June 18, 2025 • 29 mins
Ric Bucher stops by The Herd to talk about Caitlin Clark's impact on the WNBA, LeBron James' comments on "ring culture", the NBA Finals and more
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Herd podcast. Be sure to
catch us live every weekday on Fox Sports Radio in
noon to three Eastern nine am to noon Pacific. Find
your local station for The Herd at Fox Sports Radio
dot com, or stream us live every day on the
iHeartRadio app by searching Fox Sports Radio or FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Well, we all watched the finals. We're watching Caitlin Clark
Lebron James comments, which I feel like is a little projection,
little strawman argument on rings. Rick Buker now joins us live.
Let's let's start with Caitlin Clark. And I've said the
advantage to being in any business for a long time
is you're rarely shocked. You're occasionally surprised, but you've seen
(00:51):
everything three times. And so I can remember the Michael Jordan,
Steph Curry early years when these flashy, transformative players came in,
and I remember this with Hacker Shack. You're not quite
sure how to officiate them, how to defend them, and
when they score, they can humiliate you. Karl Malone could
(01:11):
score on you, he didn't humiliate you. Shack dunking on you.
Sean Kemp, Caitlin Clark thirty three footers, and I think
the league's trying to kind of figure out a lot.
So my take is this is part of the process.
It starts with physicality, trapping technicals, an ejection. They went
(01:32):
and got Sophie Cunningham, who can be the Charles Oakley
and protector. I think it's part of the process. I
think people are overreacting.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
What say you Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I do believe that part of it is her ability
to embarrass opponents, But I also believe a big part
of it is that she is going to talk trash
and she walks like I'm going to embarrass you, and
that contributes to the reaction. And that's the part that
The problem that I have is that she's being portrayed
(02:03):
by way too many people.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Is this sweet, sweet.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Caitlin Clark from Iowa, and she's being beaten up by
these big, bad WNBA players who resent her. Look, she's
a bit of a flopper. She's certainly a trash talker.
And the biggest issue I have is she'll do the
pushing back and forth and she'll talk trash and then
(02:27):
she walks away as if nothing is happening, and then
she gets bumped and she goes down. Look, if you're
going to talk trash, if you're going to push people,
if you're gonna get in their face, then stand up
and chances are you're not going to fall over when
you get pushed. So I feel like she contributes to this,
and there's a lot of people out there that are
(02:47):
feeding into it like she's being treated in this malicious way.
The reality is she brings it on. She gives as
good as she gets. But I do think that a
big part of it is because you've got, first of all,
you have competitive women out there who were here before
she was, and she's walking in like I'm all that,
(03:10):
and they're going to push back on that.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then having a having a college.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Hooper daughter's who's pretty good. She's told me about the
back and forth it goes on. Women are going to
move back and forth. I think we're not really accustomed
to seeing it and seeing them compete in the nasty
way that they that they can. It doesn't fit our
(03:36):
profile of women, and yet when you put them on
a basketball court or on a field of play, they
are they're very much like men, if.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Not more so. You know, rick I said this too,
and and I had noticed this. I wasn't a big
WNBA fan. It's not a vertical league. Nobody jumps over
anybody to score a horizontal league. It's actually been a
chippy league, ye for fifteen years this. I know people
that watch the WNBA, and I asked them last year.
They're like, this league has been dirty and chippy. And
(04:07):
by the way, I'm not knocking them, but they don't
jump over you to score. Yeah, they put a shoulder
down that I think that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
No, there's there is a physicality to the women's game
and inherent physicality, and you're right, part of it is
because it is a it's not a vertical vertical league.
It's not a vertical competition, so there's that. But look,
I went to the Seattle Valkyries game over the weekend
and and there was just as much chippiness there. So
(04:37):
anybody who thinks this is a Caitlin Clark phenomenon, no,
it is a w NBA phenomenon. And if you don't
watch it on a regular basis, then the physicality in
the way that they play in the contact is going
to shock you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So I think I've mostly been a Lebron fan. But
I but I said today when he talked with on
his podcast with Steve and it was a bit of
a straw man argument where he said, you know, the idea,
this whole ring culture thing, that am I supposed to
believe that Alan Iverson is not great or Charles Barkley
is a great And my take is everybody knows they're great.
Nobody's ever said they're not great. But the difference between
(05:15):
MJ and Barkley is the rings. The difference between Marino
and Brady isn't talent, it's the rings. And my take
is Lebron now is not in the bubble, the NBA
ring bubble. He's not going to win that. He knows it,
and now he's trying to kind of marginalize rings. They
what did you do the first fifteen years of your career.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, Look, there is an argument to be made that
the ring culture has gone too far as far as
how we judge NBA players. There's no doubt about that.
There's too much conversation about that, and we should have
some discussion about it. Lebron James just isn't the one
to delete that conversation because he literally changed teams three
(05:54):
times chasing rings. He saw what the Miami Heat worried is.
You know what, I want to go back to Cleveland
and get one. He utilized all their resources.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
He got one there.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
He said, let me go to La let me finish
up there. I'm going to get one more. So there's
no question that what I believe is driving this conversation
now is that Lebron knows that he's essentially done. He's
not going to add any more accolades to his accomplishments.
And he's still and he realizes he's short of winning
(06:28):
the goat conversation. So let me try to change the
narrative or the measuring stick in order to see if
I can convince people that I actually am the greatest
of all time in spite of the fact that I
only won four out of ten trips to the finals.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So you know, the difference between really good players and
great players is often consistency. Now, you could say that
Halliburton no points in game five, just an all time stinker.
A star can't do that. Yeah, and it's probably Chris
Bosh had a finals game like that. My take is
Halliburton's probably closer to Bosh than Lebron Right. He's a
(07:07):
really special player. And I do think the NBA going
forward is going to be point guard driven because you
can't have stack rosters and you need players who can
elevate others SGA can do that, you know, Brunson's haliburt.
My take is, did we get too hot on Halliburton?
Did we get too infatuated? Myself included with Halliburton? And
(07:27):
he's a good player, He's not a great player.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
The tricky part with Halliburton is that he made a
number of game winning shots, miraculous game winning shots, and
yet I think at his heart that's not who he is.
He's a facilitator and he's a distributor, and he's capable
of making those shots, and those are superstar moments. But
I'm not going to judge him strictly on his points.
I'm going to judge him on how much flow The
(07:54):
Indiana Pacers offense has because their secret sauce has been
they have multiple guys who can score, and haller Burton
has been at the heart of that, getting you big shots,
making big shots when he needs to. But for the
most part, it's his dribble penetration, getting into the paint
and either shooting from there or as a result of
(08:15):
the defense collapsing, getting easy looks for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And my great.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Issue with him in Game four and game and particularly
Game five is that he didn't.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Have that same aggression.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And we've seen that lack of aggression at various times,
and it is just crucial to the Indiana Pacers being
all that they can be. So I've said that he's
not a superstar, that he's a superstar in the making,
and I still, at twenty five years old, I don't
want to close the door on his potential of growing
(08:48):
into that. But superstars, for me, you never question whether
they're going some of theing. They may not get it done,
but you never question whether they are going to try.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
To get it done.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
There's just been too many instances injury aside throughout these
playoffs where every now and then you have a Halliburton
game where you think, where is he, what's he doing?
Why is he playing so passively. I've just never known
the superstars as I defined them, where you ever question
that they may not get it done. Derek Rose didn't
(09:20):
always get it done. He was steinmy by the Miami
Heat when they met in the Eastern Conference Finals. But
I never got the sense that Derek Rose wasn't trying
to get it done.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Herd weekdays
and Neon Easter, not a im Pacific.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Okay, So I'm a KD fan. I don't always love
his choices, but I'm a fan. Only two guys in
the NBA scored twenty five points a game and shot
forty percent from threes. Yokichen KD. Yet he doesn't appear
to have a big market.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
He wants a new contract, but he's not getting a max.
He may get two years, one hundred million, whatever. He
is still the number one rated jump shooter in the
league according to the analytics, and he's twenty six And yeah,
where's the market. He's a good guy. He's not a
disrupt I mean that Brooklyn thing was a mess. He wasn't. Yeah,
Phoenix was a mess. He wasn't. Yeah, where's this Why
(10:11):
I don't get it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
First of all, the New York situation is a result
of I believe the reason they don't have any interest
is because Jim Dolan is one of the most vindictive
owners that there are in sports and back in twenty nineteen,
Kevin Durant not only spurned the Knicks, but he spurned
them for the Brooklyn Nets, the team next door, and
(10:33):
that's stuck in Jim Dolan's cross. So the fact that
they're not interested in getting him, I believe is driven
first and foremost by the owner and the history.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Also Rich Climan.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Kd's guy was looking to be the team president of
the Knicks at one point, and I'm sure Leon Rose
doesn't want that competition.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So that's the New York Knicks.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
But by and large, at thirty seven years old, this
is a a little bit like the Jimmy Butler situation.
It's not so much the teams don't want KD and
couldn't use KD as much as what are we going
to have to give up for him? And are we
going to have to extend him? And if we're going
to extend him how much? And the teams that could
(11:17):
really use him are these young teams that have a
lot of pieces and as we saw with OKC, look
a year ago, they didn't get out of the second round,
a lot of people were like, oh, should they go back,
should they go get KD? Should they go get a superstar,
established superstar as the final piece, and they decided, you
know what, No, We're going to let our young guys
(11:37):
grow and develop, and that makes more sense than giving
up a bunch of our young guys to go have
a short term rental. That's essentially what KD is at
this point. And I think the reason that you're not
seeing a more robust market for him is because teams
are looking at it and saying, I don't know that
within a year for what we might have to give
(11:59):
up up that KD really moves the needle at this point,
in spite of his individual numbers and the Phoenix situation.
To your point, like he went in there didn't move
the needle. You got Devin Booker and you got Bradley Beal.
You had enough pieces around him where you thought that KD,
if he's still capable of elevating a team that at
(12:22):
the very least, at the very least, he was going
to get them into the postseason and he was unable
to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Rick Buke Riseula's Buke's great scene. He man appreciate it
stopping by You got it? Yeah, it's I'm a Durant fan,
so I like buckets. I like easy buckets. J Mack
with a news.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
No turn on the news. This is the headline.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
News rack we've got. Lamar Jackson joking to media listen.
It was a tough loss back in January to the Bills.
Obviously Lamar didn't play great two turnovers, but it was
Mark Andrews who dropped the potential game time two point conversion.
Speaking for the first time since that playoff loss, Lamar
Jackson talks about seeking revenge.
Speaker 7 (13:09):
I don't think I'll get over any loss, to be honest,
I got lost this from youth football. That still hunting me,
you know, so I'll never get over us. I don't
care how small it may be to someone else or how.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Great it might be.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
It's always the same for me.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
It's football.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Everything not gonna go await man. You know before it
was like, oh, you can't win a playoff game.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
No, we won a playoff game.
Speaker 7 (13:26):
We got to the LC Championship two years ago and
we just fell short, like two games short.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
This year.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
But we don't bounce back and we've come back. I
feel like we're gonna have mess on our mind.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
He's gonna get one, Jay Maxos, Josh Allen gonna get one.
What big trophy? Joe Flatko got a trophy? Lamar Jackson
and Josh Allen different.
Speaker 8 (13:47):
Era, different now, I mean you think Lamar's breaking through?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Come?
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yep? Absolutely absolutely? Can you give me like a timetable
on that or next two years? Wow?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Bold takes here on a Wednesday, Colin, Let's move on
to the NBA.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Oh jeez.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Doc Rivers probably the biggest choke artist from the coaching
spot in NBA history.
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Sorry, it's just the facts, you know.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
He's talking about this Yana situation. Will Will Yanni's request
to trade blah blah blah Will. Doc Rivers called out
the bogus rumors around his superstar in Milwaukee.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
No, I don't know how many more times Giannis has
to say he wants to be a buck and he
wants to win a title with a buck in it.
And it's so cool to me, you know, because it's
not the way it's done anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
But what a with certain guys.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
You know, I don't think Steph Curry would ever leave
Golden State ever, And I'm open obviously Yannis is the
same way. That's the way he's been so parent and
it's been great, it's been awesome.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well that's fine, But then I don't know how you
rebuild this roster. All I know is I'm looking around
the lead at what Orlando just did. Orlando is now
four elite players, Indiana four elite players. Is the young
kid ben Benedict Mathern. He's going to be, I think
(15:14):
by next year a really really special player, and he's
got for New York's not going anywhere. Boston eventually will
be good again. So I mean they'll be good, they'll
be great again. I just think if you look at Milwaukee, Okay,
you got you got the ten thousand dollars chandelier. What's
the rest of the house, like, you got to get
me something besides the sports car in the front yard.
What's the house? Like?
Speaker 8 (15:34):
Here's the problem, Colin.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
So we're seeing in these NBA playoffs youth and depth
are driving forces.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Indiana, Minnesota obviously.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Okay, see, do you know when you look at Milwaukee's roster,
how many guys they have over thirty who are in
the rotation.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
They're an old, broken team. I'm sorry to say it,
but with Dan Lillard and the Achilles out for next season,
I mean, are they bringing back Lopez, who is now
like in a mid thirties. I just I don't see
a path to anything right. And people are saying, oh,
Yannis is a nice guy, he won't ask.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
For a trade. Well all right, Well Yiannis will stay
irrelevant for the next five years in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, they got a championship like Denver, if Yo Kic won,
If Yo Kich I mean right now, for Jokich, you'd
get four first round picks, an all star, and two reserves. Now,
you're not trading Yokisch, but Yannis is going to get
somewhere in that ballpark. Yo Kich is better than Yannis.
Better pass there. Yeah, so I mean, and not the injury.
(16:31):
So Jokic is better than Yannis. But Yannis is going
to get your four first rounds. And like I've said that,
Houston would have to give me Sheng Goon four first
round picks and two other guys that are either number
five starters or like first guy off the bench.
Speaker 8 (16:51):
So here's the thing.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
It doesn't take that long to turn the Titanic around.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
Look at ok Colin.
Speaker 6 (16:58):
That's right, it was then three years there act together.
You just got to make the right moves. Trading Giannis
is the first right move bottom out, you'll have a
top five Picnics year. Let's wrap up with baseball, Colin,
how about this one. My Yankees lost their season high
fifth straight last night for nothing to the Angels. Worst
part is it was their third.
Speaker 8 (17:17):
Straight game getting shut out.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
They have a scoreless streak of twenty nine innings.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
At the end of last night's game, Yankees broadcaster Michael
k kind.
Speaker 8 (17:26):
Of went off.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Listen to them, and here's the payoff swing in a
minus and that will do it.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
As the Yankees get shut out for the third straight time,
only the seventh time in the franchise's history. What started
in nineteen oh three? That they've been shut out into
three consecutive games, twenty nine straight scoreless innings. And when
you see a lineup with this sort of talent base,
it's almost incomprehensible that they have been shut down to
(17:55):
this extent.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Well, did they fire their hitting cut coach? Colin?
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I listen, I don't want to go overboard.
Speaker 8 (18:05):
What is this like?
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Honestly, are we freaking out about three games out of
one hundred.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
And sixty two? What is that? The equator? Like a
bad half for Patrick Maholmes.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Well, and you have the best hitter in the lineup
in that lineup, and that means the guys before and
after him were getting good pitches. It's kind of not acceptable.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
It just feels what three gates. You can't have a
bad three game stretch. Listen, I'll be honest. Aaron Judge
a couple of weeks ago was flirting with four hundred.
He's on a two for twenty streak, so that that's
out the window. But like, come on, man, everybody, I felt, listen,
you have a clunker every now and then.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
Let's be real.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay, Yeah, well I don't, but I understand your metaphor.
I would say this because they're paying Aaron Judge and
John Carloston and Garren Garrett Cole so much money. So
John Carlo Stanton's hurt, Garrett Cole's hurt, so that two
of their big contracts aren't playing. Well, what's the problem
with the Ross is uneven? I noticed it in the
(19:02):
World Series last year, is that when you watch them
against the Dodgers, they had holes defensively, they had holes
in their roster. They really were only viable in the
game's Garrett Cole pitch. So it's a It's like we
always talk about the Dallas Cowboys are top heavy. I
mean Garrett Cole, Aaron Judge, John Carlos Stanton are making
a fortune and they don't. They're not as aggressive upstairs
(19:24):
as they were in the George ste I mean George
Steinberner here. So my takeaway is this team was out
of World Series contention when Garrett Cole got hurt. They're
too top heavy. It'd be like Ceedee Lamb getting hurt.
Oh you did. They're out of that. I don't care
what their record is. This is not a World Series
winning team. Real to the Podres, Cubs, Tigers.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
You don't think the Yankees can get to the World.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Series, not without Garrett Cole. No. I think there's holes
in their lineup. My bat Stanton just came back, so
he is now back. He was gone for a long time.
So I mean, I just I look at the Yankee
and it's it's a bit if you and I'm not
somebody that sits and watched the Yankees every night, but
(20:06):
this team feels like there's holes in the roster. Do
they manufacture runs ask? I don't know.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
They call it hold a time out timeout.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
They have the second best record in the American League.
They have the highest run differential in the American League
by sixteen runs.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Like I think the best team in the National League.
The National League is better than the.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
American Yeah it is, But I don't care about the
National League.
Speaker 8 (20:28):
I just got to get to the World Series. Then
let's see what happens.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
But like the idea that the Tigers are that much
better than the Yankees, Like, come on, you think.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
The Yanks better? But I guess my take is this
is that the minute Garrett Cole got hurt, it's not
a World Series team. It's not a World Series. It
can be a good team, it can win a division,
it's not a World Series team. And if you watch
them against the better rosters in baseball, there's holes in them.
(20:56):
So my question is around now, Stanton just just just
started playing, right, hasn't played? So now around Judge, before
Stanton came back, what is there? And now Stanton's back,
so he'll you know, it take him a while to
get back in it and played in a long time.
So I just don't know if this is the kind
of roster that if Aaron Judge and he's on a slump.
(21:18):
So if Aaron Judge is in a slump, you said
he was two for twenty, how are they scoring runs?
How are they manufacturing runs?
Speaker 6 (21:25):
All my Yankee fans on the East Coast, so listen
to this, are going to clip it off and when
they're headed to the World Series in October, just tag
you left and right and be like coward.
Speaker 8 (21:35):
Don't count the Yankees out.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I mean, I would say this, they're very Aaron Judge
on a heater dependent. The minute Garrett Cole is out,
they are very By the way, the Dodgers are not
Mookie Bett's dependent or Freddie Freeman dependent. Oh, Tawny's great,
but if he goes, you know he draws the caller
and doesn't get a hit. They win games. They got
(21:58):
Max Munsey, they got so and I feel the same
way with the Padres. The Podres are a good team
that didn't last year they lost like one of their
best pitchers late. They were still a great team. So
I remember this Yankee team last year had Sodo. Okay,
so they lost Garrett Cole to start the season. John
Carlos Stanton was gone until two games ago. They don't
(22:20):
have Sodo. It's not the same team. It's not the
same you know, they can't manufacture runs. When Aaron Judge
is not hitting, he is the heart. He is the
heartbeat of that offense. That's my take from from from
thousands of miles away. Jmack with the news.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Well, that's the news, and thanks for stopping by the.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Herd Line News Alight, wrap it up next to Herd.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays
and Noone easternn A Empacific.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Jmack Sophie cunning Ham's jersey, the Indiana Fever, according to fanatics,
is officially sold out. The defender, the enforcer on the
Indiana Fever, who's a very attractive lady, but is also
the team's enforcer. She did the tackling at the end
(23:17):
of the game last night. She's got quite an ig,
quite a profile, Yes she does.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
She is very popular among young men who follow the
w NBA.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah fanatics, Navy Explorer Edition, fast Break replica jersey out
of stockw.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Nobody fan like six months ago and look at that
fellow UFC field to it, reacting to it. By the way,
the fans, if she had grabbed you like that by
the head you're coming up swinging that that. I thought
that was out of pocket. I get to defending Caitlin,
but that angle where she's just that's not a basketball play.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Come on, well she got you know she she ended
up leaving the floor there, so she I it really
is gripping it. That's really good television.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
It is.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I'll say this. You and I have talked about this.
We are loyal to interesting. Obviously, the NFL is a sport.
We talk about probably sixty five percent of the show,
seventy percent of the show. But even in the NFL,
we don't talk a lot of one o'clock window teams.
We don't do Carolina, we don't do a lot of Atlanta.
We don't do a lot of Houston, although they've gotten better.
(24:22):
We tend to talk about the biggest brands in the NFL.
By week six, I'm down to about twelve teams that
we talk about. Max. Same with college football mid October,
you're talking about a handful of teams. There are not
a lot of stories right now in American sports. There
are not a lot of stories more interesting than Caitlin Clark.
You start naming them, I mean, if Rory McElroy who's
(24:45):
going through kind of a weird cycle of anti media
and dysfunction. If he was, if he won the US
Open after winning the Masters, okay, that would be big.
She is the biggest story right now in sports. If
I would have told you five years ago, You're not
gonna believe this, but the w NBA is going to
(25:06):
trump the NBA Finals, and I'd be like, what happened?
It was there a moment. No, like all the time,
you talk about it all the time. I mean, we've
got stuff happening. Polisic stiff Arms, the United States men's
national team, the NBA Finals. We've got stuff happening. Aaron
Rodgers to the Steelers. This is more interesting. We just
(25:27):
had a US Open. We didn't talk about it. No juice.
This is this this league right now, and I shouldn't
say this league. Caitlin Clark and how the league officials
down are processing her and responding to her is absolutely fascinating.
And you can't argue about certain things. The late John
(25:49):
Madden used to talk about this all the time when
he worked at Fox. Some games just sound big, you know,
the Connecticut son in the Indiana fever does not sound big.
So the fact that it dominated half our show today.
It just tells you how significant and transformative Caitlin Clark is.
(26:11):
And I thought Rick Buker. Rick Buker said, hey, she's
not a victim all the time on this stuff. She's
bringing a little heat on herself.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The biggest issue I have is she'll do the pushing
back and forth, and she'll talk trash, and then she
walks away as if nothing is happening, and then she
gets bumped and she goes down. Look, if you're going
to talk trash, if you're going to push people, if
you're gonna get in their face, then stand up and
chances are you're not going to fall over when you
(26:39):
get pushed. So I feel like she contributes to this.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
The reality is she brings it on.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She gives as good as she gets.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I mean there's some truth in it. I think
if you look at the players that get tackled and get,
if not hazed, get a level of physicality for their game,
it tends to be players who have a certain aesthetic.
Michael Jordan could humiliate you, not just score on you.
(27:09):
Kobe Bryant got some stuff, Steph Curry. Caitlin Clark has
been a lot of great players in the NBA, but
they score their points undramatically. I mean there's I mean,
Aunt Edwards is the kind of guy that can be
really dramatic. You know. I just think her stylistically, some
(27:31):
of it the tongue out the thirty three footers, and
she's now starting to demand the ball. So she's getting
more performative on the court, which I think is great.
But I never thought of her as drawing attention. I
thought she was kind of awkward. But her interviews now
she got a little more, just a little more in
the last couple of weeks, and her in her style
is when she came back, it's almost like she got injured.
(27:56):
She was out five games, and it's almost it was
like a bye week in the NFL, like teams improved
dramatically off the bye week. You know, they start scouting themselves,
they're off the treadmill. It's almost like she left for
five games. She sort of watched the league and she
convinced herself, I'm not aggressive enough, Like I'm not aggressive enough,
(28:18):
because she came back and she was hyper aggressive and
even even the trash talking feels like it's gone up
another level. So she had She had played one hundred
and eighty five consecutive games going back to her freshman
year at Iowa, So she had been on the treadmill.
(28:39):
She hadn't she hadn't had a lot of time to
sit back and watch her team. She was the star,
she played the most minute, she took the most shots,
and she just got a couple of weeks off the
treadmill to watch the league, watch the games. And she
came back and she has got a little edge to her.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
Heymbercolin.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
When Lebron was took like a little sabbatical that one January,
I think he was in Cleveland and he vanished to
Miami for like, yeah, eight or nine days.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
Classic. I need a little breather. Can't look Clark at
the breather comes back and is breathing.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Fire, and the players are responding, and they did last night.
We'll see you tomorrow. It's a hurt.
Thanks for listening to The Herd podcast. Be sure to
catch us live every weekday on Fox Sports Radio in
noon to three Eastern nine am to noon Pacific. Find
your local station for The Herd at Fox Sports Radio
dot com, or stream us live every day on the
iHeartRadio app by searching Fox Sports Radio or FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Well, we all watched the finals. We're watching Caitlin Clark
Lebron James comments, which I feel like is a little projection,
little strawman argument on rings. Rick Buker now joins us live.
Let's let's start with Caitlin Clark. And I've said the
advantage to being in any business for a long time
is you're rarely shocked. You're occasionally surprised, but you've seen
(00:51):
everything three times. And so I can remember the Michael Jordan,
Steph Curry early years when these flashy, transformative players came in,
and I remember this with Hacker Shack. You're not quite
sure how to officiate them, how to defend them, and
when they score, they can humiliate you. Karl Malone could
(01:11):
score on you, he didn't humiliate you. Shack dunking on you.
Sean Kemp, Caitlin Clark thirty three footers, and I think
the league's trying to kind of figure out a lot.
So my take is this is part of the process.
It starts with physicality, trapping technicals, an ejection. They went
(01:32):
and got Sophie Cunningham, who can be the Charles Oakley
and protector. I think it's part of the process. I
think people are overreacting.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
What say you Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I do believe that part of it is her ability
to embarrass opponents, But I also believe a big part
of it is that she is going to talk trash
and she walks like I'm going to embarrass you, and
that contributes to the reaction. And that's the part that
The problem that I have is that she's being portrayed
(02:03):
by way too many people.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Is this sweet, sweet.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Caitlin Clark from Iowa, and she's being beaten up by
these big, bad WNBA players who resent her. Look, she's
a bit of a flopper. She's certainly a trash talker.
And the biggest issue I have is she'll do the
pushing back and forth and she'll talk trash and then
(02:27):
she walks away as if nothing is happening, and then
she gets bumped and she goes down. Look, if you're
going to talk trash, if you're going to push people,
if you're gonna get in their face, then stand up
and chances are you're not going to fall over when
you get pushed. So I feel like she contributes to this,
and there's a lot of people out there that are
(02:47):
feeding into it like she's being treated in this malicious way.
The reality is she brings it on. She gives as
good as she gets. But I do think that a
big part of it is because you've got, first of all,
you have competitive women out there who were here before
she was, and she's walking in like I'm all that,
(03:10):
and they're going to push back on that.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then having a having a college.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Hooper daughter's who's pretty good. She's told me about the
back and forth it goes on. Women are going to
move back and forth. I think we're not really accustomed
to seeing it and seeing them compete in the nasty
way that they that they can. It doesn't fit our
(03:36):
profile of women, and yet when you put them on
a basketball court or on a field of play, they
are they're very much like men, if.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Not more so. You know, rick I said this too,
and and I had noticed this. I wasn't a big
WNBA fan. It's not a vertical league. Nobody jumps over
anybody to score a horizontal league. It's actually been a
chippy league, ye for fifteen years this. I know people
that watch the WNBA, and I asked them last year.
They're like, this league has been dirty and chippy. And
(04:07):
by the way, I'm not knocking them, but they don't
jump over you to score. Yeah, they put a shoulder
down that I think that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
No, there's there is a physicality to the women's game
and inherent physicality, and you're right, part of it is
because it is a it's not a vertical vertical league.
It's not a vertical competition, so there's that. But look,
I went to the Seattle Valkyries game over the weekend
and and there was just as much chippiness there. So
(04:37):
anybody who thinks this is a Caitlin Clark phenomenon, no,
it is a w NBA phenomenon. And if you don't
watch it on a regular basis, then the physicality in
the way that they play in the contact is going
to shock you.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So I think I've mostly been a Lebron fan. But
I but I said today when he talked with on
his podcast with Steve and it was a bit of
a straw man argument where he said, you know, the idea,
this whole ring culture thing, that am I supposed to
believe that Alan Iverson is not great or Charles Barkley
is a great And my take is everybody knows they're great.
Nobody's ever said they're not great. But the difference between
(05:15):
MJ and Barkley is the rings. The difference between Marino
and Brady isn't talent, it's the rings. And my take
is Lebron now is not in the bubble, the NBA
ring bubble. He's not going to win that. He knows it,
and now he's trying to kind of marginalize rings. They
what did you do the first fifteen years of your career.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, Look, there is an argument to be made that
the ring culture has gone too far as far as
how we judge NBA players. There's no doubt about that.
There's too much conversation about that, and we should have
some discussion about it. Lebron James just isn't the one
to delete that conversation because he literally changed teams three
(05:54):
times chasing rings. He saw what the Miami Heat worried is.
You know what, I want to go back to Cleveland
and get one. He utilized all their resources.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
He got one there.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
He said, let me go to La let me finish
up there. I'm going to get one more. So there's
no question that what I believe is driving this conversation
now is that Lebron knows that he's essentially done. He's
not going to add any more accolades to his accomplishments.
And he's still and he realizes he's short of winning
(06:28):
the goat conversation. So let me try to change the
narrative or the measuring stick in order to see if
I can convince people that I actually am the greatest
of all time in spite of the fact that I
only won four out of ten trips to the finals.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So you know, the difference between really good players and
great players is often consistency. Now, you could say that
Halliburton no points in game five, just an all time stinker.
A star can't do that. Yeah, and it's probably Chris
Bosh had a finals game like that. My take is
Halliburton's probably closer to Bosh than Lebron Right. He's a
(07:07):
really special player. And I do think the NBA going
forward is going to be point guard driven because you
can't have stack rosters and you need players who can
elevate others SGA can do that, you know, Brunson's haliburt.
My take is, did we get too hot on Halliburton?
Did we get too infatuated? Myself included with Halliburton? And
(07:27):
he's a good player, He's not a great player.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
The tricky part with Halliburton is that he made a
number of game winning shots, miraculous game winning shots, and
yet I think at his heart that's not who he is.
He's a facilitator and he's a distributor, and he's capable
of making those shots, and those are superstar moments. But
I'm not going to judge him strictly on his points.
I'm going to judge him on how much flow The
(07:54):
Indiana Pacers offense has because their secret sauce has been
they have multiple guys who can score, and haller Burton
has been at the heart of that, getting you big shots,
making big shots when he needs to. But for the
most part, it's his dribble penetration, getting into the paint
and either shooting from there or as a result of
(08:15):
the defense collapsing, getting easy looks for everybody else.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And my great.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Issue with him in Game four and game and particularly
Game five is that he didn't.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Have that same aggression.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And we've seen that lack of aggression at various times,
and it is just crucial to the Indiana Pacers being
all that they can be. So I've said that he's
not a superstar, that he's a superstar in the making,
and I still, at twenty five years old, I don't
want to close the door on his potential of growing
(08:48):
into that. But superstars, for me, you never question whether
they're going some of theing. They may not get it done,
but you never question whether they are going to try.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
To get it done.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
There's just been too many instances injury aside throughout these
playoffs where every now and then you have a Halliburton
game where you think, where is he, what's he doing?
Why is he playing so passively. I've just never known
the superstars as I defined them, where you ever question
that they may not get it done. Derek Rose didn't
(09:20):
always get it done. He was steinmy by the Miami
Heat when they met in the Eastern Conference Finals. But
I never got the sense that Derek Rose wasn't trying
to get it done.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Herd weekdays
and Neon Easter, not a im Pacific.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Okay, So I'm a KD fan. I don't always love
his choices, but I'm a fan. Only two guys in
the NBA scored twenty five points a game and shot
forty percent from threes. Yokichen KD. Yet he doesn't appear
to have a big market.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
He wants a new contract, but he's not getting a max.
He may get two years, one hundred million, whatever. He
is still the number one rated jump shooter in the
league according to the analytics, and he's twenty six And yeah,
where's the market. He's a good guy. He's not a
disrupt I mean that Brooklyn thing was a mess. He wasn't. Yeah,
Phoenix was a mess. He wasn't. Yeah, where's this Why
(10:11):
I don't get it? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
First of all, the New York situation is a result
of I believe the reason they don't have any interest
is because Jim Dolan is one of the most vindictive
owners that there are in sports and back in twenty nineteen,
Kevin Durant not only spurned the Knicks, but he spurned
them for the Brooklyn Nets, the team next door, and
(10:33):
that's stuck in Jim Dolan's cross. So the fact that
they're not interested in getting him, I believe is driven
first and foremost by the owner and the history.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Also Rich Climan.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Kd's guy was looking to be the team president of
the Knicks at one point, and I'm sure Leon Rose
doesn't want that competition.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
So that's the New York Knicks.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
But by and large, at thirty seven years old, this
is a a little bit like the Jimmy Butler situation.
It's not so much the teams don't want KD and
couldn't use KD as much as what are we going
to have to give up for him? And are we
going to have to extend him? And if we're going
to extend him how much? And the teams that could
(11:17):
really use him are these young teams that have a
lot of pieces and as we saw with OKC, look
a year ago, they didn't get out of the second round,
a lot of people were like, oh, should they go back,
should they go get KD? Should they go get a superstar,
established superstar as the final piece, and they decided, you
know what, No, We're going to let our young guys
(11:37):
grow and develop, and that makes more sense than giving
up a bunch of our young guys to go have
a short term rental. That's essentially what KD is at
this point. And I think the reason that you're not
seeing a more robust market for him is because teams
are looking at it and saying, I don't know that
within a year for what we might have to give
(11:59):
up up that KD really moves the needle at this point,
in spite of his individual numbers and the Phoenix situation.
To your point, like he went in there didn't move
the needle. You got Devin Booker and you got Bradley Beal.
You had enough pieces around him where you thought that KD,
if he's still capable of elevating a team that at
(12:22):
the very least, at the very least, he was going
to get them into the postseason and he was unable
to do that.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Rick Buke Riseula's Buke's great scene. He man appreciate it
stopping by You got it? Yeah, it's I'm a Durant fan,
so I like buckets. I like easy buckets. J Mack
with a news.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
No turn on the news. This is the headline.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
News rack we've got. Lamar Jackson joking to media listen.
It was a tough loss back in January to the Bills.
Obviously Lamar didn't play great two turnovers, but it was
Mark Andrews who dropped the potential game time two point conversion.
Speaking for the first time since that playoff loss, Lamar
Jackson talks about seeking revenge.
Speaker 7 (13:09):
I don't think I'll get over any loss, to be honest,
I got lost this from youth football. That still hunting me,
you know, so I'll never get over us. I don't
care how small it may be to someone else or how.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Great it might be.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
It's always the same for me.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
It's football.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Everything not gonna go await man. You know before it
was like, oh, you can't win a playoff game.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
No, we won a playoff game.
Speaker 7 (13:26):
We got to the LC Championship two years ago and
we just fell short, like two games short.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
This year.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
But we don't bounce back and we've come back. I
feel like we're gonna have mess on our mind.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
He's gonna get one, Jay Maxos, Josh Allen gonna get one.
What big trophy? Joe Flatko got a trophy? Lamar Jackson
and Josh Allen different.
Speaker 8 (13:47):
Era, different now, I mean you think Lamar's breaking through?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Come?
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yep? Absolutely absolutely? Can you give me like a timetable
on that or next two years? Wow?
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Bold takes here on a Wednesday, Colin, Let's move on
to the NBA.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Oh jeez.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Doc Rivers probably the biggest choke artist from the coaching
spot in NBA history.
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Sorry, it's just the facts, you know.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
He's talking about this Yana situation. Will Will Yanni's request
to trade blah blah blah Will. Doc Rivers called out
the bogus rumors around his superstar in Milwaukee.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
No, I don't know how many more times Giannis has
to say he wants to be a buck and he
wants to win a title with a buck in it.
And it's so cool to me, you know, because it's
not the way it's done anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
But what a with certain guys.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
You know, I don't think Steph Curry would ever leave
Golden State ever, And I'm open obviously Yannis is the
same way. That's the way he's been so parent and
it's been great, it's been awesome.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well that's fine, But then I don't know how you
rebuild this roster. All I know is I'm looking around
the lead at what Orlando just did. Orlando is now
four elite players, Indiana four elite players. Is the young
kid ben Benedict Mathern. He's going to be, I think
(15:14):
by next year a really really special player, and he's
got for New York's not going anywhere. Boston eventually will
be good again. So I mean they'll be good, they'll
be great again. I just think if you look at Milwaukee, Okay,
you got you got the ten thousand dollars chandelier. What's
the rest of the house, like, you got to get
me something besides the sports car in the front yard.
What's the house? Like?
Speaker 8 (15:34):
Here's the problem, Colin.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
So we're seeing in these NBA playoffs youth and depth
are driving forces.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Indiana, Minnesota obviously.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Okay, see, do you know when you look at Milwaukee's roster,
how many guys they have over thirty who are in
the rotation.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
They're an old, broken team. I'm sorry to say it,
but with Dan Lillard and the Achilles out for next season,
I mean, are they bringing back Lopez, who is now
like in a mid thirties. I just I don't see
a path to anything right. And people are saying, oh,
Yannis is a nice guy, he won't ask.
Speaker 6 (16:05):
For a trade. Well all right, Well Yiannis will stay
irrelevant for the next five years in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, they got a championship like Denver, if Yo Kic won,
If Yo Kich I mean right now, for Jokich, you'd
get four first round picks, an all star, and two reserves. Now,
you're not trading Yokisch, but Yannis is going to get
somewhere in that ballpark. Yo Kich is better than Yannis.
Better pass there. Yeah, so I mean, and not the injury.
(16:31):
So Jokic is better than Yannis. But Yannis is going
to get your four first rounds. And like I've said that,
Houston would have to give me Sheng Goon four first
round picks and two other guys that are either number
five starters or like first guy off the bench.
Speaker 8 (16:51):
So here's the thing.
Speaker 6 (16:52):
It doesn't take that long to turn the Titanic around.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
Look at ok Colin.
Speaker 6 (16:58):
That's right, it was then three years there act together.
You just got to make the right moves. Trading Giannis
is the first right move bottom out, you'll have a
top five Picnics year. Let's wrap up with baseball, Colin,
how about this one. My Yankees lost their season high
fifth straight last night for nothing to the Angels. Worst
part is it was their third.
Speaker 8 (17:17):
Straight game getting shut out.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
They have a scoreless streak of twenty nine innings.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (17:23):
At the end of last night's game, Yankees broadcaster Michael
k kind.
Speaker 8 (17:26):
Of went off.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Listen to them, and here's the payoff swing in a
minus and that will do it.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
As the Yankees get shut out for the third straight time,
only the seventh time in the franchise's history. What started
in nineteen oh three? That they've been shut out into
three consecutive games, twenty nine straight scoreless innings. And when
you see a lineup with this sort of talent base,
it's almost incomprehensible that they have been shut down to
(17:55):
this extent.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Well, did they fire their hitting cut coach? Colin?
Speaker 6 (18:02):
I listen, I don't want to go overboard.
Speaker 8 (18:05):
What is this like?
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Honestly, are we freaking out about three games out of
one hundred.
Speaker 8 (18:09):
And sixty two? What is that? The equator? Like a
bad half for Patrick Maholmes.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Well, and you have the best hitter in the lineup
in that lineup, and that means the guys before and
after him were getting good pitches. It's kind of not acceptable.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
It just feels what three gates. You can't have a
bad three game stretch. Listen, I'll be honest. Aaron Judge
a couple of weeks ago was flirting with four hundred.
He's on a two for twenty streak, so that that's
out the window. But like, come on, man, everybody, I felt, listen,
you have a clunker every now and then.
Speaker 8 (18:40):
Let's be real.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Okay, Yeah, well I don't, but I understand your metaphor.
I would say this because they're paying Aaron Judge and
John Carloston and Garren Garrett Cole so much money. So
John Carlo Stanton's hurt, Garrett Cole's hurt, so that two
of their big contracts aren't playing. Well, what's the problem
with the Ross is uneven? I noticed it in the
(19:02):
World Series last year, is that when you watch them
against the Dodgers, they had holes defensively, they had holes
in their roster. They really were only viable in the
game's Garrett Cole pitch. So it's a It's like we
always talk about the Dallas Cowboys are top heavy. I
mean Garrett Cole, Aaron Judge, John Carlos Stanton are making
a fortune and they don't. They're not as aggressive upstairs
(19:24):
as they were in the George ste I mean George
Steinberner here. So my takeaway is this team was out
of World Series contention when Garrett Cole got hurt. They're
too top heavy. It'd be like Ceedee Lamb getting hurt.
Oh you did. They're out of that. I don't care
what their record is. This is not a World Series
winning team. Real to the Podres, Cubs, Tigers.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
You don't think the Yankees can get to the World.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Series, not without Garrett Cole. No. I think there's holes
in their lineup. My bat Stanton just came back, so
he is now back. He was gone for a long time.
So I mean, I just I look at the Yankee
and it's it's a bit if you and I'm not
somebody that sits and watched the Yankees every night, but
(20:06):
this team feels like there's holes in the roster. Do
they manufacture runs ask? I don't know.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
They call it hold a time out timeout.
Speaker 6 (20:15):
They have the second best record in the American League.
They have the highest run differential in the American League
by sixteen runs.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Like I think the best team in the National League.
The National League is better than the.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
American Yeah it is, But I don't care about the
National League.
Speaker 8 (20:28):
I just got to get to the World Series. Then
let's see what happens.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
But like the idea that the Tigers are that much
better than the Yankees, Like, come on, you think.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
The Yanks better? But I guess my take is this
is that the minute Garrett Cole got hurt, it's not
a World Series team. It's not a World Series. It
can be a good team, it can win a division,
it's not a World Series team. And if you watch
them against the better rosters in baseball, there's holes in them.
(20:56):
So my question is around now, Stanton just just just
started playing, right, hasn't played? So now around Judge, before
Stanton came back, what is there? And now Stanton's back,
so he'll you know, it take him a while to
get back in it and played in a long time.
So I just don't know if this is the kind
of roster that if Aaron Judge and he's on a slump.
(21:18):
So if Aaron Judge is in a slump, you said
he was two for twenty, how are they scoring runs?
How are they manufacturing runs?
Speaker 6 (21:25):
All my Yankee fans on the East Coast, so listen
to this, are going to clip it off and when
they're headed to the World Series in October, just tag
you left and right and be like coward.
Speaker 8 (21:35):
Don't count the Yankees out.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I mean, I would say this, they're very Aaron Judge
on a heater dependent. The minute Garrett Cole is out,
they are very By the way, the Dodgers are not
Mookie Bett's dependent or Freddie Freeman dependent. Oh, Tawny's great,
but if he goes, you know he draws the caller
and doesn't get a hit. They win games. They got
(21:58):
Max Munsey, they got so and I feel the same
way with the Padres. The Podres are a good team
that didn't last year they lost like one of their
best pitchers late. They were still a great team. So
I remember this Yankee team last year had Sodo. Okay,
so they lost Garrett Cole to start the season. John
Carlos Stanton was gone until two games ago. They don't
(22:20):
have Sodo. It's not the same team. It's not the
same you know, they can't manufacture runs. When Aaron Judge
is not hitting, he is the heart. He is the
heartbeat of that offense. That's my take from from from
thousands of miles away. Jmack with the news.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Well, that's the news, and thanks for stopping by the.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Herd Line News Alight, wrap it up next to Herd.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays
and Noone easternn A Empacific.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Jmack Sophie cunning Ham's jersey, the Indiana Fever, according to fanatics,
is officially sold out. The defender, the enforcer on the
Indiana Fever, who's a very attractive lady, but is also
the team's enforcer. She did the tackling at the end
(23:17):
of the game last night. She's got quite an ig,
quite a profile, Yes she does.
Speaker 8 (23:22):
She is very popular among young men who follow the
w NBA.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah fanatics, Navy Explorer Edition, fast Break replica jersey out
of stockw.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
Nobody fan like six months ago and look at that
fellow UFC field to it, reacting to it. By the way,
the fans, if she had grabbed you like that by
the head you're coming up swinging that that. I thought
that was out of pocket. I get to defending Caitlin,
but that angle where she's just that's not a basketball play.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Come on, well she got you know she she ended
up leaving the floor there, so she I it really
is gripping it. That's really good television.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
It is.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I'll say this. You and I have talked about this.
We are loyal to interesting. Obviously, the NFL is a sport.
We talk about probably sixty five percent of the show,
seventy percent of the show. But even in the NFL,
we don't talk a lot of one o'clock window teams.
We don't do Carolina, we don't do a lot of Atlanta.
We don't do a lot of Houston, although they've gotten better.
(24:22):
We tend to talk about the biggest brands in the NFL.
By week six, I'm down to about twelve teams that
we talk about. Max. Same with college football mid October,
you're talking about a handful of teams. There are not
a lot of stories right now in American sports. There
are not a lot of stories more interesting than Caitlin Clark.
You start naming them, I mean, if Rory McElroy who's
(24:45):
going through kind of a weird cycle of anti media
and dysfunction. If he was, if he won the US
Open after winning the Masters, okay, that would be big.
She is the biggest story right now in sports. If
I would have told you five years ago, You're not
gonna believe this, but the w NBA is going to
(25:06):
trump the NBA Finals, and I'd be like, what happened?
It was there a moment. No, like all the time,
you talk about it all the time. I mean, we've
got stuff happening. Polisic stiff Arms, the United States men's
national team, the NBA Finals. We've got stuff happening. Aaron
Rodgers to the Steelers. This is more interesting. We just
(25:27):
had a US Open. We didn't talk about it. No juice.
This is this this league right now, and I shouldn't
say this league. Caitlin Clark and how the league officials
down are processing her and responding to her is absolutely fascinating.
And you can't argue about certain things. The late John
(25:49):
Madden used to talk about this all the time when
he worked at Fox. Some games just sound big, you know,
the Connecticut son in the Indiana fever does not sound big.
So the fact that it dominated half our show today.
It just tells you how significant and transformative Caitlin Clark is.
(26:11):
And I thought Rick Buker. Rick Buker said, hey, she's
not a victim all the time on this stuff. She's
bringing a little heat on herself.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The biggest issue I have is she'll do the pushing
back and forth, and she'll talk trash, and then she
walks away as if nothing is happening, and then she
gets bumped and she goes down. Look, if you're going
to talk trash, if you're going to push people, if
you're gonna get in their face, then stand up and
chances are you're not going to fall over when you
(26:39):
get pushed. So I feel like she contributes to this.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
The reality is she brings it on.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She gives as good as she gets.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, I mean there's some truth in it. I think
if you look at the players that get tackled and get,
if not hazed, get a level of physicality for their game,
it tends to be players who have a certain aesthetic.
Michael Jordan could humiliate you, not just score on you.
(27:09):
Kobe Bryant got some stuff, Steph Curry. Caitlin Clark has
been a lot of great players in the NBA, but
they score their points undramatically. I mean there's I mean,
Aunt Edwards is the kind of guy that can be
really dramatic. You know. I just think her stylistically, some
(27:31):
of it the tongue out the thirty three footers, and
she's now starting to demand the ball. So she's getting
more performative on the court, which I think is great.
But I never thought of her as drawing attention. I
thought she was kind of awkward. But her interviews now
she got a little more, just a little more in
the last couple of weeks, and her in her style
is when she came back, it's almost like she got injured.
(27:56):
She was out five games, and it's almost it was
like a bye week in the NFL, like teams improved
dramatically off the bye week. You know, they start scouting themselves,
they're off the treadmill. It's almost like she left for
five games. She sort of watched the league and she
convinced herself, I'm not aggressive enough, Like I'm not aggressive enough,
(28:18):
because she came back and she was hyper aggressive and
even even the trash talking feels like it's gone up
another level. So she had She had played one hundred
and eighty five consecutive games going back to her freshman
year at Iowa, So she had been on the treadmill.
(28:39):
She hadn't she hadn't had a lot of time to
sit back and watch her team. She was the star,
she played the most minute, she took the most shots,
and she just got a couple of weeks off the
treadmill to watch the league, watch the games. And she
came back and she has got a little edge to her.
Speaker 8 (28:59):
Heymbercolin.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
When Lebron was took like a little sabbatical that one January,
I think he was in Cleveland and he vanished to
Miami for like, yeah, eight or nine days.
Speaker 8 (29:10):
Classic. I need a little breather. Can't look Clark at
the breather comes back and is breathing.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Fire, and the players are responding, and they did last night.
We'll see you tomorrow. It's a hurt.
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.