combat it's all good did you have another one yeah true love yeah true love is who's back uh because we had we had travis and taylor getting married at uh at msg and max and max also got married for the third time um and it seemed everybody got invited to the uh Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey wedding.

41:33Big Cat:Dean Blandino was on the guest list. Thousand people. It made me laugh so hard. Like Dean just showing up.

41:39PFT Commenter:I can't. Well, let me first say you got to in this line of business. Put your hand up when you're wrong. I'm going to say I was wrong. I do think they actually are dating now. Don't need the PNV. They got married. So I'm going to count it. I'm going to put it on the board. R on F. Yep. I'm going to see it. I saw it. Yep. that's crazy they actually did the whole wedding at MSG.

42:06Big Cat:It's also crazy to invite a thousand people to something. Yeah. Like a thousand person guest list. There's so many people that you must not actually know that get invited to your wedding and that's kind of weird. There's no way to know 500 people. There's no way in hell you know a thousand people.

42:20PFT Commenter:How mad are you if you played even a snap in the NFL and you didn't get invited you gotta be like what the fuck happened to me? What am I chopped liver?

42:27Big Cat:Yeah. I don't know if you asked me to like Like, name a thousand people that I've met. I don't think I could sit down and do that list.

42:35PFT Commenter:Wait, zoom in. Let's see this. Okay, so this is the update with some of the attendees.

42:42Big Cat:Adam Sandler was the efficient. That part is awesome. That part is awesome. Good job, Travis. That's very cool. I'm assuming that was Travis's choice.

42:48PFT Commenter:That's very cool. Okay, let's all pick someone out of here. Oh, the Dixie Chicks were there. Aren't they just the chicks now? Juju Smith was there. Jules. yeah Brad Paisley Brad Paisley was there Kyle Yushek

43:07Big Cat:yeah

43:09PFT Commenter:that's huge

43:10Big Cat:George Kittle

43:10PFT Commenter:I mean yeah the TEU I think Greg Olson was there as well the chain smokers were big chain smokers guys hell yeah Wayne Gretzky the great one yeah there's no John Lovitz what I made that one up oh Bette Midler we should just uh seth meyers okay good for all these people kind of tacky a friday wedding friday weddings are okay now you get to me listen if you do if

43:44Big Cat:you are uh looking at a big ticket venue like msg probably save you like 250 grand going friday as opposed to Saturday. Can I say

43:54PFT Commenter:something without getting in trouble with the Swifties? Absolutely not. It's something that I saw. I did not come up with this. I saw it. I saw someone make this point and I want them to be married for a very long time. I hope that it's forever and forever. And I actually think this is a fair game because part of the allure of Taylor Swift is she does the numerology and the secret codes everywhere and all this stuff and it's like Like, people love doing this, finding what everything means. Someone did point out that she might have had her wedding on July 3rd so that if they ever do get divorced, she'll just release an album and call it Independence Day.

44:34PFT Commenter:That would go hard. Yeah. I did not come up with that. I did not come up with that. It crossed my eyes. Yeah. I think they're going to make it. I think they're going to be married for a very long time. I think it was a magical wedding. I think they're going to be married forever. They're going to be married forever.

44:49Big Cat:They turned into a castle, the inside of MSG. Is that true? I think so. I think they built it out into something crazy. Oh, that is cool. And then there were people that were freaking out just waiting outside. And then the cops brought them like donuts, which was kind of ironic. But they hand them these donuts. I think they said that they're like from inside. And the people that were just waiting freaked the fuck out because they were like, it's kind of like we got invited to their wedding because they're throwing food at us.

45:14PFT Commenter:Yeah. And those were just regular.

45:16Big Cat:Probably regular. Completely. Yeah, like street donuts. Yeah.

45:19PFT Commenter:They did also donate$26 million to local charities, which is very cool. We should mention that. That is good. We're going to say, Zach.

45:25Big Cat:That is good. That's a ton of money. It's a beautiful thing. If there's 1 ,000 people at a wedding, you got one shot in an hors d 'oeuvre tray, right? Oh, that's good boy. Like, it comes around once. You got to just, like, sweep it onto the plate or 1 ,000 people. You're getting, what, one meatball? But, okay, think about it.

45:43PFT Commenter:that's like glass half empty because i think all of us here uh well maybe maybe i'm just speaking for myself just kind of camp out right where the the servers come out of imagine camping out outside of where the servers come out of for a thousand people the mass quantity of appetizers that you can get yourself into holy shit that might be traffic jam kind of situation would

46:07Big Cat:be incredible you think they went open bar or do you think they uh no it's definitely like it's

46:11PFT Commenter:No, it's probably like coupons for two. Yeah, to drink tickets. Soft pretzel.

46:15Big Cat:Probably have to wait in line at the little kiosks that they have set up there. Do you think they had a beer guy?

46:21PFT Commenter:Do you think they had a 50-50?

46:22Big Cat:Maybe a 50-50. That would be sick.

46:24PFT Commenter:Then I'd be all in on this.

46:26Big Cat:Maybe the beer guy and the hot dog guy that's walking up and down the aisle.

46:30PFT Commenter:How out of place would we feel if we were at that wedding?

46:33Big Cat:I mean, I felt really out of place at the dog show at MSG. So I imagine I would feel extremely unwelcome at this point.

46:41PFT Commenter:Well, it's funny because we saw like I saw these people get in get invited that we knew we know a bunch of them, but I feel like we know not them that side of them. You know, I mean, when I see like Greg Olson, all, you know, suited up and looking nice and cool hat and Greg and George Kittle looking the same way. And like, you know, Edelman always looks hot. It's like I know them when they're like fucking around with us. They don't. We're the friends they don't want to tell anyone else about.

47:07Big Cat:It's like they're at work right now. Yeah. And they do this.

47:10PFT Commenter:Yeah.

47:10Big Cat:Yeah. But good for them. Congrats. Love is back. Love is back. Paul McCartney saying, I want to hold your hand for the first time since like 1965. That's pretty cool. That's kind of cool. That's a flex. Yeah, it's a pretty big flex.

47:21PFT Commenter:That's a fucking awesome flex. Yep. Okay. Well, love is back. All right. My who's back of the week is dudes rocking because, well, I got two of them. I got two dudes. One, our goat, Joey Chestnut. 18 out of 19. 66 hot dogs. It was super hot. It was like 92 degrees at Coney Island. He was just a man amongst boys. Can't be stopped. What was second place this year? I think Bertoletti had 50, which I feel bad for him because he is really, really good.

47:53Big Cat:Any other era. Yeah. People would be saying this is the greatest eater of all time.

47:57PFT Commenter:It's brutal. Just Joey Chester comes and just kills everyone. And it still shocks me. I tweeted this during the competition because 10 years ago I was in it and I was around Joey Chester. We've met him a couple times and hung out with him a couple times. He eats 66 hot dogs at Coney Island in 92-degree heat. He goes home, takes a nap, and then just goes and gets fucked up all night, like drinks 20 drinks. I don't know how he does it.

48:23Big Cat:It's his one-man championship parade every year.

48:25PFT Commenter:He's an absolute beast of a man. And then so Dudes Rock number one was Joey Chestnut. Dudes Rock number two was the story about the missing England fan who was accidentally found in a bar in Spain two weeks later. So this is an unbelievable story. There's a guy, an England fan, who left England, Michael Hewitt, 65. It looks a little bit like an old Sean McVay. Yeah. I'd have to see his shirt off to tell if it was actually Sean McVay.

48:59Big Cat:Yeah, but just like, you know, over the hill Sean.

49:01PFT Commenter:Yeah. so he left he left England to go to the World Cup he was going through Spain he lost his passport and his phone at the airport in Spain just started going to the pub every day and getting fucked up meanwhile his whole family was looking for him thought he died because they thought he would went to the US turns out he was never going to the US unless he had a ticket so he was just sitting in a pub in Spain looking at tickets being like maybe i'll go maybe i won't until an off-duty police officer saw him he's a leeds united fan they did the lead salute and then the off-duty police officer was like hey wait a second i like your family's been looking for you for two weeks he had no idea he was just

49:47Big Cat:having the best time of his life listen barcelona will do that to you that would be a great place to just kind of lay low for a while so he was posting pictures while he was getting fucked up

49:57PFT Commenter:in the pub yeah he had his he did have his password sorry he lost his phone he said mick had lost his phone soon after arriving in the spanish city and was blissfully unaware of the desperate appeals to find him his brother gary said he added because he still had his wallet and passport he saw no reason to go to the embassy or let us know so basically what happened was

50:16Big Cat:he he was posting pictures from this bar so it's not like he was no out of contact with everyone He was in contact with the internet, not with his family. And this is honestly like, this is the European equivalent of getting a vasectomy at the start of March Madness. Yeah. Where it's like, I'm going to chill out for a while and just watch basketball. This guy's like, I'm stuck in Barcelona. I'm just going to get fucked up and watch soccer every day.

50:41PFT Commenter:It's crazy. He's so obsessed with soccer in England. His brother called him and was like, hey, we booked you a flight to come home because we all thought you were dead. And he's like, I can't fly home on that day England plays. Like, what if I get what he doesn't want to be a Hank in the in the air when his team's play.

51:00Big Cat:We should. If this guy gets to the World Cup final, he should he should come to America.

51:04PFT Commenter:Yeah. Yeah. What an awesome. He's just been hanging out getting fucked up. All right, Zach.

51:11Big Cat:Who's back in the week this week is going to be Erling Holland because Erling Holland showed all of us that when he's not preparing for the World Cup, he's just like the rest of us. He's a dude's dude. He let us know that his favorite thing to do outside of soccer is get together with the boys at home, throw a little LAN party. Did you guys see the LAN party? No. I did not see the LAN party. No. So you guys are familiar with LAN parties? I am, yeah. What's a LAN party? LAN party is just when you guys come have a sleepover at my house and you both bring your own Xbox. Oh, hell yes. He's like, this is what me and my boys like to do.

51:43Big Cat:He's got the Xbox mini fridge there.

51:44PFT Commenter:Wait, so this is just they're playing Xbox next to you?

51:47Big Cat:Yes. Everybody's got their own TV and their own game, and they're just playing however many guys. So you're playing the same game, either co-op or against each other, but you're all in the room. It's like a closed system connected to each other.

51:58PFT Commenter:It's masturbation, not sex.

52:00Big Cat:It's a circle jerk. It's a circle jerk, yeah. Yeah, but for gaming. And then he said top three is Minecraft, GTA, and Call of Duty. So just when you feel like some of these guys on TV doing miraculous things aren't just like you and me, they remind you, hey, I'm just a regular dude. How about a game?

52:16PFT Commenter:That is awesome.

52:17Big Cat:good for you gamers up I read that he's a big raw milk guy he drinks raw milk and his alarm Zach you know what his alarm is on his phone I'm not familiar it's the Champions League theme song wakes him up every morning that's pretty cool I might have to pivot you might maybe pivot yeah

52:33PFT Commenter:you think you'd wake up for that

52:35Big Cat:or maybe round ball rock maybe a little too soft but maybe I change some of the decibels you never know are you nervous

52:40PFT Commenter:about a flight tomorrow

52:40Big Cat:I think about anytime we travel yes sir

52:43PFT Commenter:if we're talking about it

52:46Big Cat:Do you have another who's back? Other who's back of the week to pivot off the hot dog contest a little bit was Badlands Chugs because he took down that guy and eliminated in 20 seconds. Oh, that's crazy.

52:56PFT Commenter:We should get Deutsch in that. I bet you Deutsch could probably beat him. I think it was like 22.1 maybe was the exact time.

53:03Big Cat:It was Badlands Booker? Yeah, Badlands Booker, yeah. Damn, beast. Anything we missed from the booth? Jaden Daniels. Oh, yeah. What about him? He's beefing with his new receiver. No, the Washington Commanders have released Brandon Ayuk today from the contract that he didn't sign with us and was never going to sign. Yeah, things got kind of weird over the weekend. So Ayuk was talking shit about Jaden's mom, I guess, and then they unfollowed each other, and then Jaden posted a picture of Kevin Durant giving the birds. Yeah, so I think that should probably put an end to the Brandon Iyuk to the Commander's Rumors, but I was never really on board for it's been weird for quite some time.

53:51Big Cat:Yeah! I hope he gets whatever help he needs. It doesn't seem like he's in a good space mentally, and it seems like even his best, oldest friends have tried to help him, and he just burns those bridges too, so I hope he figures it out, and yeah, it's been really strange to watch.

54:11PFT Commenter:Yeah. And then I have one other. Caleb's giving jerseys to Pope Leo. Da, Pope. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

54:19Big Cat:Yeah. I have one other. Tobias Harris would be fourth all time in NFL career earnings. So NBA contracts are back. Oh.

54:28PFT Commenter:He's made$330 million. And he's too shy of Tom Brady's career earnings. Holy shit. Oh, that's awesome. Holy shit. That is nuts. God bless America. holy crap that's that's insane good for him yeah good for what about kirk cousins i feel like kirk

54:49Big Cat:cousins might be right in line with that what are the top four uh top four are matthew stafford aaron rogers tom brady and then kirk cousins so he's just above kirk got it but kirk you never know might get another bite kirk's got one more in them don't count out kirk contract no um okay

55:11PFT Commenter:Let's do Mount Rushmore of weapons. And then we have Brian Windhorst talking NBA free agency. Okay. Mount Rushmore is presented by Twisted Tea. Summer's here and so is the Twisted Tea Summer Party Pack. Twisted Tea is a refreshing hard ice tea made with a real brewed tea and 5 % alcohol. They also have a new summer party pack. Has a brand new Twisted Lemonade. It's a refreshing hard lemonade made with real lemons. It's only available in their new party pack, so grab it while you can. Whether you're hanging out at the bar, hitting the lake, or the beach for a weekend, or day drinking with friends, Twisted Tea is there to turn your day up a notch and make a good time a great time.

55:53PFT Commenter:Keep the good times going all day and all summer long. Keep it twisted. Grab a refreshing Twisted Tea today. We are headed out to Lake Tahoe, and we are excited because we are going to drink some Twisted Teas this week with the boys. Be on the golf course. Nothing better. Maybe some grilling. Zach? I need to get my numbers up. So you may be grilling while I have some twisted teas and watch you grill. Could be a big week for the burgers. Yeah. Big week. Okay. Mount Rushmore time. So Max's three month wedding is finally kind of complete. You ever seen the movie deer hunter?

56:26Big Cat:Yeah. It's been like that scene except just for an entire month. Yeah. That's all that it's been. It's his life has been half wedding.

56:32PFT Commenter:He's been a bridezilla. Let's just all admit it. He's been a bridezilla for the last three months, but he is finally, I think the wedding is almost over in the fact that he's missing this show and so is Hank so we were sitting and we were kind of game planning what we should do and I made the offer to Zach I was like hey you can pick the Mount Rushmore if you don't talk to Hank and then I said you know what memes do you mind sitting out this one let's just go mano y mano y mano so Zach me PFT all three of us and then we're like you know what let's do a Mount Rushmore where none of us have any idea what we're talking about and we will not use any google or any help from anything not even a simple hey what what it what are some of these and the mount rushmore is going to be the mount rushmore of weapons i would say we're not weapons guys is that fair to say no i call a duty zach might have yeah not really weapon i'm more

57:29Big Cat:of a weapons delivery system guy yeah i know i know planes i know tank um but outside of that No, I'm not. I have used weapons.

57:37PFT Commenter:Yeah. I've shot some guns, but it's not. My list got really tough after about. We're all pen and paper. My list got tough after about six. Yeah. And I had to start going outside the box, thinking all over the place. So weapons. Who has first pick memes? That'd be PFT. Okay. Then who goes second?

58:00Big Cat:That'd be you. Okay. Then Zach. I love having first overall pick in this draft. I got to be honest with you. Okay. This is huge. This is huge. So ready to get started? Yeah. All right. Let's get weapons. Adam bomb. Okay. Nuclear bomb. I want it to be nuclear bomb as my weapon of choice. I changed everything.

58:18PFT Commenter:Okay. I got a question right off the bat. Is there a difference between a nuclear bomb and a hydrogen bomb? Because I have both on my list.

58:25Big Cat:Hydrogen bomb is a type of nuclear bomb.

58:28PFT Commenter:So I can't take hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen bomb and atom bomb are slightly different. what's the new age one that we have that's like so sick that's like makes the because you're talking about the one we dropped in japan i want the one we got now i'm talking about nuclear

58:42Big Cat:weapons which are that income that's everything from fat man and little boy back in the day to the czar bombo that russia developed to whatever we got on the trident missiles right now so just

58:51PFT Commenter:nuclear bomb okay so i i can't do any hydrant no hydrogen all nuclear weapons that's a i

58:58Big Cat:off the table. Nuclear bomb.

59:00PFT Commenter:Alright, you know what? I think I might just go outside the box for all my picks because I really had nuclear bomb was kind of the only one I felt really good about. Everything else I was like, maybe. And I did have nuclear bomb and hydrogen bomb. So that was my one-two were taken just like that.

59:18Big Cat:My chemistry teacher in high school told me a joke when he was trying to get us to learn the periodic table. What do you do when your parents come home and interrupt your party?

59:27PFT Commenter:What do you do?

59:27Big Cat:Hydrogen.

59:28PFT Commenter:Mmm.

59:29Big Cat:Nice. Yeah.

59:31PFT Commenter:Okay, so what does this mean? What are you pulling up? What the fuck does this mean?

59:34Big Cat:It's just a lot of different nukes. This is just the most powerful nukes. Okay, got it. Got it.

59:38PFT Commenter:Tsar Bomba. Yeah, big boy. That was 1961. I feel like we've got to get better, right?

59:43Big Cat:No, we kind of stopped going bigger because it reached the point where we're like, hey, we're probably just going to destroy the earth if we make them any bigger than this. Where did we drop Tsar Bomba? So Russia did that on a remote island that's like way up north in Russia. and then now you can't go back to it ever again. Just to do it. That's kind of selfish. Just to do it. Just to drop one. Just to be like, hey, look what we got. I think it was so heavy that they had to design a brand new plane that could possibly carry it.

1:00:09PFT Commenter:All right, you know what? I'm going to do a regular weapon for the first one, not all outside the box. I feel like I got to hit something, and I do have one that I like. I'm going to go with the sniper rifle. That's a good pick. Sniper rifle is an awesome weapon, especially if you're playing video games. You just sit out. That's frowned upon, right, Zach? It's a great pick. No, I guess different game modes.

1:00:28Big Cat:So all snipers off the board?

1:00:30PFT Commenter:I think so.

1:00:31Big Cat:He got all the hydrogen and nuclear and shit. That's fair, yeah. Why? Did you have a specific type of sniper? I think the bear 50 cow is probably the 1-1. Yeah, that would be the 1-1.

1:00:40PFT Commenter:I got it. That's a great pick. Yeah, great pick off the bat. Okay. What do you got? I'm going to go with...

1:00:52PFT Commenter:It gets really tough.

1:00:54Big Cat:Is there a more fun gun to use in video games than the sniper rifle? No. When you headshot someone? Yeah. Unreal feeling. Yeah. It really is. Nothing else like that in life. In the game, though. In the game, though. In the game. Not IRL. Weaponless IRL. Okay. I'll take AK-47.

1:01:11PFT Commenter:Okay. All right, Kami. I didn't know. Is it technically an assault rifle?

1:01:18Big Cat:AK-47 is a Russian... Assault rifle. Russian rifle, very durable. Yeah, it is an assault rifle. Throw it in the mud, throw it in the water, get right back up. Works fantastic. Okay, so what do you think about taking AR-15? I was going to just take assault rifle. AR-15, which stands for assault rifle 15, as Memes and I were discussing earlier. I don't know... Everyone knows that.

1:01:38PFT Commenter:Yeah, I don't... My entire list is just very generic terms. Okay, fair. So we'll just... Between nuclear bomb and a form of an assault rifle, 75 % of my list is gone.

1:01:55Big Cat:So would I just get guns? Is that how it would work? Guns would have gone 1-1, I think. Yeah. That was the only kind of gun. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. Okay. And then one more pick. I'm going to go with The Force.

1:02:07PFT Commenter:The Force? Yeah, from Star Wars. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Good. because I, like I said, I've run out of actual weapons here. I have a couple. Is the Force just magic? I think it's up for interpretation. Zach, do you know that this side of the room has never seen Star Wars? Worth watching. I saw the second half of...

1:02:25Big Cat:Definitely worth watching. Was the last one Return of the Jedi? I don't have the numerical orders like that, but I think that's one of the head leaders. The third one, which was technically the sixth one that came out. I saw the second half of that, and then it turns out I did watch Phantom Menace. I had just forgotten about it because it sucked because they were just like debating taxes the entire movie.

1:02:44PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:02:44Big Cat:I've seen the original ones, but I haven't really seen like the Disney ones, the newer ones.

1:02:48PFT Commenter:Okay. I'm going to go with what I think is maybe more powerful of a weapon than the nuclear bomb, hydrogen bomb. I'm going to go with Big Perfect Tits. Okay. That's a good pick. Brings any man to his knees. Got some weapons. Yeah. He's just like, what are you going to do about that? Nothing. You just, you become a puddle.

1:03:07Big Cat:Yep. Right? The nips that launched a thousand ships.

1:03:10PFT Commenter:You could, yeah, right. Right. Who started a war? Joan of Arc?

1:03:13Big Cat:Helen Detroit. What did Joan of Arc do? She was burned at the stake.

1:03:17PFT Commenter:Okay. So that was close. What are you going to say, Shane? Shane's in the booth because Max is a bridezilla. Shane just Googled big perfect tits. Now we're just looking at nudes, Shane. There are nudes in the room. Yeah. Good job, Shane. Although I don't. Some of those aren't perfect. No. Actually, they're all perfect. Actually, yeah.

1:03:34Big Cat:Yeah.

1:03:35PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:03:36Big Cat:They're all really good. Thank you, Shane. They're really, really good.

1:03:38PFT Commenter:Keep scrolling.

1:03:39Big Cat:That's a good job by you, Shane. Okay.

1:03:40PFT Commenter:All right. Let's stop scrolling.

1:03:42Big Cat:Max just got Wally pipped big time. Yeah.

1:03:44PFT Commenter:Wait, did you have safe search off? It was on. I turned it off. Okay. All right. Good. Oh, Max. What a fucking pussy. He had safe search on. Okay. PFT.

1:03:55Big Cat:Okay. Hmm. Got to cross that sniper rifle here.

1:04:02PFT Commenter:Okay. That was the pie chart of our weapons knowledge. I think assault rifle, sniper rifle, and nuclear bomb had to be what?

1:04:13Big Cat:90 % of it? It's a lot of it. All right. I'm going to go with a classic one. I mean, probably more people have died by this than just about anything else. It could also be used to confer knighthood onto people. The sword. Okay. The sword. Yeah. The mightiest medieval weapon of them all.

1:04:31PFT Commenter:I had knife on there, so I like to pick.

1:04:33Big Cat:Knife's a good pick, too. I feel like sword is just like that's a longer knife. Way bigger knife. So I'm sword in front of knife. Yeah. Okay. You have two picks. Oh, yeah.

1:04:46I'm going to go with rocket launcher.

1:04:53Big Cat:That's pretty good. Rocket launchers are awesome. Don't fire too close to a wall because then you'll hurt yourself. And also don't hit a barrel with it because that's just going to blow everything up.

1:05:04PFT Commenter:Okay, this one, you guys can tell me if this passes the snuff test. This is one I'm personally very scared of, just in general. This is all I kind of hear about with China and all this shit. But can I do Cyber Warfare? Yeah, that's a good pick. I mean, that's a great pick, yeah. I don't understand it at all. I just feel like at some point, they're going to press a button, and we're all going to be fucked. And every cell phone is going to be jammed. All the stoplights are going to, you know. Go green? Yeah, everything's going to, like, all the hospitals are going to stop working. Cyber warfare scares the fuck out of me.

1:05:38Big Cat:You ever think about just, like, what if there was a button for all the, like, Waymo cars, and somebody hit it, and they all just started going, like, 100 miles an hour driving in circles everywhere? Yeah. Like, that would be pretty terrifying. Right.

1:05:50PFT Commenter:Like, if you told me that we were going to get hit by cyber warfare or, like, a bomb, you die pretty quickly. Cyber warfare, it's, like, you're, it's probably going to just become the rules of the street. and I ain't gonna survive that.

1:06:04Big Cat:And you might not even know you're dead. Like, what if it just turns us all into a simulation? My kids, by the way,

1:06:10PFT Commenter:they stopped and pet one of those robots today, and that was the first time I was like, we might be gone too far. Because it's like the normalization. They were like, oh, look at the robot. They're like, what's its name? Selma. The fuck name's a robot is Selma. It's gonna take us over.

1:06:25Big Cat:They had one of those robots that was pouring people coffee in the San Francisco airport. Just gave it double birds.

1:06:30PFT Commenter:I will say that I saw there was a robot that does your laundry for you, and I kind of want to buy it just to... I don't want to buy it to do laundry for me. I want to buy it and put it in the office and fuck with it.

1:06:41Big Cat:I don't think it can handle stairs because it was just like... I saw that same one, and it seems like stairs might be a problem for it. We should get a robot just for Mincy

1:06:50PFT Commenter:and just see how quickly... Because that actually might be our last defense. That robot was kind of... Mincy's brain versus robots. Like, if you get a robot butler and you have Mincy be in charge of it, we might be able to disable all the robots or the yeah the robot might just off itself right

1:07:04Big Cat:exactly yeah it'd just be like mincy where's the nearest magnet would it be like remote controlled like he's he's driving the robot or no i don't know i know i think this robot just does your

1:07:14PFT Commenter:laundry for you it's like 17 grand it also looks like it did it no offense to the robot but like

1:07:19Big Cat:the guy was moving slow as fuck i thought that we were way past that point in robot making too when I saw it. I was like, I expected it to be walking like a human. Yeah. It was just kind of like gliding and clumsy. If Mincy, actually, Mincy only has like three shirts. Yeah. So the robot would be like, probably kill itself out of boredom. Yeah, true. The folds were also like incredibly mid. Like it wasn't a very good fold job at all.

1:07:40PFT Commenter:I wasn't impressed. I wasn't impressed. Not for 17. No. Okay. You have two picks.

1:07:45Big Cat:I will take. Wait,

1:07:47PFT Commenter:do you have two picks?

1:07:48Big Cat:Yeah. You have two picks. I'm going to have to switch it up here. I'm going to take a Kimbo Uzi. And then I'm also going to take...

1:07:59PFT Commenter:I actually had Uzi on there, but I didn't know if Uzis were cool or not.

1:08:02Big Cat:Does that mean like dual wield? Yes. Okay. Can I take a Kimbo or no? Yeah, you can take... Okay. And then I'd also like to take...

1:08:12PFT Commenter:I'm going to have fucked up this draft. I'd like to take C4 plastic explosive.

1:08:17Big Cat:Okay. Okay, yeah. Okay. These are all weighted heavily towards Call of Duty, it seems. I think weighed heavily towards really fucking some shit up. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Akimbo, not a bad move. That might have fucked up. But if you have two of them, you can't do anything else with your hands. Yeah. Yeah. You can't really reload, but that's why they got the 30-round, 100-round. That's what the Uzi's good at. That's one of the plus sides of the Uzi is small ammunition, but so many bullets. Mm-hmm.

1:08:48PFT Commenter:All right. Can I ask memes a question? It's not about he's not gonna be able to pick. He doesn't know my list at all. Memes, should I go regular weapon or stay off the book? Stay off the book. Okay. Dual threat quarterback. All right. Yeah, it's good. I might have fucked this up. I was just thinking about weapons. Again, I don't know weapons at all. So I just started my mind wandered. I have some more honorable mentions that I think are kind of in line with that. I did have Denard Robinson. Yeah. Listen.

1:09:17Big Cat:His position was listed as offensive weapon at Michigan.

1:09:20PFT Commenter:A really good dual threat quarterback is a problem.

1:09:23Big Cat:I had women, but the tits was a better pick. Yeah, tits are, yeah. Okay. I got one more, yeah?

1:09:29PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:09:31Big Cat:All right, I might. You know me, and you know how I do Mount Rushmore, and I feel like I'm fighting myself mentally to keep myself from fucking up my draft with a weird pick.

1:09:44PFT Commenter:You already picked Sword. Sword's a good pick. Yeah. In like 15, 20.

1:09:51Big Cat:I mean, just for lifetime stats on the sword. Yeah, true. You got to respect it as one of the goats. OG. Cannonball's still there. Cannonball's still there. I am going to go with...

1:10:03PFT Commenter:Musket. Fists. Oh, okay.

1:10:06Big Cat:Yeah, your fists. Nice. Beat down. Everyone's got them. Everyone has weapons that they're born with. They die with for the most part.

1:10:15PFT Commenter:All right, good draft. Knuckle sandwich, not bad pick. Yeah, knuckle sandwich. Do we want to do honorable mentions? I did have Steven Seagal. I had Rambo. And I had Kimbo Slice R.I.P. Yeah, he was weapon. I had Flamethrower. Ooh, Flamethrower's good. I couldn't... You guys can maybe help me with this. Drones, but I don't really understand drones, but I just see a bunch of Russian dudes laying down in a field pretending to be dead and then getting blown up.

1:10:42Big Cat:It looks like hell, yeah.

1:10:43PFT Commenter:That does feel like the weapon of the future, And they do like the drones and birds now. Yep. Terrifying. That is a really terrifying weapon.

1:10:51Big Cat:I think they like fly those drones around too, like tethered to Ethernet cable so they don't lose connection. So all these fields just have like tons of like Internet cables all across them from just guys just ripping drones all day. Right. Which is a terrifying existence to live in.

1:11:04PFT Commenter:And they have the like all of Ukraine looks like the first or third base foul line now with the nets. They just have nets everywhere trying to catch them.

1:11:16Big Cat:To try to trap the drones. Foul balls. Yeah, but the thing is, the drones can go over them.

1:11:19PFT Commenter:No, no. That's the thing about drones. When they're coming down, like when they come down to bomb them, they have nets on top of the streets to catch the drones. That's crazy.

1:11:28Big Cat:Yeah. That's crazy. I had landmines.

1:11:31PFT Commenter:Oh, those are motherfuckers. I don't know what the specific name is, but I just know that we did this with Iran, the Bunker Buster. Yeah. That one seemed pretty fucking cool.

1:11:42Big Cat:Bunker Buster is cool. the moab the mother of all bombs that's a big one uh i had red turtle shells yeah mario kart that's the one i thought about taking but i was like i i better be safe and go fists yeah

1:11:57PFT Commenter:everybody's got them lightning would have actually been the pick lightning yeah lightning's good in the pick for sure uh nunchucks can you weaponize weather yeah you sure can yeah cloud seed uh uh uh covid uzi i had yeah uh torpedoes but those are only subs yep kind of a dark one but really no defense against this weapon suicide bombers tough one the vest tough one to stop

1:12:24Big Cat:yeah guy just walks in boom you're dead everyone's dead you're wearing a skinny like a sleek vest yeah are you a suicide bomber or do you work at like ernst and young i don't know uh for my other

1:12:37PFT Commenter:ones that were off the uh outside the box blackmail good weapon it's a good weapon yeah uh nostalgia nostalgia is a hell of a weapon people just that's all people do now i think it's more of a drug than a weapon it might be more of a drug but it is people are just hitting you with nostalgia all the time being like did you guys see especially fourth of july yeah these just like made up pictures and like this was this was america in 1985 just like a scene from the sandlot Actually, that's a fucking hot movie. But also, wasn't there like a huge...

1:13:10Big Cat:A friend of mine watched Sandlot a lot.

1:13:13PFT Commenter:Huge recession then? I don't know. Or maybe it was like 1975. Wasn't it? Or 1976. Wasn't that like when they had to have a lottery to get gas? Yeah, it was like the last couple years of Carter. Shit sucked then.

1:13:27Big Cat:If there's any point in history, shit has sucked. Well, the trick is... You just gotta focus on the other stuff. Yeah. The best part of your history in like everyone's nostalgia, the best part, the sweetest spot that you can always hit is just when that person happened to be like 14 years old. Yeah. That's when the world was. Maybe not even four.

1:13:44PFT Commenter:Maybe like 10.

1:13:45Big Cat:Yeah.

1:13:45PFT Commenter:14 is like a raging boner and I have to jerk off every day.

1:13:49Big Cat:Yeah. 10 to 14. Yeah. That's a sweet spot. You know that, Zach.

1:13:53PFT Commenter:It's like painful. Yeah.

1:13:54Big Cat:We've all been there. It's uncomfortable.

1:13:55PFT Commenter:Yeah. It's just like, dude, I'm a man now.

1:13:57Big Cat:And I, what men do, they jerk off. You're trying to walk in the grocery store. It's like, where'd I put this thing? Yeah. Exactly.

1:14:02PFT Commenter:I don't know what to do with this. Exactly.

1:14:03Big Cat:I drive and I jack off. That's what I do. I'm 15. Belgian Malinois. Those dogs. Those dogs are absolute weapons. Pitbulls. They freak me out. Yeah, pitbulls. Pitbulls, for sure. The Silence PP7. That's a good pick. That's a good pick. The BFG 9000. Picking odd job.

1:14:21PFT Commenter:Yeah. That's fucked up. That's fucked up. You're just a bad person. You're just a loser person. Zach doesn't understand our sick reference there.

1:14:29Big Cat:No. I missed that one. If you were really nasty at Goldeneye, then you would be like, hey, I'll be Jaws. You can be Oddjob because Jaws was like seven feet tall.

1:14:37PFT Commenter:Oddjob was like five feet tall, so it was harder to hit him. Oh, okay. That's where I come from now. It was Altuve Judge in real life.

1:14:43Big Cat:So maybe you give your friend with not as well accuracy, you give him Oddjob. Yeah, maybe if they've got like the Mad Cat controller. Here you can use this one. Like you didn't have an N64. Yeah.

1:14:56PFT Commenter:And it's like he's got no chance.

1:14:57Big Cat:He only plays when he comes over to the house. Yeah, right. I think. I had the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, Heat Seekers. Those are pretty cool. And the GAU cannon on the A-10 Warthog, the tank killer. That sounds cool. The one that's got the shark mouth at the front of the plane. What about the Gatling gun? Yeah, it's a gun that goes... That's a good one. Zach? Good pick. TNT, Claymore, RPG, Spear Gun, Bow and Arrow. Spear Gun is good, yeah.

1:15:25PFT Commenter:You don't like Spear Gun? I mean, yeah, if you're like a fish, I guess it would be a tough one. I think even if you get hit one out of water, it hurts. I mean, I don't know. We got a spear gun. Remember how hard it was to shoot? But if you got a guy who's like that with the spear gun.

1:15:39Big Cat:Yeah, I guess. We talked about it earlier, but just a net. Just a giant net in general is a great weapon.

1:15:45PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:15:46Big Cat:Think about it. A bulldog lawyer? Yeah.

1:15:50PFT Commenter:That's a tough weapon. Yeah, like just a legal weapon. Like an unbelievable legal team just being like, I'm going to sue you for everything. That is a weapon. People use that all the time. Filarion Balogun. Yeah. You should have been on there.

1:16:03Big Cat:Yeah. Laser Beam. Laser Beam's a good one.

1:16:06PFT Commenter:Laser Beam's a really good one.

1:16:08Big Cat:What else did you have? Mac-10, Gen 5 Glock, Rocket Launcher, UMP-45, also Akimbo. We did the women. I'm not going to... Never mind. Bow and Arrow. We did Bow and Arrow. uh no needler halo needler is like a gun that shoots needles yeah yeah but was the one that you weren't gonna do oh religion i wasn't gonna say no that's a good one i i was thinking about

1:16:33PFT Commenter:that too it's a tough one to bring up but it is a weapon yeah i could definitely get weaponized

1:16:38Big Cat:yeah and then a simtex grenade which is like a sticky grenade yeah so why did you go with c4 over claymore uh because the plastic explosive it's so malleable like guys can just like I like the covert obnox of the plastic explosive. Okay. Like if you're on like a, like more of like a spy mission, you just pull it out, you blow something up. Claymore, you have to more of like a, you know, you're cut. They're coming with the claymores. Yeah. Because they're just out there. Yeah. And you can see him. The plastic explosive seems a little more sneaky. Oh, we missed Tommy gun. Tommy guns. That's good.

1:17:08PFT Commenter:Oh, brass knuckles.

1:17:10Big Cat:Yep. Brass knuckles.

1:17:11PFT Commenter:That does always feel like they fuck people up. Also throwing stars. Yeah. Those are cool. Nunchucks, maybe? Yeah. Yeah, nunchucks, cool. What about baseball bat? Baseball bat's cool. It's a good one. Yeah. Baseball bat's really cool. Spear?

1:17:27Big Cat:Do we say grenade? I think Zach said grenade earlier, but I don't think he said it. I think he said it before we started. Yeah, I don't think I took grenade. Yeah. It was a miss. Grenade. Pretty big pick. Yeah, grenade feels like. Close doesn't count, Zach.

1:17:38PFT Commenter:Flash bang? Yep. A really loud siren? Oh, like one of those crank ones? Yeah, but like one that just never stops. That would drive you insane. Oh, yeah, that would be nuts.

1:17:50Big Cat:I don't know. Mustard gas.

1:17:53PFT Commenter:Oh, yeah. Mustard gas. Bad. Like bioweapons. Yeah. Bioweapons. Oh, bioweapons. Real bad. What about just disease? You said COVID, but disease. I mean, think about the think about, you know, part of this country, you know, just handing out blankets. Right. Full of the common cold. Boom. Shit changed.

1:18:14Big Cat:What about just words?

1:18:17PFT Commenter:Yeah, well, I was thinking the pen. Or the pen. Yeah, the pen is mightier than the sword. True. Memes and Shane, any that we missed? I think a lightsaber. Oh, lightsaber, yeah. Lightsaber's better than the Force. That's not real.

1:18:33Big Cat:He picked the Force. Yeah, but with the Force, doesn't the Force delete somebody with a lightsaber? It could. You could just be like, hey, I'm going to move your lightsaber out of your hand. Yeah, lightsaber's so cool. I had lightsaber as well, but it does feel like the force could just like, give me that and then take it away. Right. A knife. I feel like a knife would have been a good pick. But that doesn't look great next to sword. A knife, yeah.

1:18:55PFT Commenter:I had a knife on there. Jinx. Jinx is a powerful weapon. You just jinx someone.

1:19:01Big Cat:Gold scar. Great pick. Fortnite. Gold scar. Ballistic knife from Black Ops. Also a good pick. LT inside 10 yards.

1:19:10PFT Commenter:Love that. If someone had taken a dual threat quarterback, I would have maybe gone a great catching running back. That's a good one. They are a weapon.

1:19:20Big Cat:And then my personal favorite, the trebuchet.

1:19:24PFT Commenter:Oh, okay. Waxatives and donuts. Waxatives and donuts?

1:19:29Big Cat:A combination? Is it poison? No.

1:19:33PFT Commenter:No. You shit yourself? Yeah, you shit yourself. Mariano Rivera's Yeah You get to talk in the mic Do you get to talk in the mic? Wait Mariano Rivera's what?

1:19:47Big Cat:Cutter

1:19:47PFT Commenter:Cut fastball Trying to think of other weapons Steph Curry's range The giant hand from Jackass Yeah I'm going to see Jackass this week Memes did I fuck that up? Yeah I don't know

1:20:02Big Cat:Don't trust memes Memes doesn't always get around I think PFT won nuclear bomb it's like that was tough it's tough to come back to the nuclear bomb was half of my

1:20:09PFT Commenter:picks and he had rocket launcher i had nuclear bomb and hydrogen bomb yeah i did have a pretty good i just need the big the big titty boys to to come up you know what i i think i had the two strongest picks i might have had two of the weaker sword was not a great pick you can get dominated now you see a guy with a sword you're like that guy's got problems yeah that guy's gonna go what

1:20:29Big Cat:cut a watermelon no it's just like what's your reddit account sir yeah right that's what you say You thinking more like mythological sword or like ninja sword? Like samurai sword? He's thinking like mythological.

1:20:39PFT Commenter:They're not mythological, but like. I was thinking like medieval. Yeah, back in the day.

1:20:42Big Cat:William Wallace's big ass. They're just fighting with swords. Chain mill. Yeah. Okay. Like knights. Yeah. Medieval times.

1:20:50PFT Commenter:Listen, if there's just a shitload of people that love big tits and are afraid of cyber warfare with China, I could be in business. Yeah, pretty much everyone. Yeah. If they're honest with themselves. I need the Star Wars guys to come out heavy. All right. Good Mount Rushmore. We'll be back with the regular teams on Monday. Or sorry, Wednesday. But good Mount Rushmore. Good. Yeah. Not exactly our expertise, but I think we showed out analog to didn't Google anything. Didn't look anything up. Just weapons off the dome. Sorry to all the military guys listening who are like, what the fuck are these guys talking about?

1:21:24Big Cat:Yeah. But also, thank you for your service. Yes. Thank you for your service. We did that just to make you feel smart. Before we get to Brian Windhorse, he's brought to you by our great friends over at Nutrafol. It is Tahoe week. It's chill week. We're going to embrace a nice summer reset. And if your hair isn't performing like it used to this summer, the move is not a hat. It's addressing the root cause. Nutrafol works from the inside out. It's backed by real credentials. It's a number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. Nutrafol has formulas built for men at different life stages.

1:21:58Big Cat:Nutrafol men for guys 18 to 49, and they've got the all-new Nutrafol men 50 plus, which is the first product of its kind specifically made for men over 50. Nutrafol for men, it addresses the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. It grows visibly thicker, fuller hair in three to six months. Nutrafol is even the official hair growth partner of Major League Baseball. These are guys that perform at the highest level, and they trust Nutrafol to stay on top of their hair game. Start Nutrafol today and make the hat optional. Visit Nutrafol.com, enter promo code PMT, get$10 off your first month subscription, and you get free shipping.

1:22:37Big Cat:Find out why Nutrafol is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafol.com, N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com, promo code PMT. Nutrafol.com, promo code PMT. And now, here's our good friend, Brian Windhorst.

1:22:53PFT Commenter:okay we now welcome on a very very special guest he is our good friend brian winhorse from espn the hoop collective everywhere he was on tv for what felt like uh you know 48 hours straight for the nba free agency uh and the dust has settled a little bit so we wanted to have windy on to talk about it now windy i have a question for you right off the top do you want to do the hard stuff first because pft hates you right now do you want to just get that out of the way yes all right let's do it when you're open like that how could i stand yes i don't hate you

1:23:27Big Cat:i want to be i've said publicly i do not hate you i think that you had a a momentary lapse in judgment when you were reacting to some news that just broke and we say things in this business and sometimes we look back on things we say and we think you know what that was really stupid so okay i'm gonna write it down you don't hate me yeah dude i hate you you got him very triggered

1:23:45PFT Commenter:one day he was walking around being like wendy's what the fuck is wendy saying what is wendy saying

1:23:49Big Cat:i like him but what is he saying well yeah i mean listen we like i said we we say things in this business and i'm willing to extend grace to you and say that maybe you'd like to walk it back and say maybe maybe that was the stupidest thing i've ever thought or said the greatest things you can

1:24:01Brian Windhorst:do is extend someone grace yeah okay before we even start i just want to say i appreciate the sentiment that's why i love you wendy um please double down the trey young contract

1:24:11Big Cat:yeah i bet you didn't think you were going to have to answer for the trey young contract but your position is what my position is that it is not the worst contract in the nba as you said after the the deal was done you said you don't think that they could trade it unless you attach the number one overall pick to it um with everything that we saw in the last week or so i feel like it's safe to say that this is uh maybe not an accurate take that you had you still might not like the like the contract but to say it is the worst contract in the nba i think that's hyperbole and i think that you deep down would understand that um and and your scent what the circumstances have changed why well the the circumstance so if you saw like they were able to trade paul george last week yeah he got traded you know the trace contract is two years longer and like a hundred million dollars more and trey is also much younger and healthier than paul george

1:25:09Brian Windhorst:is true yeah okay true he's also a lot shorter i mean how long how far do you want to go down

1:25:14Big Cat:are we gonna go dollars per inch we're going dollars per inch i i think i think trey young you know he has his issues for sure and he has not you know lived up to some of the promise that he showed early on his career but i think he's going to be a fine point guard i don't think that he's um he's a uh albatross around the neck of the washington wizards with that contract that I hope you're right. We can't, you know what? What else are we going to spend that money on right now?

1:25:40Brian Windhorst:That's absolutely an unacceptable reason to say that. I would just say this, like in this current day and age in the NBA, and it's those of us who are just immersed in it, like up to our eyeballs, it's the way we think every day. And so many of the fans, like their thought process hasn't changed yet. And by the way, we may be too far on the edge, but I say we as in like the media who cover the league, but like right now you cannot afford to have a contract on your books. That's a massive overpay. And there was nobody bidding that for Trey Young. Nobody, nobody bidding that number of dollars or years.

1:26:23Brian Windhorst:They can say that there was, I just don't believe it. I reject the concept. and um i definitely upset the wizards by saying that they were very upset and um even uh like like the trey group which you know i mean i gotta tell you like trey young they were trying to trade him for like a year you know and um it's not because he's a bad person um it's not because he's a bad player it's because and this is the thing that where we're at in the nba um his contract number versus his production, the delta that existed there was difficult to live with in the current day and age. And that's the key part in the current day and age.

1:27:09Brian Windhorst:Six years, seven years ago, if you had a player that was making higher than his production, it just meant that your owner had to spend more. And if you got to different layers of the tax, you'd be like, boy, that was really penal or whatever. But it didn't kneecap your ability to deal with your team. Like now, if you have a player whose production level versus his salary is out of whack it like keeps your general manager up at night for like months on end right and so it took the hawks like a year to get somebody to take that contract and they finally you know they they trade trey to it because they just couldn't get anybody in the league who looked at trey young again not because of him as a person not because him as a player his production versus his contract it took a year and finally a team you know they got off of it and and the team that got him now had the problem and he opted out of his contract and they had the opportunity to to re redo that and they had they were in a good position they wanted trey to be their franchise point guard they were not going to draft a point guard i mean they'd already when they did that contract they'd already decided they were drafting DeBansa.

1:28:23Brian Windhorst:Okay. So they were like, Trey Young is going to be our franchise point guard. Okay. And here's the thing though. They already promised him they were going to sign him when they traded for him. And the reason that they did that was because they needed him to not play.

1:28:39PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:28:40Brian Windhorst:Okay. Because if he had played, they might've won a bunch more games and they might've not gotten the number one pick. And so if you're going to be a free agent, the last thing you're going to do is like basically admit that, you know, say that I'm injured for six months. So they told him like, Trey, we're going to take care of you. Don't worry. So we're on the same page. We're invested in you. We're going to bench you. So they are. So Trey already knew he was going to get paid. And that's why he agreed to it. Now, now the wizards can't say this publicly, but that's what happened. And so his agent did an amazing job because he got him traded to a team it was like we want Trey Young and we're going to pay him and like he's going to be our point guard we're not even going to look at Darren Peterson we're going to we're going to totally invest in you Trey because we think you can be great and then they got him to pay him a max nobody in the league wanted to trade him on a max for a year there was nobody who wanted to give him a four year max now I'm not saying an agent wouldn't come on here and say that that's a lie and and they could probably try to prove me wrong.

1:29:44Brian Windhorst:I just don't believe it. So that's my thing. It's not having Trey Young as your point guard. It's not in saying even six months ago, we want Trey Young as our point guard. It's saying it that I'm going to pay him$40 million a year for four years. And not only am I going to give him to him for four years, I'm going to give him a player option on year four, which is just the whole player option phenomenon, the NBA. And it's probably a little bit too deep in the woods. When I was a kid, two different guys got player options. The superstars, LeBron James class, and the guys who were at the end of their careers who were playing for minimums.

1:30:23Brian Windhorst:They would take them a huge discount, and so you just give them a player option to protect them. You didn't give player options to everybody who walked in the door. Well, nowadays, everybody gets a player option. Everybody. There's so many player options out there it's maddening that's a different topic to give trey that contract it just it kills you because even if you were in love with trey young as a player and said i've got to have him away from the wizards i don't care what it costs i don't care about the money that um that it's going to cost when he has a player option it puts the franchise in such a bad spot because in two years you now got to deal with it because in two years he'll be a year away from free agency and he can hold you up so i i just i whatever the wizards had to do to get the number one pick i in this particular draft i'm going to excuse so i'm not gonna get on them about promising trey young when when they ended up could have drafting darren peterson even if peterson goes on and becomes like a superstar i'm not even going to get on because they had to do what they had to do to get the number one pick giving him 212 million dollars of the player option in this market, I just, I thought it was, I thought it was a poor decision and I stand by that.

1:31:33Big Cat:Okay. That's fair. A couple of counterpoints. I would say that with the new draft lottery rules, having a guy like Trey Young at that contract would actually be maybe more valuable of a trade piece than in years past, where he, like you said, he would be good enough to make a bad team, just good enough to not be in that bottom three, bottom four. So therefore they'd be like in the sweet spot of whatever the next new draft lottery would be so let me just real quick counterpoint

1:32:00Brian Windhorst:that counterpoint so you're saying that trey young is good enough no matter what to get you

1:32:06Big Cat:to make you a play-in team i think you said that earlier in so many words yeah right and is that a

1:32:12Brian Windhorst:max that's that's what you want a 200 million dollar player to be well by himself i mean we

1:32:16Big Cat:do have other pieces around him that i think are much better than it's not like a trey young team I think that's what I like about it Because he's surrounded by a lot By and large a lot of younger players That are on affordable deals At least for the next couple years Then after those couple years passes And the backloaded contract that Trey has At the very least we're going to be in a spot Where that's going to be a different percentage Of the overall cap in the last year And it's not as bad as The player option is not as bad as the no trade clause

1:32:45Brian Windhorst:You would start his contract high Even if you wanted to give him a max in the first year You would start his contract high and then you would step it down so that as he aged and your other players got expensive, you could, I don't even agree with that. But even if you wanted to say you give Trey a max in the first year, then you'd step it down so that when your team goes up, then you would do that. There's no such thing as it's okay to pay him a lot now because we don't have that many good players. I fundamentally reject that premise. I'm sorry.

1:33:15Big Cat:Okay. I think, can you just say that it's not the worst contract in the NBA? I mean, if you want to – and the worst contract is what? I don't know. Let's see. Who would that be? I mean, Paul George, pretty bad. Embiid.

1:33:26Brian Windhorst:I mean, Paul George just got Jalen Brown. Right. So fundamentally that's not true. Joel Embiid, not a great contract. John Moran. Joel Embiid is a very tough contract. I just watched Joel Embiid win a game seven on the road with a 40-point game or whatever. That's true. He's a good counterpoint. Now, you can say that it's – and by the way, I think it's bad. And if what you're getting, if where you're going is to get me to concede that I shouldn't have said it's the worst contract, if I would amend my statement to it's one of the worst contracts, if that's what you consider a victory.

1:33:58Big Cat:That's quite literally all I want.

1:34:00Brian Windhorst:Then I can't, I'm so sorry as a Wizards fan, you've been so damaged. Okay. That this is where you're going that you're going to say. That's all I need. We only have one of the worst contracts.

1:34:11PFT Commenter:Yeah. But okay.

1:34:12Brian Windhorst:If that's what you want, I'll concede that. That I should have said one of the worst contracts. You kind of owned Wendy. Huge. Massive dub. Good job. Listen, this is why you're a master. You're a master at this profession. I've done it again. I've done it again.

1:34:28Big Cat:But I know what you're saying. I am a little bit defensive about the Wizards, but I also think that you can't necessarily fully judge how bad you think this contract is until we see Trae Young play with this Wizards young core. and then we can truly see how bad the contract is.

1:34:45Brian Windhorst:But even if he becomes a star, an all-star this year, you understand no one was offering him a four-year max with a player option. That's like, it's not an evaluation of a player. It's an evaluation of the decision to give that contract. We might be looking back on this in four years and be like, that's the best contract. Hey, listen, man, I'm not afraid to admit I'm wrong. And if I believe that that's the case, I'll do it.

1:35:08Big Cat:Yeah. All right. Hey, good talk, Wendy.

1:35:09PFT Commenter:All right. That was enough Wizards talk. Let's talk some NBA free agency. So I want to start with the dust has settled, Jalen Brown trade. We were all shocked. What have you picked up since then, since Thursday, of what the thought process is here? Because I feel like it was probably a toxic situation that Celtics had to get out of because Jalen Brown had just seemed like it was not sustainable. but still how could they have not done better than that?

1:35:43Brian Windhorst:I did not have a feel for how low of a value that Jalen Brown was in the NBA. I just didn't have a feel for it. And, you know, we have lots of conversations and we watch lots of basketball and we talk to lots of different people. I didn't understand it. You know, what I did notice was after the Giannis trade went down and went, you know, went to Miami's direction, I started hearing about what, what Boston was, was asking for in trades. And they were all of a sudden asking for draft picks. And I was like, now that's interesting because I thought Boston was like, you know, on the verge of still competing to win the Eastern conference.

1:36:17Brian Windhorst:Like, why would you, why would you be like asking for like multiple draft picks? You know, and I started, you know, I was thinking two things. I started, I started asking questions. I was like, well, maybe they have another player that they can trade for. Maybe there's another player out there and the team wants draft picks for him. So it's part of a three team deal. And so first I'm saying, well, what is that player? Who were they actually targeting? And, and who were they getting the draft picks? And as I kept having conversations, teams were rejecting, um, rejecting Jalen Brown, uh, the offers, even for the draft picks, like three and four picks, they were rejecting it.

1:36:54Brian Windhorst:And, and, and, you know, notable players kept getting traded. Right. Um, and none of, and And where Jalen Brown, where the return could have been Jalen Brown, and it wasn't Jalen Brown. And I was like, man, like some of these guys are getting traded. Like they could help Boston. Right. And they're not. So I was sort of like, as I was having the conversations and watching things happen, I was sort of processing it. And I just didn't understand his value was where it was. And so I started having conversations with people. And like I kept hearing the same thing from teams where they were explaining about certain factors of his value.

1:37:35Brian Windhorst:And again, this is where the nuance is tough in this day and age. And I agree, it's been such a sea change in the NBA that not everybody is totally adapted, which is that it's not Jalen Brown the player. It's Jalen Brown the player for his salary. Right. And you have these teams that are afraid of having him for three more years at that salary with the modifier that he was going to want a contract extension this summer. I talked to multiple teams who said, we just didn't want to get him in house and then tell him we didn't want to extend him or offer him a pay cut. And I was like, but I talked to several people and I wrote a story about this that published on ESPN on Friday who were like, we have lost the plot.

1:38:27Brian Windhorst:This is, you know, I talked to one guy and he's like, how many times have we seen this? You know, high school kids, international players, three-point shooting, rest. Like we do this, you know, somebody finds a lane that's successful and then they go to saturation and there's always this tipping point. The Darko Milicic moment where an incredible front office of Detroit Pistons convinced themselves that Darko Milicic was going to be better than Carmelo Anthony. Right. Like that was like, like that was like part of why David Stern said, no more 18 year olds. Because Carmelo Anthony is one of the best college players the last 40 years.

1:39:04Brian Windhorst:And somebody saw Darko and said, man, Joe, Joe Dumars, Joe Dumars, who had who's on one of the hottest streaks as an executive when he built those Detroit teams. And and, you know, the same thing, you get into a game like where you're Boston and you're shooting 65 three pointers and you can't hold the lead or whatever. and it just goes to the saturation and so like I definitely have people saying to me this Jalen Brown thing is a tipping point like he is going to go to Philadelphia and he's going to be great I don't know if to win the title but it'll look bad and then I've got a bunch of other people saying you can't have a 60 million dollar a year player who when he plays on the court the team gets outscored right and and it's not because he gets on twitch it's not because he says, I'm the best two-way player or anything like that.

1:39:50Brian Windhorst:I mean, I don't think the idea of him getting on Twitch and saying that this was my favorite season was in the plus reason. That's not why they traded him. And that's not why teams weren't aggressive with them. They just saw a$60 million player who probably would have wanted$70 million a year. And I am totally trying to grapple with it myself because even as all I do all day long is talk to executives this time of year, And I just didn't understand how low the value was. And I'm still in some ways stunned by it.

1:40:19Big Cat:Yeah. What about the reports of a little bit of friction between him and Tatum? Like the personalities just didn't mesh by the end. It was just a situation where one of them was going to have to go no matter what. Do you put any stock into those reports?

1:40:32Brian Windhorst:I mean, based on my conversations with the parties involved, that was not a driving factor. The driving factor was Boston felt like it could spend the money more efficiently. Now, I don't know where Jason and Jalen are, like personally. I mean, I saw some reports that like they were both in Cannes last week and like they were both there and they like didn't even hook up even though this stuff was going on. I don't know. I'm not there. I don't know what was on their schedule. I don't know anything about that. But I do not think that was a driving force for this in the Celtics. I think that they looked at the numbers and said, we can spend our money more efficiently.

1:41:10Brian Windhorst:And you may come back and say, well, Paul George makes the same salary. So how can you possibly say that Paul George at the same salary is better off than Jalen Brown? And I would say, listen, man, I agree. I don't see it either. I'm just telling you the way that I think the Celtics made this decision. And so tomorrow, Monday, I think Brad Stevens and their owner, Bill Chisholm, are going to come out publicly. And we'll see, you know, they've had days now to formulate a case and we will see what they say. And I assume they're going to take questions and have to defend it. So we'll see what they say.

1:41:49PFT Commenter:Now, you could tell me this is stupid, Wendy, because I don't fully understand it. But it does feel like we're in a weird spot with the NBA and how the CBA is set up in the second apron and all this stuff where teams are basically like they have to give these max contracts to these guys. because Jalen Brown is, wherever you think of him, he's, let's say, top 15. He's probably closer to 10 than 15. But let's say top 20 player, you're going to have to pay a guy like that. But then the second apron is so punitive now and teams are so scared of it that you just basically set up a league where I know that they want parity, but I think the NBA has been the strongest when there has been dynasties and you have those storylines.

1:42:32PFT Commenter:but now it feels like a team cannot keep their stars because you have to pay them. And then you got to ship them as soon as you get into that second apron and a guy doesn't, an owner doesn't want to pay it. So did they kind of screw themselves with this?

1:42:44Brian Windhorst:So it depends on what you mean by screw themselves because they have an 11, they're one year into an 11 year, $77 billion TV deal. Okay. So you would say, well, aren't they going to hurt themselves by, you know, their popularity? Well, I guess, but you know, maybe the ratings will go down five or 8 % or whatever, 12%, but they're guaranteed 77 billion checks going to clear. So like on one hand, like the owners, like this is the perfect time to do this because they knew they were going to get paid. And like, just at the end of the day, the owners, you know, there's 30 of them, right. And there's more middle and small markets than there are big markets.

1:43:17Big Cat:Right.

1:43:18Brian Windhorst:So what's good for the overall health of the league is probably to have the Knicks play the Lakers in every finals. Right. But if you're Cleveland, Milwaukee, Indiana, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, like you've, it's one team, one vote. You've got more power to do that. And if you, if you're armed with knowing that you're, you're secure in your earnings for 11 consecutive years, because that's going to drive the league revenues, then you can play hardball. And that's what they did. And so the average player salaries are exploding because of the, because of the influx of money. Like, you know, there are guys now signing for 70 million a year.

1:43:59Brian Windhorst:And we are, 80 million is coming. Like it's, the money is guaranteed. Like eight, there will be players in the next couple of years where there will be years on their contract where it's 80 million, okay? So you can't say that the players are suffering financially, but they are forcing player sharing. And really the second apron is, the way the teams are acting, they're acting like it's a hard cap. Nobody has been in it two consecutive years. They act like they are afraid of it because of some of the stuff that they're into it. These teams, their actions are telling that they're acting like a hard cap.

1:44:34Brian Windhorst:And so they have to do player sharing. And here's the other thing. It used to be that if you had a really good player, you just gave them the max. Nobody got 85 % of the max. It was like hand grenades and horseshoes. If you were close to being a max player, you just got the max. It wasn't like nobody was haggling over that last 10%. 10%. And especially if you were a young guy, like, you know, 25 or younger, if you were anywhere close, like what you see in that, like with Jalen Duren, three, four years ago, Jalen Duren signs his max extension on July 1st. It's done. Because even though he had a bad playoffs, the Pistons look at him like this guy is 22 years old.

1:45:17Brian Windhorst:He's already an all-star. Absolutely. We're giving him the max. Well, they're playing hardball. They're playing hardball now because they know they can't give a guy 25 % of the cap if his value is 20 % of the cap, because that 5 % is ultimately going to screw you that 5%. Or even worse, let's say you pay him 20 % and he ends up being like a player who's valued at about 18%. And now you may say this is trivial. Oh yeah. Well it's trivial until you got to cut off, you know, fingers and hands to keep your team afloat. And so these, these, everybody's negotiating harder, which again is why the wizard is giving the max what caught the league by surprised pft sorry to bring it back to that so now now there's going to be negotiation on everything and if if if jaylen brown here's the thing jaylen brown is coming off finishing sixth in the mvp voting second team all nba definitely one of the most productive in terms of raw statistics seasons of his career he absolutely elevated the celtics without tatum in there.

1:46:18Brian Windhorst:He was the lifeblood of their season. And if, and you've got teams out there who look at him and say, yeah, he's probably more of a$35 million player, not a$57 million player. And like, people are like slapping their heads. Like, what are you talking about? How could you possibly say that? But I'm telling you, this is the way these teams are operating right now. And I don't necessarily see it, but this is the way they're operating.

1:46:39Big Cat:Right. We'll get back to Wendy in a second. Chill week is here. You know what that means? No schedules, no plans, just more of the good stuff. Chevy Silverado makes that possible. There's a reason Chevy is called the heartbeat of America, and the Silverado keeps that heartbeat strong. These trucks work hard so you can chill harder, whether that's getting out of town, heading to the lake, or just not turning around when you probably should. It's got the capability, the space, and the muscle, everything you need for a proper summer, coolers, gear, whatever your version of chill looks like, because at the end of the day, Silverado helps you tackle more of what you love.

1:47:12Big Cat:Let's be honest. You've earned this summer. Now it's time to go get it. So roll the windows down, turn the music up, and just listen. That is the heartbeat of America. That's today's Chevrolet. Go to Chevy.com to learn more. Now here's more Wendy. Wendy, I know that you saw a lot of whiteboard news over the weekend. Rich Paul's whiteboard.

1:47:31Brian Windhorst:I love the whiteboard. Can we do Wendy's whiteboard? I don't have one, but I will just say that I love whiteboard humor. Like I love thinking about big decisions and thinking about like what was going on in the meeting. Yeah.

1:47:46Big Cat:I love that.

1:47:48Brian Windhorst:So the whiteboard.

1:47:50PFT Commenter:Wait, before we do the whiteboard, can I just ask? No, you go ahead.

1:47:52Big Cat:I'm just going to reset what the whiteboard is. So Rich Paul, he was on a podcast, I think with Max Kellerman. Yeah. And he had a whiteboard of, it was like a mind map or a brainstorming sheet of where LeBron might play next year. And it just said LeBron in the middle. And then it had lists of lineups. I think like seven or eight different ones the teams that he could realistically see him going to play for the whiteboard is just it's my favorite edition of the NBA offseason I need to see more whiteboards

1:48:18PFT Commenter:I love it Wendy if let's say LeBron doesn't pick a team for another month my question to you is going to be how many times are you going to get asked day to day where LeBron is going to

1:48:31Brian Windhorst:go play oh my god this weekend has been bliss but it's about to be over

1:48:35PFT Commenter:yeah do you get asked all like everywhere you go yeah of course of course yeah that's my way of not asking but where's he

1:48:43Brian Windhorst:gonna play um you guys know as podcasters especially you guys do it so many times you know that feeling that's like a warm blanket you go into a podcast and you have like a piece of gold content like and you're like man we are gonna i mean you guys are some of the best in the business of being creative i'm not saying that you know this is you know sort of you know lowest common the nominator but when you're like this topic is going to carry us through this podcast it's going to be great yeah and we're all going to get involved and like this is perfect it's kind of like you know sports radio back in the 1997 and a coach just got fired you're like oh my god baby i can't wait until three to seven o 'clock because boy are those phone lines going to be lit up and we do my mount rushmore season in the summertime yeah yeah exactly yeah this is what rich paul was like going, you know, because Rich Paul's a podcaster.

1:49:37Brian Windhorst:He's like, oh my God, this is going to be great. He's like, I could go over 10 teams. I could go over, but by the way, the best podcast that Rich Paul could do, because he said that 27 teams called. Who were the three who didn't call? I was going to ask you. I want. Lakers? I've tried. I've tried to figure it out. I mean, I can speculate. I don't know. Give us your speculation because our speculation is Lakers and then Spurs

1:50:05PFT Commenter:because they got Tobias Harris, so they don't need LeBron anymore.

1:50:08Brian Windhorst:No, I think the Spurs definitely would call. Why wouldn't they?

1:50:10PFT Commenter:No, they signed Tobias Harris. He's basically LeBron. Oh, really? No, there was a tweet that we were referencing. It was announcing that Tobias Harris, it was like a Spurs account, being like the Spurs are officially out of the LeBron sweepstakes now that they've signed Tobias Harris.

1:50:28Brian Windhorst:Good to know. All right, so one of the three teams, Lakers? Well, I can't. By the way, I don't know. I wish I could tell you I knew. I would be, at this point, I would be surprised if Memphis called. Yeah, that's a good one. That's fair. I don't think, I mean, I just, I mean, I know LeBron is qualified by saying he was talking about the hotel, not the city of Memphis. Right. But I don't know if Memphis is going to call. But maybe they did. I don't know. Okay. Yeah, I actually was like laying awake last night saying, what were the three teams? What were the other two that you thought of? I mean, are we counting the Lakers or no?

1:51:03Brian Windhorst:Well, of course. Yeah. Although, I mean. It would be funny if they called. Paul, like the Lakers technically did call. Right. True. And want to schedule a meeting. So is Rich counting that in the 27? Like this is the podcast that I want.

1:51:17Big Cat:Yeah.

1:51:17Brian Windhorst:Because Rich might count the Lakers. Yeah. You know, I don't know. Like, do you think the Wizards called? We got it. We got it. We got Trey. We're good. I realize that.

1:51:29Big Cat:Listen, I'm going to be honest with you. I do. I think the Wizards are trying to –

1:51:32Brian Windhorst:You kick the tires, sure. If you're playing Trey Young and LeBron a combined$50 million, that's great management. So I will give you that. If they want to average it down like that, that would be awesome. I just – I don't know, man. I don't know. Like I can create all kinds of scenarios. But Rich walked into that and he's going, I can do 10 teams here. And there's no chance LeBron's considering 10 teams. he's probably considering two and a half um but you know rich is like we're gonna max you know max kellerman has hosted 10 000 hours of radio you know max knows how to make it go like let's go baby let's get i think if it was up to rich he would do another podcast next week and he would cut the list to five yeah we're down to five i like that yeah this would be you know amazing so um yeah i i i gotta i don't think there's anywhere like i i think look here's the thing It's really a unique situation in NBA history.

1:52:29Brian Windhorst:Okay. Because you have a guy who is basically admitting, I will play for vastly below my value and not like a$10 million player saying he's going to play on the minimum. Not like, you know, a guy who could be getting the mid level somewhere. Who's like, I'm going to go play with a team that can win. Like literally an all NBA level player top, still a top 15, 20 player in the NBA. Who's like saying I'll play for maybe the minimum. That's the one thing that Rich again, hasn't said, Like he said, he'll play for less, but does that mean$15 million full mid-level? Because if that's the case, you cross off a bunch of teams.

1:53:02Brian Windhorst:Does that mean the$6 million mid-level that's just for the taxpaying teams? Because if he's willing to say yes to those two, that's a thing. Or is he literally willing to play for the minimum$4 million? They haven't articulated that yet. But if he's willing to play for$4 million, it makes the scenarios crazy. Right.

1:53:24PFT Commenter:he's going to Cleveland

1:53:26Brian Windhorst:can we just stop the charade come on that's what it looks like yeah because he's he's having this nostalgia time he's been in he's been in Cleveland for like 10 plus days Akron I should say not really Cleveland he does come to Akron every summer and I saw that there's a lot of you know there was an event over the weekend where he was like in a like it wasn't really a club he was in like his his place where he hosts families. It's this center in Akron where it's basically like a family center that has a lot of family programs where they just basically turned it into a club for the night. He wasn't at a club partying up.

1:54:05Brian Windhorst:He was at this event for his foundation. And he has those at that event for his foundation every year. And he generally comes to Akron every year at this time. However, the fact that he is in Akron and doing all this stuff and hanging out with the Cavs from 10 years ago and hanging out. They had like a little reunion of his high school teammates over the weekend. Like, obviously, I was not there. I thought you played point guard for him. Yes, and I did not make$41 million a year.

1:54:33PFT Commenter:No, but so who is there? I could have played point guard. The assistant GM of the Cavs, correct? Yes, who was his high school teammate. That's interesting. I mean, come on.

1:54:41Brian Windhorst:And are they keeping a roster spot open for Bronny? Well, I mean, like, they could get, I mean, I know I saw that report. It's not like Mark Stein. He's like one of the best in the business. it's not wrong. Bronny makes$2 million. Any team in the league, any team that acquired LeBron would be able to open a roster spot and bring Bronny in. What about the other way around, though?

1:55:04Big Cat:What if one team wanted to really overpay Bronny and just hold Bronny hostage and be like, if you want to play with your son, you have to sign with our team.

1:55:12Brian Windhorst:Now, that's fascinating. They would call the Lakers preemptively, acquire Bronny, and be like, if you ever want to see your son again, the whole NBA season. You got to come play for the Blazers. Yeah. I mean, this is something the Blazers might do. Yeah, I could see Dundon do it.

1:55:28Big Cat:Yeah, absolutely. I think because, I mean, obviously he would want to play with him. Now, everyone's saying the Cavs. Everyone's saying it's got to be the Cavs. It's got to be the Cavs. I was looking at the whiteboard. He had just Brad and Tatum listed for the Celtics. No Hugo on this list.

1:55:44Brian Windhorst:Complete insult. What did he have in there for the Wizards?

1:55:46Big Cat:I don't see what the Wizards are on the whiteboard.

1:55:48PFT Commenter:There's no way the Bulls were on there.

1:55:50Brian Windhorst:He didn't have Trey at the top of the list.

1:55:51Big Cat:I think it just said chasing Jordan's legacy. Okay. I really like Trey.

1:55:56Brian Windhorst:Trey has always been really good to me. I didn't mean to make it personal, but I just didn't think it was a good contract. You didn't make it personal.

1:56:01PFT Commenter:You made it about a contract. It actually was the opposite of personal. It was strictly business. It felt a little personal.

1:56:06Brian Windhorst:The Wizards thought it was personal. No.

1:56:08Big Cat:That's not personal. Well, Wendy, tell you what, Wendy. We'll make amends. I got season tickets. You'll come to a Wizards game. Sit courtside with me at some point this year.

1:56:15Brian Windhorst:I love it. I mean, by the way, are you excited about the team? Very excited. You should be, right?

1:56:20Big Cat:extremely excited yeah deandre ayton we got three first overall picks on the team yeah i just keep telling everybody hey if if ad stays healthy and deandre ayton plays like he did in college

1:56:30PFT Commenter:we could be a really good team just plays like he did in the first part of that playoffs against

1:56:35Brian Windhorst:uh so let me ask you this you know so ad has two years left on his contract yep do you think it's a good idea to give him like two more years and 120 million uh this sounds like a a trap

1:56:46Big Cat:Sounds like a trap question, Wendy. No, no. I think with him, it's probably fair to say, we want you to go out there and see what you have, see what's left in the tank, see how healthy you are. If you play really healthy, you will guarantee yourself a massive payday, either from us or from some other team that will gladly pay you a max contract.

1:57:05Brian Windhorst:That is a completely rational, well-thought-out, experienced answer.

1:57:10PFT Commenter:Sounds like a guy who learned from the Trae Young contract and the mistakes that were made.

1:57:13Big Cat:Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. Hey, that's the beautiful thing about sports, Wendy, is we can disagree and we can have take battles, and that's fine.

1:57:22Brian Windhorst:Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I think it's amazing that we're having a back and forth about the Wizards. That means that the Wizards are entering the consciousness. I think that's great.

1:57:30PFT Commenter:We've talked a lot about the Wizards on this podcast. Give me the three LeBron spots. Is it Philly, Warriors, Cleveland?

1:57:40Brian Windhorst:So I'm not sure. I think Philly is there because they make this Jalen Brown thing. I don't like, look, here's the thing about LeBron. He says it's about happiness. Well, that is so wonderfully amorphous and nebulous. Like who's to say what makes another man happy? Who's to say, right. Like, like, you know, like LeBron could like decide, like, I want to play Marion. I played Marion. That's a, you know, I played the Philadelphia cricket club and I think it's the course I want to play 70 times a year and that makes me happy. Who's to say?

1:58:16PFT Commenter:Yeah, he could be a masochist. He could be like, you know what really makes me happy is a bunch of Philly fans screaming at me and calling into radio shows and telling me I'm a bum.

1:58:25Brian Windhorst:Right, like the happiness. So if he picks the Warriors, he can say, I want to play with Steph. Who's going to say that that doesn't make somebody happy? Of course it could make you happy. So this is the thing. We've never seen a free agency like this ever where like the money is kind of for the large part out the window and it's happiness. So you can whiteboard 35 teams, whiteboard, you know, the, the teams in the G league, like, you know, you can, if you want to create happiness. So I would say this, when Draymond opted out of his contract, I was like, well, Draymond knows LeBron's out of LA.

1:59:04Brian Windhorst:He very clearly doesn't opt out of his contract unless he knows that there's a possibility. And the thing that I didn't know, I was like, would Draymond really opt out on spec? Like just at the possibility of LeBron coming, would Draymond leave$28 million on the table and like say, everything's going to be cool? Because this happened once before in 2014, when LeBron left Miami, he really didn't articulate to Wade and Bosch what he was doing. He was just sort of on the fence. And so Wade and Bosch, like LeBron opted out of his contract, like right after the season, like 10 days before the deadline.

1:59:40Brian Windhorst:Wade and Bosh opted out at two because they didn't want to be locked in. LeBron decides to go back to Cleveland, gives Wade like a very minor heads up. Like there's been different stories or whatever, but he didn't really let Dwayne know until very close to when he actually was going to do it. Houston offers Chris Bosh the max. And so Miami's hand is forced and they give Bosh the max, which ended up being huge for him because he had the blood clots and to get the longer contract, it worked out and protected him, and he didn't lose any money with that terrible health scare. But Wade had, like, had a really bad season with knee injuries, and when the Heat had, like, moved on, they were like, hey, Dwayne, we got to give you a pay cut.

2:00:22Brian Windhorst:It cost Wade about$10 million, roughly, opting out of that contract without certainty. So I've never believed that, like, a player on spec would opt out. I was like, well, he would maybe know. And so when Draymond opted out, I was like, well, he's got to be operating with some knowledge. What it seems like is that he was operating with the knowledge LeBron was not going back to the Lakers, not that LeBron was for sure going to the Warriors. And this is one of the things that has sort of emerged. People who have been around LeBron, and I haven't talked to anybody for a couple of days here. It's been the holidays, so I may be a little bit lagged in information.

2:00:57Brian Windhorst:But people who have been hanging out with LeBron recently who I've talked to, they're like, yeah, he's not really saying what he's doing. And that jibes with previous times where he's done this, where he's not like sort of showing his hands to even people pretty close to him. So I definitely think Draymond opts out because he thinks there's a reasonable chance he could go with the, he'd go with the Warriors. So I think they're absolutely on the, on the books. I'm not sure about Philly because I'm not sure how that fit is with those other guys. Obviously if he goes there, it's an abundance of talent.

2:01:28Brian Windhorst:Right. And like, you're like, well, just figure it out. And like, you know, when has LeBron not made a team that he's been around better? Like you could see it. I'm not sure. Like, I know Rich said the Philly was there. I'm not sure that like it makes a ton of sense. But again, he could just say, I'm going to be happy there. Right. And so it does like, I honestly, like he doesn't fit tremendously with Harden and Donovan. But you're like, it's LeBron James. He's this incredible player with this incredible talent. Like he'll figure it out. So yeah, if he, if he picks Philly, I would be surprised, but you know, let's put it this way, Philly, as soon as they got the Jalen deal, like done, they immediately reached out.

2:02:10Brian Windhorst:Like they're going for it. Like they made their pitch. They've reached out. They did it. I talked to people in Philly, you know, I'm like, what do you think? And they're like, we're afraid it's Cleveland. Everybody, everybody I talked to was like, well, we're afraid it's Cleveland. Nobody seems like they have optimism.

2:02:27PFT Commenter:My whiteboard for the Philly part of it is LeBron, I think, and you obviously know, I've never met the guy, I don't know how he thinks, but LeBron watching the Knicks break their drought and everyone loving that team so much. There's probably a small part of him is like, hey, there could be a sliding doors where I had gone to New York back in the day. Philly's the next story. Philly's 43 years. Philly's crazy passionate. it that might be the next story he could be like hey i'm the champion of this like if he went to philly and they won a title this year he is a king in philly forever even if they just went to the

2:03:06Brian Windhorst:conference finals it would be a huge step forward for that it would be like a smashing success season no that's He did it for Cleveland, obviously. Big Cat, I can't take that off the table.

2:03:18Big Cat:What about Minnesota? Kind of the same thing. Yeah, Minnesota. You go to Minnesota, you win a sports title. What was the last time? The Twins? Was that the last one they had in 91? No, the Lynx. The Lynx, yeah. I forgot about them. But yeah, I could see. I mean, that roster feels like it would be a really, really strong one with LeBron.

2:03:39Brian Windhorst:I mean, I think LeBron with Ant Edwards would be amazing. I don't know how LeBron would do with LaMelo. I think LaMelo hoisting up 35-footers in transition with 18 on the clock, he might look a side-eye at that.

2:03:58Big Cat:Maybe he likes a little bit of crazy, though. He liked having J.R. Smith on the team for a while.

2:04:02Brian Windhorst:Trust me, he's definitely had some guys who were crazy on his teams over the years. listen again if you look me straight in the eye and say I want to play with Ann Edwards that that will be happiness like I ain't trying to talk you out of that I think that I mean I think Ann Edwards is one of the most amazing players in the league I've gotten to know him a little bit covering Team USA LeBron was there with Team USA so many things were fascinating about the 24 I mean Nambi was on that team too as long as we're going to talk about that but there were so many fascinating things about Team USA. One of the things about Team USA, we haven't even talked about Miami yet, is how LeBron and Eric Spolstra, I don't want to use the word bonded because Spolstra is like a robot and I'm not sure how emotions are with players.

2:04:51Brian Windhorst:I've seen Spoh with his kids and he's like a great father. I've seen Spoh with players and he's locked in like a robot. I don't know. But LeBron and Spoh were attached at the hip and like pouring hours in working with each other on Team USA. Like their relationship completely evolved in a new way with Team USA. So like that's the thing. Like you can create cases for all of these scenarios. And I can't rule them out. I do think Cleveland is where there's definitely a feel in the league like, oh, it's got to be Cleveland. It's got to be Cleveland. But I don't think people are talking with knowledge.

2:05:29Brian Windhorst:I think people are talking about vibes. Right.

2:05:31PFT Commenter:And that would be the best storybook ending for his career and just finishing it, especially now, you know, the documentary being filmed like doesn't that feel?

2:05:40Brian Windhorst:Let me say something about that. LeBron has had cameras around him consistently for at least a decade. Now, is it possible that he would have an uptick in cameras for this last year? Yes. and is it possible that he would you know get some permission from the league to have a little bit more than he was previously allowed yes but the idea that lebron having cameras around him was an indication of something i'm sorry that i just reject i mean he was on the netflix show a couple of years ago um where he had heavy cameras around him a lot of times and he is playing more and more years. So he probably has 10 ,000 hours.

2:06:25Brian Windhorst:I remember going to see Brawny play as a high school freshman. And there was a documentary crew following Brawny as a freshman. I remember going out to the parking lot to leave the game. And there was a sound man and two cameras watching Bronny get into the car to go home for a nondescript non-league game on a Tuesday in December so like just having cameras around is not like that is not a change in the James when

2:06:56PFT Commenter:the James world okay so I'm gonna do a windy fingers for you if LeBron always has cameras around why hasn't he posted any uh footage of all these predictions he gets correct right we should probably have some footage of him saying oh yeah Kobe's about to score 81

2:07:15Brian Windhorst:I can um vouch for times when I've seen and heard LeBron make some predictions but like this is a problem I was just talking about this the other day um I am positing and you guys can tell me we think I'm wrong I believe that LeBron James has given more interviews and has been on the record for more hours than anyone in modern American history. Okay. Damn. Because when you think about, and I actually want to say American history, but like when you think about 20, because going back to high school, you think about 25 years of multiple hundreds of hours, multiple hundreds of interviews a year. for 25 years, plus all of the podcasts, plus the television shows, plus the social media.

2:08:16I don't think that there's more in the public sphere,

2:08:22Brian Windhorst:on the record comments by anyone in modern American history. And so therefore, if you searched it like in mass, you could find proof of just about any point. Right.

2:08:38PFT Commenter:President Trump would be my only one.

2:08:39Brian Windhorst:So you say that. What was Trump doing 300 interviews a year from 2003 to 20? And he was doing The Apprentice, too.

2:08:51PFT Commenter:Yeah, he was doing The Apprentice. He's 80. So he's obviously he had like, what, a 40 year head start on LeBron. Are you saying just in the last 20 years? Well, LeBron's life.

2:09:01Big Cat:he's been in the public sphere for 25 years. The big two, LeBron, Dave Portnoy. Yeah, Dave. Dave would be up there. He would. Listen, like, it's possible.

2:09:12Brian Windhorst:It's possible.

2:09:13PFT Commenter:Yeah.

2:09:13Brian Windhorst:No, that's a good point, though.

2:09:15PFT Commenter:It's kind of a crazy thing to think about.

2:09:17Brian Windhorst:And when you consider all of the hours of gameplay, right, and all of the hours that he has generated and people talking about him or reviewing him, like we're doing right now. Yep. I would again make the case that he may be one of the largest content creators in the information age.

2:09:36Big Cat:Yeah, I think that's probably fair. The amount of podcasts and discussion topics. And just hours of us watching basketball.

2:09:44PFT Commenter:Yeah, I mean, you're living proof not that LeBron made your career, but you moved to Miami and you guys started, what was it called? The Heat Index. The Heat Index, right.

2:09:54Brian Windhorst:I just feel about that branding. Yeah. That was good branding.

2:09:57PFT Commenter:But yeah, you guys like and guess what it was a smart move by espn because everyone wanted to hear about it

2:10:02Brian Windhorst:yeah right so i'm just saying like you could almost find evidence to prove any point as as the point where like lebron claims to have made a lot of predictions of course there are umpteen examples where it looks like he's stretching the truth however there are also examples where he was right yeah about things is all is what i'm saying um what about this uh rival league that lebron

2:10:26Big Cat:and I think it was at Maverick Carter that they're in cahoots on. It's called the B Project. And I know that for a long time they were saying it was going to be men's basketball league and women's basketball. Then for a while it was just like a rival to the WNBA. But then I read a couple months ago that they're trying to get back in to become a rival league to the NBA as well and possibly as a landing spot for older players to extend their career. Like how is this going to factor in to the end of LeBron James' NBA career as he's thinking about maybe starting a league that will rival his old employer?

2:11:01Brian Windhorst:Very, very, very good question. Good question. Very, very, very good question. He's trying to butter you up because he broke your heart and bodied you. There's a Serbian agent, Mishko, who's Jokic's agent. And a lot of what we know, because Maverick has not really talked on the record about it and the folks who were involved with it, I tried to get on the record and really couldn't get them to reply to me. They were not interested in talking about it. So Mishko went on a Serbian podcast and talked about it in Serbian. I had it translated and, like, verified the translation. And in that podcast, you know, he talked about meeting LeBron and Maverick on a yacht in the Mediterranean and they discussed basically creating a rival league to the NBA.

2:11:57Big Cat:Yeah.

2:11:58Brian Windhorst:And then two things have happened. And I can't for sure say that this is related, but two things happen because the belief and understanding was that there was going to be some Saudi backing. LeBron has ties in Saudi Arabia. He has visited Saudi Arabia as a guest of the royal family. And the Saudis, the PIF, the public fund of Saudi Arabia, they own a league where I believe it's electric boat racing. And LeBron owns a team in that league. He has business, developing business with the Saudis. This is public information. This is not like anything that's like, you know, it was all announced and stuff like that.

2:12:50Brian Windhorst:When he, it was in newspapers in Saudi, he was on social media with members of the royal family when he visited Saudi Arabia. None of this is new information. But he was slowly but surely like developing his relationship with the Saudis. And then there was like the possibility of this league forming and nobody for sure knew that it might be Saudi money, but in the wake of live people speculated that the Saudis could be backing LeBron with this league. And, you know, the idea was that you wouldn't have to kind of like live golf. You would play a world tour where you wouldn't have to play as much and you could potentially make more money.

2:13:35Brian Windhorst:And then a couple of things happen. One, NBA Europe started and the Saudis, I think, were at least in some level interested in investing in NBA Europe. And so, and by the way, again, Mishko, the agent, is on the record in this podcast saying this is what they did. This is, again, I'm quoting him. I'm not, I don't have hard reporting. I could only know what he said on a public podcast in Serbian. The NBA Europe began. um the uh saudi so live golf basically failed um and the saudi arabia entered a war and um where they're now focused on buying drones and the pif is cutting back funding other funding of sports uh sort of across the board so when the women's league started It didn't start with the men's league.

2:14:30Brian Windhorst:And there's a Saudi company operating it or helping it with events. But it's not 100 % clear that there's actually Saudi money in it. So for a time, it looked like it may be something that could blossom into a live. But it hasn't. Some of the players who were thought to be guys who might be plucked off, Like some people speculated that that would be Luka would maybe go or Jokic would maybe go. Well, Luka signed a contract extension and now LeBron looks like he's going to, has announced he's playing another year into age 42. So it was sort of hazy what was going to happen there. But there's been no indication and I wish I had more, but there's been no indication that that is going forward.

2:15:20Brian Windhorst:Not that it couldn't at some point.

2:15:21Big Cat:Okay. That's interesting stuff though. Like the fact that he, as a player in the NBA, at one time was plotting to start a rival league to the NBA. Well, so said that agent. Yeah.

2:15:33Brian Windhorst:You know, LeBron never said that, just to be clear.

2:15:37PFT Commenter:Right. All right, Wendy, last couple questions. What team should we be looking out for? I know, you know, free agency already started. We've got a lot of moves already happening. Is there one team that you're like, hey, what's going on there?

2:15:51Brian Windhorst:Good question. I mean, so I would just say like the Utah Jazz, they were like way better than what their record was. Like they were doing all kinds of maneuvers to lose. And like, I think their team might actually kind of be good. And Darren Peterson got out, you know, you know overreact to summer league but he had a he looked like a nice start to summer league and and they let walker kessler go and so now they have like all this ammunition to make trades and i really think that they kind of won like win immediately so like they're gonna have lowry marketing and and jaron jackson and and darren peterson and ace bailey and keante george and like a ton of cap space and trade assets and trade exceptions.

2:16:55Brian Windhorst:Like the Utah jazz are, and like, you know, they're just sort of existing. Like no one's paid attention to them in years. Like, I think they are like, they potentially were like, I don't know how many wins they had this year, like 25 wins or 28 wins or something like that. But I think really they were like, probably like a 38 win team. and like i think they're going to maybe get like way better way fast and so utah is a team that i am going to be watching this season okay all right um whatever that's worth to you i like

2:17:30PFT Commenter:that all right and then last question roback question rhoback.com promo code love their stuff

2:17:35Brian Windhorst:just ordered yes like they have these hoodies i love to fly in them yes and you they're very lightweight because you know airplanes are cold big cat and so you want to have something that's lightweight but has a hoodie on it i love this i just got some paid for with my own money did not receive anything free i'm telling you i wear them to fly i don't know what it's called it's called tech something or other yeah lightweight hoodie um like hoodie for summer next time put in promo

2:18:01PFT Commenter:code take 20 off first purchase yeah they great polos great great hoodies great shorts everything I love, Wendy, that you have the sweatshirts. And speaking of Roback, pumped to see our guy, Jameis Winston, invested in Roback along with 200-plus other athletes. We love Roback and we love Jameis. Congrats, guys. Zach, you got us a question. And, Wendy, thank you as always. You're always so gracious with your time.

2:18:25Brian Windhorst:Thanks for having me.

2:18:26PFT Commenter:I texted Wendy on, I think, 4th of July. I was like, hey, can you come on Sunday night, talk free agency? He's like, yeah, absolutely. He's the best. The absolute best.

2:18:34Brian Windhorst:I asked about the donuts. That is true. That was my response. Yes, yes, yes.

2:18:38PFT Commenter:And I had just gotten back from taking my kids to get them. Zach, go ahead.

2:18:42Big Cat:How are you doing today, sir? I did have a quick question regarding the trade deadline. Do you think Nicola gets –

2:18:47PFT Commenter:Oh, okay. Sorry.

2:18:49Big Cat:Oh, my bad. No, the trade – okay. My bad. Never mind. I'm going to be here. No, no, no. Go for it. All right. Another question. No, no, no. Are you talking about the trade deadline? No, I was just – The one in February? No, I was just kind of curious if we think Yogi's going to get traded at all.

2:19:03PFT Commenter:Okay, that was my fault. That was a good question.

2:19:06Big Cat:And if so, kind of what your pulse is.

2:19:08Brian Windhorst:PFT calls me sir, like respects my opinion.

2:19:10Big Cat:Yeah, I did see that, yeah.

2:19:11Brian Windhorst:Respects my expertise. Ask the question again, sorry.

2:19:14Big Cat:And it's because I respect your expertise so much that I expected better from you.

2:19:17PFT Commenter:Yeah, ask the question again. That's my fault, Zach. I shouldn't have, I thought you got free agency and trade deadline.

2:19:23Big Cat:No, that's completely understandable. I was just kind of curious, do you think he's going to get traded? And if so, what the pulse is on that? If you have any kind of like what you're thinking.

2:19:30Brian Windhorst:Well, naturally I've asked this question because, you know, So Jokic could have extended last year. And it was like, no, no, no, he doesn't. There's no stress, nothing to worry about. He'll extend next year. And so it's now next year. Now, like nobody has really extended. Like, you know, none of like the young guys have extended. You know, Wenbin Yama hasn't extended, right? Like, so I'm not like getting, you know, I'm not getting all interested in that on July 5th. I will say that like if Jokic does not extend, he can be a free agent next year. And if he reaches a point where he says, I'm not extending, there is not a reasonable reason not to extend.

2:20:18Brian Windhorst:The financial, I guess in theory, he could get an extra year. I mean, in theory, you could wait to extend until you're 38 and extend for five years and just say, well, I got an extra year. but he is now going into the last guaranteed year of his contract. He has a player option or whatever. So if Jokic now, the nuggets are like, he's, you know, he is on the record as saying I'm a nugget for life. The nuggets are not stressed about it. Like they're operating in their business. Like they're not the only thing, but if Jokic enters the season, having not extended, that will become a significant storyline.

2:20:57Brian Windhorst:Will it become like LeBron 2010? I don't think so. Because again, he has said on the record, I'm a nugget for life, but it is absolutely something that is on the board to keep an eye on. If he does not extend his contract, because the nuggets are a team that's bumping up against the second apron and are losing players and are in danger of losing more players and had obviously a disappointing end to this last season. Arguably you could say disappointing under three straight seasons because if you look at that run where they had two game seven losses, one to Minnesota, one to Oklahoma City, and they won the title, you could argue that in that three-year span that they had one championship out of three years was the worst possible outcome.

2:21:43Brian Windhorst:As good as they were and as powerful as they were, that they probably should have at least gotten back to another finals and maybe won a second one. And so now their performance is going downhill and their spending is going downhill, or not spending, but they're losing players because all their players have gotten more expensive. So yeah, they are definitely on the watch list. And that's one of the reasons why they would be an amazing team for LeBron, because I think the Nuggets would be in some ways the most interesting team. Of course, I am from Cleveland and my family are waiting with bated breath for LeBron's decision.

2:22:21Brian Windhorst:And LeBron going back to Cleveland is extremely enriching for many people that I know and I have such a history there or whatever but from a straight um you know focused on like you know in a vacuum 20 26 27 season if LeBron went to Denver and brought that level of talent to a team that is wheezing under the weight of its salaries and brought that influx, it would be incredible. And seeing LeBron and Jokic play together would be potentially like once-in-a-generation type. By the way, Curry and LeBron would be the same. It's not just Jokic, but short of the Nuggets pulling the sword from the stone in that type of transaction, I don't know if they're going to be able to bring the same team back.

2:23:12Brian Windhorst:So I don't know if they're going to be better. So, yes, absolutely, Zach. We are watching it, but the Nuggets, according to them, are not stressing about it. Good question, Zach.

2:23:24Big Cat:Good question, Zach. Instead of asking you where LeBron's going to go, do you have any idea on the timeframe?

2:23:30Brian Windhorst:It sounds like they were not doing it this weekend. I know there was this big internet rumor. Obviously, the weekend's over, but there was this big internet rumor he was announcing it today or whatever, and I never believed that. So I've asked the question, obviously, and I've gotten like a series of different days. Like, oh, it could be midweek. It could be the week later. So I don't have a good answer. Trust me, I've asked. I just knew it was not going to be this weekend. All right.

2:23:59PFT Commenter:All right. Well, Wendy. Thank you, Wendy. You are the best. Thank you so much.

2:24:03Brian Windhorst:I'm a starter of the country clubs in Akron and find out what day he does not have a tee time in the next week. And that would be like, if I was really intrepid, that's a good move.

2:24:12Big Cat:I like that. That's a good move. We'll get on that. That's a good move. And I'll see you courtside, feet on the wood at a whiz game.

2:24:19Brian Windhorst:It's going to be great. And by the way, the league is better when the Wizards are good. I've always said that. 2005 to 2008, three straight years, Cavs, Wizards, every year in April in the playoffs. Cherry Blossoms are out. Fun Street, remember they would close off the arena? Yep. They would close off the street next to the arena. 8th I think it was 8th and they would call it Fun Street and they would have everybody out there

2:24:49Brian Windhorst:Soulja Boy sitting courtside Gilbert Arena sitting 30 footers these are core memories for me Deshaun Stevenson Deshaun Stevenson with Abraham Lincoln on his throat it would be awesome to see the Wizards be relevant again I am pro-Wizard alright we'll see you there

2:25:09PFT Commenter:Yeah. All right. Thank you, Indy. You're the best. Take care, guys. Have a great week. Okay, boys. Off to Tahoe. Chill week. Next you see us. We'll have Lake Tahoe behind us. Maximum chill. Maximum chill. Doing some awesome interviews.

2:25:27Big Cat:Chill week is usually sneaky. One of the most busy weeks that we do. Pump fake chill. Pump fake chill. Some great interviews coming out. Great guests. And it should be nice out there. Good weather The mountains are unbelievable Watch out for the bears out there Zach Looking forward to the onions Lots of bears

2:25:45PFT Commenter:He's not talking about Urlacher But Urlacher might fuck you up too

2:25:49Big Cat:I want no smoke with Urlacher There's a lot of bears out there Like physical bears We gotta get weapons Hey you gotta

2:25:56PFT Commenter:I gotta get my cheeseburgers I gotta get going

2:25:59Big Cat:What's your Preferred cook No pink? A little pink? Medium So Big Cat came over to my place for 4th of July Yeah I was grilling out and I made some burgers and I was walking through the house checking on people. I passed by Big Cat. I go, hey Big Cat, did you get any burgers to eat? And he goes, yeah, I had three. And I was like, oh, that's... And then I stopped. I was like, wait, what, you had three?

2:26:21PFT Commenter:I was a little ashamed of it because it was a fun party. There was kids, there was people and I ate all... I ate my three burgers, each one in a different location because I was like, I didn't want to... There's probably like 15 people from that party would be like oh i i sat with him for a burger because i just like kept like i ate one with the kids i ate one with just more some adults then i went to the table because i was like i can't sit and just have three cheeseburgers in front of people and then i

2:26:51Big Cat:ate some steak too yep but every room you're going through it's like different group of people saying

2:26:56PFT Commenter:oh that must be his first yeah right i was just trying to hide i was a little ashamed of it which I shouldn't be. All right. I'm going to go with 50. Let's go 30.

2:27:12Big Cat:With 7. 86. I'm going to 99.

2:27:19PFT Commenter:31. PFT. Yeah.

2:27:23Big Cat:Shit. We didn't get it. You want to do one more? Let's do one more.

2:27:28PFT Commenter:That's why I picked 30. Let's do one more.

2:27:30Big Cat:I'll go 50 again.

2:27:46PFT Commenter:Zero. The rare zero.

2:27:52Big Cat:Happy birthday to George W. Bush. Happy birthday to Dolly the Sheep. You got cloned. Your ass got cloned. Maybe not even a birthday. Happy clone day to Dolly the Sheep. Happy birthday to Zion Williamson. Maybe ease up on the cake. And happy birthday to the goat, Nancy Reagan. She would have dominated the Nathan's Hot Dog Contest. RIP to a real one. Love you guys.

2:28:32Thank you.

2:29:05Thank you.

2:29:36Thank you.

2:30:20Big Cat:you grind all year early mornings late nights fantasy drafts hustle mode on but when summer hits, it's time to chill, and Chevy Silverado makes that possible. We're talking towing the boat to the lake, off-roading into the woods like a legend, and still having room for the squad and all your gear. Inside, Silverado is comfy like a recliner. Outside, built like a linebacker. Chevy Silverado, work hard, chill harder. Football guy approved. Head to Chevy.com to check out more about the Chevy Silverado.