July 9, 2026 • 55 mins
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon accept that USA is *never* going to be a world power in soccer. Jason explained how the Yankees operate scared these days and longtime NBA Insider Ric Bucher hopped to talk all things LeBron James!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmen podcast. Be sure to catch us
live every weeknight from ten pm to two am Eastern
seven to eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find
your local station for The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon at Foxsports Radio dot com, or stream us live
every night on the iHeartRadio app by searching FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is the best of The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Greetings, Welcome inside, Happy Tuesday, The Jason Smith Show with
my bes friend Mike Harmon. Wednesday, Buddy, Today's Wednesday. All right, hey,
you're a step closer. That's fantastic. Remember you stayed home.
You tried to forget Monday because of the miserable, horrible
showing of the men's national team. I really thought all
(00:50):
day today was Tuesday. There you go. It's great. So
you lost the day of your life, depending on I mean,
you're either a day closer to the weekend or a
day closer today tomorrow, depending on which way you take it.
What's wrong with you? Man? I couldn't I couldn't even
be excited about Oh, hey, were one day closer to
the weekend. I thought it was Tuesday, all day today. No,
one day closer world, come back. That's you one day
(01:13):
closer to day. Yeah, and maybe no, maybe that's what's
going on with you. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's all
about you. I was listening to Pink Floyd earlier and
they sang that line to me, so they didn't lie
to me in song. But it is Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I hate when.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
People do that.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Jason Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The Mets the off on.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
No, we're winning tonight. They're actually yeah, runs tonight. No,
we're playing.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Don't know you're gonna win.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
What's fair? Yesterday you thought you were on a road
to a victory. Now wants to kill you. Yeah, we
we have audio evidence. The Mets are killing Keither named
bit by Bitch. Yeah, they kill everybody. For over forty years,
tire racks been uping customers find the right tires for how,
what and where they drive. Ship Fast and Free backed
by free Road, has a protection with convenient installation options
(01:58):
like mobile tire installation dot com. He is the way
tire by and should be. Yeah, the Jets killed Carl. Yeah,
that's her killing after it you know, the Knicks can
only do so much. I mean, city in a nation.
They're still lifting people. Look, Marishka Hargateae just got named
Emmy Host. Is she getting named Emmy Host without the Knicks?
(02:20):
Be honest? It over to whatever year twenty one was
so good as for you. None of the other years
were good enough, but you're twenty one. She was so good.
She gets No, the Knicks got her that gig. The
Knicks got that, but she also helped propel the Knicks.
So yeah, symbiotic thing she did. Plus she did the
one woman play, right, she took over when our buddy
(02:44):
Daniel Radcliffe stepped out of that one person play. She
came in and killed it. Yeah no, but what I'm
talking about it again with the whole Taylor Swift thing.
Yeah no, it all came together again again with the killing.
But it's but you know, it's very subtle. You don't
have to call it out. People are paying a ten.
She's not getting that gig without the Knicks. The Knicks
got her that gig. Is she going to do some
(03:06):
song and dance like I'm sure, I'm sure she's gonna
come in and do Empire State of Mind.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
With jay Z all the consequences that Yet, what are
the consequences a broken wrist?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Stop it is did you see the the the dreams
of the U, the karaoke with that this weekend? The
pictures making the rounds today. Oh, here's here's an x
ray of Jalen Brunson's left wrist.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Is there a dog in it?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
No? No, no? And it's him and he's doing the
you know he does for three points with an outline
of the championship ring on his finger. It's awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I don't know, I'm not a doctor, but that x
ray looks like it's really messed up.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, I know you're not a doctor, but we just
won the title, so it's okay. He's like, I don't
care if his risk. We just want he just needs
to be available come March or April, depending on their seating. Now,
today is a day with no soccer. It's that weird.
I know, it's awful, you know for people that don't
work during the middle of the day like me and
like like like like a lot of us apparently, uh yeah,
(04:06):
like what do you do at noon? Wait a minute,
there's no game on what you mean by the reaction
of all your people. Yes, around all the people reactcause
if you're referring to me, yes, I'm sitting next to
you now, so clearly no. I mean like like, listen
to a goal, open your window in middle of the day,
go wow, it's really loud. A lot of people not
working okay or working from home. But yes, but with
(04:28):
no soccery, today is a great day to talk about
this because this is the best way I can get
everybody to understand. With the US men's national team losing
to Belgium and all the fire and brimstone of the
past forty eight hours, things keep getting worse for Christian Polisic.
They get worse for everything associated with USA soccer. Notice
(04:50):
how everybody that's been in or around the program suddenly
decided it was okay to unleash on him. Yeah, they
didn't say anything about his deficiencies or anything. Now, all
of you, from people around you. He doesn't say high
to people, doesn't say hi to the commentators at games.
All this stuff, right, But here's that This is honestly
(05:10):
you've heard a lot and again every four years you
get people that want to come up and say things
about soccer. Okay, but let me just help, because this
is we're about helping here on the show. We don't
just point out problems, but we can we can solve them.
The anger that everybody feels for the United States team losing,
There's one word I can tell you that's going to
help you with this. It may not be what you
(05:33):
want to hear, but it is true and it will
help you because I always say the truth is the
best thing. Whether you want to hear it or not,
the truth is always the best thing. Now I'm sure
I have I've have some years left in my life
hopefully to test that theory. But the truth is always
the best thing. The biggest word I can tell you
is acceptance. Okay, not the stage of grief, but certain
(05:57):
things you just have to accept after period of time.
And the acceptance what I'm talking about is that we're
just not as good as everybody else in the world
at soccer, and we're never going to be as good
as the rest of the world in soccer. Every four
years the questions come up, why aren't we as good?
Look at our population, why are we not? Why are
(06:19):
we should be better? We have the players, we have
the numbers. Yeah, we're just accept that We are not
ever going to be a world power in soccer. There's
been forty years where okay, we're gonna get a big
boon ninety four World Cup. Oh my goodness, he has
a big boon for men's soccer. We were terrible in
(06:40):
ninety eight, Hey ninety two quarter finals soccer era. No,
didn't happen, Oh, Lennon Donovan's goal against Algeria. Golden generation
of US soccer didn't happen. Right. We've had many times
over the past forty years to fix what is wrong,
to get good at soccer. We just aren't. And people
are mad because for us as a country, we don't
(07:04):
lose it things. We don't look when we do stuff creatively,
whether it's sports or entertainment or we don't lose. That's
why we are the land of opportunities, right, we are
the land of manifest destiny. We don't lose it things,
We win things. We are the best at every sport
across the globe except for soccer. Right. We are the
best in entertainment, We are the best in movies, anything
(07:25):
creatively you do. The only thing I can say is, well,
you want to look at what China is doing. Internet wise,
computer wise. Okay, so China has become as good as
we are. But we're in that conversation, right, we ran
things for a long time. We're at the top of
that conference. That's the one thing I can tell you that. Well, okay,
we watched them come up and now we were you know,
the the race for computers and the internet and everything
(07:47):
else going on. We are at the top. We don't lose,
and nobody likes to lose. We are not used to losing.
On the world stage and anything. Creatively, we win everything.
But here in soccer, it makes people go back. Banana
is crazy. Why can't we win? Why can't we win?
There's gotta be some reason, and everybody throws out all
these reasons. It's gotta be some reason, some reason, some reason.
(08:09):
Just accept that we're not going to be a world power.
We're just not. We've had time, we've had opportunity. Doesn't
mean we can't win at some point, doesn't mean we
can't have a good run where hey, a couple of
World Cups in a row. We make it into the
uh into the quarterfinals, right, we win our group, but
it doesn't we can't do that. But we're never going
to be a world power. We just aren't. Sometimes you
(08:31):
just have to sit back and accept that whatever the
reason's out there, it's just not gonna happen. Right. It's
it's it's the it's the people that finally accepted. Okay,
Shaq is just not gonna make his free throws, right Like,
Shaq's gotta do this to make us. He's gotta do this. Hey,
he's not gonna make them. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I knew Mitchell Robinson's not making friends in the final.
I'm not sitting here after on some sort of burner
account going ah, man, if Mitch could just do this
and this and make one of them, He's not gonna
make his free throws. We're just not going to be
world power. But it's sports, and this is what you
do is you keep throwing stuff out there. See what works,
see what sticks. Maybe someday we'll find the right We'll
(09:08):
find the right to a combination of coaches and talent
and do it right. You have you have teams that
have been tried in sports for years to win and
they can't. Ronald Reagan was born was a broadcaster for
the Iowa Cubs, lived his entire life where President died
never saw the Cubs win the World Series, and he
lived he was one hundred and seventeen years old. Okay,
(09:29):
sometimes you're just not great. But finally the Cubs won.
Didn't mean they could never win, but they won, right,
it was great. It's just never going to be that case,
no matter what kind of questions you want to ask,
no matter how you want to cut it up, just
understand we're never going to be a soccer power. Doesn't
mean we can't be good and win and do well
once in a while, but that's not who we are.
(09:51):
The Miami Marlins, as good a ear as they have,
as whatever years they put to, they know they're never
gonna be the New York Yankees or the La Dodgers. Right,
that's just not going to happen. So once you accept that, okay,
well I can look at it more positively and hope that, hey,
the next time around, things are gonna be different, right
like hades down. Right, Hey, we keep singing the same
song over and over, hoping the next time things are
gonna change. But overall it's just just forget about this.
(10:14):
How do we catch up to the rest of the world.
We're not. We've had chances, we've had opportunities. It's just
one thing we're not good at it. And I get
that it's tough to swallow. There's one thing that every
four years the rest of the world laughs at us
that because we don't even get in the top eight,
top ten. Just want to say, yes, we can't win
absolutely everything, and soccer something We're just not going to
win at economic power, all these other things you talk
(10:36):
about the global impact. Look when it all comes down
to it, and you mentioned Hades Town in theaters for
a week in a couple of weeks from Yeah, that's
big ticket. I'm ready. But it's the inverse of the
old Toby Keith, who would have been sixty five today, right,
the old I'm not as good as I once was,
but I'm as good once. We're just trying for that once. Right.
(10:59):
You mentioned the mar Carlands very much a if things
coalesce and come together, maybe you have that opportunity for
the United States. You take the blame pie and decide
how much is infrastructure, how much is coaching, how much
is the economic barrier, whatever you want to ascribe to that,
whatever coefficient, whatever percentage, But where we're at now, is
(11:20):
I know, folks get frustrated because you're told this is
the time, right, this was the group Holisic being the
poster child for this next run and always being tabbed
as Captain America. Well he wasn't. We had Altador for
a brief period, right, he was going to be our
version of Lukaku who comes in and runs through you
(11:43):
and is a prolific goal scorer. Well he couldn't stay
on the pitch, and now you come to this next
era where you've got a couple of players to build
off of. But the expectations this time, because it was
on American soil, because you had the thumb press or
full hand and pressed back on the scale to allow
Balagan to play in that game against Belgium, that it
(12:05):
was supposed to be the time to push forward, and
everybody bought in because from a television perspective, well, it
was in our windows, right, It was on all the
news shows. Because it was local. It costs a lot
less to send people around to these games, which meant
you got more coverage and more pro American team circumstance
(12:26):
and pomp pumping, you know, pageantry to it. All that
so when folks saw it go so terribly wrong on
a big stage Monday, that that's where they got disenchanted
and disenfranchised. So now you just have to figure out
what that normal is of how to keep people involved.
And even at the end of the broadcast, it was, hey,
(12:48):
don't forget soccer plays on for another these four years
in between. Whether you jump on or not, that's a
that's a reality. But for everybody it's it's recognizing there
needs to be more investment, more consistency, all of those
things if you want to compete. But even then it's
a Marlin situation. Yeah, doesn't mean to stop trying, doesn't
(13:09):
mean we can't, it doesn't. But to be the world
power like and that that's where you really get it. Oh,
I kind of get it now. You're you know, no
one's ever gonna be the Yankees of the Dodgers right there.
They're never gonna be the Cowboys. They never go up
in back to back since what sixty whatever. I mean,
it's it's just it's just just get that that and
that's a conversation that once we understand that losing okay,
(13:30):
you can accept it a little bit. There can be
one thing we're not better than the rest of the
world that this happens to be soccer and it's public
and it's and it's embarrassing for us. And when the
rest of the world is laughing, we don't like it
because we ain't used to lose it. But that's how
it goes. But this is where I can use your
nicks for good. Is that it took fifty three years
for you to win a title. There have been eight
(13:50):
straight years with a different winner in the World Cup.
There's been six decades where there's been no repeat. That's
the reality of it. You're hoping everything coalesces. You're healthy,
you're strong and ready to go, and maybe the football
gods come against your opponents somewhere along the way.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Well Story, We'll have Moron coming up later on this hour. Boy,
not a great night for the Indiana Fever, A bad
night for Caitlin Clark. The La Sparks at eight and
eleven about to hang a big l on the fever.
One oh one to ninety with a minute left to go.
Here in the fourth corner. She's played sixteen minutes plus
(14:43):
minus minus sixteen and she got up twelve shots, so
she at least gave people what they came for. Yeah,
in the minutes she did play, Oh, she didn't make
any of them four twelve from the field, but yeah,
gave it her the old college try. So one quick
thing before we have to finish this conversation we had
on Earl Holland before you get to a big story
(15:05):
out of the NBA tyshirt.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Just told me.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You go to Google and if you type in Earling
Holland right, you type in his name and you spell
it right, and you hit return, you get a you know,
you get a bunch of returns on his name, and
then on the bottom you get the animated all of
them rowing the boat, like all the way across the
bottom of the screen. It looks kind of cool. It
reminds me of like remember the old show Press your
Luck and the Whammy would come out and dance and
(15:30):
take your money away. Like that's kind of what it
looks like. You know, it's funny. Yesterday I was showing
the guys that there was a slide from the original
press Sure luck because now it's come back, yeah, with
Elizabeth Banks as the host. But from the original one
of the slides of the Whammies went for eight hundred
bucks at auction. Wow. Really, that's that's one million and
(15:51):
one million, one one hundred thousand, nine hundred dollars less
than Jalen Brunson's jerseys before tonight. It's also one quarter
ish of what it would take to bribe Danhausen.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
His wrist is also broken.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Risk is fine. You saw the X ray with the
big championship ring on it. You saw the x ray.
It was there.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
When Isling Holland's collapse with Ragnor going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
It's got to happen. Get him, It's gotta happen, Like.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I mean, how has this not happened?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
When's this next game?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Dude? Earling Holland. The impact he's having right now on
the World Cup is and I'm gonna go back to today.
This is this is really what reminds me of is
that this is the impact that Steph Curry had on
the NCAA turn with Davidson when they had that big
run put himself on the map of boy, this guy
could be really good in the NBA, and you know,
(16:45):
I don't know how people didn't take him first overall,
but he goes ninth. Okay, well, he had suspect ankles
and he weighed one hundred and five pounds, but Steph
Curry was a name and people knew who he was,
and you know, you knew was Del Curry's kid, but
it was Davidson, a smaller school. But over the course
of the season, he his highlights are out there is
kind of fun. Then you get to the tournament and
Davidson's running and they're winning and they're beating teams and
(17:06):
suddenly he became the individual story of the NCAA tournament.
Back in two thousand and eight, it was really something.
And this is kind of what Holland has. Like, people
knew about him coming in, We talked about him. The
average fan is watching him now. The United States is out,
but people have soccer fever want to see, Hey, I
want to watch this Holland guy play again. He's taken
on that Steph Curry role and one more win and
(17:27):
he's done what Steph Curry has done. He's gotten his
team into the final four. And I'll tell you what,
when you have the best striker in the world, you
have a puncher's chance against anybody you will play. That's
why I like the match against England because England's tough. Defensively,
they're not that good. I mean, but they have two aces, Yeah, no,
they do, but defensively they're not very good. They're they're
not at the higher level of Spain or France or
(17:48):
some of these other teams. They're gettable, and the last
thing they want to see is a striker on the
other team that is world class level. They would get England,
you would say, they would say, if we had our choices,
we'd rather play Spain. We'd rather play Spain' rather play
a team that doesn't have this guy this firepower because
you can't stop. How many guys can you can you
put on him? Right? I mean Brazil? I mean still
(18:09):
he found he finds a way to just walk around
and just lull everybody into a false sense security and
then make a lightning quick move for the box, like
and those people should all be fired. I mean that
that was how you lose that guy. But Messi's done
the same thing for his time. Yes, he's a lot shorter,
but Messi's done the same thing for his Tiger with Argentina.
He's just walking around the pitch and all of a sudden, boom,
he's a lightning strike and he's in the box. That's
(18:30):
in the net. This guy's man, how do you miss him?
Like that second goal and then he meg that guy? Yeah,
but come on, that was just bad. Like as that
ball's getting pushed over and he's calling for it, it's
like there is no There are four guys kind of
around him, but they're all ten yards away, like what
are we doing?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And what's so damn cool about Earling Holland is the
way he's embraced our country. Oh, showering down cats is
Deli Pistrami, him and Dallas we'reing the CA cowboy boots
and the cowboy hat.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Yeah, he's like the uh the when you when you
go visit another country and or someone comes over and
they're wearing the the goofy hat and the Mickey Mouse ears,
Like I love going to Disneyland.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
This is fantasmic.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But a lot of guys come here and they talk
crap on our country. He's coming here and he's embraced it.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
No, that's one of the overriding things from the World
Cup as a whole, but certainly Holland has become the
embodiment of it and his social media team and what
he's what they've been doing is great. I just hope
if they do beat and if they or when they
beat England on Saturday, he goes and bangs the drum
and then grabs a microphone and starts singing, Well, there's.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
One thing stopping them from moving on. What's that Jason
picked them?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Hey, my picks have been pretty good. The last couple
of Frostburg I've been on it. That was two weeks ago,
that was three years ago. We have the tape. Uh,
I want to say, you know, you talk about the
experience of other countries are having here in the United States,
and it's awesome to see that, right, it's awesome sometimes
not to get too Pollyanna on you, but obviously you
(20:02):
know where we are politically in this country and and
and every day seems like it's worse than the last
one politically, But sometimes you need to see something through
somebody else's eyes to understand, hey, we're still pretty good.
Right Like when I when when if let's say, okay,
like the Jets are playing the Vikings in a game
and I start tweeting out about the you know, hey,
(20:24):
this is why the Vikings are gonna get the Jets
problems something like that, and the fans of the Vikings go, oh,
I thought we had problems. But it's nice to see
how somebody sees us from the outside. Right. Am I
too close to my team that I think we're underachieving,
we're not playing well, But it's nice to see. And
when I see other teams talk about us a certain way,
I understand that we're maybe better off. And I'm a
(20:45):
little too close to it. And I think we're seeing
that the United States now in that you know, all
this stuff happening and and and it's and it's you know,
with stuff with Iran and the World Cup and all this,
and it's and it's just the craziness to continue to permeate.
But to see everybody coming over from all these other
countries and having an incredible time, like it reminds me that, Okay, yeah,
(21:06):
we're still pretty good here, right, We're still pretty good.
We have problems that we got to solve, but maybe,
you know, to take a step back from it and
see the United States from somebody else's eyes. It comes
from another country to come in here, I get that
maybe things aren't so bad. And I don't know who
it was, but it was somebody that I think it
was somebody that got interviewed a fan from another country
(21:27):
that came to the United States. I want to say
maybe in North Carolina. I mean, it could be wrong
about this, but I want to say is when the
games from North Carolina and they interviewed a fan and
they said, what do you think your experience in our country?
And they said, if you want to hate America, watch
the news. If you want to love America, drive through it.
And I thought that was like, Wow, you got to
whoever said that you had a patent that put that
(21:47):
on a T shirt, because that's an incredible phrase. You
want to hate America, watch the news, but you want
to love America, drive through it. That's that was an
awesome thing. So that's the larger, larger point to it,
all right, is if you want to read a newspaper,
go to your favorite news website or watch you know,
the evening local or national news. What are you getting
(22:10):
The Sky's falling all around. No matter what stock market
can go through the roof in a day and it's
still gonna be the a if it bleeds, it leads.
But your day to day isn't that miserable for everybody? Yeah,
And I think a lot of folks coming in from
out of the country, and I'm not saying it's not
for for some people. I certainly sympathize, empathize, and I
(22:31):
recognize there's there's a divide, But on a day to
day basis, we've got a pretty good Yeah. I mean
it's it's just sometimes you need to see what you
have through somebody.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Else's eyes, especially through a star's eyes like Earling.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yes. Yeah, Like here's a guy who come and say
anything he wants, you.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Can kiss my Dallas.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah. But also right, a guy who's got a nation
that'll do whatever they need to for him and still
has embrace it in every which way. It's it's fun
to see that, man, it really is. Now. We got
more in the World Cup coming up in a few minutes,
but this story out of the NBA. The Bucks have
spoke for the first time since the trade of Yannis
(23:10):
to the Miami Heat, and you know it I really
I think I can help the Bucks feel better about
things because the narrative surrounding Yannis the last couple of
weeks is really puzzling. Right. So John Horst the GM
said that trading Yannis was quote a very difficult decision.
(23:30):
And look, no one's sitting here today saying we're a
better team after trading Giannis, one of the greatest players,
incredible amount of success. It was the opportunity to build
and to again set a foundation. So here's the first
real public comments from the Bucks after trading Giannis. And
I get that, and they're saying, you know, they're saying
the right things. And so far Jannis has always said
nothing but glowing things about the Milwaukee Bucks. But I
(23:55):
can't get over that people are still looking at Yannis
like this is Yanna of five years ago, right. I
always like you, look, you can't look at the back
of a guy's basketball card and assume that he's still great.
This is Giannis, who is still a really good player, right,
still terrific player, right, Yan, But is he still one
of the top players in the league, or is he
someone who the last couple of years has been injured
(24:18):
and can't even lead the Bucks into the playoffs, right,
they can't get out of the playing round, right, Like
if I'm not saying Giannis needed to have the Bucks
at the top of the East and fifty five wins,
But if you're the best player in the game, you
got to be able to get your team higher than that.
Which is where like you know when you understood that
Steph Curry wasn't the same player? Where boy built around
Steph Curry. He can't lead the Warriors higher than the
(24:40):
playing round. That tells you that Steph Curry is not
the same player. Giannis is also not the same player,
not that he was never right, of course, he was
the best player in the league for a long time,
but he's not that guy anymore. And people still think
this is twenty twenty Yiannis and is twenty twenty six
Yiannis where being on the wrong side of thirty now
with injury concerns, fitting in on a new team and
wondering is he still the guy that can lead and
(25:04):
pick a team up or is he a guy that
gets his Because that's the whole thing with Lebron the
last few years, Like Lebron's not a guy that's gonna
grab the team and lead him like he did earlier
in his career and drag a bunch of Jags to
the Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA Finals with Cleveland. No,
this is a Lebron that gets his Does he make
the team better?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
No, not like he used to. And that's the whole
thing about Giannis is that people still think this is
Jannis from following its Yiannis and Yonn. No, this is
this is it. Yes, it's Jannis, but it's a twenty
twenty six Yannis. And you look at the injuries and
where the Bucks have not achieved in the last few years.
I mean, not even mediocrity have they been able to
achieve with him as their best player. So yeah, understand that.
(25:43):
That's why I never thought this deal tilted the balance
of power at all in the East. I was happy
he went to the Heat. I'm like, oh, okay, he's
going to the heat. I don't have to worry about
the heat, all right, I don't have to worry about
That's good. It's not like he went to the Sixers
or the Celtics or the Pistons. Uh oh the heat. Yeah, No, okay,
that's fine. Janni's going there where they're relying him to
be the number one guy. Yeah, good luck now, But
(26:04):
I'm said, thirteen years in the league, the fresh faced
guy is long gone. He doesn't play more than sixty
games most seasons. Is he going to be available for
the ten weeks right, because now we're talking about Mike
Brown's T shirt. I need you for ten weeks. Is
he going to be available for those ten weeks? I
don't know that that's going to be the case. I
hope that he is, and I hope he's got a
(26:25):
great run down there. But for the Milwaukee Bucks, it
was time to move on. He had two years of
an impass of both sides, not wanting to be the
bad guy at some point. Again, doesn't have to be
a bad guy. Just agree to disagree, shake hands, and
go your opposite ways. Life moves on.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
So on a day with no soccer, which seems really weird, right,
how much we've come to embrace the World Cup and
everyday soccer, and for big soccer fans, it's great. For
the average soccer fan, it's awesome. Middle of the day
we get we get soccer all the time. No soccer today. No,
I felt like you needed violins behind you.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And then it was a full vo on a day
with no soccer. On a day with no soccer, as
lots On would say, a day with no soccer is
like a day with no lat It's fair. It should
not happen. No, it should not happen. I mean, did
they have a two hours Laton show just because today?
I mean because I I've come to expect there he
is what I expect. Like, do you turn on Fox? Liked? No,
(27:30):
it's just him in front of the camera and he
goes and now, because there is no soccer today, here's
every one of Slaton's goals in his career. Then it's
just like and then he just does a countdown.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Produced, written and directed by slots.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Way up and down. That's all that. That's what's all
his credits. That's all the clips that they put together
of his goodbye to teams has been the funniest. Yeah yeah, yeah,
here's the flags USA and then he's got some pithy
commentsary for Germany, it was go back, be sad and
drink your sad beer. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost like the
(28:08):
like they I could feel in the meeting. Hey, we
want to do something like the gone fishing thing for
for TNT and now they do it in an ESPN.
Can we do that? Yes, I will say goodbye to
all of the all of the countries. I'll say goodbye to
all of them. Oh okay, great, all right, great and
he runs his line. Yeah, but some some have been
borner wide where you're like, that probably didn't pass. Yeah,
so in honor of law of time. Yeah, here's a
(28:30):
hot take coming off of the World Cup. The last
twenty four hours you have seen especially on social media
and now you're seeing a lot of former players, a
lot of analysts talk about this that the downfall of
the United States men's team is because of youth soccer,
travel sports being responsible for not getting the kids up
(28:54):
to speed enough where by the time they turn professional
they can be amongst the best in the world. World right,
And the big article on ESPN about this, a lot
of hosts talking about this, a lot of yeah, you know,
the youth sports, the travel uh sports with soccer is
a problem. Now, what are they pointing out? Well, that
the main thing is that clubs exist in youth travel sports.
They're expensive. They exist to win games, which is good
(29:19):
for the club to get the kids to college, which
is also good for the club. Also good for the
kids to get took out. But overall development is bad.
Right that that this is, this is the reason why
we have not caught up to the rest world. Of
the rest of the world has academies. We you know,
we we have we have travel sports. And it's all
because of that, all of those reasons. It's too expensive,
(29:39):
the the club is out for themselves, and and and
it doesn't develop the player. Now, I want to tell
you this. Whoever says that that is the laziest take
you could ever possibly want to listen to. That is
so lazy that I mean, it sounds like fun because
you hear it once in a while. Oh, youth sports
are bad, and what is it? Generally it's comments from
(30:01):
people that didn't have a great youth sports experience, did
have a great club experience. At which happens, right? Club
experience experience in sports is sometimes you have a good
experience when you're a kid in sports, sometimes you don't.
Sometimes you have a really good experience when you're in
your team. Sometimes you don't. But this blaming travel is
the laziest take possible. And anybody who does it, you know,
is lazy. And now everybody that I've seen, especially are
(30:23):
people in the media that are pushing this. Not not
former athletes, but when I speak about I know, yeah,
because you're a lazy host, You're a lazy TV host,
you're a lazy radio host. Because I'll tell you exactly
why this is a ridiculous statement. To make travel sports
travel sports, right, it's expense all these different things. We
have travel sports in this country for everything, right, we
have travel sports. There's travel basketball. Okay, travel basketball. Uh,
(30:46):
problems with travel bad? Travel basketball is expensive? Right. Oh,
we're not getting the players ready for uh, for for
what they should be doing in college. And we've heard
stories that maybe they should be more developed. H they're
worried about getting scholarships to college. But you know, those
are the problems. Pretty sure, we produce the best basketball
players in the world, and we have done so for
(31:06):
the better part of sixty years. Okay, do we even
have to talk about football? We have the best football
players in the World's not even close. I I didn't
have to go, but football's expensive. Football is expensive. Yes,
there's a lot of camps, a lot of things you
go to, but we produce the best football players in
the world. Travel baseball travel baseball expensive, lots of travel,
lots of games, play more games travel baseball than anything.
(31:29):
Pretty sure that we are at the top of the
list in the world, along with a couple of other
country Dominican Republic very good as well, producing the best
baseball players on the planet. Okay, so if you're telling
me and everything I have read and heard people talk about, yes,
this is the problem with youth sports, well, pretty sure
that basketball finds a way to have the best athletes,
(31:51):
baseball finds a way to have the best athletes, and
football finds a way to have the best athletes, but
soccer can't. Oh so basically it's a soccer issue. Okay, well, well, well, okay, okay,
you want to tell me it's a soccer issue. Fired, Okay,
let me just say this, and this is where I win.
We have men's and women's soccer in this country. We
(32:11):
have travel soccer and club soccer for girls in this country.
Your daughter has played club soccer for better part of
the last decades, she's going to college to play soccer.
All the problems that exist for soccer exist, right, It's expensive,
it's not developing the players, it's worrying more about the club.
(32:32):
It's the coaches leaving and getting new gigs. It's you know,
just getting a player ready to go to college. All
these are problems. Yet somehow the women's program is the
pre eminent program in the world and has been the
number one program in the world for the better part
of thirty years. So you tell me exactly how all
(32:53):
the other sports, including women's soccer, can get to the
top of the food chain or stay at the top
of the food chain. But oh, it's it's it's specifically
boys soccer and how club is done. That's absolutely ridiculous.
Every sport finds a way, even soccer. You want to look,
there's problems, right, there's obvious problems. Right, you want to
look into it. But don't sit here and blame you sports.
(33:14):
Well that's the most that's the stupidest, laziest thing that
I've seen yet. As as far as what people want
to do as signing blame for why the United States laws, well,
it's absolutely absurd, right, And look, as one who's been
in that system. Yeah, it's expensive. There's a lot of
lessons learned along the way, and the gratitude and the
buy in from your kid is part of it as
(33:36):
they go through. I think with the women's side, just
from the us w n T is the fact that
the United States, based on different protocols, policies, procedures, laws,
invested in the area on a national level far earlier
than other nations did. Right, So competitive advantage, first move advantage, whatever.
(33:58):
But all of that to say, the sports that we're
talking about here, basketball and soccer and baseball primarily, right,
we'll put football off and it's American football, and it's
other category is there's no barrier to entry, there's no
huge cost to just go play, right, ayso still exists
(34:18):
and is still very large in this and that costs
you what fifty bucks just to keep you honest that
you're on a romster. That's all it is, right, That's it,
And so that they can give the officials a couple
of bucks, right, that's all it comes down to. Otherwise,
a lot of volunteer hours, a lot of man hours
trying to find facilities and and I get that, trying
to find fields is certainly an issue that all clubs
(34:42):
have where no matter where you live, like that is,
it's like getting ice time if your kid plays hockey.
You want to talk about expensive barriers to entry, there
you go, but the costs are travel ball. Because what
it tells me is that you're trying to excuse. And
this is the triple underscore, and this goes for any
soccer player, any anybody, any talking head, is that you're
(35:04):
you're absolving the federation, its officials and those who are
tasked to go find the talent. You're allowing them to
be lazy and not get off their ass to go
find the talent. Right, that's where where the bigger problem
lies for me. Right you could say, okay, this pay
pay to play, travel and these academy things whatever. Okay,
(35:26):
I'll hear it to a point, but that's a choice.
Families make the sacrifices they make. You've had a number
of guys on the men's national team talking about what
their parents did, Robin Peter to pay Paul and all
of those things to make sure that the fee was
and everybody's done that, and you decide that it's worth
it right for the values for the teamwork for all
(35:49):
the responsibility, and hopefully your kid takes that back into
the rest of their lives, into the classroom, how they
treat other people, how they deal with you, and everything
else those lessons learn. But what in sense is me
is the fact that you're absolving the men's national team
and its structure from any responsibility from going and finding
these other players that are in the ayso that may
(36:12):
be on a field, in leagues organized within communities. You
gotta go, get off your ass, go pay a couple
of bucks for gas, and if you're not in California,
it's cheaper there you go. I saved the dollars, But
go and go find these people. Don't leave it to well.
I mean, look, this is what we go because we
go to these these big academy functions, and I mean
(36:33):
the players aren't good enough. No, you're not working hard
enough or finding them early enough to where you at
the turn whatever it is twelve thirteen fourteen. You want
to go a little bit earlier and figure out the
whole academy system that needs to be burnt down right,
like we talked with Keith Hernandez Burn, burn burnt and
(36:54):
restructure it to where you're finding these kids early enough
to where if there's an inadequacy in their play, the attitude,
whatever else. I mean, Polisic called out because of the
sprained ankle. I just need some rest. Like if you
want to call out, you know, like that kind of thing.
If you want to go and find these guys, you
got to do it and don't blame the system saying well,
this is what they turned to us when they turned eighteen.
(37:15):
That's all we got. No, that's bs. What you're telling
me is, Okay, there's about five million kids that play
travel sports in the United States, about five million. A
million of them play soccer, right, I don't know the breakdown,
but boys and girls, but about a million of them
play soccer. Let's just say for argument's sake, five hundred
(37:39):
thousand of the of them, the boys, five hundred thousand
of the more girls. Right, let's say. So, what you're
telling me is that the five hundred thousand who were
girls are getting coached well enough and everything is going well.
But all five hundred thousand boys are all getting coached badly.
They're all getting coach badly at the youth level, and
that's why they're not good here, all five hundred thousand.
(38:00):
Because you look at a guy like Christian Polisic, who, Okay,
coming into this, was he America's best player? Yes? Is
he still America's best player? No, Balligan, Tillman, Freeman, those
are your three studs. But Polistic would be on Belgium
maybe their fourth best player, fifth best player on France
to be their ninth best player. Okay. So what you're
telling me is is that this is youth sports fault
(38:22):
that they couldn't get any of these guys, any of
these kids, all five hundred thousand of them, there's nobody
good enough to be not just the best player in
the United States, but one of the best players in
the world. I'm not saying you had to go find
the next Messi or the next or the next Ronaldo, right,
because look at what happened. Would you ever think that, hey,
the next great striker in the world, where's he coming from? Norway?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Okay, So that's a little bit of luck, right, there's
a little bit of luck that Norway's got the best
striker in the world. But you're telling me that it's
youth sports fault that all hundred thousand kids that are
playing that continue to roll through. It's new five thousand
new kids every every year, all of them. It's youth
sports fault, not being coached the right way, and that's
why we can't get at least a couple of players
to play at the top of the world class level.
(39:06):
That's a load of crap. And honestly, I'm embarrassed because
but most of the people saying this, or you know
a lot of people just pay attention to soccer a
little bit. But to overall to have this conversation go,
yeah's youth sports. No, either you're lazy or you have
an extra grind because your club sport isn't going how
you thought it would go well, or at the sub
layer of laziness of well, all our best athletes go
(39:27):
play football and basketball, go watch some of these matches
across these suspect clubs and travel sports. Yeah, they can
all go pound saying what an awful, specious, pathetic argument.
That is such a load of crap. That's such a
load of crap.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and The iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
App joining us now on the hotline is the men
who bought that jersey. Wow, it's Fox Sports one NBA
insider extraordinaia, Rick Buker. Rick. What credit card did you
use to buy that Brunson jersey? Uh?
Speaker 5 (40:11):
My daughters?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Oh gok, can I have the miles?
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
She's the one who got the nil money. So I'm like, hey, yeah,
here you go.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Okay, have very good.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
One basketball from one basketball silo to another. Well, let's
get this done.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
We.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
By the way, I will say this, first of all,
it's way past July one, so I don't know if
we should be having this conversation. But that said, and
Mike don't hate me for saying this. We really, and
I'm gonna talk about this on my podcast coming Out
to Buy tomorrow at the latest. We we really have
(40:51):
not talked about Jalen Brunson enough in terms of how
he represents something so different from what the NBA has
become and how gratifying it is to see someone like
Jalen Brunson rewarded the man. The man left one hundred
(41:13):
million dollars on the table. Just I believe it was
that something.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
Like that.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Big figure just for the opportunity to play for a championship,
not knowing whether he would get it, but just to
give himself an opportunity, and he ultimately got that reward.
And I just let's go back through time and think
about in the NBA the last player to do that.
(41:41):
We can think of the Tom Brady's. I mean, maybe
Tim Duncan had opportunity to push the end envelope, but
as far as the NBA concerned, Jalen Brunson deserves to
be in the Tom bra Brady category of guys that
did not put their pocketbooks ahead of their aspect operations.
(42:01):
And I just don't you know, in this day and age,
I feel like we need to give that more attention
than we have.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So I'm going to well, he's going to make up
for it because he's getting a grand per photo at
fanatics Fest. That's not even adding an autograph, that's just
standing there and kind kind of looking in the camera's
general direction. Rick and it sold out in minutes.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
I got to say, with the general demeanor of Jalen Brunson,
like I love the man and I love watching him play,
I really don't need a photo of him like he's
he looks perpetually grumpy and mildly interested. Why would I
want a photo of that?
Speaker 1 (42:41):
You know, I paid one thousand dollars and I stood
in line for three hours for him to just share.
You know what we have him honestly, you know we
haven't talked about enough, right because I agree with you
on Jalen Brunts. Of course, could we've talked a lot
about him here Rick.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
That that was the case.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
After the finals, the Knicks had a Jay Brunson look
alike contest. Yes, and the thirty people who were there
for it, it was like it was like into the
Spider Verse where all the different Spider men show up
and like all these people that looks somewhat like Jeff.
Here's an older jailing Brunt. Here's here's a shorter jail
in Brunson. This is a taller, heavier jailing Brunson. Like
(43:19):
all of those people like, I want a thirty for
thirty on all of those people like there was That's
something that visual is amazing.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
It's scary how many people actually look like Jalen Brunson.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, see he is our every man. So maybe like
five guys would show up, but you see there's like
fifty people up and down there that could be Brunson,
that could be bruns. But now the more important question
Rick the grandmother who looked like Jalen Brunson, that was
the scary one. Well, you know full range, but I mean,
how badly does this wrist injury push the Knicks back
(43:51):
in their quest to repeat? I had to do that
for my guy Smith over here. Yeah, n here's the thing, Rick,
I got a deal for you. You want a deal,
here's a deal for you. Here's a deal for it.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
We will never I don't even get the answer.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
No.
Speaker 5 (44:07):
You can say yes or no.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
He's no.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Here's the thing. You can say or no. You can
say yes or no.
Speaker 5 (44:13):
No. I don't want your deal, Okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
All right, I guess I got no deal. I won't
give Rick Buker any of that money.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Okay, Jason, Jason, what's your deal?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Here's a dream. We will never talk about the Knicks
again on the air. You and I on your end,
you have to have every single person who showed up
at the Jalen Brunson lookalike contest. Every week you have
one person as a guest on your on the Ball podcast.
(44:43):
So for forty weeks in a row. You have one
of those guys and you got an interview him for
ten minutes. Oh and will never talk about the Knicks again.
That's a book. There you go.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
You know how long it's taken me to build the
audience for my podcast. I am not wasted. I'm merely
on the ability to not have you talk about the
next So no, no, I'm sorry. I appreciate the offer.
I genuinely do, and clearly you gave it a lot
of thought and it's a sacrifice on your part. Now,
(45:16):
but I will, I will, I will politely pass.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Okay. Actually, I just had a lot of coffee tonight
and the idea just came to me. But that I
just wonder what happens if the sixth person comes on
and go. I just happened to be walking through. I
didn't know. I don't even know. It was a contest,
all right. Ex So to the business of the off season,
the long the decision, and we see the money is
flowing in in the marketplace. How soon is Lebron James
(45:43):
announcing his Cleveland cavalieredom?
Speaker 5 (45:46):
Wait, what money is flowing into.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
The there's a seventy five million dollar Calshi market on
where he ends up. Oh about fifty of it is
on Cleveland, and it's all on Rick's daughter's credit card.
I don't know that Giannis has any money put in there,
but there you go.
Speaker 5 (46:01):
Right, I look, I don't know that there's a first
of all, that it's three. It's down to three Eastern
Conference teams. Is no surprise at all, right, because he
doesn't he doesn't want to play in the West. I
don't know that there's a team in the West outside
of Golden State. I think genuinely, mistakenly would probably go
down that road because they're still chasing the dragon Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I think what the.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Tricky part for me is, I mean, bottom line is
Cleveland still makes without question the most sense, both for
the Cavaliers but maybe more importantly for Lebron James, because
while we can talk about him going back to Miami,
the fact of the matter is, and I think pat
(46:47):
Riley would would have him back if it makes them
a better team and gives them a better chance of winning.
He's going to go in there with guys that are
stabl established in their own right. I mean, there's no
question in that he is going to be the third
wheel and treated as such, with Bam Autebaio the established
star there and Janni Santetecumpo, neither of whom have any
(47:11):
prior sort of relationship or deference toward toward Lebron in Philadelphia,
sort of the same thing. They got Jalen Brown there,
they got the young guns. Like I'm sure that they
would be respectful of him, but again, there's a lot
of mouths to feed, and he's going to be He's
(47:34):
going to be down the chain of command just by
virtue of the talent that they have there. Cleveland makes
the most sense because it's a homecoming, because of there's
no personality bigger than him there at this point. And
I do like their chances you add him to Cleveland. Yes,
(47:55):
they got swept and none of the games were close
with the Knicks, and I don't know that I would
certainly I wouldn't think of Cleveland as the favorite if
he went there. But I think there's a world in
which he makes them better and and and maybe more important,
it's the sentimental him going back to Cleveland. He's going
(48:15):
to have a stature that he wouldn't have in Philadelphia.
And I really don't think under the current structure of
the Miami Heat that he would that he would have
it there. So for all those reasons, Cleveland really only
makes uh makes sense to me, and I think that
that's and talking to people in the league, that's generally
(48:37):
what they've said is that that that makes sense from
both ends, and that this waiting game is simply because
Lebron loves the intention and loves the attention. He loves
the intrigue. He loves everybody talking about him on a
daily basis, saying where's he going to go? You know
who's do? I take exception with Sham's. You know, he's
(48:59):
sifting through his offers. I mean, what are we doing here?
At least at least he should say he's sifting through
his offers. According to Rich Paul and Lebron James put it.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Let's give it.
Speaker 5 (49:15):
That context because we're talking. I mean, Philadelphia signed Dean
Wade to a four year, thirty million dollar deal.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
They only have.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Minimum money to offer Lebron at this stage, and they
do have two roster spots open in Philadelphia, so they
could take on Lebron and Bronny. But it's not like
anybody's waiting for him. They continue to build out their
rosters and sign people, and they have their cores intact.
(49:45):
So would any one of these three teams could they see,
you know, adding Lebron and him making them better. Sure,
but this this idea that he's in the same place
that he was the summer of Lebron in two thousand
and two or at any prior point in his career
when he had the option of being a free agent,
(50:06):
is just you know, delusional. And I get why Rich
is presenting it this way. Why he did the grease
sport and you know, had the whatever number of teams
and how he fit into the roster and the starting
lineup and all of that, But that's Rich Paul trying
(50:27):
to create leverage out of nothing. It's not the reality
of these teams are you know, with baited breath waiting
for Lebron to tell them that they're the chosen ones
that happened in twenty ten. For sure, that's not happening now.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
See for me, it's pretty simple, Rick, is that I've
said Cleveland for a year because if you're looking at
how his end game is going, and it'll probably be
a couple of years wherever he signs he's still got
a couple of years left playing at this We've never
seen a guy at forty one in any sport play
at this high level ever. I mean, just to give
them credit for what's going on here. But number one,
(51:02):
it's the softest landing for him because if he doesn't win,
instead of getting made fun of and people laughing, and
you know how much he likes that, he has the
soft landing of, well, it's my goodbye and I went home.
I'm just a kid from Akron. I could say goodbye.
But the other part of it is that is Lebron
really going to very publicly have this down to three
teams and the Cavaliers be one of them. And at
(51:23):
the end he says, no, I'm not going home, Like
I just can't believe at this point, Like I think
if if that was a possibility, there would be no
talk about the Cavaliers or they would have been ruled
out by now.
Speaker 5 (51:32):
So the fat many times could I break those people's hearts?
Let me see right right? Like Like what I mean,
if you're a Cleveland fan, you're like Lebron, what the
hell did we ever do to you? Like?
Speaker 3 (51:45):
How many times are you going to.
Speaker 5 (51:46):
Do this to us, No, I think I think there's
a lot of I think there's a lot of truth
to that. And ultimately, look, wherever he goes, I don't
see them winning a championship. And at this point, you know,
how much of an impact that he can he can have,
Like like the Lakers. The Lakers exceeded expectations, but let's
(52:11):
not ignore the fact that they were at their best
when Luka Doncic and Austin Reeves were healthy and Lebron
was accepting of the being the third option. Like that's
what this is about. It's like, how can he exit gracefully?
And and to your point, you know, I would take
(52:33):
a page from Klay Thompson's experience in Dallas, Like I
always said, Golden, you know, Clay should have bit the
bullet and stayed with the Warriors because of all of
the goodwill that he had engendered from being part of
all those championships. You go someplace else and they go, well, hey,
what are you doing for us now? Like what like
(52:55):
we find you won those championships for somebody else, You
those great years for somebody else, Like, what are you
doing for us? If he goes to Philadelphia or he
goes back to Miami. I think there is there is
more of that. In fact, I don't even know why
we're talking about Philadelphia. Really, Miami's probably in the second
spot in terms of teams that I could see it
(53:18):
being understandable. But again to your point, if he chooses
Miami over Cleveland again, oh my god, it's just I
just at least, at the very least, he's got to
go back to Greenwich and have another sit down and go, yeah,
I'm taking my talents to South Beach again.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
There you go real quick for you. I know you're
at summer League. What's got tongues wagon? What are you
most excited to see?
Speaker 5 (53:48):
Actually I'm not there yet. I will be there first
thing in the morning. But I think I think in general,
it's simply to see the top picks. You know, see
see Darren were Peterson. We've seen some of him in
the Salt Lake Summer League, but a number. I mean,
(54:09):
this is such an intriguing draft and Darius Acuff, like
is he the real deal? And how does he match
up against some of the other guys that were picked
around him? Caleb Love, I can't wait to see what
he looks like with Chicago, because I think that he
could be the dark horse, and I mean just go
(54:31):
down the line. There are so many guys that were
so highly touted and I'm not sure that we got
them in the right order. And for me, this is
always the first opportunity to see the guys where you
go ooh, that guy is better than people thought that
he was and against pro talent and that guy might
(54:52):
struggle at this level because he doesn't have the same
physical advantage.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
That he had at the collegiate level.
Speaker 5 (54:57):
So I think that that really these first couple days
at least, because that's you know, after that they usually
shut down the top guys. I think these first couple
of days is really going to be about measuring those five, six,
seven top picks and who comes out of Summer League
carrying the mantle of these are guys that are actually
(55:17):
going to have an impact as rookies.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
You can follow him on Twitter at Rick Buker, That
is at Rick Buker. You can see him at Summer
League play this week and yeah, he begins the first
of forty interviews with all the Jalen Brunson lookalike, jud Cree,
Jungle Wild, dreams of made up. Rick is always buddy.
Appreciate it, man, We'll talk to you.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
Have fine money, Jim Greg, Jim Gray Yo,
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmen podcast. Be sure to catch us
live every weeknight from ten pm to two am Eastern
seven to eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find
your local station for The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon at Foxsports Radio dot com, or stream us live
every night on the iHeartRadio app by searching FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is the best of The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Greetings, Welcome inside, Happy Tuesday, The Jason Smith Show with
my bes friend Mike Harmon. Wednesday, Buddy, Today's Wednesday. All right, hey,
you're a step closer. That's fantastic. Remember you stayed home.
You tried to forget Monday because of the miserable, horrible
showing of the men's national team. I really thought all
(00:50):
day today was Tuesday. There you go. It's great. So
you lost the day of your life, depending on I mean,
you're either a day closer to the weekend or a
day closer today tomorrow, depending on which way you take it.
What's wrong with you? Man? I couldn't I couldn't even
be excited about Oh, hey, were one day closer to
the weekend. I thought it was Tuesday, all day today. No,
one day closer world, come back. That's you one day
(01:13):
closer to day. Yeah, and maybe no, maybe that's what's
going on with you. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's all
about you. I was listening to Pink Floyd earlier and
they sang that line to me, so they didn't lie
to me in song. But it is Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I hate when.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
People do that.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Jason Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The Mets the off on.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
No, we're winning tonight. They're actually yeah, runs tonight. No,
we're playing.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Don't know you're gonna win.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
What's fair? Yesterday you thought you were on a road
to a victory. Now wants to kill you. Yeah, we
we have audio evidence. The Mets are killing Keither named
bit by Bitch. Yeah, they kill everybody. For over forty years,
tire racks been uping customers find the right tires for how,
what and where they drive. Ship Fast and Free backed
by free Road, has a protection with convenient installation options
(01:58):
like mobile tire installation dot com. He is the way
tire by and should be. Yeah, the Jets killed Carl. Yeah,
that's her killing after it you know, the Knicks can
only do so much. I mean, city in a nation.
They're still lifting people. Look, Marishka Hargateae just got named
Emmy Host. Is she getting named Emmy Host without the Knicks?
(02:20):
Be honest? It over to whatever year twenty one was
so good as for you. None of the other years
were good enough, but you're twenty one. She was so good.
She gets No, the Knicks got her that gig. The
Knicks got that, but she also helped propel the Knicks.
So yeah, symbiotic thing she did. Plus she did the
one woman play, right, she took over when our buddy
(02:44):
Daniel Radcliffe stepped out of that one person play. She
came in and killed it. Yeah no, but what I'm
talking about it again with the whole Taylor Swift thing.
Yeah no, it all came together again again with the killing.
But it's but you know, it's very subtle. You don't
have to call it out. People are paying a ten.
She's not getting that gig without the Knicks. The Knicks
got her that gig. Is she going to do some
(03:06):
song and dance like I'm sure, I'm sure she's gonna
come in and do Empire State of Mind.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
With jay Z all the consequences that Yet, what are
the consequences a broken wrist?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
No?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Stop it is did you see the the the dreams
of the U, the karaoke with that this weekend? The
pictures making the rounds today. Oh, here's here's an x
ray of Jalen Brunson's left wrist.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Is there a dog in it?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
No? No, no? And it's him and he's doing the
you know he does for three points with an outline
of the championship ring on his finger. It's awesome.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I don't know, I'm not a doctor, but that x
ray looks like it's really messed up.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, I know you're not a doctor, but we just
won the title, so it's okay. He's like, I don't
care if his risk. We just want he just needs
to be available come March or April, depending on their seating. Now,
today is a day with no soccer. It's that weird.
I know, it's awful, you know for people that don't
work during the middle of the day like me and
like like like like a lot of us apparently, uh yeah,
(04:06):
like what do you do at noon? Wait a minute,
there's no game on what you mean by the reaction
of all your people. Yes, around all the people reactcause
if you're referring to me, yes, I'm sitting next to
you now, so clearly no. I mean like like, listen
to a goal, open your window in middle of the day,
go wow, it's really loud. A lot of people not
working okay or working from home. But yes, but with
(04:28):
no soccery, today is a great day to talk about
this because this is the best way I can get
everybody to understand. With the US men's national team losing
to Belgium and all the fire and brimstone of the
past forty eight hours, things keep getting worse for Christian Polisic.
They get worse for everything associated with USA soccer. Notice
(04:50):
how everybody that's been in or around the program suddenly
decided it was okay to unleash on him. Yeah, they
didn't say anything about his deficiencies or anything. Now, all
of you, from people around you. He doesn't say high
to people, doesn't say hi to the commentators at games.
All this stuff, right, But here's that This is honestly
(05:10):
you've heard a lot and again every four years you
get people that want to come up and say things
about soccer. Okay, but let me just help, because this
is we're about helping here on the show. We don't
just point out problems, but we can we can solve them.
The anger that everybody feels for the United States team losing,
There's one word I can tell you that's going to
help you with this. It may not be what you
(05:33):
want to hear, but it is true and it will
help you because I always say the truth is the
best thing. Whether you want to hear it or not,
the truth is always the best thing. Now I'm sure
I have I've have some years left in my life
hopefully to test that theory. But the truth is always
the best thing. The biggest word I can tell you
is acceptance. Okay, not the stage of grief, but certain
(05:57):
things you just have to accept after period of time.
And the acceptance what I'm talking about is that we're
just not as good as everybody else in the world
at soccer, and we're never going to be as good
as the rest of the world in soccer. Every four
years the questions come up, why aren't we as good?
Look at our population, why are we not? Why are
(06:19):
we should be better? We have the players, we have
the numbers. Yeah, we're just accept that We are not
ever going to be a world power in soccer. There's
been forty years where okay, we're gonna get a big
boon ninety four World Cup. Oh my goodness, he has
a big boon for men's soccer. We were terrible in
(06:40):
ninety eight, Hey ninety two quarter finals soccer era. No,
didn't happen, Oh, Lennon Donovan's goal against Algeria. Golden generation
of US soccer didn't happen. Right. We've had many times
over the past forty years to fix what is wrong,
to get good at soccer. We just aren't. And people
are mad because for us as a country, we don't
(07:04):
lose it things. We don't look when we do stuff creatively,
whether it's sports or entertainment or we don't lose. That's
why we are the land of opportunities, right, we are
the land of manifest destiny. We don't lose it things,
We win things. We are the best at every sport
across the globe except for soccer. Right. We are the
best in entertainment, We are the best in movies, anything
(07:25):
creatively you do. The only thing I can say is, well,
you want to look at what China is doing. Internet wise,
computer wise. Okay, so China has become as good as
we are. But we're in that conversation, right, we ran
things for a long time. We're at the top of
that conference. That's the one thing I can tell you that. Well, okay,
we watched them come up and now we were you know,
the the race for computers and the internet and everything
(07:47):
else going on. We are at the top. We don't lose,
and nobody likes to lose. We are not used to losing.
On the world stage and anything. Creatively, we win everything.
But here in soccer, it makes people go back. Banana
is crazy. Why can't we win? Why can't we win?
There's gotta be some reason, and everybody throws out all
these reasons. It's gotta be some reason, some reason, some reason.
(08:09):
Just accept that we're not going to be a world power.
We're just not. We've had time, we've had opportunity. Doesn't
mean we can't win at some point, doesn't mean we
can't have a good run where hey, a couple of
World Cups in a row. We make it into the
uh into the quarterfinals, right, we win our group, but
it doesn't we can't do that. But we're never going
to be a world power. We just aren't. Sometimes you
(08:31):
just have to sit back and accept that whatever the
reason's out there, it's just not gonna happen. Right. It's
it's it's the it's the people that finally accepted. Okay,
Shaq is just not gonna make his free throws, right Like,
Shaq's gotta do this to make us. He's gotta do this. Hey,
he's not gonna make them. It's not gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I knew Mitchell Robinson's not making friends in the final.
I'm not sitting here after on some sort of burner
account going ah, man, if Mitch could just do this
and this and make one of them, He's not gonna
make his free throws. We're just not going to be
world power. But it's sports, and this is what you
do is you keep throwing stuff out there. See what works,
see what sticks. Maybe someday we'll find the right We'll
(09:08):
find the right to a combination of coaches and talent
and do it right. You have you have teams that
have been tried in sports for years to win and
they can't. Ronald Reagan was born was a broadcaster for
the Iowa Cubs, lived his entire life where President died
never saw the Cubs win the World Series, and he
lived he was one hundred and seventeen years old. Okay,
(09:29):
sometimes you're just not great. But finally the Cubs won.
Didn't mean they could never win, but they won, right,
it was great. It's just never going to be that case,
no matter what kind of questions you want to ask,
no matter how you want to cut it up, just
understand we're never going to be a soccer power. Doesn't
mean we can't be good and win and do well
once in a while, but that's not who we are.
(09:51):
The Miami Marlins, as good a ear as they have,
as whatever years they put to, they know they're never
gonna be the New York Yankees or the La Dodgers. Right,
that's just not going to happen. So once you accept that, okay,
well I can look at it more positively and hope that, hey,
the next time around, things are gonna be different, right
like hades down. Right, Hey, we keep singing the same
song over and over, hoping the next time things are
gonna change. But overall it's just just forget about this.
(10:14):
How do we catch up to the rest of the world.
We're not. We've had chances, we've had opportunities. It's just
one thing we're not good at it. And I get
that it's tough to swallow. There's one thing that every
four years the rest of the world laughs at us
that because we don't even get in the top eight,
top ten. Just want to say, yes, we can't win
absolutely everything, and soccer something We're just not going to
win at economic power, all these other things you talk
(10:36):
about the global impact. Look when it all comes down
to it, and you mentioned Hades Town in theaters for
a week in a couple of weeks from Yeah, that's
big ticket. I'm ready. But it's the inverse of the
old Toby Keith, who would have been sixty five today, right,
the old I'm not as good as I once was,
but I'm as good once. We're just trying for that once. Right.
(10:59):
You mentioned the mar Carlands very much a if things
coalesce and come together, maybe you have that opportunity for
the United States. You take the blame pie and decide
how much is infrastructure, how much is coaching, how much
is the economic barrier, whatever you want to ascribe to that,
whatever coefficient, whatever percentage, But where we're at now, is
(11:20):
I know, folks get frustrated because you're told this is
the time, right, this was the group Holisic being the
poster child for this next run and always being tabbed
as Captain America. Well he wasn't. We had Altador for
a brief period, right, he was going to be our
version of Lukaku who comes in and runs through you
(11:43):
and is a prolific goal scorer. Well he couldn't stay
on the pitch, and now you come to this next
era where you've got a couple of players to build
off of. But the expectations this time, because it was
on American soil, because you had the thumb press or
full hand and pressed back on the scale to allow
Balagan to play in that game against Belgium, that it
(12:05):
was supposed to be the time to push forward, and
everybody bought in because from a television perspective, well, it
was in our windows, right, It was on all the
news shows. Because it was local. It costs a lot
less to send people around to these games, which meant
you got more coverage and more pro American team circumstance
(12:26):
and pomp pumping, you know, pageantry to it. All that
so when folks saw it go so terribly wrong on
a big stage Monday, that that's where they got disenchanted
and disenfranchised. So now you just have to figure out
what that normal is of how to keep people involved.
And even at the end of the broadcast, it was, hey,
(12:48):
don't forget soccer plays on for another these four years
in between. Whether you jump on or not, that's a
that's a reality. But for everybody it's it's recognizing there
needs to be more investment, more consistency, all of those
things if you want to compete. But even then it's
a Marlin situation. Yeah, doesn't mean to stop trying, doesn't
(13:09):
mean we can't, it doesn't. But to be the world
power like and that that's where you really get it. Oh,
I kind of get it now. You're you know, no
one's ever gonna be the Yankees of the Dodgers right there.
They're never gonna be the Cowboys. They never go up
in back to back since what sixty whatever. I mean,
it's it's just it's just just get that that and
that's a conversation that once we understand that losing okay,
(13:30):
you can accept it a little bit. There can be
one thing we're not better than the rest of the
world that this happens to be soccer and it's public
and it's and it's embarrassing for us. And when the
rest of the world is laughing, we don't like it
because we ain't used to lose it. But that's how
it goes. But this is where I can use your
nicks for good. Is that it took fifty three years
for you to win a title. There have been eight
(13:50):
straight years with a different winner in the World Cup.
There's been six decades where there's been no repeat. That's
the reality of it. You're hoping everything coalesces. You're healthy,
you're strong and ready to go, and maybe the football
gods come against your opponents somewhere along the way.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Well Story, We'll have Moron coming up later on this hour. Boy,
not a great night for the Indiana Fever, A bad
night for Caitlin Clark. The La Sparks at eight and
eleven about to hang a big l on the fever.
One oh one to ninety with a minute left to go.
Here in the fourth corner. She's played sixteen minutes plus
(14:43):
minus minus sixteen and she got up twelve shots, so
she at least gave people what they came for. Yeah,
in the minutes she did play, Oh, she didn't make
any of them four twelve from the field, but yeah,
gave it her the old college try. So one quick
thing before we have to finish this conversation we had
on Earl Holland before you get to a big story
(15:05):
out of the NBA tyshirt.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Just told me.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You go to Google and if you type in Earling
Holland right, you type in his name and you spell
it right, and you hit return, you get a you know,
you get a bunch of returns on his name, and
then on the bottom you get the animated all of
them rowing the boat, like all the way across the
bottom of the screen. It looks kind of cool. It
reminds me of like remember the old show Press your
Luck and the Whammy would come out and dance and
(15:30):
take your money away. Like that's kind of what it
looks like. You know, it's funny. Yesterday I was showing
the guys that there was a slide from the original
press Sure luck because now it's come back, yeah, with
Elizabeth Banks as the host. But from the original one
of the slides of the Whammies went for eight hundred
bucks at auction. Wow. Really, that's that's one million and
(15:51):
one million, one one hundred thousand, nine hundred dollars less
than Jalen Brunson's jerseys before tonight. It's also one quarter
ish of what it would take to bribe Danhausen.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
His wrist is also broken.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Risk is fine. You saw the X ray with the
big championship ring on it. You saw the x ray.
It was there.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
When Isling Holland's collapse with Ragnor going to happen.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
It's got to happen. Get him, It's gotta happen, Like.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I mean, how has this not happened?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
When's this next game?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Dude? Earling Holland. The impact he's having right now on
the World Cup is and I'm gonna go back to today.
This is this is really what reminds me of is
that this is the impact that Steph Curry had on
the NCAA turn with Davidson when they had that big
run put himself on the map of boy, this guy
could be really good in the NBA, and you know,
(16:45):
I don't know how people didn't take him first overall,
but he goes ninth. Okay, well, he had suspect ankles
and he weighed one hundred and five pounds, but Steph
Curry was a name and people knew who he was,
and you know, you knew was Del Curry's kid, but
it was Davidson, a smaller school. But over the course
of the season, he his highlights are out there is
kind of fun. Then you get to the tournament and
Davidson's running and they're winning and they're beating teams and
(17:06):
suddenly he became the individual story of the NCAA tournament.
Back in two thousand and eight, it was really something.
And this is kind of what Holland has. Like, people
knew about him coming in, We talked about him. The
average fan is watching him now. The United States is out,
but people have soccer fever want to see, Hey, I
want to watch this Holland guy play again. He's taken
on that Steph Curry role and one more win and
(17:27):
he's done what Steph Curry has done. He's gotten his
team into the final four. And I'll tell you what,
when you have the best striker in the world, you
have a puncher's chance against anybody you will play. That's
why I like the match against England because England's tough. Defensively,
they're not that good. I mean, but they have two aces, Yeah, no,
they do, but defensively they're not very good. They're they're
not at the higher level of Spain or France or
(17:48):
some of these other teams. They're gettable, and the last
thing they want to see is a striker on the
other team that is world class level. They would get England,
you would say, they would say, if we had our choices,
we'd rather play Spain. We'd rather play Spain' rather play
a team that doesn't have this guy this firepower because
you can't stop. How many guys can you can you
put on him? Right? I mean Brazil? I mean still
(18:09):
he found he finds a way to just walk around
and just lull everybody into a false sense security and
then make a lightning quick move for the box, like
and those people should all be fired. I mean that
that was how you lose that guy. But Messi's done
the same thing for his time. Yes, he's a lot shorter,
but Messi's done the same thing for his Tiger with Argentina.
He's just walking around the pitch and all of a sudden, boom,
he's a lightning strike and he's in the box. That's
(18:30):
in the net. This guy's man, how do you miss him?
Like that second goal and then he meg that guy? Yeah,
but come on, that was just bad. Like as that
ball's getting pushed over and he's calling for it, it's
like there is no There are four guys kind of
around him, but they're all ten yards away, like what
are we doing?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
And what's so damn cool about Earling Holland is the
way he's embraced our country. Oh, showering down cats is
Deli Pistrami, him and Dallas we'reing the CA cowboy boots
and the cowboy hat.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
Yeah, he's like the uh the when you when you
go visit another country and or someone comes over and
they're wearing the the goofy hat and the Mickey Mouse ears,
Like I love going to Disneyland.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
This is fantasmic.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
But a lot of guys come here and they talk
crap on our country. He's coming here and he's embraced it.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
No, that's one of the overriding things from the World
Cup as a whole, but certainly Holland has become the
embodiment of it and his social media team and what
he's what they've been doing is great. I just hope
if they do beat and if they or when they
beat England on Saturday, he goes and bangs the drum
and then grabs a microphone and starts singing, Well, there's.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
One thing stopping them from moving on. What's that Jason
picked them?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Hey, my picks have been pretty good. The last couple
of Frostburg I've been on it. That was two weeks ago,
that was three years ago. We have the tape. Uh,
I want to say, you know, you talk about the
experience of other countries are having here in the United States,
and it's awesome to see that, right, it's awesome sometimes
not to get too Pollyanna on you, but obviously you
(20:02):
know where we are politically in this country and and
and every day seems like it's worse than the last
one politically, But sometimes you need to see something through
somebody else's eyes to understand, hey, we're still pretty good.
Right Like when I when when if let's say, okay,
like the Jets are playing the Vikings in a game
and I start tweeting out about the you know, hey,
(20:24):
this is why the Vikings are gonna get the Jets
problems something like that, and the fans of the Vikings go, oh,
I thought we had problems. But it's nice to see
how somebody sees us from the outside. Right. Am I
too close to my team that I think we're underachieving,
we're not playing well, But it's nice to see. And
when I see other teams talk about us a certain way,
I understand that we're maybe better off. And I'm a
(20:45):
little too close to it. And I think we're seeing
that the United States now in that you know, all
this stuff happening and and and it's and it's you know,
with stuff with Iran and the World Cup and all this,
and it's and it's just the craziness to continue to permeate.
But to see everybody coming over from all these other
countries and having an incredible time, like it reminds me that, Okay, yeah,
(21:06):
we're still pretty good here, right, We're still pretty good.
We have problems that we got to solve, but maybe,
you know, to take a step back from it and
see the United States from somebody else's eyes. It comes
from another country to come in here, I get that
maybe things aren't so bad. And I don't know who
it was, but it was somebody that I think it
was somebody that got interviewed a fan from another country
(21:27):
that came to the United States. I want to say
maybe in North Carolina. I mean, it could be wrong
about this, but I want to say is when the
games from North Carolina and they interviewed a fan and
they said, what do you think your experience in our country?
And they said, if you want to hate America, watch
the news. If you want to love America, drive through it.
And I thought that was like, Wow, you got to
whoever said that you had a patent that put that
(21:47):
on a T shirt, because that's an incredible phrase. You
want to hate America, watch the news, but you want
to love America, drive through it. That's that was an
awesome thing. So that's the larger, larger point to it,
all right, is if you want to read a newspaper,
go to your favorite news website or watch you know,
the evening local or national news. What are you getting
(22:10):
The Sky's falling all around. No matter what stock market
can go through the roof in a day and it's
still gonna be the a if it bleeds, it leads.
But your day to day isn't that miserable for everybody? Yeah,
And I think a lot of folks coming in from
out of the country, and I'm not saying it's not
for for some people. I certainly sympathize, empathize, and I
(22:31):
recognize there's there's a divide, But on a day to
day basis, we've got a pretty good Yeah. I mean
it's it's just sometimes you need to see what you
have through somebody.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Else's eyes, especially through a star's eyes like Earling.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yes. Yeah, Like here's a guy who come and say
anything he wants, you.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Can kiss my Dallas.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah. But also right, a guy who's got a nation
that'll do whatever they need to for him and still
has embrace it in every which way. It's it's fun
to see that, man, it really is. Now. We got
more in the World Cup coming up in a few minutes,
but this story out of the NBA. The Bucks have
spoke for the first time since the trade of Yannis
(23:10):
to the Miami Heat, and you know it I really
I think I can help the Bucks feel better about
things because the narrative surrounding Yannis the last couple of
weeks is really puzzling. Right. So John Horst the GM
said that trading Yannis was quote a very difficult decision.
(23:30):
And look, no one's sitting here today saying we're a
better team after trading Giannis, one of the greatest players,
incredible amount of success. It was the opportunity to build
and to again set a foundation. So here's the first
real public comments from the Bucks after trading Giannis. And
I get that, and they're saying, you know, they're saying
the right things. And so far Jannis has always said
nothing but glowing things about the Milwaukee Bucks. But I
(23:55):
can't get over that people are still looking at Yannis
like this is Yanna of five years ago, right. I
always like you, look, you can't look at the back
of a guy's basketball card and assume that he's still great.
This is Giannis, who is still a really good player, right,
still terrific player, right, Yan, But is he still one
of the top players in the league, or is he
someone who the last couple of years has been injured
(24:18):
and can't even lead the Bucks into the playoffs, right,
they can't get out of the playing round, right, Like
if I'm not saying Giannis needed to have the Bucks
at the top of the East and fifty five wins,
But if you're the best player in the game, you
got to be able to get your team higher than that.
Which is where like you know when you understood that
Steph Curry wasn't the same player? Where boy built around
Steph Curry. He can't lead the Warriors higher than the
(24:40):
playing round. That tells you that Steph Curry is not
the same player. Giannis is also not the same player,
not that he was never right, of course, he was
the best player in the league for a long time,
but he's not that guy anymore. And people still think
this is twenty twenty Yiannis and is twenty twenty six
Yiannis where being on the wrong side of thirty now
with injury concerns, fitting in on a new team and
wondering is he still the guy that can lead and
(25:04):
pick a team up or is he a guy that
gets his Because that's the whole thing with Lebron the
last few years, Like Lebron's not a guy that's gonna
grab the team and lead him like he did earlier
in his career and drag a bunch of Jags to
the Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA Finals with Cleveland. No,
this is a Lebron that gets his Does he make
the team better?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
No, not like he used to. And that's the whole
thing about Giannis is that people still think this is
Jannis from following its Yiannis and Yonn. No, this is
this is it. Yes, it's Jannis, but it's a twenty
twenty six Yannis. And you look at the injuries and
where the Bucks have not achieved in the last few years.
I mean, not even mediocrity have they been able to
achieve with him as their best player. So yeah, understand that.
(25:43):
That's why I never thought this deal tilted the balance
of power at all in the East. I was happy
he went to the Heat. I'm like, oh, okay, he's
going to the heat. I don't have to worry about
the heat, all right, I don't have to worry about
That's good. It's not like he went to the Sixers
or the Celtics or the Pistons. Uh oh the heat. Yeah, No, okay,
that's fine. Janni's going there where they're relying him to
be the number one guy. Yeah, good luck now, But
(26:04):
I'm said, thirteen years in the league, the fresh faced
guy is long gone. He doesn't play more than sixty
games most seasons. Is he going to be available for
the ten weeks right, because now we're talking about Mike
Brown's T shirt. I need you for ten weeks. Is
he going to be available for those ten weeks? I
don't know that that's going to be the case. I
hope that he is, and I hope he's got a
(26:25):
great run down there. But for the Milwaukee Bucks, it
was time to move on. He had two years of
an impass of both sides, not wanting to be the
bad guy at some point. Again, doesn't have to be
a bad guy. Just agree to disagree, shake hands, and
go your opposite ways. Life moves on.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
So on a day with no soccer, which seems really weird, right,
how much we've come to embrace the World Cup and
everyday soccer, and for big soccer fans, it's great. For
the average soccer fan, it's awesome. Middle of the day
we get we get soccer all the time. No soccer today. No,
I felt like you needed violins behind you.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And then it was a full vo on a day
with no soccer. On a day with no soccer, as
lots On would say, a day with no soccer is
like a day with no lat It's fair. It should
not happen. No, it should not happen. I mean, did
they have a two hours Laton show just because today?
I mean because I I've come to expect there he
is what I expect. Like, do you turn on Fox? Liked? No,
(27:30):
it's just him in front of the camera and he
goes and now, because there is no soccer today, here's
every one of Slaton's goals in his career. Then it's
just like and then he just does a countdown.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Produced, written and directed by slots.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Way up and down. That's all that. That's what's all
his credits. That's all the clips that they put together
of his goodbye to teams has been the funniest. Yeah yeah, yeah,
here's the flags USA and then he's got some pithy
commentsary for Germany, it was go back, be sad and
drink your sad beer. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost like the
(28:08):
like they I could feel in the meeting. Hey, we
want to do something like the gone fishing thing for
for TNT and now they do it in an ESPN.
Can we do that? Yes, I will say goodbye to
all of the all of the countries. I'll say goodbye to
all of them. Oh okay, great, all right, great and
he runs his line. Yeah, but some some have been
borner wide where you're like, that probably didn't pass. Yeah,
so in honor of law of time. Yeah, here's a
(28:30):
hot take coming off of the World Cup. The last
twenty four hours you have seen especially on social media
and now you're seeing a lot of former players, a
lot of analysts talk about this that the downfall of
the United States men's team is because of youth soccer,
travel sports being responsible for not getting the kids up
(28:54):
to speed enough where by the time they turn professional
they can be amongst the best in the world. World right,
And the big article on ESPN about this, a lot
of hosts talking about this, a lot of yeah, you know,
the youth sports, the travel uh sports with soccer is
a problem. Now, what are they pointing out? Well, that
the main thing is that clubs exist in youth travel sports.
They're expensive. They exist to win games, which is good
(29:19):
for the club to get the kids to college, which
is also good for the club. Also good for the
kids to get took out. But overall development is bad.
Right that that this is, this is the reason why
we have not caught up to the rest world. Of
the rest of the world has academies. We you know,
we we have we have travel sports. And it's all
because of that, all of those reasons. It's too expensive,
(29:39):
the the club is out for themselves, and and and
it doesn't develop the player. Now, I want to tell
you this. Whoever says that that is the laziest take
you could ever possibly want to listen to. That is
so lazy that I mean, it sounds like fun because
you hear it once in a while. Oh, youth sports
are bad, and what is it? Generally it's comments from
(30:01):
people that didn't have a great youth sports experience, did
have a great club experience. At which happens, right? Club
experience experience in sports is sometimes you have a good
experience when you're a kid in sports, sometimes you don't.
Sometimes you have a really good experience when you're in
your team. Sometimes you don't. But this blaming travel is
the laziest take possible. And anybody who does it, you know,
is lazy. And now everybody that I've seen, especially are
(30:23):
people in the media that are pushing this. Not not
former athletes, but when I speak about I know, yeah,
because you're a lazy host, You're a lazy TV host,
you're a lazy radio host. Because I'll tell you exactly
why this is a ridiculous statement. To make travel sports
travel sports, right, it's expense all these different things. We
have travel sports in this country for everything, right, we
have travel sports. There's travel basketball. Okay, travel basketball. Uh,
(30:46):
problems with travel bad? Travel basketball is expensive? Right. Oh,
we're not getting the players ready for uh, for for
what they should be doing in college. And we've heard
stories that maybe they should be more developed. H they're
worried about getting scholarships to college. But you know, those
are the problems. Pretty sure, we produce the best basketball
players in the world, and we have done so for
(31:06):
the better part of sixty years. Okay, do we even
have to talk about football? We have the best football
players in the World's not even close. I I didn't
have to go, but football's expensive. Football is expensive. Yes,
there's a lot of camps, a lot of things you
go to, but we produce the best football players in
the world. Travel baseball travel baseball expensive, lots of travel,
lots of games, play more games travel baseball than anything.
(31:29):
Pretty sure that we are at the top of the
list in the world, along with a couple of other
country Dominican Republic very good as well, producing the best
baseball players on the planet. Okay, so if you're telling
me and everything I have read and heard people talk about, yes,
this is the problem with youth sports, well, pretty sure
that basketball finds a way to have the best athletes,
(31:51):
baseball finds a way to have the best athletes, and
football finds a way to have the best athletes, but
soccer can't. Oh so basically it's a soccer issue. Okay, well, well, well, okay, okay,
you want to tell me it's a soccer issue. Fired, Okay,
let me just say this, and this is where I win.
We have men's and women's soccer in this country. We
(32:11):
have travel soccer and club soccer for girls in this country.
Your daughter has played club soccer for better part of
the last decades, she's going to college to play soccer.
All the problems that exist for soccer exist, right, It's expensive,
it's not developing the players, it's worrying more about the club.
(32:32):
It's the coaches leaving and getting new gigs. It's you know,
just getting a player ready to go to college. All
these are problems. Yet somehow the women's program is the
pre eminent program in the world and has been the
number one program in the world for the better part
of thirty years. So you tell me exactly how all
(32:53):
the other sports, including women's soccer, can get to the
top of the food chain or stay at the top
of the food chain. But oh, it's it's it's specifically
boys soccer and how club is done. That's absolutely ridiculous.
Every sport finds a way, even soccer. You want to look,
there's problems, right, there's obvious problems. Right, you want to
look into it. But don't sit here and blame you sports.
(33:14):
Well that's the most that's the stupidest, laziest thing that
I've seen yet. As as far as what people want
to do as signing blame for why the United States laws, well,
it's absolutely absurd, right, And look, as one who's been
in that system. Yeah, it's expensive. There's a lot of
lessons learned along the way, and the gratitude and the
buy in from your kid is part of it as
(33:36):
they go through. I think with the women's side, just
from the us w n T is the fact that
the United States, based on different protocols, policies, procedures, laws,
invested in the area on a national level far earlier
than other nations did. Right, So competitive advantage, first move advantage, whatever.
(33:58):
But all of that to say, the sports that we're
talking about here, basketball and soccer and baseball primarily, right,
we'll put football off and it's American football, and it's
other category is there's no barrier to entry, there's no
huge cost to just go play, right, ayso still exists
(34:18):
and is still very large in this and that costs
you what fifty bucks just to keep you honest that
you're on a romster. That's all it is, right, That's it,
And so that they can give the officials a couple
of bucks, right, that's all it comes down to. Otherwise,
a lot of volunteer hours, a lot of man hours
trying to find facilities and and I get that, trying
to find fields is certainly an issue that all clubs
(34:42):
have where no matter where you live, like that is,
it's like getting ice time if your kid plays hockey.
You want to talk about expensive barriers to entry, there
you go, but the costs are travel ball. Because what
it tells me is that you're trying to excuse. And
this is the triple underscore, and this goes for any
soccer player, any anybody, any talking head, is that you're
(35:04):
you're absolving the federation, its officials and those who are
tasked to go find the talent. You're allowing them to
be lazy and not get off their ass to go
find the talent. Right, that's where where the bigger problem
lies for me. Right you could say, okay, this pay
pay to play, travel and these academy things whatever. Okay,
(35:26):
I'll hear it to a point, but that's a choice.
Families make the sacrifices they make. You've had a number
of guys on the men's national team talking about what
their parents did, Robin Peter to pay Paul and all
of those things to make sure that the fee was
and everybody's done that, and you decide that it's worth
it right for the values for the teamwork for all
(35:49):
the responsibility, and hopefully your kid takes that back into
the rest of their lives, into the classroom, how they
treat other people, how they deal with you, and everything
else those lessons learn. But what in sense is me
is the fact that you're absolving the men's national team
and its structure from any responsibility from going and finding
these other players that are in the ayso that may
(36:12):
be on a field, in leagues organized within communities. You
gotta go, get off your ass, go pay a couple
of bucks for gas, and if you're not in California,
it's cheaper there you go. I saved the dollars, But
go and go find these people. Don't leave it to well.
I mean, look, this is what we go because we
go to these these big academy functions, and I mean
(36:33):
the players aren't good enough. No, you're not working hard
enough or finding them early enough to where you at
the turn whatever it is twelve thirteen fourteen. You want
to go a little bit earlier and figure out the
whole academy system that needs to be burnt down right,
like we talked with Keith Hernandez Burn, burn burnt and
(36:54):
restructure it to where you're finding these kids early enough
to where if there's an inadequacy in their play, the attitude,
whatever else. I mean, Polisic called out because of the
sprained ankle. I just need some rest. Like if you
want to call out, you know, like that kind of thing.
If you want to go and find these guys, you
got to do it and don't blame the system saying well,
this is what they turned to us when they turned eighteen.
(37:15):
That's all we got. No, that's bs. What you're telling
me is, Okay, there's about five million kids that play
travel sports in the United States, about five million. A
million of them play soccer, right, I don't know the breakdown,
but boys and girls, but about a million of them
play soccer. Let's just say for argument's sake, five hundred
(37:39):
thousand of the of them, the boys, five hundred thousand
of the more girls. Right, let's say. So, what you're
telling me is that the five hundred thousand who were
girls are getting coached well enough and everything is going well.
But all five hundred thousand boys are all getting coached badly.
They're all getting coach badly at the youth level, and
that's why they're not good here, all five hundred thousand.
(38:00):
Because you look at a guy like Christian Polisic, who, Okay,
coming into this, was he America's best player? Yes? Is
he still America's best player? No, Balligan, Tillman, Freeman, those
are your three studs. But Polistic would be on Belgium
maybe their fourth best player, fifth best player on France
to be their ninth best player. Okay. So what you're
telling me is is that this is youth sports fault
(38:22):
that they couldn't get any of these guys, any of
these kids, all five hundred thousand of them, there's nobody
good enough to be not just the best player in
the United States, but one of the best players in
the world. I'm not saying you had to go find
the next Messi or the next or the next Ronaldo, right,
because look at what happened. Would you ever think that, hey,
the next great striker in the world, where's he coming from? Norway?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Okay, So that's a little bit of luck, right, there's
a little bit of luck that Norway's got the best
striker in the world. But you're telling me that it's
youth sports fault that all hundred thousand kids that are
playing that continue to roll through. It's new five thousand
new kids every every year, all of them. It's youth
sports fault, not being coached the right way, and that's
why we can't get at least a couple of players
to play at the top of the world class level.
(39:06):
That's a load of crap. And honestly, I'm embarrassed because
but most of the people saying this, or you know
a lot of people just pay attention to soccer a
little bit. But to overall to have this conversation go,
yeah's youth sports. No, either you're lazy or you have
an extra grind because your club sport isn't going how
you thought it would go well, or at the sub
layer of laziness of well, all our best athletes go
(39:27):
play football and basketball, go watch some of these matches
across these suspect clubs and travel sports. Yeah, they can
all go pound saying what an awful, specious, pathetic argument.
That is such a load of crap. That's such a
load of crap.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and The iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
App joining us now on the hotline is the men
who bought that jersey. Wow, it's Fox Sports one NBA
insider extraordinaia, Rick Buker. Rick. What credit card did you
use to buy that Brunson jersey? Uh?
Speaker 5 (40:11):
My daughters?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Oh gok, can I have the miles?
Speaker 5 (40:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
She's the one who got the nil money. So I'm like, hey, yeah,
here you go.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Okay, have very good.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
One basketball from one basketball silo to another. Well, let's
get this done.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
We.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
By the way, I will say this, first of all,
it's way past July one, so I don't know if
we should be having this conversation. But that said, and
Mike don't hate me for saying this. We really, and
I'm gonna talk about this on my podcast coming Out
to Buy tomorrow at the latest. We we really have
(40:51):
not talked about Jalen Brunson enough in terms of how
he represents something so different from what the NBA has
become and how gratifying it is to see someone like
Jalen Brunson rewarded the man. The man left one hundred
(41:13):
million dollars on the table. Just I believe it was
that something.
Speaker 4 (41:17):
Like that.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Big figure just for the opportunity to play for a championship,
not knowing whether he would get it, but just to
give himself an opportunity, and he ultimately got that reward.
And I just let's go back through time and think
about in the NBA the last player to do that.
(41:41):
We can think of the Tom Brady's. I mean, maybe
Tim Duncan had opportunity to push the end envelope, but
as far as the NBA concerned, Jalen Brunson deserves to
be in the Tom bra Brady category of guys that
did not put their pocketbooks ahead of their aspect operations.
(42:01):
And I just don't you know, in this day and age,
I feel like we need to give that more attention
than we have.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
So I'm going to well, he's going to make up
for it because he's getting a grand per photo at
fanatics Fest. That's not even adding an autograph, that's just
standing there and kind kind of looking in the camera's
general direction. Rick and it sold out in minutes.
Speaker 5 (42:23):
I got to say, with the general demeanor of Jalen Brunson,
like I love the man and I love watching him play,
I really don't need a photo of him like he's
he looks perpetually grumpy and mildly interested. Why would I
want a photo of that?
Speaker 1 (42:41):
You know, I paid one thousand dollars and I stood
in line for three hours for him to just share.
You know what we have him honestly, you know we
haven't talked about enough, right because I agree with you
on Jalen Brunts. Of course, could we've talked a lot
about him here Rick.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
That that was the case.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
After the finals, the Knicks had a Jay Brunson look
alike contest. Yes, and the thirty people who were there
for it, it was like it was like into the
Spider Verse where all the different Spider men show up
and like all these people that looks somewhat like Jeff.
Here's an older jailing Brunt. Here's here's a shorter jail
in Brunson. This is a taller, heavier jailing Brunson. Like
(43:19):
all of those people like, I want a thirty for
thirty on all of those people like there was That's
something that visual is amazing.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
It's scary how many people actually look like Jalen Brunson.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, see he is our every man. So maybe like
five guys would show up, but you see there's like
fifty people up and down there that could be Brunson,
that could be bruns. But now the more important question
Rick the grandmother who looked like Jalen Brunson, that was
the scary one. Well, you know full range, but I mean,
how badly does this wrist injury push the Knicks back
(43:51):
in their quest to repeat? I had to do that
for my guy Smith over here. Yeah, n here's the thing, Rick,
I got a deal for you. You want a deal,
here's a deal for you. Here's a deal for it.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
We will never I don't even get the answer.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
No.
Speaker 5 (44:07):
You can say yes or no.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
He's no.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Here's the thing. You can say or no. You can
say yes or no.
Speaker 5 (44:13):
No. I don't want your deal, Okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
All right, I guess I got no deal. I won't
give Rick Buker any of that money.
Speaker 5 (44:19):
Okay, Jason, Jason, what's your deal?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Here's a dream. We will never talk about the Knicks
again on the air. You and I on your end,
you have to have every single person who showed up
at the Jalen Brunson lookalike contest. Every week you have
one person as a guest on your on the Ball podcast.
(44:43):
So for forty weeks in a row. You have one
of those guys and you got an interview him for
ten minutes. Oh and will never talk about the Knicks again.
That's a book. There you go.
Speaker 5 (44:55):
You know how long it's taken me to build the
audience for my podcast. I am not wasted. I'm merely
on the ability to not have you talk about the
next So no, no, I'm sorry. I appreciate the offer.
I genuinely do, and clearly you gave it a lot
of thought and it's a sacrifice on your part. Now,
(45:16):
but I will, I will, I will politely pass.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Okay. Actually, I just had a lot of coffee tonight
and the idea just came to me. But that I
just wonder what happens if the sixth person comes on
and go. I just happened to be walking through. I
didn't know. I don't even know. It was a contest,
all right. Ex So to the business of the off season,
the long the decision, and we see the money is
flowing in in the marketplace. How soon is Lebron James
(45:43):
announcing his Cleveland cavalieredom?
Speaker 5 (45:46):
Wait, what money is flowing into.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
The there's a seventy five million dollar Calshi market on
where he ends up. Oh about fifty of it is
on Cleveland, and it's all on Rick's daughter's credit card.
I don't know that Giannis has any money put in there,
but there you go.
Speaker 5 (46:01):
Right, I look, I don't know that there's a first
of all, that it's three. It's down to three Eastern
Conference teams. Is no surprise at all, right, because he
doesn't he doesn't want to play in the West. I
don't know that there's a team in the West outside
of Golden State. I think genuinely, mistakenly would probably go
down that road because they're still chasing the dragon Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I think what the.
Speaker 5 (46:27):
Tricky part for me is, I mean, bottom line is
Cleveland still makes without question the most sense, both for
the Cavaliers but maybe more importantly for Lebron James, because
while we can talk about him going back to Miami,
the fact of the matter is, and I think pat
(46:47):
Riley would would have him back if it makes them
a better team and gives them a better chance of winning.
He's going to go in there with guys that are
stabl established in their own right. I mean, there's no
question in that he is going to be the third
wheel and treated as such, with Bam Autebaio the established
star there and Janni Santetecumpo, neither of whom have any
(47:11):
prior sort of relationship or deference toward toward Lebron in Philadelphia,
sort of the same thing. They got Jalen Brown there,
they got the young guns. Like I'm sure that they
would be respectful of him, but again, there's a lot
of mouths to feed, and he's going to be He's
(47:34):
going to be down the chain of command just by
virtue of the talent that they have there. Cleveland makes
the most sense because it's a homecoming, because of there's
no personality bigger than him there at this point. And
I do like their chances you add him to Cleveland. Yes,
(47:55):
they got swept and none of the games were close
with the Knicks, and I don't know that I would
certainly I wouldn't think of Cleveland as the favorite if
he went there. But I think there's a world in
which he makes them better and and and maybe more important,
it's the sentimental him going back to Cleveland. He's going
(48:15):
to have a stature that he wouldn't have in Philadelphia.
And I really don't think under the current structure of
the Miami Heat that he would that he would have
it there. So for all those reasons, Cleveland really only
makes uh makes sense to me, and I think that
that's and talking to people in the league, that's generally
(48:37):
what they've said is that that that makes sense from
both ends, and that this waiting game is simply because
Lebron loves the intention and loves the attention. He loves
the intrigue. He loves everybody talking about him on a
daily basis, saying where's he going to go? You know
who's do? I take exception with Sham's. You know, he's
(48:59):
sifting through his offers. I mean, what are we doing here?
At least at least he should say he's sifting through
his offers. According to Rich Paul and Lebron James put it.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Let's give it.
Speaker 5 (49:15):
That context because we're talking. I mean, Philadelphia signed Dean
Wade to a four year, thirty million dollar deal.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
They only have.
Speaker 5 (49:25):
Minimum money to offer Lebron at this stage, and they
do have two roster spots open in Philadelphia, so they
could take on Lebron and Bronny. But it's not like
anybody's waiting for him. They continue to build out their
rosters and sign people, and they have their cores intact.
(49:45):
So would any one of these three teams could they see,
you know, adding Lebron and him making them better. Sure,
but this this idea that he's in the same place
that he was the summer of Lebron in two thousand
and two or at any prior point in his career
when he had the option of being a free agent,
(50:06):
is just you know, delusional. And I get why Rich
is presenting it this way. Why he did the grease
sport and you know, had the whatever number of teams
and how he fit into the roster and the starting
lineup and all of that, But that's Rich Paul trying
(50:27):
to create leverage out of nothing. It's not the reality
of these teams are you know, with baited breath waiting
for Lebron to tell them that they're the chosen ones
that happened in twenty ten. For sure, that's not happening now.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
See for me, it's pretty simple, Rick, is that I've
said Cleveland for a year because if you're looking at
how his end game is going, and it'll probably be
a couple of years wherever he signs he's still got
a couple of years left playing at this We've never
seen a guy at forty one in any sport play
at this high level ever. I mean, just to give
them credit for what's going on here. But number one,
(51:02):
it's the softest landing for him because if he doesn't win,
instead of getting made fun of and people laughing, and
you know how much he likes that, he has the
soft landing of, well, it's my goodbye and I went home.
I'm just a kid from Akron. I could say goodbye.
But the other part of it is that is Lebron
really going to very publicly have this down to three
teams and the Cavaliers be one of them. And at
(51:23):
the end he says, no, I'm not going home, Like
I just can't believe at this point, Like I think
if if that was a possibility, there would be no
talk about the Cavaliers or they would have been ruled
out by now.
Speaker 5 (51:32):
So the fat many times could I break those people's hearts?
Let me see right right? Like Like what I mean,
if you're a Cleveland fan, you're like Lebron, what the
hell did we ever do to you? Like?
Speaker 3 (51:45):
How many times are you going to.
Speaker 5 (51:46):
Do this to us, No, I think I think there's
a lot of I think there's a lot of truth
to that. And ultimately, look, wherever he goes, I don't
see them winning a championship. And at this point, you know,
how much of an impact that he can he can have,
Like like the Lakers. The Lakers exceeded expectations, but let's
(52:11):
not ignore the fact that they were at their best
when Luka Doncic and Austin Reeves were healthy and Lebron
was accepting of the being the third option. Like that's
what this is about. It's like, how can he exit gracefully?
And and to your point, you know, I would take
(52:33):
a page from Klay Thompson's experience in Dallas, Like I
always said, Golden, you know, Clay should have bit the
bullet and stayed with the Warriors because of all of
the goodwill that he had engendered from being part of
all those championships. You go someplace else and they go, well, hey,
what are you doing for us now? Like what like
(52:55):
we find you won those championships for somebody else, You
those great years for somebody else, Like, what are you
doing for us? If he goes to Philadelphia or he
goes back to Miami. I think there is there is
more of that. In fact, I don't even know why
we're talking about Philadelphia. Really, Miami's probably in the second
spot in terms of teams that I could see it
(53:18):
being understandable. But again to your point, if he chooses
Miami over Cleveland again, oh my god, it's just I
just at least, at the very least, he's got to
go back to Greenwich and have another sit down and go, yeah,
I'm taking my talents to South Beach again.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
There you go real quick for you. I know you're
at summer League. What's got tongues wagon? What are you
most excited to see?
Speaker 5 (53:48):
Actually I'm not there yet. I will be there first
thing in the morning. But I think I think in general,
it's simply to see the top picks. You know, see
see Darren were Peterson. We've seen some of him in
the Salt Lake Summer League, but a number. I mean,
(54:09):
this is such an intriguing draft and Darius Acuff, like
is he the real deal? And how does he match
up against some of the other guys that were picked
around him? Caleb Love, I can't wait to see what
he looks like with Chicago, because I think that he
could be the dark horse, and I mean just go
(54:31):
down the line. There are so many guys that were
so highly touted and I'm not sure that we got
them in the right order. And for me, this is
always the first opportunity to see the guys where you
go ooh, that guy is better than people thought that
he was and against pro talent and that guy might
(54:52):
struggle at this level because he doesn't have the same
physical advantage.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
That he had at the collegiate level.
Speaker 5 (54:57):
So I think that that really these first couple days
at least, because that's you know, after that they usually
shut down the top guys. I think these first couple
of days is really going to be about measuring those five, six,
seven top picks and who comes out of Summer League
carrying the mantle of these are guys that are actually
(55:17):
going to have an impact as rookies.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
You can follow him on Twitter at Rick Buker, That
is at Rick Buker. You can see him at Summer
League play this week and yeah, he begins the first
of forty interviews with all the Jalen Brunson lookalike, jud Cree,
Jungle Wild, dreams of made up. Rick is always buddy.
Appreciate it, man, We'll talk to you.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
Have fine money, Jim Greg, Jim Gray Yo,
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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