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[Assistant] Uhm, that's crazy to me. And the other, so if they score 19 points with the clock stop.


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[Assistant] What's the number the Cavs reached tonight? I'm saying they win and they score 110. I go 104. Okay. They win with 100.


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[Assistant] Now, I will say this, uhm, it looks like a lot of guys are following the breadcrumbs.


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[Assistant] And people within the organization that are talking to these people.


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[Assistant] Are appropriately mis- misdirecting them.


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[Assistant] I will say this, there is almost no significant advantage to be gained at this point by dropping fake breadcrumbs, but you do it out of habit. You just figure that when the last down is played of the season, as a general manager, you say, okay,


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[Assistant] On this day, I turn into Pinocchio, and I don't tell the truth until the day after the draft. And that's just the way it is.


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[Assistant] And because of that, that still is your area of need.


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[Assistant] And they can't draft a receiver in the third round because they end up pumping gas after two years.


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[Assistant] So I, I just think the higher you move up the board.


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[Assistant] The more likelihood you are to hit at any given position. I will throw this into the mix.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't even rule out the Browns moving up. And I know that's not what they do. But if they think that there's a receiver


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[Assistant] And they think that that's the guy that fits their system and that's the need that they have.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't put them, I wouldn't put it past them packaging a couple of later round picks to go up 10 to get the player that they think won't be there at 54.


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[Assistant] And you might be right, by the way. If they don't think they've got somebody that is a difference maker at 54, they might go to another position.


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[Assistant] So I don't know, man. I don't know. Well, if you guys don't know, I'll tell you what.


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[Assistant] He's got 17 games to get 1200 yards. You said he'd get a thousand.


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[Assistant] 11, 1100, 1100. Okay, that's a difference maker.


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[Assistant] Well, you know what? It all depends on what Amari Cooper does.


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[Assistant] Does he stay healthy? Does he have even close to the kind of year he had last year? If he does, I'm not ready to turn the page on that. Me neither.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I agree. Earl, I hate to disagree with you because, you know, I love your opinions and I love the way you come at stuff, but I don't think it's disrespectful at all. I think it's using past experience and past players


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[Assistant] To kind of figure out where he is. Now there's no guarantee he'll be ready for week one.


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[Assistant] By the way, I like the fact that we haven't heard anything about his rehab. I like that. Don't give us false hope.


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[Assistant] Because when I heard Deshaun Watson talk about his shoulder, he's like, oh yeah, man, I'm fine, it's great, it's great. Then I heard Andrew Berry talk. And I'm like,


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[Assistant] Dial back expectations, and I like that. I like that we haven't heard from Nick Chow, and I bet we won't. But the thing of it is, and you know this, it's an injury unlike any other. It literally is. It is, it's the holy grail of injuries.


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[Assistant] No two ACLs are the same. No two ACL surgeries are the same and no two ACL comebacks are the same. The good news is he had this when he was at Georgia.


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[Assistant] Great. And if you look at that video from when he blew up his knee in Georgia. That was crazy. It looked just as cringeworthy as the make of his Patrick hit. Uh, it's, it's nauseating to think about.


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[Assistant] The corresponding muscles, because ligaments are what they are, you don't strengthen them, they are what they are.


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[Assistant] But his prehab is his body and the condition it was in when the injury happened. His muscles are superhuman. He is Barry Sanders, Adrian Peterson, 2.0. Okay, he's just a freak of nature. So because of that, his atrophied leg


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[Assistant] Is in better shape than 99% of any human on this planet when they're in peak shape.


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[Assistant] Even after he's atrophied for months after the surgery and he's done nothing. So that's his base, that's his starting point. His starting point is better than most people's finishing point. And his work ethic, his desire to be great, all of that bodes well for him.


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[Assistant] They turn on the TV and they see his highlights and they're like, wow, that dude can run.


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[Assistant] We've gotten to know Nick Chubb over the six years he's been here. We've gotten to know him as a quality human being.


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[Assistant] I agree with that. I think when he is on the football field he will be close to the version of Nick Chubb we've seen in the past.


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[Assistant] So you start doing math forward. If you, now I know this is not fair to him, but he's the closest comparison I have to Nick is Adrian Peterson. And when he tore his ACL and was playing in games eight months later,


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[Assistant] And when Adrian came back and ate, everybody's like, what? Oh, well, hey, medicine's getting better. You can now come back and eat. No, you can't.


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[Assistant] But if anyone can, it would be Nick Chubb. And you know where we are right now? He did it in early September. September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. We're eight months exactly post-terror.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I've heard players that have torn ACLs didn't have them replaced and continue to play. Crazy, right?


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's beyond impressive, uh, because they have the best record in baseball and they're like five or five games over the LA Dodgers who spend $8 for every dollar the Guardians spend or something absurd like that. Uhm, what they're doing is


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[Assistant] Gathering a lot of attention across baseball. A lot of the pundits, when I talk to my friends in the national media, they say, uh, talk to me at the All-Star break. And they also say, you know, you have to look at who they've done this against. And that is a fair criticism.


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[Assistant] When they played one great team so far, they lost that series. The great team they played were the New York Yankees and that's the only series they've lost this year. They dropped two of the three games.


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[Assistant] To the Yankees, but they could have won two or three. Uhm, they lost a close one.


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[Assistant] And I don't, I still want to pump the brakes on.


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[Assistant] You know, I still don't think that's, this is who this team is. I think they're a above average team. I think that they are going to contend in the central.


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[Assistant] Um, but man, I look at their starting pitching and it, it's terrifying. Um, because I'm not sure.


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[Assistant] How long we're gonna have Tristan McKenzie? He just doesn't look like the same.


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[Assistant] And they struggled, uh, with, with their starting pitching. And I don't know who's next. I don't know who's coming in the pipeline, but.


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[Assistant] You don't apologize for beating the Oakland A's. You don't apologize for beating poor teams. You play who's on your schedule. You know, you said, I don't care if they're playing the A's, the B's or the C's. Well, the B's are in town tonight.


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[Assistant] They get the Red Sox, uh, starting tomorrow night actually. Uhm, Red Sox are a little bit better team than, uh, than most and we'll see what happens. But I always wait two months before I make any wholesale pivots on a team. Cause I've been burned before by doing that. So June 1st, I will let you know if, if this is who they are.


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[Assistant] One of the, now we asked this question last week, is, is, has anything you've seen been a bit of an indictment on Tito?


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[Assistant] Because, you know, in his 10 years here, he only had two teams that were under 500. I think it was his first team and his last team. Also, happy birthday, Tito. Yea, happy birthday, Tito.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and I said no, but you know what? I was thinking about something when I was watching the game yesterday. Tito's teams were notorious slow starters.


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[Assistant] August and September, they were world-beaters. In fact, one year, the one year they made the playoffs,


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[Assistant] We had just finished our live hits for Channel 3's 6 o'clock show and we had been there since 8 o'clock in the morning and


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[Assistant] When I was leaving, I knew all the parking spots were labeled.


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[Assistant] They didn't have a game that day. It was before they started playing games and they were just doing workouts. And the players like to get out at one o'clock so they can go get a round of golf in and they put in their work. They were done. But here it was, you know, local time, five o'clock.


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[Assistant] And I know that he was there at six or seven o'clock in the morning, and everybody's gone, but Steven Vogt is still there. And I was like, damn.


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[Assistant] You know, that's what you want to see in your first year manager.


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[Assistant] But one of the things he may have been doing and I'm sure he's smart enough that he wanted to look at, so where has this team faltered in the past? And he probably realized that


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[Assistant] Hey, for Tito and all of his strengths, they were never a hot starter. Never.


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[Assistant] So maybe he's put more emphasis on April and he let the guys know, look, you guys are falling out of contention in April and May.


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[Assistant] And then making it difficult on yourselves the last four months of the season. Let's for a change, do well on the road and do well early. What's their road record, Mike?


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[Assistant] Okay, 10 and 3 on the road. One of the things that struck me about the Texas Rangers' road to the World Series last year, and I love this,


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[Assistant] They beat the Orioles, then they beat... No, they beat the Rays, Astros. So, they beat...


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[Assistant] I'ma tell you what, Jay. The road to winning happens on the road. And Steven Vogt saw that in the World Series last year. Now it's just ironic that the teams they beat


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[Assistant] Now you talk about a guy finding a weakness and turning it into a strength. Two years ago, he hit


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[Assistant] A subpar lefty against lefties. Because lefties are always notoriously bad against lefties. But he was worse. He was bottom of the barrel against lefties.


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[Assistant] To now being one of the best left handed hitters against left handed pitching, how did you do that? He said, I just made it a priority in the off season. And I also realized that a lot of that was mindset. I was going up to the plate thinking I'm not supposed to get a hit.


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[Assistant] Do that every time and you're going to be out of the major leagues real quick. I changed my approach.


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[Assistant] And I worked, and I worked, and I worked. Yesterday, he comes up in a one run, close game. Three to two, bases loaded.


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[Assistant] He drives double down into the right field corner off a left hander that was a pitch that was one of the tough ones for him to handle. It was a sweeper that still finished inner half. He sat on it. He's waiting for it.


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[Assistant] And he put it into the right field corner, cleared the bases. Now a 3-2 game is 6-2 and you take the pressure off your bullpen.


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[Assistant] And what's interesting about that is baseball more than any other sport.


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[Assistant] Feeds or everything feeds off everything else. Winning breeds winning.


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[Assistant] Losing breeds, losing, the Astros are not a 7-15.


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[Assistant] But they got a couple of tough losses early. Confidence wanes. Excitement wanes. Up and down the lineup. All nine guys. They're not going to play that way all year. They're going to catch a stride. Hopefully it's not against us. One or two guys in the lineup are going to get hot and everybody's going to feed off that. Right now what's going on with the guardians is


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[Assistant] After that 35 and 5 start, they were pretty much a 500 team.


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[Assistant] They were 30 games over 500 to start the season. They had pitchers who were not household names that were winning 15, 16, 17 games because they didn't want to be the one to let down the four game string where you had


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[Assistant] A quality start and a shut out or a complete game or a win and it just fed on itself and it carried him all the way to a World Series championship.


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[Assistant] And I'm not predicting that for the guardians, but what I'm saying is it feeds on itself and then it becomes almost like this.


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[Assistant] Yeah, now look, I, I, I, we are getting very, very excited about this team and it's easy to do. Guardians and foes. And I, I love the, I love where they are and what they've done, but I'm also a realist and I know that


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[Assistant] Payroll at some point impacts production. It just does. I mean, it doesn't maybe in 20 games. Like I said, if the season were a game, there'd be one out in the second inning. So we're really early in the process. But to your point, and it shocked me when he said it, because I'd done 23 or 24 interviews before Steven Vogt sat down in the chair.


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[Assistant] And I asked everybody the same question. 2024 will be a successful season if...


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[Assistant] And everybody had a different answer. Some guys were like, if our starting pitching stays healthy, if we can get the middle of the order to


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[Assistant] Uh, carry the, what the front half is doing. If we hit more home runs, if our bullpen can bounce back to 2022 form.


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[Assistant] One man sat in that chair when I asked that question and answered it this way. If we win the World Series.


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[Assistant] But he embraced it like it was matter of fact. So if he told me that, I know his team is hearing that. And when you hear it enough and you start to play well, you can start to believe it. So I'm not predicting the World Series, but what I'm predicting is this is going to be a fun baseball season. A very fun baseball season.


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[Assistant] No, genius. Remember, he's the one that head butted Terry Francona after a big win last year. What I wish this video showed was the Rays first baseman, who I like. He's a good ball player. Actually chirping at Josh Naylor as he crosses first base.


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[Assistant] And I can't, I don't know what he said, I couldn't read lips. Uhm, but I, I imagine what he said was,


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[Assistant] That's not what it was about. What it was about was earlier in the bat, in the at bat,


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[Assistant] He swung at a pitch and got put a bad pitch, a bad swing on a good pitch and he was mad at himself. Earlier in the game, he got into one that he drove on a line to deep center field that didn't get out. He was frustrated. When he crossed home plate,


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[Assistant] But what I'm looking at it, what I'm saying is, this is what a leader looks like.


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[Assistant] This is a guy that can get 24 guys to stand behind him and take whatever damn hill he wants to take. Remember when he hit the big home run in the Yankee series and he did the rock the baby.


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[Assistant] Yankee fans don't like when you do that kind of shit to their team. They made it.


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[Assistant] Brutal on him for his remaining at bats at Yankee Stadium.


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[Assistant] But what it told me was, oh this is a dude that's not afraid to write big checks.


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[Assistant] You know, it's funny, I also asked all the players, who do you want most on your side when a fight breaks out? And a couple guys, uhm,


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[Assistant] Surprised me said Hunter Gaddis, which is a big dude. But just about everybody said Jose or Josh.


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[Assistant] Based on the hay that's in the barn now. Like you've gotta be careful. You can't have multiple players on these deals that other teams wouldn't be lining up to give max deals to.


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[Assistant] Remember David and Joe who were like, okay, this dude looks like, uh, looks like Tarzan, but he's not, he's not, I don't want to say he's playing like Jane, but he sure as hell wasn't playing like Tarzan. Now he looks like Tarzan and plays like Tarzan.


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[Assistant] You gotta be that throat cutter. You gotta be that guy that is the reason that you win, not a piece.


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[Assistant] To the puzzle. Donovan Mitchell is the reason the


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[Assistant] Because apparently Garrett and I are like the last to send our stuff in when you guys ask for stuff. I'm hit and miss.


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[Assistant] Jason? It's a free look. It's the, you know, you say low risk, high reward. Well, it's a low risk look. You know, come in, take a look at him. You got him all through OTAs and camp and see what he's got. I mean, they started Jaren Christian, a practice squad guy at Tackle for multiple games last year.


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[Assistant] Yeah, well you, you can never have enough guys up front, so.


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[Assistant] I just, it surprises me how much time we've spent on the third corner, on the slot corner. And I get it, I guess a little bit. We said a couple weeks ago, they're going to pick up the option. I think you pick it up just out of the


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[Assistant] Because you asked him to do something that he wasn't comfortable doing. So you reward him with the option. Doesn't mean you have to keep him. Yea. You know, you can still trade him. Pick up the option now and trade him a year from now. But, you know, he's in security blanket right now to make sure that Cam Mitchell is for real. Like, right, you gotta see it again out of Cam. And if Cam Mitchell is the real deal,


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[Assistant] If somebody wows them at the draft this year, then sure, that's a possibility.


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[Assistant] Okay, uhm, he's, he's gotten game rips with slot.


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[Assistant] So, yeaah. Cause I've noticed early in games before, I'm like, well that's... Where they were just kind of... Especially two years ago, right? I don't remember now. I remember it was early in the year, I don't remember which year it was. Where I had the binoculars out and thought...


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[Assistant] Is there any, and I just thought of this and this could be really bad. This could, there could be nothing to this at all. Did you see any comparison between if they did try to move on from Greg Newsom?


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[Assistant] That'll be tricky to pull off natural grass in a dome. They do it in Arizona because it's Arizona and they can wheel it out and the weather's nice and I don't know. That might be something else I have to look into because I agree in terms of the injuries on turf. It's bad with knees and everything else. It was funny, I was talking, I was at the, I was at the Guardians game.


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[Assistant] I was working at Progressive Field and I walked by a couple of the workers and they called me over like, you gotta stop with this dome talk about moving it out of the city. We gotta keep this team in the city. Keep that stadium, I want that stadium in the city. And they were rattling off a couple of different sites where they thought a stadium might be able to go. I'm like, guys.


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[Assistant] It's Jimmy. He wants 176 acres. It's the land around. It's not just the stadium land. It's the land all around and what they can do with it all.


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[Assistant] Uh, is, is what's so appe and you're right. Billio I mean, you see the ESPN st


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[Assistant] Billionaires live in a different world, man. They just, they do their own thing. But to the earlier question, no, no player should have any say in terms of stadium, stadium site. Stadiums are going to be around.


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[Assistant] Minimum 30 years, if not 40, 50 years. Players can be here 6, 7 years, 8 years, 10 tops. If you have a franchise quarterback, and the best of circumstances, maybe 10 to 15. Even Tom Brady didn't last 20 years in New England. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] There are probably very specific special circumstances like a Brady. I mean, we're talking three or four in the history of the game.


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[Assistant] Who maybe should have some sort of say in it. But by and large, yeaah, Mahomes. He's gonna be, he's got a long way to go in Kansas City still and he could be the greatest ever to play by the time he's done. If you want to consult with him or whatever, go.


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[Assistant] But these are very, very few and far between cases of guys who should have any sort of


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[Assistant] Say it all and what goes on, whether it's dome, open air, location, anything like that.


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[Assistant] That's one of them. They can say whatever they want. They put that thing in independence because it was close to Lebron's house. It was right down 77. Right up 77.


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[Assistant] That's gonna happen. And they could use it for- So the land is technically his? Well, I don't think- he hasn't closed on it. Okay. I don't think it's that far down the road, but I think they're gonna buy that land and they'll turn it into something else.


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[Assistant] I keep saying that. I keep saying, certainly by the end of the year, if they're gonna go before the public and they don't necessarily have to, but if they have a ballot measure, I think they have to have it on this November.


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[Assistant] And both of those facilities are way older than Brown Stadium.


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[Assistant] I mean you can certainly tell the difference when you walk into Atlanta, the Mercedes Benz,


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[Assistant] Sofi, I haven't been to Vegas, but it's in that category. Minnesota.


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[Assistant] I was at Minnesota. Minnesota's nice. It's phenomenal. Yea, Minnesota's nice. You walk into those stadiums, compared to everything else, there is no comparison. Yea. And Kansas City certainly falls into the everything else category. And I've never been to Royal Stadium. I've never been there. They're right across the street from each other, but I'm, I'm sorry. Yea, Coughlin Stadium. I never covered a game there.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I've spent more time trying to get to the bottom of the dome thing rather than, I think they would tear it down to the studs. Like they would tear the current stadium down as an almost rebuild on the current, on the current land and basically redo the whole thing. So it's still going to be open.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I don't know. I need to look into that. I don't know. And I don't even know if Dave got that.


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[Assistant] Yeah, right. Every time I do something with you, you make me do work. People want to know. People want to know these things. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that they know. Because I think right now everyone's focused on how do they do it.


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[Assistant] Well you can't build it, I mean if you try and build a dome on that location, that's gonna be multiple years that you're, cause you gotta knock the whole thing down. Yea, you gotta knock the whole thing down.


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[Assistant] And the guardians is a bad example, but the guardians are playing through their innovations. Like, you know, literally they start the day after the season ends, they work.


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[Assistant] But you can certainly play through renovations while you're doing them. If you, if depending on how significant the renovations are. I'm surprised to hear Zach say that only because


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[Assistant] I think that they, like the Brook Park plan is what they want. That's what they want. They want land. They want land and they want, uh, the opportunity to


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[Assistant] Print money out there, which is what they will do. And that's why if the public pushes back on it, I get it. You know, I've said before, I think he should pay for the whole thing himself.


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[Assistant] public funds put into these things. In Atlanta, uh, Arthur Blank was on the hook for all the overruns. And there were a lot of overruns. And the city's like,


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[Assistant] SoFi is the only one that I'm aware of. In Vegas, was it? I believe Vegas, no, I mean Vegas just taxes the crap out of everyone who comes in there. That's why the tourism rates are outrageous in Vegas. Uh, but SoFi is the only one, to my knowledge, where the owner paid the whole fee. It's 100%, yea, I'm pretty sure it's still accurate.


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[Assistant] Not yet, but it's going to be. Okay. It's out in Inglewood. It's actually, it's in kind of a rough area right now, but they're gonna, it's, it's by the forum, it's by the Great Western Forum. Oh, okay. But they're gonna, they're gonna do up that hole.


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[Assistant] I don't know if I know where the Clippers are building their arena.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I know a bunch of the people with that organization, that would be great. They need their own arena. They need to get out of the shadow of the Lakers.


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[Assistant] Okay, now that's interesting, if it's in Engel, I guess, because somebody told me that SoFi


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[Assistant] And I was at SoFi and I didn't notice this, but part of SoFi is underground because of flight patterns with LAX. And it's like four miles away, but because of the way the planes come in. So I wonder how high they can go with that. If they're building it by, but I guess it can be.


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[Assistant] I want to dig in on that. I wonder who's paying for that. Is Ballmer? Ballmer's probably not paying for the whole thing, is he? He has more money than anyone. Yea, he does.


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[Assistant] He's had some monster postseason games, for sure. I still have last year stuck in my head.


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[Assistant] And it's hard to, it's hard to shake that. Uh, but I do think like this is a really motivated team. There's a really motivated Donovan, you know, like I said before, his teams have lost in the first round for the last five years. He's never made a conference finals. He's very aware of that. He's acutely aware of that. And he knows that's his reputation right now.


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[Assistant] And if they, I wrote it this morning, if they flame out again, it's on him.


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[Assistant] Darius and Evan and Jared, no one's gonna blame them. Injury or not. Injury or not. He's the star of the team.


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[Assistant] He's the one who's gonna take the blame for it. He knows that. I mean JB will as well. But it'll be JB and Donovan. They'll be the ones that get blamed for it if it's an early exit again. It'll be 70-30.


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[Assistant] Yeah, which I don't know is entirely fair, but we gotta let it play out first. Like, hopefully they win the series and there's a moot conversation, a moot point, at least for a few weeks.


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[Assistant] I totally agree and we've talked about it on the show before, but I talked to a couple of NBA coaches this year, like, how would you guard this team in the playoffs? How would you? And I talked to


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[Assistant] Two head coaches and assistant, and they all said the same thing. You have to pick somebody to shrink off. You're choosing Isaac. If Isaac's on the floor, just because he's making them in the regular season, it's a lot different to make those shots in April and May than it is in January, February, and March. And they want to prove that he can do it.


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[Assistant] We'll see. And until he does it, no. You don't have faith in him that he can do it because he hasn't done it yet. Once he does it, Mike's right. If he comes out and he hits the first two or three corner threes, if Orlando leaves him open and he makes the first two or three,


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[Assistant] Last year he didn't even shoot it was the issue. He shot a couple and it was alligator arms. It was bad. It was bad.


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[Assistant] That's, that's, that's. If I'm him, I'm shooting a thousand jumpers a day. And you know, to your point about Sugs, Mike and I talked about this on the Chaos Podcast this week.


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[Assistant] I agree, like the Knicks did this and we've said it for two years. When you get to the postseason, the first thing teams do is they blitz your best player, blitz the pick and roll, get the ball out of his hands. Okay, now what else are you going to go to? Orlando is the one team that may not do that.


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[Assistant] Just because Suggs is so good as an on-ball defender, they may not feel like they need to take the chance. And I'm just, I'm curious to see how Orlando plays this series, how they guard Donovan.


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[Assistant] Do what the Knicks did last year. They may not just attack Donovan and Blitz Donovan because Suggs is so good. If Suggs can handle him, why not?


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[Assistant] I trust W. Moley because he had a really good year this year. And the shooting component gets overshadowed. It overshadows a lot of the rest and I get it.


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[Assistant] Well he's another one, if he's open he's gotta shoot it. And I actually have faith in him to make those shots.


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[Assistant] He's had games where he's won 100% from the 3 point line. Yea, I have faith that he would make those shots. Now the problem is, obviously he's not a stretch 4. No. Obviously, you know, we talked about on the show, when they went on that 18 and 2 heater,


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[Assistant] And then how do they continue to play? Well the way you continue to play that way, if you go four out and one in, is Evan has to be one of the outs. And he has to consistently take and make those shots. Well that didn't happen to the extent that it probably needed to to continue playing this way. So I don't know how Mobley and Allen


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[Assistant] I don't know how many minutes they're going to be able to play on the floor together. And that complicates things. But as a player in this series, I absolutely trust Evan Mowgli. Here's what's funny.


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[Assistant] He hit the big shot at the end of the Indiana game. So he can hit a big shot in a big moment, but he's also, he's just, he's had a bad year. He's just had a really bad year. And he makes bad decisions with the ball at key moments this year. And it's hard to trust that.


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[Assistant] So, I mean, I said it in February that he wouldn't be in my closing lineup right now. And I don't think he would be. And I know, I just said he hit the big shot against Indiana.


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[Assistant] But if there's other guys who are making shots, I don't know that I'd trust to be on the floor at the end of games. And that's crazy! He's the highest paid player in the history of the team! Crazy to be saying that, but...


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[Assistant] And I'm sure he will be on the floor at the end. But you're not sure if it's the best. Yea, I don't know if that's the best lineup for that. It hurts. It hurts.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I'm kind of surprised I'm a yes after last year, but I'm a yes.


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[Assistant] Yeah, for a lot of, I mean, this is why they brought him here, right? Like they brought him here for postseason experience, for this moment, to be an upgrade over Isaac. And then Isaac played, had a great year, but like, he was brought here for moments like this. His shooting, he's not an elite shooter by any means, but,


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[Assistant] We talked about on the podcast, him and Donovan have this little pick and roll game going, this little two man action that is really hard for teams to guard. I haven't looked at the numbers lately, there was a point where they were the best two man, or one of the best top five two man combos in the league when they're on the floor together.


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[Assistant] They just run a lot of actions. There's a lot of comfortability. And yeah, I, I absolutely, the guy who went to the finals was a key piece. The team went to the finals. Yeah, you certainly trust him in the first round matchup against Orlando.


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[Assistant] I don't trust him because I don't know which version of Karis you're having. That is true. That's very true. I love it.


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[Assistant] He's got a championship, uh, he's a locker room leader, vocal guy, I was glad to see him. We ain't gonna hear about the lights being too bright.


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[Assistant] No, you will not hear that. And for what he can provide this team, absolutely. This is not 2016 Tristan anymore, but I absolutely trust him.


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[Assistant] Kendra, Mike and I did a playoff preview Cavs show a couple days ago and one player on the Magic that I think a lot of Cavs fans aren't aware of is Jonathan Isaac.


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[Assistant] Can you just, can you just explain to people what the Cavs, what the Cavs have to deal with, with Isaac, just because he's been hurt so much. He's not Paulo Banquero, he's not one of their top named guys for a casual fan to know, but Mike and I are aware of how ruthless he can be defensively.


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[Assistant] Has Jamal talked about his relationship with JB Bickerstaff at all? I know they've been close friends forever. Jamal came from here. He was an assistant here for a while. I got to know him when he was here. I love Jamal. I'm just wondering the influence he's had on that team and then if he's discussed with you guys at all his relationship with JB.


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[Assistant] We've been kind of talking around this, I'm just curious. Is this team early or are they on time? Do you think that this team arrived early? Have they been a surprise in, even in Orlando, kind of appearing here before people thought they were ready? Or is this the progression that they expected?


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[Assistant] Not yet, but he could. He's not going to be at the start.


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[Assistant] Isaac's missing shots, if bad Karas shows up, if Yang's over three, Sam Merrill's going to get minutes in the series, then it's up to him. So I, I chose I don't trust him because number one, I don't know how many minutes he's going to get. He's clearly the 10th man in this rotation, 11th man in this rotation, and you're probably going to play a...


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[Assistant] Eight and a half. Yeaah. Nine, trust eight, play nine and you trust eight type thing.


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[Assistant] And, and it's just, it's different. Like we talked about with Okoro, and it's different hitting shots in April than it is in January and February. And Sam Merrill is a terrific shooter, and if he gets hot,


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[Assistant] He could make a name for himself in this series. I don't know that he's going to get the minutes and the opportunity and then without having seen him do it before, it's just, it's just hard. Like if you're asking me, if you're giving me four or five shooters on the list that I'm trusting just because of the stakes and the guys that have been here before,


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[Assistant] He would be last on my list, but he also has, just because he hasn't done it, but he also has the opportunity, yeaah, to jump to number one on that list. If he gets hot, he's making shots.


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[Assistant] I don't want to boil it down to one stat or one category.


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[Assistant] I tend to feel that whoever shoots better from 3 is going to win the series.


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[Assistant] Like, it, it really is that these are two, and, and we've talked about it before that these are two defensive minded teams, but defense isn't necessarily what gets you to win playoff games in series. It's shot making. You gotta make shots. And that's what the, like, there is nothing wrong with the Cavs defensively. Go back and look at the Knicks scoring totals from those games.


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[Assistant] Cavs defense was fine. It was their inability to make shots is what cost them that series. And here they are against another tough physical defensive minded team in Orlando.


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[Assistant] Where it's going to come down to shot making, and we talked about it on the podcast. Orlando doesn't really have a ton of great shooters that you really have to fear from the three point line. The Cavs, I believe, are the better shooting team. That's why I'm picking them.


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[Assistant] I just think it's, it's probably the way I'm sitting here now, two days out from the start of the series, whoever shoots it better from three, probably gonna win the series.


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[Assistant] Sometimes all you need is 1-3. Yeaah. That's all you... Go back and look at the game 7 where the Cavs won the championship against Golden State. They couldn't make a friggin' shot. And JR hit like 2-3s. And it's all they needed.


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[Assistant] Mike did an unbelievable job with film breakdown of Paulo Banquero and tendencies and weaknesses and what to look for with him. It was fascinating. Uh, it's, he does a phenomenal job. I turn my computer on, sit down and start talking and this man puts in hours of work on film.


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[Assistant] I'm still going back to the three point shooting because I was thinking back to the Knicks series last year and it was rebounding and they knew it. Oh my gosh. But the Cavs knew going into that series that they were at a disadvantage and they were going to have to control the glass.


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[Assistant] I don't know that it's rebounding this. I do worry about them getting pushed around inside a little bit. Orlando's big. Orlando's big.


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[Assistant] I know that he, like, that it was a busted play, because I remember.


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[Assistant] I mean, in the moment, you're just like, oh my god, I can't believe you made that shot. It was unbelievable. And everything happened so fast. That went crazy. Yeah, everything happened so fast. I was not covering them on a day-to-day basis. I was working for the Associated Press at the time, just stringing, running quotes and that.


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[Assistant] And, and so I didn't really know him yet. And to hear him break that down, that's, that's, Hito Turkoglu had an incredible series. He destroyed the Cavs in that series. But when you look at the play, it wasn't much of a play. Like it wasn't very,


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[Assistant] Wasn't a lot of high level. Yeaah. Wasn't a lot of high level coming off screens or anything like that. And now you know why. Because that wasn't how the player was supposed to be run. But he was so good he just adjusted. Right there.


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[Assistant] And, I mean, not to go off on a Z tangent, but all the foot problems that he had early in his career, that's why the all-time games played meant so much to him, because he never thought he was going to last that long.


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[Assistant] I would have gave it to Z. But, and to your point, that's what Jerry West, when we're talking to Jerry West, the year the Cavs came back from 3-1 and 1.


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[Assistant] Jerry was so angry that Lebron takes so much crap for his finals record because he's like, he said, how many series was he favored in? And you know, the Dallas one you put on Lebron. Oh, that's 100% him. That was on him.


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[Assistant] But everything else, I don't know that they were, I think he's only been favored in like two series. Two of the ten, right? Yeah, something like that. And I think OKC, they were favored. Miami was favored over OKC.


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[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah, that's the third. I think that's it. The San Antonio ones, they were. I think that's it.


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[Assistant] That Orlando series, that 09 Orlando series.


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[Assistant] Was wild because the, the calves were, I'm trying to think back. They never, like, losing to Orlando was not an option. Like no one ever thought that was.


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[Assistant] And LeBron has said one of his big regrets in his career is never facing Kobe in the finals. And he said, like, I messed that up. That 0-9 is what he's talking about. That 0-9 season when they didn't get there. Nah, you can't put that on him, no. No, I mean, those guys, that's how they carry. He did what he did. But yeah, when you look around at what else he had to work with.


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[Assistant] He went crazy that year. When Cleveland beat the Celtics? Yeaah. The second time around. Yeaah. When he dunked on KG.


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[Assistant] That wasn't the second time around. That wasn't the second. That was the first time around!


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[Assistant] Yeah, KG was gone by the time he came back here and they had those playoff matchups the second time.


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[Assistant] I call it Huck, but I'm not sure. Huck, Huck. I'm a writer, I'm not a TV guy, although I guess I'm probably. Tanner H. None of these issues don't matter. You're converting into it.


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[Assistant] No, nothing bigger. He was terrific. He threw a, he threw a Maddox. It was under 100 pitches. Complete game under 100 pitches. Like, nobody does that. Yeaah. In today's game. So he, and, uh, Stephen Vo talked about it after the game that he just, he hit his spots and he didn't leave anything out over the plate. I think he left like two or three pitches out over the plate and those are the only hits that the Guardians had at all.


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[Assistant] So, I, he's a guy who's been, he's, uh, he's bounced around rotation, bullpen, and he's really coming into his own this year. He wasn't even guaranteed a rotation spot for Boston.


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[Assistant] They didn't do anything this all season. No, for a couple years now they really haven't. They're going the Cleveland 1990s route. They're signing their guys to long-term extensions. They got Brian Bayo, their starter, they locked him up. Their center fielder, they just locked him up. So they're trying not to go the free agent route and build from within. And Hawk is one of those guys.


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[Assistant] Uh, and, you know, he's off to Trimist. He had a great day, like tip of the cap to him. Yeaah. It happens. Ain't nothing you can say.


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[Assistant] There's a stupid rule in baseball that you have to declare if you're going to pitch out of the windup or out of the stretch. And with the runner at third, Lively went back to the windup and didn't declare it and therefore it was a balk.


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[Assistant] We'll listen to vote and then I'll tell you why this is the stupidest rule and why baseball has to fix them.


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[Assistant] Well, Volk basically said that. That they were told that he didn't declare. Whether or not he was coming out of the windup part of the stretch with a runner third, he went back to the windup so they called a balk. What's stupid about this is go back and look at what Nester Cortez did


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[Assistant] Against the guardians at home the other day. Like he's just a trash ass pitcher. I don't care what anybody says. Nestor Cortez is a trash ass pitcher.


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[Assistant] And he does these stupid motions on, on the mound to try and throw off batter's timings because he's not good enough to just beat him straight up. So he does stupid things like kick his leg and fake a throw and then actually throw it. And that's okay. That's not a balk. But if you don't declare, if you don't tell the batter what you're going to do,


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[Assistant] I love baseball. I love baseball my entire life. It was the first love sport I have. But some of the, what baseball does is so ass backwards and stupid. I can't wait for Rob Mantrick to leave. He has been terrible for the game.


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[Assistant] Here's the, so here's the lively. And there's, here's lively coming out of the stretch, and he didn't declare it, so that's a balk. He did nothing wrong. Nothing wrong.


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[Assistant] Hit a spot, find the Cortez if you can, guys. I'm sorry, I probably should have sent it to you. What is he doing?


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[Assistant] He does all kinds of stupid stuff on the mound, where he'll like, he'll fake a leg kick and kick two or three times, then he fakes the throw, and then he hurries up and throws, because he knows he's a trash-ass pitcher who can't get major leaguers out with his stuff. So he does stupid stuff like this.


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[Assistant] Sometimes. He's a trash-ass pitcher.


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[Assistant] I mean, I don't know if you can sit here and declare you can trust Curry and Lively. They were terrific starts. There's not a lot of tape on either one of those guys right now. Bybee, yes, this team's gonna rely on Tanner Bybee. He's gonna have to carry a heavy load for them. Psy Young votes. Psy Young votes, it's coming. It's coming.


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[Assistant] Round and in the form. Round and in the form. Uh, I mean, Xavier on Curry, he's one of those like in between, like he was never a top prospect. Not bad by any means, but he's sort of an arm that he's sort of the epitome of what this organization does is being able to maximize pitching arms and get the best out of guys. And they're probably going to have to rely on Curry.


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[Assistant] Like Gavin Williams, I thought he'd be back by now. It's just, some of these guys would take a little bit longer than we thought. And obviously Bieber going down. The uncertainty around Mackenzie. Zach and I's story finally- The piece came out this morning. Yeaah, we put it out this morning. I'm amazed how many people-


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[Assistant] Apparently didn't realize Trist McKenzie has a torn ligament in his arm. Like, people didn't know.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that was the big deal last year. But, but I thought we knew last year, like he was trying to rehab and come back from it. Like I thought that was common knowledge. And today, I'm getting all this like, what do you mean he's got a tort? Where did this come from? When did, I'm like, guys. It just hadn't healed, right?


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[Assistant] And he, the way he explained it was depending on where the terror is located determines, and it's actually over here, it's on your pinky side, UCL is in here. And the only thing you need your UCL for really is to throw a pitch 95 miles an hour.


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[Assistant] Like it's not a necessary, you can live your daily life with a torn UCL, it's really not that big of a deal. But to be a high end elite pitcher, although I've heard that there's actually pitchers that don't even have a UCL. Which I now want to look into that and dig into that. But it runs here and it runs from the humerus to the ulna bone.


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[Assistant] And the closer it is to the top, to the, to the humeral head.


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[Assistant] The easier it is for you to try and rehab and pitch through. And there have been other guys with tears who have been able to pitch through it.


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[Assistant] Uh, Masahiro Tanaka from the Yankees is the biggest example of guys who had a torn ligament and pitched through it.


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[Assistant] Uh, Aaron Nola from Philadelphia has a torn ligament. He's pitched with it for eight years. And, but his was much milder. It was smaller from, from what we're gathering. It wasn't as big of a deal. And Nola actually came back throwing harder. So Nola was diagnosed and I think it was 2016.


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[Assistant] In like July or August, they shut him down for the rest of the season. And he used that as an opportunity to activate his legs more and use his legs more in his delivery.


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[Assistant] We'll try and, and we'll try and pitch through it. If, if you can handle the pain, if it's a pain management thing and you can handle the pain.


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[Assistant] And you have the velocity, but not so much the location, you try and work around it.


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[Assistant] If you don't have pain, which is Tristan's case, Tristan does not have pain. I said, does it hurt? He said, no, not at all.


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[Assistant] So, but his, he's low, he's got lower velocity and his command hasn't been as good. His location is down this year. He's not getting guys to chase out of the zone like he did a couple years ago. So he's trying to pitch through two of the three because he doesn't have pain. Tony Gonsolin is another example from the Dodgers who was diagnosed last year


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[Assistant] With an, all they were saying was an elbow injury. He didn't take rest or rehab. Like Tristan was shut down for a couple months last year. Tried to rehab it. Gonsolin pitched through it as long as he could. And Gonsolin, when he was diagnosed, had a 1.93 ERA.


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[Assistant] And when he finally shut it down in August, his ERA was over seven. He just couldn't do it anymore. And, and, and we'll see. I mean, Tristan.


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[Assistant] This is a big, this was the biggest decision of his career of whether or not to have the surgery or not because he didn't have a contract. Like he's, he's arbitration eligible, but he doesn't have a long-term contract. He was probably hours from signing.


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[Assistant] In spring training last year before the shoulder injury. Can I touch you for that real quick? Was it really hours away? Yea, like that day.


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[Assistant] I mean, like that day, that day, and that's more Zach's reporting on that than mine. I don't want to take credit for Zach. But we were in Arizona talking about it, and Zach thought it was going to come down like that day.


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[Assistant] And then that's when the shoulders started barking. Like, Zach was getting ready to try and put the numbers together on this and try and break this, that McKenzie and the Guardians were agreeing to an extension, and then that's when this came down.


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[Assistant] Well, the shoulder injury, and then, I mean, you know, Tristan's had a lot of injuries in his career to begin with, and then the shoulder...


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[Assistant] Starts flaring up and then the offer disappears. That's how it works. And now he's got this elbow thing, so he hasn't even signed long term yet.


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[Assistant] So, you know, my point, and I told him this, I said, I'm surprised you didn't have the surgery because...


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[Assistant] Tommy Johnson, everybody has Tommy Johnson surgery now, so take the surgery. He would have missed last year, and probably most or all of this year realistically, and then he would have been back next year ready to go, and he would have had two years left, uh,


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[Assistant] Before he hits free agency. Now, if he needs, if he has to shut it down at some point this year, he'll miss this year and all of next year and he'll have just one year before free agency. And he said like, yeah, of course I, you know, considered the contract, but you have to live in the moment.


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[Assistant] And he did what he thought was best for him. He consulted with three different doctors.


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[Assistant] And the team leaves it up to the player. It's the player's call. Whether you're gonna try and pitch through it with rehab or whether you're gonna have the surgery. And he did tell us, Tristan told us that he talked to one doctor outside consultant who said have the surgery.


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[Assistant] And then there was other doctors who felt like he could maybe rehab and pitch through it. He chose to rehab and try and pitch through it. And he said like, you know, hindsight's 20-20. He's standing by his decision and hopefully the velocity comes back a little bit and hopefully he can get back to being the pitcher that he was. Obviously it's early. The first few starts have not come.


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[Assistant] Oh, that was, uh, to get through this little band of stretch here. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, Angel Martinez went on the 60-day deal. They picked up a guy from the Padres just for cash, for money.


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[Assistant] Yeah, he got hit early by the Yankees, but then he settled in and hung around. I don't know what his ERA is. I don't know.


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[Assistant] It's just wild. It'd be a shame, but. Carrasco was brought back here as a feel-good story.


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[Assistant] Which just hasn't come back yet. He's a big piece to what they do. Another big left-hander. Yeaah, they've been great. Like, uh, Beattie has been... They've got...


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[Assistant] Lively, bibey, and beady. Yeaah. You gotta be careful, trip over the names. But they've had some surprise contributions from guys. Klausi's been solid. Barlow had the, uh... Barlow's been up and down. Yeaah, he's been a little shaky. He's making a lot of money. Santa Morgan.


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[Assistant] Yeah, he's there, he's an incredible athlete. He's probably...


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[Assistant] Jimenez would be their best defensive shortstop if he played short. Obviously, he's a platinum glove at second. I thought for a minute that they may move Jimenez to short after last season, because it's easier to fill second than short. But Arias is, if Arias continues to hit like this,


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[Assistant] I think he will be the everyday shortstop. That's what they were waiting for last season. They've been begging for Arias to grab hold of the shortstop job. And he just wasn't doing it. And so they went to Rokeo. But if, if, if Arias figures out major league pitching and if he can continue to hit like this,


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[Assistant] He's got an absolute hose for an arm. He's great defensively. He is, he should be the shortstop over Rokio, but he just hasn't hit. So, we'll see.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I don't know. I just, I just think you just have to do it. It's different. It's different for everybody. Some guys, you just need one look at it and then they struggle a little bit. Maybe one quick trip to AAA and you come back up and you figure it out.


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[Assistant] And with Arias, he's had multiple opportunities timing again, playing different positions, not shortstop every day obviously, but they've tried forcing him into right field, first base, they've tried moving him around.


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[Assistant] Because he has a lot of power in his bat, and he's such a great defender, but he just hasn't been able to put it all together. But if he puts it all together, he's the everyday shortstop.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I told Zach Meisel, I texted him during the Yankees doubleheader. I said, this feels like Florial's last gasp. The fact that they started in both games of that doubleheader.


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[Assistant] It kind of felt like maybe that's his last chance before Manzardo gets here. And he took advantage of the opportunity.


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[Assistant] And maybe bottom, and I'm just speculating. Nobody told me that. I just, I think they want, Manzardo didn't get off to a great start at AAA, but I think that they want him up here sooner than later. So, uh, we'll see. I mean, not going to worry about one game with Florial, but it does feel like,


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[Assistant] They, they, they're gonna get Kyle Manzardo up here. Sooner or later. Someone has to go to bring up someone else. He's one of the guys that I would think would be on the.


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[Assistant] Here's what I'll say about JB. Last year, I felt like he didn't have what he needed to compete because they had no shooting. And it was a pointed emphasis throughout the entire playoffs. Shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. They addressed that in the offseason.


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[Assistant] Theoretically, they should have everything they need. Now, Donovan, is he 100% or not? We'll find out Saturday. I agree with Mike. 10 days off should be a massive help to the knee.


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[Assistant] No Dean Wade is a huge loss to what they do. He's an underrated defender. He's so important as a stretch four, but there's other guys who can make shots. And that's why I said earlier, I think it comes down to who's, who's the better team from three, who shoots it better from three. That's the team that's going to win the series. The Cavs should, especially for this first round, they should have everything that they need to get out there.


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[Assistant] No, I don't think it benefits either one, but they know, they certainly know each other and they're, they coach very much the same way. Very defensive oriented, defensive minded type coaches and two of the best people you could ever meet. Like Jamal and JB both. Just tremendous, tremendous people.


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[Assistant] Uh, so, you know, I know Jamal from his time here. Great guy. And JB is just a wonderful man. I know he takes a lot of crap here.


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[Assistant] Some of it deserved, some of it undeserved, but he's such a good dude that it's, it's, he's a guy who's easy to root for.


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[Assistant] But I think, uh, they know each other, they know each other's tendencies. I don't think one has an advantage over the other for it though.


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[Assistant] They're still human beings and I try to be very, very careful when I'm trying to be constructive and criticizing an athlete.


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[Assistant] To make sure I'm not calling them out their name, that I'm not being disrespectful, etc. Because you never know.


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[Assistant] Like how that can have an impact on them on a day to day basis. And so I'm glad that, you know, he came on and he put himself out there.


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[Assistant] To be vulnerable like that and to follow up on what G said, boy.


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[Assistant] One of the reasons why I really, really wanted to do this outside of it being a childhood dream. A lot of times I would listen to the radio.


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[Assistant] I felt like that the moment that there was time to be criticized, that they was being overly criticized to the point that I felt like they were being disrespected. And I said, if I ever got an opportunity to be on this platform,


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[Assistant] That every time I get the chance to make sure I represent my people well, that I will do that.


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[Assistant] You don't have to be friends. You don't have to be family. You could be a total stranger.


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[Assistant] Pay somebody a compliment and that's a former spread love. Something for people to think about.


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[Assistant] Fire, man. Chef kids, man. Great time, great content, uhm, a whole lot of fun. The food was fire, man. That was dope, bro. Like, that-


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[Assistant] Hey G, hey everybody stand tall. I might have something we might be able to do this weekend, man. We'll talk to you after the show.


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[Assistant] So yea, FanDuel, our presenting sponsor, has put out odds.


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[Assistant] The Baltimore Ravens are the favorites, plus 110. The Cincinnati Bengals second at plus 175. The Browns coming in at third at plus 550 and Pittsburgh is in last at plus 950. These odds feel right, too high, too low. Browns third and is a great value at plus 550.


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[Assistant] Is it fair to say that that plus 550 number next to the Browns is an indication of FanDuel just having a little skepticism over Deshaun Watson? Because if Deshaun comes back, that number has to be right.


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[Assistant] Yeah, if you want more Brown's content every Monday and Friday, we're just with you at 5 o'clock for the ultimate Brown show.


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[Assistant] Twice a week, 30 minutes, non-stop Browns coverage on Tuesday, myself and Jason Lloyd.


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[Assistant] You and him, the best Guardian show in all of the land that starts this Monday, first episode, three o'clock.


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[Assistant] Yeah guys, so the regular season's coming to an end. 13 games left for Cleveland, so it's time to start looking ahead to some of those regular season awards. A couple Cavs are in the running to win some of these awards, so I'm gonna show you the odds. You tell me who is most deserving, not who's most likely to win.


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[Assistant] Who's most deserving of the award they're in the running for? Let's start with Defensive Player of the Year. Jared Allen, currently third according to FanDuel Sportsbook, but


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[Assistant] Quite a bit behind Rudy Gobert, who's a favorite. He's a 65 to 1 favorite to win defensive player of the year. Let's go to the next award here, Steve.


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[Assistant] The si- uh, most improved player, excuse me. Tyree Smacks, he's the favorite at minus 210. Isaac Ikoro, having a great season for the Cavs, he's at 80 to 1. Sixth man of the year, Karis Levert, also in the top 5. 48 to 1.


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[Assistant] Let me go for Isaac Kikoro. I made this point earlier, but he's increased his 3-point attempts by 33%. So more volume usually means a lower efficiency.


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[Assistant] We went from 36% to 40%. So increased volume, increased efficiency. He's bidding much better attacking closeouts and making plays off the dribble as well. He's not just a stiff on offense. He's a guy you actually have to.


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[Assistant] Pay attention to, you're not playing four and five handcuffs when he's on the court. And his perimeter defense has been as good as it's ever been. So, a slight edge to Isaac over Karis Lever, but he certainly has a case for six men of the year.


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[Assistant] Plus, ba-da-da-da-da, you're lovin' him. Mikey McNuggets. And so many big names, it would take me hours to say all of their names.


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[Assistant] Endgame, Game 2, one of your most iconic shots. What game? Game 2 2009 Conference Finals.


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[Assistant] Cause that is an example of a, you know, off, off ball movement, catch and shoot three. So, if I remember correctly, uh, Mo was taking it out.


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[Assistant] Delante set like a flair screen for Ilgauskas. Yep. Right, right here. I think it was Pavlovich just kind of ran to the ball.


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[Assistant] And you were over here on this elbow. You actually never got a screen on that play.


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[Assistant] If they let MLB players use aluminum bats.


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[Assistant] Carlo's an actor now, isn't he? He was in What Men Can't Jump.


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[Assistant] Well, there's a lot to unpack with what you said there, Jay, and I'll start with the, you know, with the money. As the Yankees and the word drought


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[Assistant] is a very relative term. I'm not going to talk to Cleveland fans about a World Series drought and being from Cleveland and growing up there and rooting for all of the Cleveland teams. You would laugh at the Yankees


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[Assistant] Take the city that I'm in, uh, currently, and you guys know, 1948.


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[Assistant] Uh, you know, that's, that's, that's a real drought for not winning a World Series, but the anger level from the fan base toward Yankees management, starting with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner and certainly going down to long time general manager Brian Cashman has increased steadily


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[Assistant] Over the last decade or so and it really culminated last year, uh, with just a top to bottom irate fan base with them going 82 and 80 that the season just turned into a complete.


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[Assistant] Uh, disaster, uh, really in June when Aaron Judge suffered the toe injury at Dodger Stadium when he ran into the bullpen fence and uh, tore a ligament in his, in his toe. Uh, last year


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[Assistant] Coming out of spring training, they had the highest of expectations as they always do, uh, but one of the criticisms that you've heard of Hal Steinbrenner, and I don't really agree with it,


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[Assistant] Maybe we can get into this later, maybe not. Uhm, is that he is cheap, he's not his father who would pursue every shiny, uh, object that presented itself whether it be on the trade market or on the free agent market and there's Blake Snell and I'm going to offer him


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[Assistant] 40 million, you've got the Dodgers and the Mets across town, and that has not helped since Steve Cohen took over the Mets. That has not helped Hal Steinbrenner's cause, because you've got a guy across town that


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[Assistant] You know, he's worth, oh, I don't know, what is it, 16 billion dollars or something like that, and he grew up a Mets fan, and he, and he treats it the way that, and I have said this before, he's the owner that


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[Assistant] Everyone who roots for a professional sports team wants owning their favorite team.


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[Assistant] And, uh, you know, fans don't care about luxury taxes and they don't care about, you know, staying under a certain threshold and all of that. They want somebody that would operate a team the way that they would operate it. And that's what Steve Cohen does with the Mets.


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[Assistant] I know this is a long meandering answer, but, uh, look.


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[Assistant] The expectations are always high for the Yankees no matter what, but they were slightly lower this year based on the season that they were coming off of.


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[Assistant] Uh, when they added Juan Soto, when they added Alex Bergugo, when they added Marcus Stroman, when they were spurned by Yamamoto, the Japanese star pitcher, he went to the Dodgers for $325 million, the Yankees offered $300 million, but he just wanted to play on the west coast with Shohei Otani.


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[Assistant] Basically, uhm, you know, they, they didn't get a lot of attention other than the Soto deal, of course, but uhm, you know, they were quietly confident that last year was an outlier, uh, and that with the additions they made this off-season, that they would be


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[Assistant] We're just an infinitesimal portion into the season. This is my 16th year covering the Yankees. I've seen all kinds of starts by this team and by other teams. Sometimes they've started off well.


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[Assistant] You know, struggled to win 90 games and sometimes they started off poorly and won 100.


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[Assistant] Uh, so, you know, it's just, it's so early, it's very difficult to draw any kind of grand conclusions, but, uh, I do think that this Yankees team is, uh, is pretty good. And, uh, you know, barring the injury bug, and that's always something that can crop up and just nail teams, and it did with the Yankees to a degree last year. I think they used it too much as an excuse, but that's...


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[Assistant] That's another story for another day maybe. Uhm, but they, uh, the roster's pretty good overall.


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[Assistant] Well, I mean, look, it's one of the big topics in the sport, and it has been for a number of years, but the last few years in particular, the number of arm injuries, shoulder injuries with pitchers, as you mentioned, it's just, it's


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[Assistant] One of the issues, and again, criticisms, and I can't talk about other organizations, I only cover the Yankees, I can give you a bird's eye view of, you know, opinions or people that I've talked to in other organizations about various topics, but I'll just stick with the Yankees.


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[Assistant] One of the issues that I have when it comes to, uh, you know, keeping pitchers healthy is they, all of these teams, certainly the Yankees, bring in all of these gurus.


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[Assistant] And they, you know, the hundred pitches in a game and the way that they develop guys in the minor leagues, etc. And the reality is everyone's looking for the secret sauce on how to keep pitchers healthy and nobody knows how the hell to do it.


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[Assistant] And I would like to see, you know, some of these, these pitching gurus and these, these medical, you know, data science gurus, et cetera, actually come out and say, you know what, a lot of this stuff that we're doing is arbitrary.


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[Assistant] You know, when did a hundred pitches become, uh, you know, some kind of a constitutional amendment, if you will, that that's the way to keep guys healthy. And there certainly is common sense to a degree, you don't want


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[Assistant] Uh, you know, an 18 year old kid that you just drafted his first year rookie ball, uh, coming out and throwing 150 pitches in a game. That's, that's, that's not my point, but, uh, I really think that,


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[Assistant] There needs to be some kind of a come to Jesus moment in the sport where, you know, all of these, these geniuses, and a lot of them are self-appointed geniuses,


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[Assistant] That they really don't know what the hell to do to keep guys, uh, healthy and at least acknowledge that and, and say that, uh, you know what?


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[Assistant] We've tried this, this, and this over the last 10 years, and the number of injuries in the game when it comes to pitchers have only increased in that time. And, you know, you saw Justin Verlander talk about it the other day, Garrett Cole from the Yankees who


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[Assistant] Uh, people in the sport acknowledge, uh, a lot of what they don't know because, you know, they speak so arrogantly.


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[Assistant] About, well, you know, these players are treasure, and it's so important to keep them healthy, etc. And then again, they apply all of these arbitrary benchmarks to the development of these guys, and most of the time, these gurus


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[Assistant] Have no background whatsoever when it comes to being between the lines. And this isn't one of those things where I think that you have to have played the game at a certain level to know anything about it. But I would like to see more of an input from


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[Assistant] Guys that have played the game and how did they manage to stay healthy for the preponderance of their career and what did they do


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[Assistant] Uh, plus on this, this issue, but, uh,


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[Assistant] Your question is a great one and I know from the Yankee standpoint and certainly talking to people in other organizations, you know, scouts, executives, people on the field, whether it's players or coaches, uh, you know, it really is the number one, uh,


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[Assistant] The best thing in the sport, uh, and in spring training, it's the number one topic always is, you know, I don't care about the results of my guys, I just want to get them healthy out of, after the six weeks and, uh, you know, again, the injury rate has never been higher.


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[Assistant] I mean, I don't know if blackballed is the right word. He certainly, and if he is blackballed, he's done it to himself, uh, certainly, but, uh,


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[Assistant] Look, you guys have all covered sports long enough to know that, you know, if a team concludes, and it's not just baseball, it's any sport, concludes that a guy can help them on the court, between the lines, etc., uh, they'll find a way to get him in, but teams would have to weigh


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[Assistant] The risk reward element of it and is the PR hit that you're going to take worth what the potential reward


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[Assistant] Is, and he has not pitched in the big leagues in, I don't know, what is it, four or five years. Uhm, you know, he's north, well north of 30 at this point. Obviously was mostly successful when he was on the field, but, you know, do I think he'll get signed eventually? Uhm, I don't think, I never


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[Assistant] And I definitely don't think it will be the Guardians either, but, uh, some team is gonna be pitching desperate, and I think we'll take a flyer on them.


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[Assistant] Well, I certainly, I've covered my share of Yankees, Guardians, Indians before that, playoff series in my time covering the Yankees and would love to do another one in October.


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[Assistant] It's been weeks, man. It's been years. And it feels like it's been forever for you too. Yeah, man. I've been around here, man. It's like, yo, I be, hey, trust me. Hey, look, hey.


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[Assistant] And I'm, I'm Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Alright, very good.


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[Assistant] No, listen, I actually slightly disagree. I think that they are already, you know, when you, you're in management.


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[Assistant] They got, like you said, they got two, three-year plans, like four-year plans. We do this show.


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[Assistant] They got three, two, three year plans, right? But in the minutia of it, we only thinking about the very next show. For GMs and like Andrew Barry and the organization, they have to think


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[Assistant] Two steps ahead, they gotta say, okay, well we moving all this money around and we figured that we need this money to make the roster better. They have to be able to forecast whether or not Deshaun Watson is going to, what does that really look like? I think that they're hoping he comes out


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[Assistant] It has a good year and they're already thinking, okay, well now we're on track, we're moving forward. Now we can potentially think about what the next contract looks like. I mean, cause quiet is kept. We already in year three.


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[Assistant] He's a, this is year three, right? He's approaching year three. Year three. And how many years is this contract? Five. So.


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[Assistant] You're going into it next year, so after next year, that means that's year four.


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[Assistant] Uhm, they say he has a great year, great year next year. You go into year four and they say, okay, well what are we looking like financially? Can we extend him and save some money? Can we roll over some stuff?


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[Assistant] And when you say extension, I'm not talking five years. They may be in a position to do, hey, we're going to extend you three years, right? Something like that. Or a team option or somewhere along the line. I just think that when you were the general manager and they got so many irons in the fire,


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[Assistant] They have to imagine and think of all options. They have to think, they have to have a contingency plan if he's not good.


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[Assistant] They have to have a contingency plan if he gets hurt. Right. They also have to have a contingency plan and what does it look like if he comes out and plays very well because if you're Deshaun Watson and your team.


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[Assistant] You know that you've had injuries, you know you've been off the field. Sure. They are going to be pushing for more security, especially as a quarterback, and if he comes back and proves it again, they don't want to negotiate and play a fifth year without a deal.


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[Assistant] And I believe that we have to take in consideration when we look at it is what the Browns have done philosophically with their money. They seem to always pay a guy a year early. They paid David O'Joku a boatload of money when they hadn't seen anything. Right? They paid Jack Conklin.


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[Assistant] That is true. That is true. Jerry Judy, he got the contract and they didn't really see it. So they try to get in front of these things and project a lot and what they want to do.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't be surprised if they're projecting for Mark Cooper right now. They're trying to figure out what a Jed Will situation looks like. And especially because they put a lot of money and they do a lot of mental gymnastics with this cap. So I think they got a contingency plan for a lot of things.


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[Assistant] And of course he has to play well, but I think that they already have some blueprints about what they're doing.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna ask y'all this question. Does, does, you know, the Haslam said the extension is coming.


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[Assistant] How does that calculus work now that Andrew Barry knows, I got a deal on the table, I'm probably going to get it? So how does that work? Do you feel like there's not as much pressure with Deshaun Watson? Because before we said, if it flames out with Deshaun, that's with him.


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[Assistant] Does that now change that perspective in how he handles it?


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[Assistant] And he can do that because again, you have the job security. So even, even if the big blunder of Deshaun Watson does not work out, he's able to say, well, look, I can go, let me go into the draft and find somebody. I could, I have not had the leeway where I could build that roster.


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[Assistant] This sucks to say, but I think the ship's out when...


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[Assistant] Deshaun Watson was supposed to play against the Ravens, right?


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[Assistant] I was on the way in and uhm, I was listening to 92 through the fan. Coach Schofanski was talking over there. Yeaah. He was on with Ken and Lima and uhm, he talked about Ken Dorsey and how


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[Assistant] He believes how aggressive he is. He's like, listen, when you see King Dorsey,


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[Assistant] You're gonna be surprised about how he talks about...


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[Assistant] You know, the aggressiveness that he wants, you know, to play on offense. He talked about some of the other skill position guys and how many new different offensive minds that they have.


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[Assistant] In the room from Deuce Staley, uh, and uh, Tommy Reese and some of these other guys. And he actually sounded like he had a little spark, a little pep to his step when he was talking about these guys. Well, it's interesting that to me at least all the breadcrumbs are leading to him calling the play.


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[Assistant] Usually you have a good sample size on your quarterback. When Baker was here, we understood where Baker could get into trouble or where he likes to throw the football if he's under. Like, we don't even have that kind of, we don't know that with Deshaun. We haven't seen Deshaun Watson throw the ball 40 or 50 times and we'd be like,


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[Assistant] Deshaun's better at 25 to 30 throws rather than 4. We don't know. Like, we just have to figure it out. So I think Dorsey comes in and says, look,


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[Assistant] If we're going to be aggressive, let me get some receivers and guys out here that I can at least be aggressive with and see what we're going to have. I think last year they told us that the offense was going to be different. And like you said, the Elijah Moore experiment


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[Assistant] I don't think he's going to be what we call a vertical guy.


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[Assistant] No, that was too high. Do you believe, like, okay, so, say for instance you take Joe Burrow and Josh Allen, right?


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[Assistant] Do you believe that Joe Burrow, if Joe Burrow has better, I guess, decision making, you don't really worry about how many times you throw it, right? Like, because he's not gonna turn the ball over. I think sometimes Josh Allen's decision making is just like, man, there was three dudes over there.


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[Assistant] You know, Brew, I'm gonna ask you this, uhm, you know, Donovan Mitchell, last couple years, even going back to the jazz.


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[Assistant] Uhm, really wasn't, uhm, really hasn't had really good playoff series. Uhm, and you know how it is, especially in the NBA, like, people in the NBA and all the purists and the guys, they always want to go to the playoffs and that's where you make your money at, that's where your legacy lies in the playoffs.


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[Assistant] Where, where is Donovan Mitchell at?


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[Assistant] Uhm, nationally and the way teams think about him as a player and, and is he a, does he have to win this series and make some noise in the next series to kind of raise where his, his, uh, his stock is in terms of, uh, as being a superstar in the league.


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[Assistant] You know, uh, Bru, when you look at the, the entire, uh, Eastern Conference, and, and, you know, getting to possibly, you know, talk about the Cavs moving to the next round, does anybody have a shot against Boston?


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[Assistant] I'm gonna say this right now. They win that series. We gonna have to start drinking Kool-Aid.


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[Assistant] If they beat these dudes, listen, all you need, if they come out and play well, one game, uh oh.


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[Assistant] He'll be fine. He'll be fine. Yeaah, he's fine. Now listen, listen, I've already told y'all, man, listen, this is, this is, uh, this is allowable. Uh, me and Jay have had 17 surgeries. We are allowed to wish upon other people ankle sprains.


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[Assistant] He affects the game in multiple areas. 20, about 23, 7 and 5. Uhm, he's a little throwback. He kind of plays like Carmelo Anthony a little bit, like when he was in his prime. Uhm, you know, they're not going to jack up a bunch of degrees. More passes though. Yes, yeaah, right? He's a, you know, more of a long passer. But one thing is,


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[Assistant] He's a big dude, man. Like this guy's 240 or 250 or something. Like he's a bully. He can get to the rim. I just think he affects the game in more areas. But it's close. And I still want to see Jared Allen prove it.


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[Assistant] I need to see him against these Wagner's. Listen, do not, they're higher on my list too. The Wagner's is decent.


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[Assistant] So I wanna see what he'd do against them, but I got him at third. I got Jared Allen at third.


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[Assistant] Darius Garland, don't make me regret this, bro. I got Darius Garland at four and I say it because...


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[Assistant] I can't, I can't get it out of my mind that Darius Garland has put up some amazing games.


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[Assistant] He's put up games where he's hit 8 threes. He's gotten 50 before. And just go back to not this year, but the year before.


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[Assistant] He was Bart Nunn the best player on the team. Bart Nunn. Like he was that guy. All-star. I, I, I, in this series, he's gonna have to, he can make up for a terrible regular season by stepping up and playing well in his, in his, in his playoffs.


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[Assistant] Right? I had him next. I had him after I had Garland. I think at five or something. Okay. Okay.


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[Assistant] Yeah, listen, I like Wagner. I like Wagner's brother. I like him. I like him. And by the way, uh, Isaacs is one of the best defenders in the league. I got him next after Suggs.


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[Assistant] Darius Garland, you need to be about 24 or 25. That's what it needs to be. Like, especially his first round series.


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[Assistant] There was no chance for anybody in those first series. The superstars got to carry you first, the first series at least get you past the first round. And that means if Donovan Mitchell got to play every minute, that's what he's going to do. He needs 30. Oh, he'll be playing provided the


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's gonna be rea- it's gonna be interesting. He's gonna have to work it on in rotations. Like, it's unacceptable. Is Sam Merrill healthy?


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[Assistant] He can't say he does not have the parts. Sam Merrill you found, he's a, he's a space out guy. Niang, you got Struz, uh, you still got Keris Levert, Isaac Okoro is a Swiss Army knife, he can guard multiple positions, you got Evan Mobley, you got Allen, you have all the pieces and parts you need to beat the, to win this series. Absolutely. 100%.


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[Assistant] I think, uh, I'm not gonna say it's a changing in the guard, but I think we just gotta get used to them winning games a little bit differently, right? You know, we've been used to for a lot of years, the guardians, you know, usually live and die with pitching and we usually know that they always have good pitching and, and they've had some Cy Young award winners. But now,


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[Assistant] There's been a change of mentality at the plate. Uhm, there's been a change and I think, I think players are playing more free and I think players are enjoying this because there isn't this organizational


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[Assistant] Uh, philosophy that, hey, we want to take 30 pitches. We want to see a bunch of pitches. We want to go play small ball or go deep in the count.


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[Assistant] It's something to be said for, you know, for you to go. When I played baseball, I didn't even look at the third base coach. Ain't nothing to tell me. I'm going up here swinging. Like, hey, listen, don't give me the take sign. You know what I come up here to do.


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[Assistant] Eminez 22, uh, Naylor 21 hits, Ramirez 20 hits.


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[Assistant] And think about it, they're even getting guys that are platooning, not having, you know, positions locked down. Arius has been swinging a bat well. He's been hot, he's been knocking in, uh, you know, uh, runs and batting and so the thing is, this may be


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[Assistant] They're best at now. This may be how they're gonna have to win some games and I think that's the sign of a good team to be able to win in different ways than you traditionally have.


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[Assistant] You're with each other more than you're with your family. And the crazy thing about this Jay is when you look at it.


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[Assistant] Everybody's been, everybody ready to play. Look at this. Floriao, he's played 12 games. Floriano 13. Fry 11. Naylor 14. And the rest of the guys, Freeman, Brandon 15, 16.


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[Assistant] Everybody, when you come to the park and you come in and you're there, it's good to know that hey, I'm going to get some at bats today. We play a four game set, I'm going to get some run. That's why everybody's engaged, people are supporting each other because you know you're going to be used and to stay ready.


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[Assistant] Well, it's something to be said. I remember playing, you know, at times where in high school we have a new coach or in college we have a new head coach. And it's something to be said for a fresh slate.


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[Assistant] You know, you could either, you could be a guy that the coach loves. Like, you could get away with certain things. But when they bring in that new coach, everybody starts over. Like, you're not a favorite, you're not a veteran.


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[Assistant] Everybody start over, so the guys that didn't think they got a fair shot, now they're energized. Now the guys that were in Tito's good graces, now they have to say, I gotta represent and start all over again. I gotta make sure this guy knows what I'm able to bring to the table.


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[Assistant] I don't even see an intimidation factor. Like when you play the Yankees or the Red Sox, there's that thing where it's like, oh goodness, like we're going to try to stay in the game. And you watched it a couple of years ago when we played the Yankees in the playoffs. It was like, hey, we would be up and then they was like, yeah, let's go get you out of here with these two, three home runs. Right. But in Boston, I was really impressed.


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[Assistant] about the way that they had to battle back. Sometimes they gave up the lead. You're in a, you know, the crowd was starting to get into it, but they just start, they just, they went up there and had good at bats. I'm just, I just liked the way that they're aggressive because it looked, you never are out of a game when you're aggressive that way right now.


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[Assistant] I don't think that people should dismiss it because I, we've talked to a lot of baseball people and they, they're very dismissive of what's happened. I know they are. It's incredible. You have to pay attention to the facts that is laid out. This one is in jail.


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[Assistant] We're not the guardians but it is something to be said for the fact that


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[Assistant] Yeah, but he was still good enough. You would think, you would think. If you're gonna claim somebody did something and the energy that the media put out there that was negative, you have to put the same energy out to say, hey, that person who lied on you,


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[Assistant] And shout out to, shout out to OG Brad. I remember vividly having a conversation last year. Yeaah. And he forecast this.


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[Assistant] Last year, Brad Seller says this is going to be one of the best ones we've seen. The game is picking up and this year he was right. I was hoping that Maryland would make a deep run.


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[Assistant] Well, Jay, I know you guys are old enough to remember this, like, you know, it was, like, one of those things, it was an investment. Like, I was gonna be there like his foreign exchange student, right?


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[Assistant] What can I learn about Malaysia today? You know, I used to, I was strange. I used to put, I don't know, this is, don't, don't judge me. I used to put a bunch of clothes, like clothes that I would throw in the floor that were clean. I would put them in a dryer with a dryer sheet. I would get them real warm. I would then go into my closet.


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[Assistant] Throw all the clothes over my body and read encyclopedias with a flashlight.