JOHN LUND UNLEASHED EPISODE 45: Warriors top Thunder, Jimmy Butler rumors, Iggy of course and more!

TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning, unleashed Lund loyalists. Thanks for tuning in live each weekday at 8 a.m. on YouTube, Instagram and X. Remember, please like and subscribe and listen where you get your podcasts. Be on the lookout for Lund loyalist perks by joining the club and if you really want your comments read during the show, you can use supers and stickers.

Now, as close to on time as he gets, here’s Johnny. Here’s Johnny.

Uh, every day I wake up and I think to myself, we have nothing. We have nothing. What am I gonna talk about? And then I look over there. Let me get myself out of the way here.

Then I look at the chalkboard there when I’m finished with it. I’m like, my god, how am I gonna get through all this stuff. We may or may not, but uh, lots of stuff we’ll go up to the chalkboard and tell you exactly.

Well, see, it just it does that on its own. Decide, you know what? I’m just gonna go it again. It’s like, no, I don’t I don’t have you on loop track.

I have you on fade track. So there you go. I don’t know. It just just decides it just wants to do its own thing. Uh, want to acknowledge everybody in the room today before I do roll call, before I go through the chalkboard on the right and the chalkboard seems to be this big conversation point that everybody wants to

talk about after the show. Maybe, maybe do this with it, maybe do that with it, maybe do this with it, maybe do that with it. So uh, we’ll get into that conversation too because I find it to be fun. But do remember we are on a few different platforms and we’re gonna add more and more and more. But right now,

if you’re watching us on X at John Lund Radio, good morning and welcome. If you’re watching on Instagram at John Lund Radio, good morning and welcome. Also YouTube, please subscribe. It’s the best way to do it because uh, we like all the platforms because then you can kind of move around with us. But if you do it on YouTube, John Lund Unleashed Pod, John Lund Unleashed Pod is where you can subscribe and then you turn on your alerts and you never miss anything because not only do we do the morning show

uh, at 8 a.m. ish Pacific Time, but we also do stuff throughout the day that we don’t want you to miss. Plus we want you to join the Lund loyalist club because like I said, we ordered we ordered post uh, that is a post uh, post order we ordered and uh, so we’ve got new stuff on the way that we’re gonna give out to our people and that’s gonna be really, really cool. So we’re looking forward to that. Also for all things John Lund Unleashed, please just go to johnlundunleashed.com.

In fact, if I can pop that up on the screen today, well, you know what? I’m not gonna do that yet because that’ll get us down a uh, not so much a rabbit hole, but just we’ll it’ll get us into the conversation of the show. And so I don’t wanna do that yet because I wanna read the chalkboard and get going on everything good. But good morning, good morning, good morning. Uh, skills report is here today, Jeff. It is always great to see you. I think you joined the loyalist club, so that is gonna be awesome. I’ll have a great hat, one of those trucker hats coming your way.

Uh, AJ Cruz 75 is here today, Vernon, good to see you. Hurley Bird is here. Uh, the the the sports girl for life, it is great to see you. Gizmo, thank you so much for making the time. Awesome to see Joey here this morning on a uh, Thursday, 59, 50, which is really uh,

84, 84. There are you. Hey yo, good to see you, my friend. Uh, Nathan is here today. He was part of the club, I know that. Jason is here. Kenny Smith from TNT is here. That’s that means a lot to me. Steve is here, one of my favorite guys. Uh, who else do we have today? Jacob is here today. If I did not get your name, it’s just because I’m trying to zip through this thing fast and I will absolutely positively

acknowledge you as we go throughout the show today because we do have a lot. But it is episode 45 as you can see on the top there. We’ve been going for episode 45 and that’s just the live shows. We do all sorts of other stuff as well at johnlundunleashed.com and on the YouTube channel. But uh, market equals money is what that first one says and it was because I did that

as story of the day yesterday. I don’t wanna revisit it for you just in a second because we had a lot of good uh, response to it. And good response does not mean that everybody agreed with me because like we say in this show all the time, I don’t want negative and nasty and and all this kind of stuff and we’ve done a really nice job in this community of of just having a lot of fun and treating sports for what they are even though we’re passionate about it. It’s not gonna it’s not living down any kind of stuff and people don’t need to get angry and and things like that. But

I did get some good uh, back and forth in that. So I’m excited about that conversation. I think it’s DL, which means D-line. We’re gonna continue to talk a little bit more as uh, as the practices are going on at the Senior Bowl and everybody’s all excited and this guy looks good and that guy looks good. Uh, we’ll give you some of that.

Where’s comeback and beat Oklahoma City? We shall discuss although a lot of people are like, oh, they’re back in the top of the Western Conference. I’m just saying slow down. Acknowledge, have fun, enjoy, uh, but slow down a little bit latest on Jimmy Butler. I don’t like some of the things coming out. We had some good conversation about it yesterday.

But I would only take Jimmy Butler under certain circumstances. So we shall discuss. Bobby Marks is a hopefully I’ll get Bobby on at some point during on the show, but uh, he was on my radio show tons of times and he’s predicting a boring deadline for the worst, which stinks. Uh, this is a couple of days old, but I wanted to address it.

No doubt Iggy, we’ll discuss as well. One of the Rogers brothers is gone and sounds to me that the Giants are like, thank you very much. We’ll save six million dollars and put it in our pocket. Won’t spend it. Farm Ranks, Memory Lane, New Orleans and random, which is random as just throughout the show. So again, I’ll try to keep you up to date on what’s going on with the chalkboard before we get to everything and anything.

The chalkboard, like I said, has kind of become a hot topic. So after the show, I I just mentioned that the other day and I think it was let’s say Thursday, so it was like either Monday or Tuesday. A friend calls me after the show and says, look man, I’m really enjoying the show. I really like what you’re doing and I’m I’m just anticipating a butt, you know what I mean? Like it’s fine. Everybody can have an opinion. It’s not like

what I do is like a doctor or a dentist or a vet or like something where it’s like, you know, I’m not gonna tell my, you know, my dentist, hey, you know that one in the back? I’m not sure you’re working on, you know, the open heart surgery. Uh, is that the one you wanna mess with, doc? Like, you know, you’re not gonna do that. But everybody’s got their opinion on how I should do the show or different things or change this and I’ve invited that.

Like I’ve told everybody, like, hey, what you like, what you don’t, let’s make this thing perfect. Let’s tweak it, let’s move it, let’s, you know, if you don’t like something, let’s change it, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I say this all the time. Some people don’t like the gabby pistol. I have altered it a little bit. I don’t get as loopy as I used to do, which is weird because I went off the radio and said, I’m not gonna do as as loopy things. You know, Tongue Guy was was incredible. You know, it doesn’t have to be the craziest thing. I do have a story on that cheese

sausage story I did the other day that kind of upset me. But anyway, I’ll give you that and in a little while. But my point about the the chalkboard is I thought for something that was just kind of gives everybody a blueprint or a roadmap of what we’re gonna do every day. And if you’re a regular, I kind of sometimes I follow it, sometimes I don’t. You know, ADD takes over. I go here, I go there and then I go back to it, then I go down and then I go move back up and

so my friend just told me the other day like, dude, that’s kind of confusing. And I went, yeah, I know. That’s kind of me. And he said, well, could you do something where maybe you had a I don’t know, a highlighter or a marker or something where then you could tell us where you were. And I said, uh, maybe. I said, I’ll work on that. But I said, in the meantime what I’ll do is I’ll try to do a better job in terms of telling you where we are during the show. So if that’s annoying to some, I understand.

But a few people have said that, so we’ll try to keep you up to date on what’s going on and where we are. So we’re at the top. We just started things. We are uh, eight minutes and 46 seconds into the show and we are just starting. So let’s start here. Episode 45 we’ve established. Uh, market equals dollars. Now I didn’t after the show every day I write a piece and let me share my screen with you.

I write a piece and it’s called the story of the day. So I take all these different stories, all these things we talk about on a given day and I boil it down to one that I think is kind of the most important thing or the most interesting thing or however we wanna do it. And so I’m gonna share my screen with you for a second here and and just let’s make sure I got the right one here because I don’t wanna I don’t wanna share the wrong part of my screen with you because that might offend some people. Here we go.

So I wrote this piece yesterday. It says, sorry, there are no scripts or conspiracies when it comes to who wins in the NFL. And you know, there’s Aaron Rodgers there and refs with with Mahomes and of course Taylor and Jerry Jones and Caleb Williams. And my whole point of it is and I’m not gonna go over the whole thing because I want you to just go read it and so there’s a what I do every day is on the website johnlundunleashed.com is I write the story, I put a little video with it and then I write the story around it. But the essentially what I’m saying here and this is pretty amazing to me that if you really wanted to fix the NFL,

your top markets, so New York, the Jets and Giants, number two largest market is LA Rams and Chargers, number three largest market is Chicago, number four is San Francisco, number five is Dallas. And as you can see there, the combined record of the top five markets in the NFL was 47 and 72 and two of the seven teams made the playoffs.

Now this is the one that really gets you. Their last Super Season, which means the last season they won the Super Bowl, the average for the top five markets in which there are seven teams, the average is nearly 30 years. So the Jets haven’t won it in 56, that’s that number next to it. The Giants haven’t won it in 30, the Rams, the only team that recently has won it in three, the Chargers never, the Bears 39 years, the the Niners 30 years and the Cowboys 31 years. So the average for the top five markets in all of the NFL is nearly 30 years since they won a Super Bowl.

So you gotta ask yourself the question, why would the NFL make Kansas City the Mecca? Kansas City just to give you a little bit of of of uh, I don’t know, guidance on this whole thing is the 34th largest media market in the country. 34. To put that in perspective, Kansas City, the entire city of Kansas City has 1.8 million people. New York has 17 million. New York City has 17 million. 1.8 million. There are less than four million people in the entire state of Missouri.

Again, 17 million just in New York City. So if you were trying to to raise revenue, which the league is always trying to do, wouldn’t you make one of these teams, one of those top markets, I’ll throw that away. Wouldn’t you make one of those markets a team that was dominant? Wouldn’t you make one of the New York teams decent? Wouldn’t you make the LA teams more interesting? Wouldn’t you make wouldn’t San Francisco win more? Wouldn’t Chicago who’s been atrocious forever, the third largest market?

And you’re asking yourself, what does market size have to do with it? More people, more eyes, more eyes, more ratings, more ratings, more money. What’s the NFL trying to do? Make money. So we don’t have to go long on that and it’s pretty logical to say that those kind of things, but they wouldn’t make Kansas City the center of the NFL. Hey Roger Goodell, what do you think of making Kansas City the Mecca of the NFL? Good idea. 1.8 million people, 34th largest market in the country.

Buffalo, Baltimore, those teams are really, really good. Chicago, LA, New York, they suck. So if you had a script to the league, it would be let’s make New York good. Let’s make LA good. Let’s make Chicago good. Let’s make San Francisco good. Let’s make Dallas good.

The most powerful owner in all of sport in all of the NFL is Jerry Jones. His team stinks. And that’s just what it is. So again, it’s no big deal. We don’t have to go through it a long time, but the only reason I bring it up is because yesterday when I posted that, a bunch of people were were having a conversation about it and everything and it’s just basic. It’s just logic. It’s just more people, more money. The NFL’s trying to make money. Everybody thinks the NFL’s trying to find a true champion, they’re a business. At the end of the day,

Roger Goodell maintains his position in the league because he continues to expand the revenue pie. You know, I I know we hate Amazon. I know we hate Netflix. Where the hell’s the game? I gotta buy another channel. They don’t care about us. They care about growing the pie. And what Roger Goodell is really good at, there’s a few different things.

A, he’s really good at growing the revenue pie. B, he takes all the bullets. So for example, the Thursday before the Super Bowl, what will happen is and I’ve sat in this a bunch of times and now it’s an invite only by the way because Roger Goodell doesn’t wanna take uh, more negative questions than he has to. But you get invited to this thing on Thursday and it’s the commissioner’s uh, address and it happens once a year and he goes in and he takes questions and there are actually people now that are pretty much planned to ask him these questions. Glad you asked. I have a great answer because it’s already, you know, pre-conceived answer. So

and he says all these great things about the league and what the owners like about him is anything negative, he takes all the bullets. Anything positive, they get all the accolades. Everybody hates Roger Goodell. Everybody boos Roger Goodell. I mean the whole thing. And so he’s a perfect mark for the fans. He takes all the bullets. Yes, he gets paid gobs and gobs of money, but he’s really good at growing the revenue pie and that’s all the owners care about.

So the revenue pie would mean that if New York and LA and Chicago and San Francisco and Dallas were really, really good, but they’re not because the best teams in the league are in Buffalo and Baltimore and Kansas City and you’re going, huh? Why? Like what wait if we had a conspiracy, if we had a script, wouldn’t they be better? Wouldn’t Dallas be better? Wouldn’t Chicago be better? Would both New York teams are atrocious and have been for a long time. The last time the Jets won the Super Bowl,

my god, 69. I was writing that article yesterday. The last time the 49ers won the Super Bowl, put this in perspective. Amazon only sold books. Amazon only sold books. 1994. They didn’t even have an official website, Amazon until 1995.

I mean, really? So anyway, just getting you uh, a little bit of perspective on that. All right, we are past the I of the market equals money. We’re past that. All right, let’s get to the uh, NFL side of things because people I think and again, this is where the show gets democratic.

You tell me on this whole thing, but I I do get the sense that right around February, we’ve talked about this and we’ll continue to. Right around February, I think everybody kind of gets into uh, NFL draft talk, NFL free agent talk. We also, you know, we okay, my team’s done the Super Bowl, my team wasn’t in the playoffs.

Let’s move this thing along a little bit. So um, again, I’m gonna share my screen just because that’s where everything is here. So let me get to that. Let me take one second. Share the screen and this only takes a second because I don’t wanna share the wrong thing with you if you know what I mean. So let’s do I’m gonna start here with interior defensive alignment. So all these

all the draft gurus and it’s very, very early are pegging the 49ers at number 11 for an offensive lineman, an offensive tackle, an offensive guard. Even somebody suggested this morning Tyler Warren who’s a really, really good tight end for Penn State. If you watched the USC Penn State game this past season, he caught like 20 passes.

The guy is amazing. He’s really, really good. I have nothing bad to say about him, but because of positional value, I just I there’s no way that the 49ers are gonna take him at 11. I could be wrong, of course. So where I think you should study if you’re into this kind of stuff and you wanna have some fun. I think the Niners are going defensive line. So that’s Mason Graham from Michigan right there. He’s gonna be long gone.

Kenneth Grant, Michigan, Tyrique Williams. These are guys that are run stuffers in the middle. The guy that I would really keep an eye on right there in the middle is Walter Nolan. He’s a third he’s on the big board. This is Pro Football Focus at 36. I think he’s gonna go in the top 15. I wouldn’t be surprised maybe if the Niners traded down and picked him up. But Walter Nolan’s about 295 pounds. He’s quick. They showed the Senior Bowl practices. He’s one of the guys that I think that um, a lot of people like for the 49ers. And then if the 49ers don’t go in that direction, let me just throw one more up on the board here.

Uh, as far as sharing my screen with you and there’s one more thing I wanna show you and that is this, which is edge defenders. Now the guy right there, Abdul Carter from Penn State, he’s not gonna be in the range of the 49ers. He’s gonna be gone probably in the top three, maybe top five.

James Pierce is kind of thin. Mike Green’s had a good week. Mikel Williams is a freak. Shamar Stewart, I can see the Niners going after. So again, I don’t need to go through all this stuff with you and make it real boring, especially at this point because it’s fun to talk about this kind of stuff, but to get too deep into it is kinda what what what what even if you’re a big college football fan. So

anyway, I I my point in showing you all those things is right now and things can change. Right now, I think that the 49ers if they had their druthers, there’s enough of these guys in talking to people and reading stuff. There’s a lot of defensive alignment, a lot of quality defensive alignment they’re gonna be in that range of the 49ers. And I showed you I believe yesterday all the free agents and again, this has this goes to position value. This goes to

what’s available in free agency and then it goes to the draft and if you know anything you do, free agency comes first because that’s how the players union wants it. They don’t want a bunch of guys drafted and then it’s free agency after they’ve drafted these guys and then they’re guys don’t get contracts. There’s a reason why free agency is first so that the players union their players who are veterans can secure contracts before the draft. But I’m not gonna go through this again because I did this yesterday, but I did keep it on my board. So like free agents,

I told you about Drew Dalman, there’s a connection with the 49ers, a center. Uh, there’s a connection with this kid who’s a really nice linebacker with with the Jets, for example. James Daniels is a really nice guard. There’s a lot of uh, interior offensive lineman that I think the 49ers could get in free agency that could absolutely take the place of Aaron Banks at left guard and Jake Brendel at center. So every the well the

draft people are saying this is what they need and I get it. There are guys in free agency that the 49ers could get and then they can look at the draft and look at defensive lineman because in free agency there’s not a lot of interior defensive lineman. Why is that? Well, it’s a value position. Just like edge defenders. It’s hard to find edge defenders. It’s hard to find high-quality interior defensive lineman. So what I think the Niners are gonna do is they’re gonna delve into the free agent market, not overly deep,

but they’re gonna delve into it and you can get guards and centers in this league, interior lineman in this league for a fairly cheap price. Think about it if you wanna do a comp to baseball to like relievers. Relievers are getting more expensive, but they’re not like front line starting pitching or power hitting or anything like that.

all of a sudden it’s like relievers are going off the market.

And we’ll get to Taylor, Tyler, Taylor got traded to the Reds yesterday.

We’ll get into that in a minute and then and the Giants aren’t gonna are just gonna pocket the money.

That’s gonna be a fun conversation we can have, but I digress.

So I think the strategy is gonna be for the 49ers in the off season

sign the interior alignment, the veterans and I like that.

I I I don’t love rookie centers unless they’re really high elite, you know, I I hate to say this because I know we’re praising Kansas City a lot this week, but like Creed Humphrey

from Kansas City came out of Oklahoma was right away, he was ready to go or Tyler Linderbaum who’s out of Baltimore was a late first round pick.

There’s certain guys who are because they’re making the line calls and it it takes a couple of years usually for most guys.

So I’d like to see a guy like Dolman because he can make the calls.

He’s a veteran guy, he went to Stanford, you know, smart guy.

Anyway, that’s what I think is gonna be the strategy for the 49ers.

I could be wrong.

We could be sitting here in April and they go, I thought you said they were gonna sign lineman, draft D lineman.

I could be wrong.

I could be 100% wrong.

Uh couple of quick things before we get into the Warriors and that was a nice win last night.

Uh two things.

One thing I didn’t get to in regards to the Kansas City thing.

So um I was getting a bunch of grief over the last couple of days for not so much defending Kansas City but one a piece I wrote and a video that accompanied it was just deal with it.

They were really really good. Um and I went through the whole thing and all the different plays and that’s when we went down the rabbit hole I think on Monday, right?

We did the rabbit hole on Monday.

So we did all that kind of stuff and people were kind of giving me grief about it and I told you

that I look, I’m not a Chiefs guy.

I I try to give you the present things in a way that’s objective, but I pointed out to you that after the after Super Bowl 54, I was in Miami and watched the confetti on the field and did a post game show for like four hours and it was basically a button pusher.

Uh let’s go out to here, let’s go out to here and just you know, I hate this, this sucks, I hate Kansas City.

And then I did the exact same thing, the exact same confetti on the field.

The only thing that was different between Miami and Las Vegas was the color of the seats.

In Miami they were like an aqua dolphins color in at Allegiant Stadium last year.

They were they were black, Raiders black.

But it was the same confetti, it was the same feeling, it was the same depression, it was the same I can’t wait to get out of here.

And so what I was doing this morning and I’ll have to go back I I you know, I’ve got a cloud account like everybody else does and I was looking for and I have thousands and thousands of these pictures.

And I always take tons of pictures at Super Bowls and at the radio rows and so I was looking for New Orleans pictures because as you can see on the

chalkboard there it says New Orleans because we’re gonna tell New Orleans stories every day.

So I wanted pictures

to accompany the New Orleans stories and I well I couldn’t find those because they’re all the way back in like 2012 for the 49er Super Bowl 47.

I’ll find them because I have them.

But I have thousands and thousands and I was already late as it were and so I didn’t I didn’t go all the way back.

But where I did flip through was the Miami Super Bowl and so I just wanted to show you that I wasn’t just saying it.

That’s what it looked like from our vantage point, my vantage point because I was literally sitting there.

And I’m doing a post game show for the next four hours.

This is in Miami and I’m just sitting there from our terrible booth location by the way in the corner there and that’s after the loss and I’m just sitting there going anyway, next caller, next caller, next caller and all these Chiefs people are celebrating on the field and they wouldn’t leave and it was like it was unbelievable and I was there until literally all those people were gone and everyone was gone.

I’m walking around going, how the hell do I get out of this stadium.

So anyway, uh that was not an enjoyable experience and I’m not a fan of the Chiefs.

So I’m just saying.

And then one more football note then we’ll get to the NBA.

And I think Krugg actually did this during his show speaking of Miami.

I saw this yesterday and wanted to vomit. Uh whatever that guy’s name is, Andres Borregales met with the 49ers blah blah blah.

He’s a senior kicker with the Hurricanes with Miami.

And the same things applied that applied to Jake Moody.

I’m not out ripping Jake Moody.

What I’m saying is is I don’t want another rookie kicker.

I don’t care if he’s a seventh rounder, third rounder, first rounder, free agent.

It takes a minute for kickers to understand the league.

So if the 49ers aren’t gonna have Jake Moody as their kicker, if they can’t mentally rehab him, it’s not a physical issue, I’ve told you that.

It’s a mental issue. Then I want a veteran.

Like in in training camp next year, I don’t want rookie from Miami kicker and third year kicker from Miami with a ment or from uh from Michigan with a mental problem that I took in the third round.

I want some guy and Robbie Gould’s too old, but I want some veteran guy who’s proven it, who’s been around the league.

I don’t care you know if he doesn’t have the range of a Jake Moody, that’s fine.

Go back to the days of Robbie Gould is money 53 and in so that Kyle Shanahan can say, okay,

we go for it, we don’t.

Like he has an idea whereas Jake Moody could hit a 58 yarder and and shank a 33 yarder.

I don’t want that.

I just wanna know what I’m gonna get out of my kicker for the most part and I like veterans in that position more than I like rookies.

So I saw that the other day just like Krugg did and I think Krugg went off on it yesterday and I had it in my notes and I didn’t do it and I was like, I don’t want that again.

I do not want a rookie kicker.

I don’t want a young kicker.

I don’t want a drafted kicker.

I don’t want a free agent young kicker.

I just want a a guy that I’m like, oh yeah, I heard of that guy.

He’s pretty good.

You know, that’s okay.

I just want a veteran guy.

That’s all.

Okay.

I think football wise, I’m not gonna do a ton of football today because there’s a bunch of other stuff.

But uh market equals money.

I think it’s the D line position ranks which I gave you a few of those.

So and then I threw in the kicker and the Kansas City thing just for a bonus.

I don’t think football wise unless you have a question or a comment.

Like there is a lot of Warriors stuff today.

And as we talk about on the show if you’re new around here, we are not beholden to talk about anything.

So if the 49ers have a bunch of compelling topics, it’ll be kind of a 49ers driven show.

If the Warriors do, it’ll be a Warriors driven show.

The Giants do, there’s kind of a mix of everything.

If there’s national stories, we’re not just beholden to stay within these four walls.

If there’s more national stories that are great.

We just do whatever is the most compelling stories of the day and there just happens to be a lot of Warriors stuff in that.

So let me just go with let me just uh before I finish up a conversation on the NFL on the Chiefs on confetti on the Niners on kickers on drafts.

Let me just make sure that everybody’s okay. Uh and I just and hi Enrique, good to see you.

I just don’t want a young kicker anymore.

It just takes time.

I’ve talked to both Joe Nedney and Robbie Gould and guys like that and it just takes a minute and I don’t want to go through those those things.

Like if you wanna if you’re if you’re Tennessee and you stink and you have the first pick in the draft, fine, you can go through those lumps.

If you’re at at you know, if you’re one of the New York teams as I said, if you’re one of the whatever.

I just I want a I want a veteran kicker.

I want a veteran kicker and he may not have Jake Moody 58 yard range, but if he has 55 range, but he’s more consistent then I’m okay with that.

That’s all.

That’s all I’m saying. Uh this is a great question.

Hi Jess fan.

Um

do you have George on an expense account in NOLA a per diem?

I do.

I do.

In fact, I had a long conversation with him and there’s a lot of other things we were talking about, but that was one of the things.

You know what’s amazing is that he’s not really a big spender and he’s the opposite of me.

Like if I have uh if I have 50 bucks, it’s burning a deep hole in my pocket.

It’s honestly it’s on fire in my pocket and especially when I was at age is what I’m talking about.

And it was like I gotta get rid of this money, man.

It’s it’s burning.

And so I would it was gone and then it was like, oh man, he’s pretty good about it actually.

He’s pretty good about it because I I send him money on the regular and then I’m like, hey, are you you need some money and he’s like, nah, I’m pretty good.

You know, he’s good at that.

And I told I’ve told you this story before.

So when I think a lot of kids this is not a unique story to me.

I don’t think it is, but I’ll tell it anyway.

Which is you know, my parents would send me, I don’t remember back in the day what it was.

It wasn’t a whole lot of money and I’ll age myself if I give give an actual number.

But let’s just say for the sake of conversation, it was not that this would go nowadays, but let let’s say it was $100 a week, right?

$100 bucks.

Well, what I would do is I would take out of that $100, I’d probably take 80 of it and it was it was earmarked for beer, booze, whatever, parties.

And then you’d have 20 bucks, which is not much.

And so like I told you yesterday, we’d have those Tony’s pizzas that back in the day were like a buck.

So you’d buy a ton of those at one of at a warehouse store whether it was Costco or whatever Sam’s Club whatever it was as we we would just stack up those things in the freezer.

So, I mean you you you were in a pretty good space after that, maybe get a water or something like that and then you’re you’re pretty good and you can you don’t really need to eat the rest of the day. So a couple days a week we’d do that.

The other days we would buy the cheapest possible food, like I said, like cardboard pizzas, peanut butter and jelly, bread, big things of ham, uh those kind of things, big boxes of cereal, you know, you go to Costco and get big boxes of cereal, stuff like that.

And that’s basically what we do because most of the money was spent on on booze. My son’s not like that. He actually like him and his buddies, if you go to his his house that he’s that he uh shares with six other guys.

Their whole they have like five blenders on the counter and all these gigantic things of protein powder. That’s what they do and it’s not like he’s a meathead or anything like that. It’s just they they just that’s how they fill up.

Which is pretty brilliant. It’s like a forty dollar big thing of of protein powder, like vanilla protein powder. And they’ll you know, they’ll throw some water in there, some ice, maybe uh you know, some frozen big bags of frozen fruit or something like that and they’ll blend these these suckers up.

And that gives you a pretty good pretty good base and it’s actually fairly healthy. It’s just fruit, water, ice and a bunch of protein powder. It’s probably a better way to do it. So that’s what they do.

And I’m like, yeah, that’s pretty good evolution there. But they do. They each one of them has like a blender. There’s like five blenders on their counter and a bunch of protein powder and then the whole rest the house has like beer cans all over it. So that part hasn’t changed.

Just the part that they’re that they’re being a little bit better than we were growing up. All right. I don’t know why we got on that tangent. Oh, I think it was because you asked me about whether he was on a some sort of a pitch count as far as New Orleans is concerned of money count.

That’s right. All right, let’s get to last night’s win. Let me pop this up for you. Uh the we’re gonna nice win last night. But rather than the regular praise that we always give a certain number thirty and he absolutely deserves it.

So Steph Curry last night scores twenty-one. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was ridiculous. He had thirty-one and was fifty-two in the first half. So they kind of slowed him down in the second half. But if you look to the top there, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, sixteen to twenty-nine, two of six.

Eighteen of twenty-one from the free throw line. He is the latest to get the wrath of everybody. He gets all these calls, but he draws the calls. So I don’t really have a problem with it. So he scores fifty-two.

Jaylen Williams scores twenty-six and they get up to this great start of thirty-four twenty Thunder at the end of the first quarter and you’re thinking, well they’re getting blown out tonight. And then the Warriors slowly but surely come back.

And the guy that I want to praise right now and it’s going to lead us into a Jimmy Butler conversation, we had one yesterday, but in reading today what people are talking about about Jimmy Butler, I’m like, whoa whoa whoa whoa. That’s not what we talked about on the show yesterday. So we’ll get to that in a minute.

But Andrew Wiggins in thirty-eight minutes goes ten of seventeen, five of eight, twenty-seven points. Now, not a lot of other stuff, four boards, two assists, whatever. But whatever it is and it’s probably his father, Mitchell Wiggins who passed away and Andrew Wiggins had a few years there where he was in and out and he had personal issues, you can tell it was bothering him.

You see the interviews now and I watched the game on ESPN for obvious reasons last night um with Dave Pasch and Bob Myers, which was an enjoyable watch and an enjoyable listen and they talked to Andrew Wiggins afterwards and you can just see that it’s lifted.

Whatever it is and maybe it was just as simple as his father and I’ve been through it and you probably have too in terms of people close to you passing away. It it sucks. There’s just you can’t get away from it. It always consumes your mind. You can get distracted from it, whatever the case may be, but it’s just always hanging over your head.

And then after a certain amount of time, I was actually having this conversation with a friend of mine the other day who’s lost both of his parents now and said, you know, it’s you you never get over it, you just get used to it. And I think that what’s happening with Andrew Wiggins is he’s finally passed that period where his father was was gravely ill, he finally passes away and now he’s getting to the plane of acceptance and now it’s going over in a positive way to his professional life because Andrew Wiggins is having a great year. Twenty-seven points last night, he was the best player on the floor for the uh for the Warriors.

Nice job also by Kevon Looney in twenty-five minutes. He scores eighteen, but it’s not his eighteen, it’s his defense and all the different things he did. So best team in the Western Conference at thirty-seven and nine in Oklahoma City.

They get off to a fourteen-point lead in the first quarter and you’re thinking, what else is on. So there’s something else on then I could watch because they’re clearly getting blown out tonight. So give the Warriors a ton of credit. But I want to uh put the spotlight on Andrew Wiggins because Wiggins is having a really nice season.

And it never has really been about talent for Andrew Wiggins. We go to the mental side, the physical side, he’s physically gifted. People call him Maple Jordan. Let’s slow down on that kind of thing, Canadian Michael Jordan. He’s not Maple Jordan. But he can absolutely be a solid player when things are right for him. So let’s move that to then the Jimmy Butler conversation because

if you wanted to get Jimmy Butler in a trade and I didn’t advocate that yesterday, we’ll get to it in a second. But if you wanted to get Jimmy Butler in a trade, then you’d probably have to somehow put Andrew Wiggins in that trade and there’s no way I’m doing that.

Now, let me just pop this up because yesterday we had a totally different situation. So this is uh Anthony Slater and you can read, but I’ll read a little bit for you. Uh devolved to a degree, we talked about this yesterday, perceived price tag continues to tumble. Warriors’ middling season has upped their desperation level for some sort of a shake-up, all the way to controlling owner Joe Lacob.

Team sources downplayed their recent involvement in conversations with the Heat, but there’s been a noticeable increase in intrigue from the front office about the idea of Butler at a bargain. So let’s just stop there for a second because we were ahead of the curve on this. We talked about this yesterday

when I popped this up for you that the Heat have suspended Jimmy Butler, blah blah blah blah blah. And my conversation point and our conversation point, you and I, yesterday was I would take Jimmy Butler for nothing.

I’m not gonna trade for Jimmy Butler. I’m not. Um he’s gonna be upset because the let’s say he just comes let’s just say for the sake of conversation he comes to the Warriors. He gets released by the Heat, comes to the Warriors, plays his butt off.

And then maybe after ten games says, so have I shown you guys enough that you would give me an extension and Joe Lacob is gonna go, let’s just wait. Is Jimmy Butler then gonna turn around and be an ass and do all the type of things he’s done in Miami after all.

There is no state income tax in Florida, so he’s gonna be um getting a thirteen point three percent decrease in pay. Is that gonna make him happy when he wants to get an extension, all these different things. Uh he was in South Beach, he was comfortable, he probably has a nice condo on the water. Now he’s gonna get thrown in here, he’s probably gonna have to stay not in a bad place, but just

you know, a smaller apartment, something until the end of the year, whatever. You get displaced, you have to you know that’s that none of that stuff’s fun regardless if you’re making millions of dollars or not. So I don’t know that he’s necessarily gonna be as happy and who knows if the Warriors are gonna be winning and is it gonna be a pain.

So my whole point yesterday in regards to Jimmy Butler was if I can get him for free because the way that he’s acting and clearly he just wants out of Miami because he wants an extension somewhere and he’s hoping to fool a team at the age of thirty-five that he’s a good boy and he’s gonna be nice and he’s gonna play nice and they’re gonna win and all these kind of things.

I’m not trading anything for Jimmy Butler because Jimmy Butler makes like fifty million dollars. So even if you say, okay, the price has decreased as what Slater said right there, let me just pop that up one more time at the end there.

Uh downplayed their recent involvement in conversations with the Heat. There’s been a noticeable increase in intrigue from the front office about the idea of Butler at a bargain. And then he goes down there, he goes to let’s go to the bottom of the next paragraph uh where he says, Andrew Wiggins has had a productive season well worth his twenty-six point two cap figure.

Obvious salary match with Gary Payton the second, nine point one and Kevon Looney, eight million, profiling is a tip to blah blah blah blah blah. So let me get this straight. For Jimmy Butler who I would only take if it was free, right? Free, free, free, free, free. So in other words, Miami releases him and says we’ve had enough.

Addition by subtraction was the term I used yesterday. So you’re telling me because you have to match salaries. So even if I trade anything for him, even if the value is down on Jimmy Butler, which it is, he they the Heat have zero leverage. So I gotta trade Wiggins who’s better and younger at twenty-six million and I gotta trade GP2 who I don’t love GP2, it’s nothing personal, but he gives you energy.

I don’t know that he’s worth nine point one million, but GP2 is a nice piece. Kevon Looney just scored eighteen last night and no matter what his numbers are, Looney. Whatever Looney’s numbers are, let me throw that off the screen because of course you want to see my beautiful face. No matter what Looney’s numbers are because he’s a great uh steadying force off the court because against certain teams in the playoffs, you may not see

Looney for you know, and not that they’re gonna go this far, but for a couple series and all of a sudden you need Looney in a certain series, right? Or a certain game during the season. And so he is valuable in that way. Now, would I move Looney if I could get something of significance? Sure I could. Sure I would.

But I only want Jimmy Butler for free, Jimmy Butler. So Miami just says I’ve had it, man. He’s he’s just it’s too much. But I almo I talked myself if you were with us yesterday, I talked myself through this. At first I said, yeah, I would take Butler for free.

And then I started to think more about it and I went, why would Pat Riley release Jimmy Butler? Why would he? And he mentioned Al Davis. Al Davis was vindictive. He’s not he ain’t he’s not releasing Marcus Allen. Marcus Allen’s gonna rot on the bench. He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care if it causes a rift in the locker room. He doesn’t care if it’s it’s bad for chemistry of the team. He does not care. It’s Al Davis versus Marcus Allen and Al Davis is gonna win. And it’s the same situation here. It’s Pat Riley, giant ego. I’ll show you guys versus Jimmy Butler, giant ego, I’ll show you guy. And the guy with the most power in that situation is Pat Riley. So let’s just go through it. Pat Riley decides, you know what, he’s just he’s bad for this team. I don’t like to use cancer uh for obvious reasons. My father passed away of cancer. You you have probably dealt with cancer in your life. Saying that someone’s a cancer, I I don’t love the term.

I’m not I’m not gonna get mad at you if you use it not at all.

I understand why people do, but I just don’t.

So let’s but you know what I’m saying, but it’s he’s become such a problem that we’re just gonna let Jimmy Butler go.

We just can’t deal with it.

He’s he’s negative, he’s this, he’s that.

We’re gonna let him go.

Then Jimmy Butler goes to a Golden State, a Phoenix, a whatever team he goes to and he’s able to get a whole new fresh start and he lives in a new city and he’s got a better opportunity and he can play with either Durant or Curry or whomever he decides whatever veteran of these old veteran teams,

I’d bet a nickel or more that he’s either gonna go to the Lakers, the Suns or the Warriors because they’re the old men team that need it and there’s Jimmy Butler fit fitting in like an old man at 35 even though 35 is not old,

but in a basketball sense it is and going to one of those three teams and hoping that it works and then hoping because it then works that he gets a contract extension.

That’s what’s going through his mind.

Now let’s look at Pat Riley’s side of things.

If I just suspend Jimmy Butler,

I suspend him.

So he’s not around the team, he’s not causing a problem around the team.

He’s out of sight out of mind and if anybody asks about Jimmy Butler,

this is what Pat Riley’s gonna say and this is why good organizations are good and bad organizations are bad.

Because Pat Riley can sit down in front of the team, in front of uh the ownership, in front of the management, in front of Eric Spoelstra, the coaching, all these guys and say this is the deal.

Jimmy Butler’s been suspended for the rest of the season and remember Jimmy Butler’s a free agent at the end of the season.

So he’s gonna be gone at the end of the season anyway and we are already halfway through the season.

So Pat Riley tells the entire organization,

we don’t talk about Jimmy Butler anymore.

Jimmy Butler’s been suspended, Jimmy Butler’s a free agent at the end of the season.

Any reporter, any person, any whatever asks about Jimmy Butler,

the answer is we only talk about the players who are here.

Uh what about Jimmy?

We only talk about the players who are here.

So when organizations who are actually have their stuff together do that, bad organizations do, but you just Pat Riley can tell the players and and start with Bam Adebayo that look Bam, you’re the leader of this team in the locker room.

So I’m gonna put it on you to say we’re not talking Jimmy Butler.

All right, you may have a personal relationship, you guys might be boys, whatever, but from now on,

the answer from everybody in the locker room is we’re not talking Jimmy Butler and after a while,

because the Miami media is not the New York media or the Philly media or any of that other uh media,

New York wouldn’t let it die.

They just like we’re gonna find Jimmy Butler gonna make it about Jimmy Butler because that’s the biggest story around a team that’s pretty boring.

That’s how media works.

But Miami’s just gonna say we’re not talking about it and they won’t talk about it and Jimmy Butler will be out of sight out of mind.

They can do that.

And that’s what I think they probably will do rather than allowing Jimmy Butler to just walk.

Most organizations, bad organizations would say, you know what, we just gotta get rid of them.

It’s addition by subtraction, but I think Miami’s just gonna say we’re gonna let you rot.

I’m Pat Riley, I’m pissed off, I got a giant ego.

We can control this narrative.

People won’t talk about you if we if we say you’re suspended for the rest of the season.

He’s not at this point

because what’s trying to ha what Miami is trying to do is they’re holding out very very very faint hope

that they can get something for Jimmy Butler because if you look at his salary at around $50 million and as we just pointed out from what Anthony Slater wrote,

you’re gonna have to match that salary even if you don’t think it’s much.

And last year’s Andrew Wiggins or maybe even the year before’s Andrew Wiggins,

I would have no problem with that.

But as we just pointed out and I told you this was all gonna kind of tie together after what Wiggins did last night, we’ll pop it up there again.

But you’ve seen this all season long.

10 to 17, 27 points.

Andrew Wiggins outside of Steph Curry has been the best player on the Warriors and some nights better than Steph Curry.

This is the best Andrew Wiggins has played in a long time.

And even though Papa for a long time was like I’m not trading Wiggins, I’m not trading Wiggins, I’m not trading Wiggins.

I had no issue trading Wiggins for many of the last few years.

Now in 2022 he was amazing.

But and when they won a championship but everybody sat around going that’s the Wiggins, that’s the Wiggins, that’s the Wiggins.

No, it’s not.

It hasn’t been.

That’s why he was drafted first and he’s kind of aloof and people get frustrated then he gets traded and then you get excited and then

you think he’s a first overall pick man, he’s gotta have something and he does.

When he is mentally right, it’s not the physical.

He’s athletic, he can defend, he can team defend, one-on-one defend, he can do just about everything you need a guy to do.

If he’s locked in, but too many times over the last couple of years that just hasn’t been the case.

So again, let me go back to Slater really quickly.

On this whole thing and look to the bottom there, Wiggins at 26.2, Payton at 9.1 and Kavan Looney at eight.

I’m sorry, I’m just not I’m not gonna get rid of as uh Looney and Payton fine, you know, whatever.

But I’m not getting rid of Andrew Wiggins at 26.2 million the way that he’s playing right now.

He’s better than Jimmy Butler.

Like if you put Jimmy Butler in and you take Andrew Wiggins out, you’re not better.

You’ve moved chess pieces around the board, but right now, I’m just saying right now, maybe not next year, certainly not last year.

I’d have taken Jimmy Butler last year and the year before.

But I I’m not not right now.

And then the risk becomes and this is something I talked about yesterday, if I get Jimmy Butler for nada,

if if Miami does what I don’t think they’re gonna do, but they might and just say, you know what, we don’t want the questions about Jimmy Butler.

We don’t want to talk about him anymore.

We don’t want him on the team, we don’t want it as a distraction because let’s be honest, Miami’s not going anywhere with or without him.

There are too many good teams in the Eastern Conference, Cleveland, Boston, New York.

There’s a lot of better teams.

So Miami’s gotta be realistic with itself and to think with or without Jimmy Butler we’re going nowhere.

So if they can get something for Jimmy Butler, something, anything, but you do have to match salaries in the league,

then you’ve got to give up something significant for Jimmy Butler.

And to me this season Andrew Wiggins, I would consider to be significant therefore I’m not giving him up for Jimmy Butler because you can disagree with me on this whole thing, but as of right now,

if I replace and put Butler in the lineup for Wiggins, I don’t think I’m better.

And not only do I not think I’m better,

Butler has been such a pain that I’m actually taking a risk.

I’m not taking a risk if I pick him up for the minimum and Miami’s still paying the freight and then Jimmy’s a pain in the butt again and then I can just let Jimmy Butler go.

But once I trade Andrew Wiggins, I’m I’m thinking okay, I’ve got this guy.

He’s got to play well, he’s got to play nice.

He’s got some leverage on me because I just lost Wiggins and I may have to re-sign him to that extension that I don’t really want to ex sign him to because I just lost Andrew Wiggins.

Now unless Jonathan Kuminga can be that guy and take that spot, but Wiggins is more of a uh excuse me, Kuminga is more of a four.

So I’ve kind I’ve lost my three.

traded to a team he’s not the top dog.

He’s been the guy since he was 15. Needs some perspective.

I agree with that. I in fact I have a great story Jacob on that if you remind me, but I have a great comp on that.

But um electric bikes, don’t they doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?

Like my parents would tell me like go outside and do something, get some exercise.

So you’d ride your bike around, right?

My parents bought me lots of bikes. I had like a cool, you know, motocross bike and ten speed and twelve speed and mountain bike and I had all these different bikes. I was a big mountain biker growing up.

And um but part of it was you’re getting some exercise. And now they just hit the electric bike and you’re barreling down the road at 30, 40 miles an hour and you’re getting zero exercise.

And they have pedals on them just in case.

I’ve never seen any of our kids use the pedals on it.

Anyway, that was all because of a Taco Bell rant because they go to Taco Bell constantly and there’s a cantina there.

And I haven’t I probably haven’t had Taco Bell in five or more years and if I did have it, it was probably on a road trip.

You know, you’re driving down the road and you’re going to wherever you’re going and it’s like, okay, what am I gonna do?

There’s a McDonald’s, there’s a Wendy’s, there’s a Taco Bell.

Taco Bell’s probably not a good thing to do on the road, you know, cuz I do not know what their ground beef was made of, but I I do know that well Taco Bell doesn’t taste terrible.

About an hour to an hour and a half later, you’re like, you’re not feeling so hot.

And probably if you’re on the road, that’s not great cuz then that forces you for another stop and I hate stopping on road trips.

Hate, hate, hate. I’m not at the point and I don’t like to use the word hate, you know that.

But um not to the point where I would make kids start urinating in bottles kind of a thing, but I am certainly one of those people that drives down and just goes,

unless it is an absolute emergency, we are not stopping. Like I like barreling through. I like going.

Like once we go, we go. My son is a great travel partner in that way.

We we’ve done all sorts of road trips all over the place. We’ve done that and I’ve told you this before. We’ve done the summertime uh baseball, you know, different baseball park series all over the place.

And we just get in a car, I set up a bed for him in the back, I put the seats down in an SUV, put the seats down, give him like everything he possibly needs and then I drink uh energy drink after energy drink and I can bomb for 12, 14 hours at a time right through the middle of the night.

Like right through Nevada where there’s nobody and you just pass that prison and hope you don’t hope you don’t crap or at that point break down.

I just go. Like just I I’m one of those people.

Can he stop, daddy? Hell no. Here’s a bottle.

No, I don’t do that. That’s not cool.

All right. Uh Jacob asked me something about uh Zion. Yeah, if if Zion, you mentioned Zion as kind of a second or a third guy.

If Zion’s a second or a third guy, he’s great. I’ve told this story before.

I was I was with Rasheed Wallace in Portland. We weren’t friends.

But uh I was there and and the Blazers wanted to make Rasheed Wallace a number one guy and that just wasn’t Rasheed.

He was super talented, but he just didn’t want that responsibility being that number one guy and they kept trying, they kept trying, they kept trying, didn’t work.

And then as it would be, I went from Portland, Oregon to Detroit.

I I got a new gig in Detroit, started doing mornings in Detroit and about I don’t know, a couple weeks later, a few weeks later, lo and behold,

Rasheed Wallace gets traded to Detroit. And I’m like, damn, this guy’s following me.

Well what happened was is that Rasheed Wallace went from Portland trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and saying you’re gonna be our number one guy, our scorer, we’re gonna rely on you every night.

That wasn’t his personality.

Till then Chauncey Billups was there and Rip Hamilton was there and Ben Wallace was there and he was like the fourth guy.

And then he’d score like 18 and grab seven and it was like that worked for him and he didn’t have to talk to the media, he wasn’t the center of attention and he was really great in that role and was a really good defender.

Was long at about six foot eleven if you remember him, could hit inside, outside. I mean talk about a stretch five. You know, he wasn’t physical enough to be a five, but I mean he you had to deal with him and he was really, really good and that was a perfect role for him.

So I think Zion’s probably the same way in terms of you know, if if Steph took pressure off him, if Draymond took pressure off him and

I don’t mean Draymond’s gonna be better than him and ultimately Steph’s not gonna be better than him, but he just can kind of hide in the background and do what he wants to do whereas he’s you look at him now in New Orleans and

I’m sure they run to him first and just say, well you’ve got to be the star of the show and I don’t know that he’s comfortable with that.

Does that make any sense? I hope so. So anyway, all right, man, we did a lot of hoop there.

A boring deadline, what boring deadline means and this is depressing to me today.

So we went through the Butler stuff.

Where we are is uh we went Golden State, Oklahoma City nice win last night. Slow down. Everybody was freaking out last night.

Maybe they could be at the top of the West. It’s like that was one game, but let’s let’s see what they can do from here. Consistency would be nice.

Uh we did a lot on Jimmy Butler. Let’s go to see if I can find this.

Uh where’s deadline?

So this is Bobby Marks, big fan, but he’s been on the show a lot.

And we’re trying to get him on this show and what he says here is so he did this whole long thing about each team.

Who were the power brokers? Who was this? Who was that?

And so I’m flipping down and I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s get to the Warriors. What what are you gonna say here?

You know, something exciting for me that I can use on the show. Oh boy, I can’t wait.

And so I get to the Warriors and he writes, this is this is the money line right here. One trade that works and so I’m excited.

What’s he gonna say? What’s he gonna say? What’s he gonna say?

Detroit receives Kevon Looney.

Golden State receives 2029 second round pick.

Trading Looney helps financially but not on the court. Well then just what are you doing?

Like I waited, I opened this up. This is an insider article. I had to sign in. I don’t know why ESPN just doesn’t keep your information like everybody else.

So I have to sign in for this and this is what I get. Detroit gets Kevon Looney and Warriors get a second round pick.

Like that’s the big move? No. That’s not happening.

So look, if they make a move, they make a move, but this is this is uh Bobby Marks and I’m not saying that Bobby Marks knows all, but what I do know is

if the Warriors were in on something, if he really thought they were gonna make a move, that he would have said something. He would be speculating on something, but he’s saying that the big move is one trade that works.

Kevon Looney for a second. That’s what it’s gonna be?

Now he might be right. And again, he’s he’s dialed in around the league, so if there was something that maybe he was hearing,

but we every single day we hear something different.

So a couple days ago, you know, it’s Vucevic and it’s this guy and it’s that guy and we’ve heard Zion’s name and all this kind of stuff.

And then the very next day with the Warriors we hear, uh that price is too high for Vucevic. They’re just they’re not gonna do that.

And then weeks ago we heard, well there’s no way they’re getting on Jimmy Butler then then Slater writes, you know, they’re kind of intrigued by Butler.

And you know my thought on Butler because I just spent 20 minutes on it or maybe even more. If it’s free, it’s for me, but if it’s not for Jimmy Butler, I’m just not taking that chance.

I’m sure as hell not trading Wiggins. So now we’ve gone from they’re right in the middle of all this.

They gotta go for it. Steph Curry’s on the on the Christmas show uh with Malik Andrews saying they gotta do something, we gotta do something and then a week after that,

Steph Curry saying, well we don’t wanna mortgage the future and Draymond saying we don’t wanna mortgage the future.

And I’m like, well you already did when you let Jordan Poole be traded or when you traded Jordan Poole for Chris Paul and then Chris Paul walked. You kind of already did that.

So there’s these mixed messages all season long when it comes to the words aggressive trade, not aggressive trade.

Um they don’t wanna give up too much. They you know, all this kind of stuff back and forth and I get the sense because this happens all the time in sports, right?

We all get excited. It’s the trade deadline. What are they gonna do? It’s this, it’s that and then we all 99% of the time are let down.

Sometimes you get a really good trade and you get really excited and something really happens, but

to be honest, when was the last time the Warriors made some massive swing at the deadline and you kind of get this sense that Joe Lacob realizes that is they sit at eleventh place in the Western Conference

that there is not that single player and you and I have discussed this. I’ve even had I think we did, if I’m thinking right,

that we might have had a funeral for the Warriors already this year and you know, dearly beloved we are gathered here.

So I’m not I’m not necessarily at that place, but it just depends on what your perspective is. If you believe that they can win a championship, I think that you’re wrong.

Even if Jimmy Butler was released and you could keep everybody and Jimmy Butler was just a flyer, I don’t think Jimmy Butler and keeping everyone, not trading,

not trading for Jimmy Butler. I’m saying as we had the discussion yesterday where everybody stays in place and you add Jimmy Butler.

I still don’t think they’re one of the better teams in the Western Conference. Now maybe I’m wrong.Maybe you got enthused yesterday watching them come back against Oklahoma City without Draymond Green and with Steph Curry just being okay and Wiggins being really, really good.

And even though Shaquille Gilgeous-Alexander scores 52, he didn’t win that game.

Which by the way, does anybody was anybody watching that game yesterday whether it be on ESPN or locally and thinking of themselves as Shaquille Gilgeous-Alexander parades the line again and again and again, but especially in the first half when he scored 31 points.

They traded him for Paul George. And thank God the Warriors didn’t get Paul George.

Like that was what was going through my mind yesterday as I’m watching that game that first of all from the Clippers, I wanna vomit.

And they didn’t keep Paul George and Paul George goes to Philadelphia and all off season what were Warrior fans?We gotta get Paul George. Gotta get Paul George. Gotta get Paul George.Where are the Sixers? I mean a lot of his his Joel Embiid can’t stay healthy or won’t stay healthy or whatever the case may be.But Paul George has fallen off a freaking cliff. He’s terrible and he’s always hurt too.

So you’re the Clippers going, my god, Shaquille Gilgeous-Alexander’s the MVP in the league.

He’s starting in the backcourt with Steph Curry. He’s an unstoppable offensive force whether you wanna agree or not. I mean he people get mad that he parades the line, but he earns it.

The kid is damn good and the Clippers have nothing to show for it except for this beautiful new Intuit Dome that they have in which Kawhi Leonard can’t stay healthy and for some reason Norman Powell’s really, really good.

And James Harden is okay, but the Clippers somehow are what, sixth in the Western Conference. If they had Shaquille Gilgeous-Alexander right now, they’d be where Oklahoma City is. I mean that guy’s that good.

They have a bunch of solid players around him. I mean that’s one team and watching Oklahoma City, not that we care much about them, but in

watching Oklahoma City last night.

They have a bunch of nice pieces around Shay Gilgeous,

but what they need to do and San Antonio is kind of in the same boat.

They’re not as good, but they will be because Victor Wembanyama is getting better and better and better.

What those two young teams need to do is take all those young assets or a lot of those young assets

and get a star.

That’s where they are in this whole process.

And I know that the Warriors went through this whole thing and they decided,

caught new, caught new, caught new, and there’s something to be said for that.

But as I’m watching Oklahoma City last night,

I’m thinking that’s a team that maybe not there in the in-season,

but certainly in the off-season when they have time to really look at everything and say,

okay, what do we have here, especially if they come up short this year.

And I don’t I see them as a really good regular season team that’s not going to be a great playoff team.

And so I’m watching that game last night thinking Shay Gilgeous-Alexander is awesome.

So that’s the first thing.

And the Clippers should want a Paul George.

And it that’s a and Paul George is terrible.

And Paul George, good thing that the Warriors didn’t give up all the assets that they were reportedly going to give up for him.

Because sometimes the best move you make is the or the best move is the move you don’t make and that’s what happened with the Warriors because Paul George is terrible.

So anyway, all that from Shay Gilgeous-Alexander from the game last night.

Makes sense?

One more one more only one more football or excuse me, basketball thing.

And the only reason I bring this up as we’re an hour into the show,

it’s a couple of days old,

but we’ve had so much football stuff and you know, Chiefs and NFL playoffs and Super Bowl-ish and all these kind of things and different things we talked about,

Tongayi,

uh, food, all you know, sausage and cheese, all this kind of stuff.

All these things that we’ve discussed of the last number of days have overshadowed this.

I should have gotten to it sooner, so I apologize for that.

But I don’t know if people just don’t understand basketball or what,

but uh, this is a couple of days ago, uh,

what is this Tuesday?

Today’s Thursday.

Andre Iguodala will get first jersey retirement from Warriors dynasty, quote, I’m just the oldest.

And there were some people questioning whether Andre Iguodala should have his jersey retired or put into the rafters.

Um, at Chase Center for the things that he’s done.

And some people have even questioned whether he is a basketball Hall of Famer.

Now remember, it’s not the NBA Hall of Fame,

it’s everything.

So internationally Andre Iguodala, at Arizona, Andre Iguodala, the things Iguodala did before he was a Warrior, like Philadelphia, he was a ninth overall pick.

The guy all-around player, he was never like the greatest shooter or anything, but just an amazing athlete, really good defender,

all these different things that Iguodala brought.

You can’t put a tangible on what Iguodala brought off the court for the Warriors for for that young team because remember,

this was young Steph and young Dray and a lot of young guys going through this thing and he walked in and said,

I got this.

But the biggest thing that Andre Iguodala did for the Warriors was and I don’t know that there’d be a dynasty without him,

is after they beat, you know this, after the Warriors beat the Nuggets and George Karl was coach of the year and got fired,

Andre Iguodala and I remember this because I was on vacation and it was right around July 4th time,

Andre Iguodala went to the Warriors and said, look, I want to be here.

No one did that at that time.

No one said that.

No one said that.

No one said I wanted to be a Warrior.

Nobody, nobody, nobody.

So the Kings had a bigger deal on the table for him, but he didn’t want to go there.

Denver was trying to keep him.

All these kind of things were going on.

And Andre Iguodala was steadfast that he had seen from a, you know, from the other bench in that playoff series that he saw that there was potential with Steph Curry and Draymond Green and and in this group

and he wanted to be a part of it.

And he was the first one to say, I’m in.

Besides the guys that were obviously drafted and already here, but he was a guy, the first guy of that group to say, you know what, and it’s easy now or was easy not now because they’re on the they’re kind of going down the hill.

But when they were at their pinnacle, it was really it would be really easy to say, well, this team’s winning championships like Kevin Durant.

This team just won 73 games.

I think I’ll join those guys.

They’re good.

That’s not what Andre Iguodala did.

Andre Iguodala could have gotten more money and they worked a trade and they they did all these things and they they moved money around and they got

uh, and they got Andre Iguodala.

So for that reason alone to to to for a veteran player, for an all-star type, for the type of player that Andre Iguodala was at that point of his career to say,

I see it.

I see the future for this team and maybe he didn’t see what they ultimately became, which was a dynasty,

but he was one of the first, he was the first to say, I want to be part of this team.

And so when I heard people say, well gosh, does he deserve to be in the rafters?

What are you insane?

And then the first championship, obviously he’s the MVP, plays great in the finals,

but it’s what he did on the court.

It’s what he said in coming to this team.

It’s it’s how he helped Steph Curry, it’s how he helped Draymond Green, it’s the leadership he provided.

It was all those different things.

He he decided I’m cool coming off the bench and then he would sit and he would watch and he would say, okay, what can I provide?

Because he could provide just about anything.

Now not again, not great shooting, but he hit his his share of key shots, especially with the MVP the that first finals.

But he would sit there and come off the bench and say and be selfless in that way and say, what do they need?

Do they need playmaking because I can provide that?

Do they need a a wing defender or he could defend, you know, point guard, off guard, small forward, power forward, he could defend four of the five positions on the floor.

Do they need somebody to do that?

Do they need some maturity?

They need to be settled down.

Do they need what exactly does this team need at this particular point and he provided it.

So for all those reasons, it’s a no-brainer.

And so when it’s not it’s not in that piece that I popped up there,

but it was I heard people say that and people would hit me with it.

Do you think that Andre Iguodala and I’m like, games go beyond numbers a lot of times.

We are so analytically driven in sports right now.

Let’s go to the numbers.

Beep boop beep boop beep boop.

Nope, does not compute.

Well, there’s other things beyond that and sometimes I think what you have to do a lot of times

is to look at how things fit.

Because we live in this fantasy um, world of it’s only it’s fantasy sports.

And I’ve worked for teams that that’s what the general manager was is he wanted to just put the best

players and there was no chemistry involved or anything and so everybody wanted to score or ever, you know, nobody wanted to rebound or do dirty work.

Everybody just wanted to shoot.

Well, it doesn’t work that way.

You could have all stars,

but somebody’s got to do dirty work.

Somebody’s got to do things that people don’t want to do and that’s what Andre Iguodala did for those Warriors teams.

He was he was an ultimate glue piece.

He’s a great player.

Now am I saying he’s one of the top 10 players of all time?

Am I saying that he’s as important as Steph Curry was to that era?

No, I’m not saying that.

I’m not saying he’s as important as Draymond Green was,

but he was damn important.

And I think that there is a lot to be said for being the first to say, I see the vision of what this team could potentially become.

And that’s what Andre Iguodala did.

So there you go.

All right, there is a lot as I told you man, there was a lot of NBA stuff and as we do on this show, we don’t just go, well,

we feel like we should talk about this.

I thought there was a lot of compelling stuff around the Warriors from again, I’ll go through the the chalkboard, Golden State, Oklahoma City,

slow down, Butler latest, boring deadline, no doubt Iggy is where we are.

That took a long time to get all that stuff.

So before I get into some other things that are on the list there,

let me go uh, let me go down and make sure that we’re hitting on everything and I’m not missing something because to be honest with you,

I’ve not looked at uh, social media uh, for a little bit and I don’t know if anything.

It’s not really a breaking time of year.

I mean, we’re in Super Bowl time, so there’s nothing really in the NFL breaking.

There’s no coaching things.

NBA, I guess we are near the deadline.

What do we at today?

30th, so what do we a week away or something?

Seven eight days away from the deadline, so there’s that.

Uh, let’s see what else.

Uh, Andre Andre didn’t want to didn’t want to go to the Kings mid 2010s?

Shocking, yeah.

Imagine that.

And I think the Kings, if I’m not wrong, and I can go back and look this up, but if I’m not wrong,

the Kings actually had a better a bigger deal on the table for Andre and he was like, yeah, I’m good.

Um, there is interesting stuff up there in terms of uh, their point guard up in Sacramento, so I don’t know.

I I think San Antonio would be a perfect fit for him, but what are you going to get back?

And that might be something for the Kings.

I mean, you’re I say this all the time, 90% of the time when you get the best player in a trade, you’re going to win said trade.

So if I was Sacramento, I know I get it.

Uh, De’Aaron Fox and the Kings aren’t getting along right now, but I would do everything I could to try to fix that relationship.

I just I think, you know, you’re getting three or four players, you’re getting a bunch of picks, maybe that works out.

Most times it doesn’t.

All right, let’s go to um,

I’m very hesitant to do this to be completely honest with you because I don’t want people to leave in droves.

I want you to stay.

Please stay.

It is John Lund Unleashed.

Uh, John JohnLundUnleashed.com.

Please make sure that you’re subscribing to the channel as well at uh,

John Lund Unleashed Pod.

We do the do the daily show 8 AM Pacific Time, uh, Monday through Friday, 10 AM on Saturdays is when we do it and uh, when news breaks and we do stories of the day and all sorts of stuff like that.

So stay up-to-date on the YouTube uh, channel at John Lund Unleashed Pod and you’re watching on X and Instagram right now.

Much appreciated your attendance as far as that goes.

All right, let’s go to I am hesitant, but I’ll do it.

Let’s go to a little bit of baseball talk only because there was a story yesterday with the Giants that I want to get to.

Where the heck is it?

No, there it is right there.

So uh, the Rogers twins are no longer together.

all park like this, but I could be wrong. Toronto’s been mentioned, the Angels have been mentioned, the Mets have been mentioned.

Here’s the thing, the only buddy the only people mentioning the Giants and a Pete Alonso scenario is us.

Is people in the Bay Area because you have a screaming need for first base.

And everyone Pete Alonso would fit, Pete Alonso would fit, Pete Alonso would fit, he would.

From a Giants perspective, from a Pete Alonso uh uh viewpoint, I’m not coming here for to this ballpark for a one-year make good.

I could go to a place, I could go to the Angels and hit 40 home runs and be the main guy in that lineup and even though he probably wouldn’t love love playing for that team, and they wouldn’t win a whole lot.

He could get back out on the market, he could probably get traded at the deadline, play in the postseason, make a bunch of money, hit a bunch of homers and then get a great contract next offseason.

If he comes here, he’s hitting in Grand in the Grand Canyon although I don’t think that really to be honest.

Right-handed hitters can hit home runs here, but he they’re he’s not gonna make a decision to come here in a one year.

Scott Boras is not gonna do that because then he can’t get a big deal next or as big of a deal, at least in my opinion.

So I get the Pete Alonso talk and it would be cool and from a Giants perspective it makes a lot of sense.

Actually it doesn’t because we’re not gonna spend money, but um

it makes a lot of

sense from a baseball perspective, but from a Pete Alonso perspective, from a Scott Boras perspective, I don’t see it.

But I could be wrong. I could be 100% wrong. Baseball talk.

We haven’t done that in a while. All right, here is uh let me throw this out here to ya and um I think we’re gonna get a good story out of this.

So um all week long as I said, so right here we are at Memory Lane followed by New Orleans and then random and random we just do throughout the show.

But um Memory Lane is so this morning I was I told you a little bit about this, but I wanted to expand on it.

So I was looking through my phone and I probably I’m not even kidding you on the cloud.

I need to clean this thing out because it just automatically anything I take a picture of it just goes right into the cloud.

I I’m sure I’m just like you, thousands and thousands and thousands and useless pictures, just useless.

I’ll never but what am I gonna do? Sit here and actually go through it.

I don’t know how I’m gonna get rid of all these. But anyway, tons of them in this cloud.

And I used to have them really well organized.

They had folders that said certain times, certain events, certain things, Super Bowls, so I have you know I I do have and then I don’t know over the last couple of years I’ve just done a terrible job of of not putting them in folders.

But I thought I had a folder and I do. It’s just I didn’t have time.

I I around probably around 10 of eight. I went, oh yeah, that’s right.

I wanna do this memory thing in in New Orleans and I so tomorrow on the show and by the way Papa’s gonna be on the show tomorrow.

Great Papa’s gonna be on the show tomorrow. I’m not sure how long because he’s gonna do it before his 10 o’clock show tomorrow.

But um so what I mean, we’ve got that going on, but um we were at the Super Bowl together in New Orleans and I have tons and tons and tons of pictures from it.

And because the Super Bowl’s gonna be in New Orleans this year, I wanted to start to share some of those because we were gonna we’re gonna tell a New Orleans story every single day.

And so I start going through it and I can’t find the damn New Orleans folder, but I start going through Radio Row and I’ve told the story before

of Alden Smith in New York um that was Seattle and and Denver.

What Super Bowl’s that? 48, I think because they were in it two years in a row was in New York.

That was when Seattle beat Denver 43 to 8 and it was a sardine can in one of the Marriott hotels that convention center unlike like I said, New Orleans has got this massive convention center that you could imagine.

And you have plenty of room between each table. So New York was just a sardine can, but it was my favorite in from a sense of Radio Row because for some reason that year the 49ers gave us just everybody, anybody and everybody.

Uh older guys. We had Jerry Rice and we had Ronnie Lott and we had Joe Montana and we had Steve Young.

We had we had guys that were currently on the team at that point. We had Colin Kaepernick and Alden Smith and we had tons of different guys.

I think we had Staley on and we had just all these different guys. So you always have like movie people and other people from other uh you know other teams and all this kind of stuff and where did that Boras thing come from?

I don’t know where that came from. But anyway, um let me just pop that off, no offense. But um I hate Boras. There we go. Okay. There we go.

All right, so anyway, all these people so we probably that even though it’s it’s not that I just wanna have Niners guys on from Radio Row.

We had lots we had Kevin Costner on that year by the way and we were we were talking to Kevin Costner and it was like we wanted to talk movies with Kevin Costner.

You know what movie he had that year? Terrible Draft Day. That’s why he came on with us now that I think about it.

That was that 2014 Draft Day was coming out. So he did Radio Row which he didn’t often do, but he wanted to come on sports stations because he figured the demographic was going to go out and see Draft Day where he was what the general manager of the Browns or something.

Awful, awful, awful movie. Anyway, so he knew it was an awful movie because we kept asking Kevin Costner about said movie and he always he wanted to bring it back to sports.

So he was a big USC fan growing up, you know, tailback, you and winning Heisman trophies and he wanted to talk to Papa about

you know Gary Beban, the UCLA quarterback versus OJ Simpson for what like the 67 Heisman or 68 Heisman or whatever it was, the one that got melted down eventually.

So uh anyway, we’d go movie, he’d go sports, we’d go movie, he’d go sports.

So it ended up being like a 30 minute it was awesome.

His handlers doing this kind of thing to us, wrap it up, wrap it up and we just were having so much fun with Costner.

We’re like, I’m sorry, we’re just not wrapping it up. So anyway, it was a great time.

Had a had a great time. We had tons of great guests, New York great time and all that kind of stuff, but that was that was not New Orleans.

So I wanted to bring this up just because I had brought I had brought up uh New York so many different times and I brought up Alden Smith so many different times and I like great Alden Smith story that you may or may not know.

And so as I was flipping through the New York photos looking for the New Orleans photos and not finding that folder, I found a picture of Greg and I with Alden Smith.

Though that’s the two look at my hair there. Oh my god, what is going on? So 2014, that is the Super Bowl in New York and as you can see behind us, I mean it’s just like it is just like jam-packed in there.

There’s Alden back in 2014 with us at the Super Bowl in New York on Radio Row which is now Media Row.

Greg looks extremely thrilled to be there, but the story on Alden Smith was and he was so cool to us.

So that was the year that Alden Smith had all the problems. Well that was every year, but that was one of the years that Alden Smith had all the problems, but it was a bigger problem because if you remember

that was the accelerator gets stuck and he’s up against a tree. And then I think that weekend that might have been on like a Wednesday.

And then that Sunday and this is when Jed York was kind of at the bottom of everything and everyone was complaining with him and then he got smart and he went, okay, I know what I don’t know.

Let’s let people who are actually football people get in charge and all of a sudden Jed York is a heck of a lot smarter, very smart now.

But um then Jed York came out and said, no, we’re gonna let him play this weekend and I think they’re playing Indianapolis.

I think I’m right in that and they actually let Alden Smith play.

He went on like a Wednesday, he was drunk behind the wheel at like 7:30 in the morning and he had his accelerator down against a tree.

So that was that offseason. So we’re at the Super Bowl, we’re at Radio Row at the Super Bowl.

It was the year of uh Seattle and Denver and we’re in New York and Alden comes on and we had all these different people on and you may have heard the story, but as I’ve told you before, every guest has a handler.

So they have a a company that they go through. It’s not like Alden Smith walking around Radio Row going who wants me?

So they they go on these different things. They have all these different shows they go on and Alden had always been to me very pleasant, very nice, very approachable, all those kind of things despite all the issues they had off the field.

Alden Smith was a a a good guy to me and I can only say to me.

I remember going to the first practice he ever had. It was it was a Harbaugh training camp and we’re watching the one-on-ones and at that point Joe Staley’s in the prime of his career.

Nobody really knew who Alden Smith was other than the fact that he was the seventh overall pick from Missouri and everybody’s like, who’s this guy?

And the first time I see Alden Smith, he’s doing one-on-ones against Joe Staley in training camp, first or second day at training camp and he is given Joe Staley all of it because he’s got these long arms and we all know the thing and and at the end of that practice because we watched the one-on-ones, we went straight to Joe Staley.

We’re like, what did you think Alden Smith? He looked like from our uneducated media eye that this guy was crushing it and he’s like, this dude is a problem.

So he knew that right away. So anyway, there’s the back drop of Alden.

So anyway, go back to Radio Row that year and um Alden what is that sweater I’m wearing? What is that? My god, man.

Yeah, like looks like I have like pads. I looks like I have shoulder pads on. So anyway, uh Alden Smith sits down and his handler tells us first thing,

do not ask Alden Smith about DWIs. Do not ask Alden Smith about the accelerator being down uh and him being drunk, you know, the accelerator down, the car was against the tree, none of that kind of stuff.

And we thought and we had a minute and Greg and I kind of huddled for a second.

We we what why else would we want him on? I mean they I mean of course we’re gonna talk about the 49ers and all this kind of stuff, but we want him on to say, dude, are you gonna get it together or not?

He was at a crossroads at that particular point where it was like, is this guy gonna be a superstar or is this guy gonna flame out?

And so we decided, look, if the handler gets pissed off, the handler gets pissed off and you wanna be nice to these guys year after year after year,

you’re gonna see these guys and they’re gonna have you know it’s it’s a company that does this and so they’re gonna have these guys and you don’t wanna really piss them off because the next year they may have somebody that you want.

And these guys are all getting paid. It’s not like Alden Smith’s a nice guy as I’ve told you many many times.

We have 10 minutes of conversation about sports or whatever it is and then it’s you know it’s 60 seconds about razors or whatever it is, whatever it is that they’re promoting and Alden Smith that year even though it’s back in what’s that 2013 or 14,

he probably made $100,000. I mean it’s crazy money. He probably made $100,000 to fly into New York, do 25 or 30 radio shows and take a limo back to the airport and fly right out.

Good money. And you that’s what you see every year on Radio Row. So anyway, Alden Smith sits down, we’re play doing pleasantries.

I think we get a couple of things out of the way. Hey Alden, good to see ya. How you doing? How’s the offseason, blah blah blah. And then the next the first real question.

And as I’ve told you before when you do interviews, if you have something controversial that you’re gonna ask somebody, you wait till the end because you have your fun, you ask the questions, this that and the other.

And if things go sideways, it’s fun. There’s only a minute or 90 seconds or two minutes left in the interview, so you wait till the end.

And a lot of people are like, ask him the question, ask him the question no matter where the interview is. It’s like, hold on.

You know, we’re buttering it up, we’re we’re chumming it up, we’re we’re chopping it up, we’re doing all these things and at the end I’ll zing them.

And then if things go sideways, then it’s like, okay, good night everybody. That was great to have so and so on. That’s kind of how it works. So

um but that’s not what Greg does. So like then we’ll talk about this tomorrow. So like the the first real question after just chopping it up and you know small talk and all that kind of stuff.

First question is, so Alden, what’s going on, man? Are you gonna get things together? I mean that that that that uh accelerator against the tree, you’re drinking at 7 o’clock in the morning and the handler is losing

I think was his his mind because if they want you to stop something, they’re waving it’s like an air traffic controller.

They’re waving their hands, no, no, no. They’re giving you the cutoff sign right now, no, no, no. Don’t do that.

I just told you don’t do that. And we can literally because it’s loud like I told you, it’s New York, so it’s it we’re right next to everybody.

We’re sardines in a can and you can hear the other shows, they can hear you. It’s loud. We’re obnoxious loud people anyway. That’s how we talk.

And through my headphones and through all the sound and through all these things, I can hear and he’s coming through on the air this handler going, no, no, no, no, no.

Like he is yelling at the top of his lungs. And to Alden’s credit, he puts his hand up like this like stop, like stop because I think and he was and you know he prob the handler probably thought differently, but I think Alden knew this because he was probably not getting those kind of things in the other interviews that he was doing in other places across the country.

But we knew him very very well and Alden uh put up his hand and said, no, no, no, no. You know, I answer and he proceeded to in a very mature way and this is what was so wild about Alden because

he was a good guy and he was a smart guy and he was a mature guy. But then you got him around booze or outside, you know, and a lot of people are like that and and they just can’t handle themselves around it and but everything else about him was he was a mature, smart, well-thought-out guy and he gave us great answers

and explained himself and said, you know, I need to not do that and be mature and of course that’s not what happened, but at the time he sat there and was great to us.

And then if he had hated us, like I said, he wouldn’t that was after the interview. Like he’s like, yeah, look at he’s got a you know nice smile.

Greg’s kind of like, no, no. I’m faking it. I have a good smile there. Terrible clothes and hair, but still, you know, not bad.

But anyway, that so I wanted to tell that story and that’s Memory Lane for today. And tomorrow I’ll make sure that I get some um some New Orleans stories and I do have tons of New Orleans stories.

In fact, I need to have Krueger on the show to tell New Orleans stories. We had a great time uh with New Orleans stories.

One one one I can tell off the top of my head that was the wildest thing or not the wildest thing, but kind of a weird thing was so we go out to dinner one night in New Orleans uh for the Super Bowl and it was like the first night.

And there was a group of us and we were and despite what everybody says and Damon Bruce came back this up and Larry Krueger came back this up at the time, they were both with KNBR and I was with 957.

And because we were all from the Bay Area, we all hung out. So all the shows our our shows on 957 and the guys from KNBR and and Tom and everybody we all just hung out.

We’re all from the Bay Area. It’s not like we don’t hate each other. It’s like, yeah, we wanna win. We’re all competitive, but you know we’d see each other at Paddy O’Brien’s or we’d see you know each other eating somewhere, we whatever the case may be and so we ended up hanging out.

I was friends with Krueger anyway. I was friends with friends with Damon anyway. So we all hung out and one night we all went to dinner.

It was probably a table of I don’t know, 20 or 25 of us and you know nobody expects anybody to buy dinner that particular night.

And so you probably all know Rick Bucher and all of a sudden about halfway through dinner, Bucher goes, hey, I got this.

Well I mean you you when you say you have dinner, when you say you’re gonna buy dinner, first of all, nobody buys dinner for like 20 or 25. That’s that was crazy in New Orleans.

Everybody’s drinking, everybody’s having a great time and I thought to my you know at that time I think he’s still like the main NBA insider for ESPN, but he was also doing the afternoon show with Chris Townsend on 957.

So he’s got a couple bucks in his pocket and so we’re out on one of the nights. I don’t know, it was early in the week, so it was maybe like a Monday or Tuesday night.

And when you say you’re gonna buy dinner for someone or a group, you say it at the end, like when the check comes or when dessert comes or when after you go, hey, I got this.

And and you do it. But in the middle of it if you do it, it’s like which I was gonna get like Rock Gut Vodka, but now it’s like I’m gonna get you know whatever the best and vodka is a bad example, but like you know I was gonna get Rock Gut well whiskey, but now hell, I’m gonna get top of the line, you know.

Sir, that whiskey is $65 a shot. Give me 10. You know, I mean that’s I mean that’s what everybody started doing and I felt terrible for Bucher.

But the funniest part was so we all we you know we take advantage of his generosity. We we eat, we drink, we you know we act like we’re a bunch of Vikings out there.

We’re throwing shots behind us like $65 a shot. I’m not paying for it. So people get kind of a little overboard or a lot overboard in the whole thing and then

we’re all gonna go out on the town. So this was just dinner and you know New Orleans. Nothing even gets rocking till one or two in the morning and so it might have been midnight, you know, you always start late anyway.

So I don’t know, maybe 11 or midnight or something and everybody’s like, okay, what’s next? And Bucher says to us, no, I’ve got a guy that’s coming into town and he’s fitting suits for me, so I’m going back to the hotel to have suits fitted for me.

This is this is like this is New Orleans. This is we’re in we’re in the French Quarter. It’s Super Bowl week. So he was he was nice enough to buy everybody dinner and then he goes back and gets fitted for suits because you know he’s a big deal on TV and he goes back and gets fitted for suits.

The rest of us go crazy and we’re thinking ourselves, I thought I was gonna spend like $300 on dinner. So now we’re we’re we’re packed with that kind of money and anyway, crazy night.

So anyway, we have tons of O stories and uh Papa will help tomorrow with those stories uh in New Orleans and I will go back through um a ton of pictures and find that um that file that has all the New Orleans pictures because the Alden one is okay.

And the Alden picture from 2014 and I have tons of New York pictures. I found that whole file. So I found the 2014 Radio Row, but uh I’ll go back and I know I have it.

I just was like it it was in like I said, I was doing it at like 10 to eight and I think we got on at what 10 or 15 after today, so I was upset that I didn’t do that. So

anyway, uh we will do more Memory Lane, we will do more New Orleans. That’s where the Super Bowl is next week and we’ll have a lot of fun on that.

Let me make sure I haven’t missed anything and then I’ll go out to the text line and it is John Lund Unleashed. Thanks for joining us.

Check us out at johnlundunleashed.com. Please make sure that you are subscribing to the YouTube channel at johnlundunleashedpod.

Also make sure that you like and you have your alerts on because we do the 8 AM Pacific show as long as it takes, but then we also send out all sorts of content during the day including story of the day, a couple of shorts, if news breaks, all those things.

I feel really sad.

Nobody’s traveling with Melody, okay?

Melody’s probably either in the bedroom or the kitchen.

I mean, that’s probably where people are gonna put Melody.

You’re not gonna have Melody maybe she’s watching TV with you.

Melody’s not traveling.

Melody’s not traveling with you.

That’s really weird.

I I just I can’t see that we’re gonna do that.

Uh Melody does boast an impressive array of features that enhance her functionality and user experience.

Realistic movements,

eye tracking and object recognition,

modular design.

Well, that’s nice.

Uh Melody’s design supports interaction with various AI platforms,

which is nice.

See that’s just look at I mean just that’s

that’s not re- I mean it looks real to a certain extent.

It almost looks like like you’re playing a video game, right?

And she’s a video game.

And then but she’s real.

I I would just think that was way too creepy.

And then I’m not taking her in public like that.

Like look, she’s in public right there and you’re walking down the like if you were way far away,

you might think that Melody was real, but the close you got up to her it’s like, whoa.

And then the price tag would be a problem.

With a price tag of $175,000, Melody is positioned as a premium product.

You think aimed at those seeking a unique blend of companionship and technology.

Full bodied robot, $175,000.

Okay. Now this is the key thing.

Kurt’s key takeaways.

One look at Melody and you might think she’s designed for something else entirely.

I know what’s going through your mind.

That’s what most people are probably thinking at this point.

But look at her.

Hi honey, glad to have you home.

Keep her away from the nice willing to pay $175,000 for a life-sized robot friend

that remembers everything about you.

First of all, I don’t want her to remember everything about me.

But uh that’s that’s pure creepiness to me.

So there you go.

I’ll I’ll use that kind of as a cap pistol-ish kind of a thing.

What do you think of Melody the robot?

You think that is the future?

Would you like that no matter how lonely you were, like you’re extremely lonely,

you know, and you have let’s say you have the money.

Let’s say that that let’s say that the money is not an object.

$175,000 dropping a bucket, right?

You got tons of money.

Not it’s not money related.

Um I just Melody’s not like Melody’s not coming outside.

Melody sure as hell’s not traveling with me.

I’m not putting Melody on a plane.

Who’s your friend there?

This is Melody.

Weird.

I don’t think that’s gonna catch on.

I don’t think it’s gonna even if you wanna drop like a lot of times too from a technology standpoint, like you buy a TV, right?

And the TV is just it’s so expensive and then the price comes down on it because

it’s a more common product.

So when something comes out from a technology sense it’s a gazillion dollars, right?

The first computer was gigantic and nobody could afford it or the first first phones, right?

They were a giant brick and nobody could afford them or nobody could afford the airtime.

Like you could have it, but if you actually used the product,

it was like $500 a minute to have a cell phone.

It’s like, well, I can’t do that.

And then the prices came down and everybody has one and all those kind of things and they become what they become.

So let’s just say again, I’m telling you, Melody doesn’t cost isn’t an issue.

Like Melody gets down to I don’t know, they’re saying $175,000.

Let’s say that she’s $1500 bucks.

I’m still not doing it and I’m sure as hell not taking her on a vacation with me.

No, no, no.

No.

I love that you picked this up out of everything.

Uh Joy says bangs are my friend.

Uh Law of awe says good morning gang and aw do I love bangs on a woman.

That’s good that’s a good call.

I really wasn’t thinking about bangs on a woman there, but I think you’re right.

Bangs on a woman is very attractive.

Hadn’t thought about that.

Um Antonio Melody will give a new meaning to “wife swapping!”

Yeah, what do you do?

But again, the the longer you have her, the more she’s gonna know about you with which is both good and bad and her, you know, AI and we we all know this if you’re using AI at all.

AI and AI gets to know you more and more and more and it becomes better for you better, I think.

But anyway, uh yeah, like you said, Nathan, let’s just throw that out the window.

175.

I mean that’s ridiculous, but that’s what new technology is.

Really, really expensive, right?

But if we throw out the 175, is it like, hey, you you just bought a ticket for two and you’re going to Cancun.

Like she’s going, can she get sunburnt?

She probably can’t get wet like

saltwater wise.

I didn’t stop it.

She probably can’t get wet like, you know, saltwater or something like that.

That’s probably gonna screw up her circuits.

What’s she gonna cost to fix?

Like you take her into the shop?

Oh man, it’s gotta break like your like your car, right?

Like your car breaks down.

What is she gonna cost?

You got a technician for that?

Will they come into the house so I don’t have to take her out?

Like she’s over my shoulder.

What seems to be the problem with uh Melody?

I I don’t know, Dad.

You gotta take a look at her.

There’s a lot of problems.

All right, that’s all.

That’s all I got today, man.

Uh oh hey, there you go.

I gotta make sure that I’m watching these things.

Uh thank you, Nathan.

Thank you, thank you.

By the way, Nathan, I believe you are our first Lund loyalist.

So I’m gonna give you this because I I brought this up the other day and to say that the reaction was tepid is being nice.

Um Nathan, I believe are you a Kings fan?

I believe you’re a Kings fan.

Do you want the Jimmy Garoppolo?

You were the first Lund loyalist and when I brought this up the other day, nobody wanted it.

So this is a professional, as I said, if you’re new here.

This is a professional like $500 autograph Jimmy Garoppolo.

My wife wanted it for it’s framed professionally done.

Let me set it back there also uh delicately.

And my my wife wanted it in the studio.

I told you that.

My wife wanted it as her only thing that she wanted in this studio that we’re sitting in right now.

And all this thing you you can only see the background, but there’s sports stuff and TVs and stuff in the studio.

And she has since replaced that Jimmy Garoppolo.

She’s a big fan of a Fleetwood Mac and she’s got this really cool picture of Stevie Nicks who she’s a huge fan of and and Fleetwood Mac, so she replaced it.

So we have nowhere for the Jimmy Garoppolo, but it’s like uh

maybe it’s not $500, but it’s like a $400 nicely framed autograph.

So if somebody had like a, you know, a 49ers like man cave or something, it would it would probably fit in there, although maybe you don’t want him in there.

I get it.

But it’s pretty nice.

So if you want it, you were the first Lund loyalist and I I told you we’re gonna start giving stuff away and I do have the hats and we just did a reorder on them.

So anybody who’s a Lund loyalist is gonna get uh is gonna get hats and everything and we’re gonna do all sorts of stuff like that.

But that’s my first one uh that’s the first thing I was gonna give away and the other day when I brought it up, I said, does anybody want this?

And it was like, no.

And my wife was like, I think you could probably auction this off on the show.

I’m like, no, we can’t.

We can’t auction it off.

Maybe someone would want it.

But I don’t think we can auction it off and I know that that Nathan, you were the first one to um to join the Lund loyalists, so I’d like to give it to you.

And like I said, that’s, you know, you might be like what kind of

thing is that.

But you know, like I said, it’s got some value to it and somebody might want it.

But if you don’t want it, I totally understand and uh we’ll we’ll figure it out.

Uh that’s an excuse.

Don’t give me that.

You’re like, I have a tiny house.

Sorry.

That’s a great line.

Sorry, I have a tiny house, man.

I can’t uh I can’t take it.

Yeah, we could auction it for charity.

That’s no, it’s nice.

It is nice.

It’s, you know, like I said, it’s like a $400 professionally done autograph kind of a thing, but I know it’s Jimmy Garoppolo.

Oh, you’re not a Kings fan.

I’m sorry.

I don’t mean I’m I’m not trying to to uh make somebody out to be something that they’re not.

So anyway, uh let’s see what else do we have here.

Anything else that I’m missing today.

Uh yeah, people love bangs.

I’ll I’ll ask my wife uh today.

Our bangs in Joy, our bangs in right now.

You say bangs are my friend.

Bangs go in and out and I don’t know where they are in terms of uh the on the fashion meter right now.

But uh I bel- I don’t know if they’re in or maybe they’re always in.

I don’t think they’re always in.

I don’t I don’t think they are.

But uh on what was her name, Melody, $175,000, but if you throw that out, would you ever go on vacation

with a friendly robot?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think so at all.

All right, uh here’s what we got and we went over everything today.

Uh we did a little football, a lot of Warriors.

It was a Warriors day.

We got angry with the Giants as we often do.

Uh we talked about memory lane a little bit.

All will be much better tomorrow on uh memory lane.

I’m gonna do memory lane um there you go.

Uh we’re gonna do better on memory lane tomorrow because I will find those New Orleans pictures and we’ll combine memory lane with New Orleans stories.

Papa’s gonna be on the show tomorrow.

I’m not sure what time.

I think early rather than late because his show starts at 10 o’clock.

Um I don’t know if you knew that, but uh anyway, he’ll be on tomorrow.

We’ll talk some off-season.

We’ll talk some New Orleans stories, some um more so then um the Niner stories.

I bet we’re gonna get caught in just Super Bowl stories because him and I went to probably covered, I don’t know, 15 Super Bowl.

She probably was with me on 12 of those Super Bowls.

So we have lots of stories we were together on uh on the New Orleans Super Bowl.

Like I said, I’ll try to find some of those pictures from the New Orleans Super Bowl because then as we’re telling the stories, we’ll be able to kind of pop some uh some pictures up on the screen.

So I will make sure that I find you were the second member to join.

I didn’t know that.

I thought you were the first member.

All right, um good stuff.

Anything else?

Did I miss anything?

Did anything break while I was yip-yapping around here?

Anything like that?

Am I missing anything?

All right.

Great time had by all.

Good to see you, Anthony.

Um great time had by all today.

Really fun show today.

Much appreciated.

Went through a bunch of stuff.

Friday edition of the show is great.

If you have any feedback on something

that uh that we could do for a poll tomorrow.

If you want to do a poll tomorrow, something on that, we will do that.

Uh Papa’s gonna join the show.

We’ll tell lots of stories.

We might fit some 49ers in there.

More stuff will break, I’m sure, but had a great time had by all.

Make sure that you have subscribed to the channel on YouTube.

John Lund Unleashed Pod.

We will make sure that we’re releasing more stuff as the day goes on.

Also johnlundunleashed.com.

We’ll put a story of the day together and write something as we did yesterday.

And I really think by the way, if you let me just play let me just hot pop this up one more time

and share the screen with you.

And it went through the markets and everything like that.

That’s at johnlundunleashed.com.

So you can check that out.

We do a blog every day.

And uh let me see.

Now I can’t I can’t move to different parts, but you can Oh yeah, I can.

Okay, meet your host.

Meet your host.

Uh the latest YouTube shows is up there.

The latest podcasts are up there and if you click on these, you can actually see all the YouTube shows and all that.

So it’s not only the front page.

So for example, if you click on the YouTube one, see there’s what’s going on right now and then it has all the stuff that we’ve done on YouTube,

all in one place.

Same thing on the podcasts, all in one place.

We put those up there and you can download them and everything like that and then come on, internet go faster.

And then same thing with the blog posts, so you can see all the blog posts there and uh it just makes everything easier for you.

So I don’t have to tell you to go to 50 different places.

So there’s the blog posts and all that kind of stuff.

And it’s all in one place johnlundunleashed.com.

So you can check all those things out online in addition to the show itself.

So there you go.

I have a tiny house.

I love that part.

All right, thank you so much.

Oh uh uh uh wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I absolutely positively have to get things especially when you’re saying nice things like that, Jason.

Uh Jason’s been around for a long time and I appreciate it.

Jason Gallion, $10.

Great stuff today, John.

Best show out there.

You I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

Thank you.

We work hard on the show and most days,

I think we get it right, Jason.

Some days we don’t.

Some, you know, we don’t hit it out of the park every time, but I think that we’re doing a better job than most and

I don’t I’m not just saying this.

The community that we’re building is really, really cool and the people that come in every single day and if you’re new here,

make sure that you tell us that you’re new around here because if if you are new,

we have a lot of fun every single day.

We talk about a lot of different things.

It’s kind of a variety show.

It’s not just it’s not just Niners.

It’s not just Warriors.

It’s not just Giants.

It’s not just local sports.

It’s national stuff and we try to do it from an objective standpoint and we try to have a lot of fun and we try to put sports in their proper perspective.

It it’s important to a lot of people.

We are passionate about sports, but you know what?

There’s a lot going on in life and I think a lot of people just like to come in and have fun and laugh and know that there’s not a bunch of

jackasses sitting in here bullying or doing whatever they wanna do, you know, whatever they say, whatever they do because if they do, we get them out of here and we just like to have fun.

So I appreciate everybody for coming in.

I like to make sure that I say that every couple of shows because um if I’m sitting in here just blabbing to myself, I can do that as you clearly know I could,

but I don’t like to do that and the show is only as good as what the people are that are in the room.

So I appreciate everybody doing that and thank you, Jason.

It means a ton to me that you would contribute to the show in that way and say what you said.

So thank you so much for that.

All right, everybody have a great day today.

It is Thursday.

Friday show is even gonna be better than today.

johnlundunleashed.com.

John Lund on the YouTube.

John Lund Unleashed Pod.

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Thank you for watching on Instagram.

Everybody have a great Thursday.

We will talk to you later today and for sure tomorrow at 8 a.m.

Pacific right here.

Thanks for hanging out with John Lund Unleashed.

We’ll try to be better next time, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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