Episode 20: All The Hashtags

Posted on Apr 3, 2026

And we’re live.

That was a weird way to say that.

Welcome to a new episode of the Red Black Comeback Podcast, a podcast that is ostensibly about the rebuilding efforts of the Portland Trailblazers and the Toronto Raptors, but is also about so much more, including but not limited to the NBA, the WNBA, Canada, America, the Portland Fire, the Toronto Tempo, and I don’t know, like, John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

The TLDR is the last time we recorded, we did the first of what was supposed to be two episodes about the trade deadline and lots of huge moves happening in the NBA, causing certain seismic shifts in the NBA, coming into Atlanta, Porzingis to Golden State, and I don’t know.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is Dave.

I’m one of the co-hosts.

I let the cat out of the bag.

He is John.

He is the other co-host.

I am in Toronto, Ontario.

John, where are you again?

Portland, Oregon, the real one.

Do people actually—I’ve asked this before, and this is not a recurring bit, but does anybody think Portland, Maine first?

No, no, no.

Only you.

Even people in Portland, Maine?

Only you as an insult to me, so I get it out of the way.

Otherwise, no, we don’t even think about Portland, Maine.

In fact, most of the time, people in Portland, Oregon forget there is another Portland unless we run into some clueless person from Connecticut that’s like, oh, Portland, Maine?

I love the lobster.

All right, and now we’re in because that one just sank.

Just a quick note, it is currently April 1st, 2026.

John and I have not recorded an episode in a little while, over a month, definitely, and that was not the way it was supposed to go.

John, what else is this about?

It’s about whatever we feel like talking about, Dave.

Okay, so he just let the cat out of the bag.

My name is I would worry about that.

Magic I’m not so concerned about.

Heat, I mean, Heat, I don’t know.

The only thing I will say about the Heat is that when I watch Miami play, the guys who impress me the most on Miami, it’s always the same two guys, Pelly Larson and Jaime Jaquez Jr.

Those two are hoopers.

Like, if you have a team, if you like a guy who cheers for a certain team, and you’re like, man, I don’t know what this team needs, it’s Pelly Larson.

It’s a Pelly Larson type, it’s a Jaime Jaquez type.

Those guys do a little bit of everything.

They are tough, they are tough minded.

I adore those dudes.

See, I disagree.

I disagree.

To me, the two best people in that franchise are Pat Riley and Eric Spolstra.

Like, they’re the guys that get more out of- Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Pelly can beat Pat Riley in a one-on-one right now.

Those two guys get more out of players that they shouldn’t get stuff out of than they deserve to.

You know, honestly, you look at the roster, and it honestly doesn’t, it’s not that great.

And yet- It’s not that great within a certain context, right?

Like, the Miami Heat don’t play basketball, they play Heat basketball.

So they draft guys that fit Heat basketball.

You’ll never catch Miami going best player available.

Well, but that’s, yeah, that’s, you’re actually reinforcing my point.

I didn’t disagree with your point.

They make the playoffs every year.

They made the finals a couple years ago, twice.

It’s, you know, it’s with rosters that on other teams wouldn’t make sense.

Because your point, it’s Heat basketball.

Well, you ever hear anybody say, it’s not timing the market, it’s timing the market?

Right?

Like, vis-a-vis investing and visa or whatever.

And well, I guess the larger point about timing, it’s timing the market, not timing the market.

There’s a lot of people in the context of investing, for instance.

And this doesn’t even mean investing in, you know, stocks and ETS or whatever.

I’m just talking about anything that you are in, whether it’s a hobby or, you know, you’re dating.

You know, the longer you are in the milieu of doing the thing, it is more important than having the right play at the right time.

And I think that Miami’s great strength is their continuity, right?

You see a lot of coaches or a lot of teams, like, you know, they have a couple bad years and it’s like, okay, fire the coach.

We’re going to get a new guy again.

Look at Milwaukee, right?

Milwaukee had Budenholzer in there.

They fired him.

They replaced him.

They fired that guy.

They replaced him.

And now they’re playing for three coaches at the same time, right?

Right.

So just from a coaching standpoint, now you’re a bunch of players and you have unbelievable physical ability, but the coach comes up with a system and the coach is like, well, we’re going to use you as this or I see this in you.

Now, imagine you have to do that three times in the course of like a year and a half, right?

It’s no wonder that Milwaukee has sort of fallen on hard times after their title because it didn’t seem like they had a plan.

Boston wins a title and then they get bought and then it’s like cut salary.

So it’s like, okay, bye-bye Drew Holiday, which has worked out very well for your Blazers.

Bye-bye Chris Esforzingas and so on and so forth.

But then Boston develops well.

They always have.

And they tread water and they like Joe Mazzullo was an assistant coach and the main guys have been there for a minute and the guys that they draft, especially the guys that they draft late, guys like Baylor Sharman and, you know, Hugh Gonzalez or whoever else, right?

Or acquire otherwise.

Like, remember when Nemeus Cato was on the Warriors and I was just like, well, why are they letting this guy go?

It reminded me of when the Lakers let Zubach go.

But Boston has the sort of like, and the thing is like it pains my soul to say nice things about the Celtics, but it’s been the same group of guys for a long time.

Brad Stevenson, the coach, now he’s in the front office.

Joe Mazzullo was an assistant coach, now he’s the coach.

Tatum and Brown have been there for a minute, right?

And they set the tone.

It’s not a revolving door of guys, right?

And this is why I thought Toronto, I think Toronto can eventually be good because it seems like they’ve committed to Emmanuel Quigley, Scotty Barnes, Brandon Ingram, and R.J.

Barrett, right?

And now we’ve got like CMB and Jacoby Walterton playing great and people seem to really like Darko and it seems like we have like the kind of consistency and continuity that we need to achieve what we want to achieve, right?

And Miami is the perfect example of this, right?

Their structure has been the same since like LeBron and Bosh and Wade.

And when you get drafted there, you sign there, there is a clear set of expectations set up for you in terms of your physical fitness, your commitment, your whatever, whatever, whatever.

And no one is above the team.

And Jimmy Butler should know that better than anybody else, right?

Last year, Butler was doing stuff and to be fair, Jimmy Butler is a superstar.

Jimmy Butler dragged teams to the finals.

But Jimmy Butler started acting like he was bigger than the team.

He was shipped out in like six seconds.

It was crazy, right?

So I’m impressed with Miami for the same reason that you are.

That is the long story short.

Even though we think they’re not going to make the playoff?

I think that if I had to pick two teams out of Atlanta, Philly, Charlotte, Toronto, Orlando, who’s the other team?

If I have to pick two teams out of the 6 through 10 group in the East right now to not make the playoffs, Magic would be the first one and Philly would be the second one, but only because I just assume they’re going to have to deal with injuries.

I just assume that NB is going to hurt himself or Maxie rushed himself back from injury or whatever.

Barring injuries, though.

Barring injuries, I think Orlando misses because I don’t think their heads are in it.

And I’m not going to say that Toronto is going to miss it, but I will say that we need to take this last couple of weeks very, very seriously and we can’t be fucking around and doing stuff like, oh, you know, Darko didn’t put the starters back in to try to catch the Pistons last night.

And to me, that smacked of a lesson.

I don’t want lessons.

I just want to win.

And if certain people have to take a back seat, so be it.

We started crushing people when Scottie was playing more point forward, point guard.

Quickly out, somebody’s got to do it.

Shed is a wonderful, wonderful distributor and a great on-ball defender, but Shed can’t shoot.

Last night, Detroit just left him open all over the place.

Their lack of faith in his shot was warranted.

He shot terribly and it was like one of those things.

But yeah, that’s the East.

Can we talk about the West?

Yeah, let’s talk about the West.

So where’s Portland right now?

You go ahead.

Yeah, so I mean, starting at the top, like you did with the East, Oklahoma City has locked it up as well as the Spurs and the Lakers now and the Nuggets.

So all four of those are kind of locked in the top four.

The Wolves and the Rockets are hanging out in fifth and sixth at 46 and 29, so they’re virtually tied.

And then Phoenix is at 42 and 34.

And then the Clippers are at 39 and 37.

The Blazers are at 39 and 38.

And the Warriors are at 36 and 39.

So the Warriors are the only team in one through 10 that have a losing record, which I can’t say I’m at all sad about.

You know, the last night.

So the play-in is probably Phoenix has number seven, has the seventh seed locked up, which is fine.

I will say the Clippers and the Blazers, though, it’s going to go down to the wire.

Last night, the Clippers played the Blazers and the Blazers won in L.A.

pretty handily, actually, which was kind of nice.

Yeah, I was watching with you.

We were chatting a little bit, but I was really impressed.

Yeah, and then the Blazers also play the Clippers again one more time next week in Portland.

Who are your games left against?

We have a fairly easy schedule, except for we have a game against Denver and a game against the Spurs.

The question will be, though, since they have their sort of spots locked up, how hard will they be trying at that point?

I think that the Spurs still, I think, OK, the Nuggets and the Spurs are in the playoffs, but the Spurs are two and a half games behind the Thunder for number one seed.

Right.

And if there’s something I know, it’s that for whatever reason, Victor Lim and Yama hates the fucking Thunder.

Like, he hates them.

Like, it’s a real hatred.

And I really think it’s incredible that, like, it’s taken a Frenchman to bring this kind of thing back to the NBA.

I am endlessly impressed with Victor.

I hope he wins NBA MVP and DPOY, and I hope they get the one seed, and I hope they fucking destroy everybody.

Until they meet Portland, and then Portland, Cinderella, Portland, Trailblazers, NBA Oh no, no.

I mean Grayson Allen, all the ill will in the world.

And I’m like, you know, I hated that motherfucker since he was at Duke.

Yeah, I knew that as well.

Speaking of Duke, can I just say that people are going to remember that shot as long as people remember shots.

And all I want to say is, Caden Boozer, you cannot let this define the rest of your life.

But if it was me, it would define the rest of my life.

And I would like, I would remove myself from society and go live in a lighthouse somewhere.

Says the man in a bathrobe and a Blue Jays hat.

First of all, it’s not a bathrobe, it’s a robe.

And second of all, my Blue Jays went to the World Series last year.

Where did your Portland Major League Baseball team go exactly?

Portland Pickles.

I love the Portland Pickles.

Can I just say one dumb thing?

So over the course of the history of this podcast, which is not incredibly long, but it’s long enough, I have advocated for a player, and the player’s name is Ryan Rupair.

Now, I never really explained this to anybody that much, and I feel like doing it now, but specifically within the context of Ryan Rupair getting some good minutes in Memphis.

So long story short, Ryan Rupair was the 41st, I think, overall draft pick in 2023.

And there were rumors that Ryan Rupair was going to be late lottery.

I think the pick that Golden State ended up using on Brandon Bojenski was the pick that some people had theorized that they were going to use on Ryan Rupair.

And it’s pretty easy to understand why if you watch him, right?

He’s young.

He’s only 21 now, right?

So 2026 minus 2023 is three.

Okay, so he’ll be 22 by the time the NBA draft happens, which means that he was 19 when he was drafted.

And he had played with the New Zealand Breakers, I think, in the Aussie League.

And he was sold as a guy who had freakish length, and I think his wingspan is something dumb like 7'2".

And a guy who could do a lot of things.

And I think that in Chauncey’s rotation, Ryan Rupair only became a guy, who is only a guy who is, okay, you’re 3 and D.

You and Tumani Kamara are 3 and D.

And obviously you know that Tumani Kamara has become more than that.

And Tumani Kamara is just a tremendous player, and every team in the league wants a guy like that.

Every team in the league wants 10 guys like that.

But I was always of the perspective that Ryan Rupair could be that guy, just not as strong.

Because Tumani is a little older, right?

Tumani is like 23 or 24, right?

Yeah.

Like he was drafted late.

I think he’s 23, yeah.

Okay.

So anyway, so the Blazers had to cut Ryan Rupair so that it was for Caleb Love, right?

Yes.

No, it was for City.

It was for City.

Caleb is still on his two-way.

Okay.

So they could sign City Sissoko to a full contract because he was on a two-way, and they obviously wanted the depth starring him, not Rupair.

Well, he was over his game limit.

That was the thing, right?

So they had to do it or they had to just not play him.

And obviously he’s an important guy, especially with guys like Scoot and Shaden and Jeremy Grant and whoever else missing games, right?

So Ryan Rupair goes to the Grizzlies, and I was really, really happy about that for reasons including, okay, so the inside baseball and why I like Rupair is that that was the first year I was playing Dynasty basketball, and Ryan Rupair was on my board.

I ended up yanking him in the second round, and I was very, very happy about it.

And then he ended up in a situation where I thought it was going to be a lot better than it was, right?

I wanted him to end up in a situation where he could play offense because I actually thought they had untapped offensive upside.

He wasn’t just a hustle guy.

He wasn’t just a defensive guy.

He actually had something to his game.

Anyways, he goes to Memphis, and he was getting playing time, and I was noticing the first couple of returns when he got cut and he signed with Memphis.

And I was like, okay, first game in Memphis.

You know, 10 points, 9 boards, an assist, 3 steals, you know, shooting 56 from the field.

Okay, that’s pretty cool.

Okay, the next game was, you know, 8-3-1 with a steal, and okay, that’s not so great, 5-5-2.

And then 16-6-1, you know, hitting some threes, steals in a block, two stocks, you know, 13-6-1, but also a steal in a block.

So two stocks there, shooting 55 from the field and 50 from three.

And he’s had a handful of games, like, you know, on March 9th, 20 points, 8 rebounds, a steal in two blocks, you know, 4 of 8 from three.

You know, March 10th, 14-2-1, March 12th, 13-7-2.

Are you still talking about Ryan Repair?

I’m sorry, because this is the bit.

So all I’m saying is this.

I really like what happens sometimes in the NBA, and we’re seeing it with Memphis, right?

So guys like De’Juan Giroux and Ryan Repair.

It’s the approach guys.

Omax Prosper and all of these guys.

Like Memphis has a lost season, obviously.

The Joss situation is the Joss situation.

Zach Heedy goes down 11 games into the season after he had started the season late.

You know, Cedric Coward missed time.

And so basically it’s a changing of the guard, right?

You know, like Aldama got hurt, and they’re like, okay, we had surgery because we’re not going to compete.

And then these young guys, and some of these guys were draft picks by the Grizzlies, and some of them were cast-offs, right?

Like Tyler Burton’s a cast-off.

They’re trying him out.

And Omax was a late first by Dallas, and they clearly didn’t see him as part of the plan.

He’s got 31 points a couple days ago.

But what about Ryan Repair?

Ryan Repair is showing in this late season, you know, because the thing is it’s silly season, right?

But silly season doesn’t mean that bad players suddenly get good.

It means that guys who don’t get time get more time.

And you’re seeing a lot of guys who are basically playing for their role on an NBA team next year, right?

Which is why I was very, very saddened by the whole Jaden Ivey situation because, like, whether or not he was going to be in the Bulls next year, I don’t think he’s going to be on any team next year.

I think that he’s having some significant mental health and addiction-related issue that has manifested in being, like, evicted.

But that’s a different conversation for a different day.

All I’m saying is that this late season period, we call it silly season, and we call it, you know, oh, my God, it sucks that my team wants to go to the playoffs, but the team one above them in the standings was going to play Memphis, and they’re going to blow them up by 40 or whatever.

And I think that it requires our attention but also our admiration for these guys who treat this part of the season the way that they have to, right?

Ryan Repair is looking for a job, right?

Tyler Burton is looking for a job.

Kennedy Chandler in Utah, he’s looking for a job.

Elijah Harkless in Utah.

Besen Bang in Utah, right?

Jamal Mashick, who was the second-round pick of the Grizzlies, he’s been fantastic.

And, you know, all these kids in Washington who clearly know they’re building something and want to be a part of it, right?

So, like, obviously you know that Bilal is going to be there, and obviously you know that Bob Carrington and Trey Johnson and whoever else, but, like, now Tricky Vooch, Tristan Vukcevic, is their bona fide backup center behind Saar, right?

Because I don’t imagine Anthony Davis is going to be on that team next year.

And it’s kind of interesting to sort of watch all of these things coalesce.

Obviously I’ve been going a little bit crazy because I wanted to couch this all in a Ryan Repair comment, but all I’m going to say is this.

If you’re an NBA fan and your team’s not playing and you’re not doing anything and you have a league pass, go and watch some terrible team.

I guarantee you, you will find someone to just root for, to love to watch play.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

All right.

WNBA?

WNBA.

Okay, so why don’t you start her off because I just talked for 100 years in a row.

Sure.

So, yeah, let’s shift to the WNBA.

I can wrap this one up with WNBA.

It’s a good place to end.

It is a good place to end.

So it’s just starting.

We’re ending where it’s starting.

You see what I did there?

Sometimes I just jot in so that you’ll talk over me because me and your life coach think you need to be more assertive.

Yes.

I mean, I try.

It’s hard to talk over of, you know, whatever else, you know, players that will, because of the fact that you make more money in the WNBA than you previously were able to, maybe players who play half their year overseas and half their season in America will play in America all year, right?

And all of a sudden, WNBA is going to become the Premier League because it pays its stars and it pays its players well enough, right?

So I think that the competitive, I think that there’s so many options that a team can, like directions a team can go in.

So the chat around Toronto was like, oh, we’re going young.

And this was why we were going young.

I was like, because as John mentioned, there are going to be very, very good players unprotected and available in this draft.

And if you want to build a winner right away, you might be able to get a Jewel Law.

You might be able to get a Kayla Thornton.

You might be able to get a whoever, Cecilia Zandalosini or I think Carla Late is supposed to be unprotected, right?

So that’s a perfect example, right?

Imagine Stuart and Lloyd are unprotected.

And imagine the same WNBA expansion team gets those two.

You already got the nucleus of contender, right?

But wherever you go the other way, and for instance, say Carla Late and Cecilia Zandalosini are unprotected by Golden State and they both ended up in Toronto.

Well, are we going for a championship going with those two?

No, we’re clearly building for the future and we’re going to try to establish a baseline level of young talent with the organization to which we will supplement and complement with free agents.

That’s my guess.

So when we decided that we were going to pick earlier in the entry draft, which I believe is the sixth overall pick instead of the seventh overall pick, which is going to go to Portland, instead of picking first in the expansion draft, it was a subtle signal as interpreted by a lot of basketball fans in Toronto that we were going to go young.

My question to you is, was the alternate true in Portland?

Did you guys, did the Portland Fire fans or prospective Portland Fire fans think that maybe that signaled that now that they’ve been put in this position by Toronto, maybe it’s like, okay, well, we can win right away or maybe we should try to go win right away?

Yeah, I think that there is a general consensus that we’re going to try to win right away or at least try to be competitive right away.

I mean, I think the Valkyries definitely sort of set the bar for expansion teams and being on the West Coast and also hating San Francisco.

I hate San Francisco too, man.

Yeah.

It’s the worst.

Hating San Francisco sports teams in particular.

Oh, sports teams.

I’m just talking about the city.

Yeah, no.

Well, I mean, I like Ghirardelli chocolate.

Anyway, hating San Francisco sports teams in particular.

Shout out Ghirardelli.

Shout out Poshmark.

Shout out Blue Jays.

Shout out Glove Actually Podcast.

Shout out Mary Meco.

I can definitely see…

It’s like that 30 Rock joke during the Verizon thing and Tina Fey turns the camera and goes, can we have our money now?

I will say one other piece of interesting WNBA news as we wrap up here is, I don’t know if you read recently, the Connecticut Sun sold to new owners and the new owners are going to move it to Houston.

So Houston will have a WNBA team.

Yeah, but it also sucks for a lot of reasons.

It does suck.

I mean, the most…

I mean, I don’t know.

There’s a couple of days ago or a couple of weeks ago, I don’t know, time is a flat circle.

Shout out True Detective.

Shout out True Detective Season 1.

Shout out Russ Cole.

So now we’re talking about expanding the NBA to Vegas and Seattle and it was like…

It brought up a lot of old memories for people who were not even from the Pacific Northwest or from Seattle because obviously Seattle gets moved to Oklahoma City and almost immediately Oklahoma City becomes competitive.

They go to the NBA finals.

They lose.

They draft three guys who are going to all go to the Hall of Fame, right?

And then they go through this fallow period and now they look like they’re set up to compete until the fucking sun burns out, right?

And then now Seattle has to start from scratch.

It doesn’t seem fair.

Seattle should get the thunder and Oklahoma should have to start from scratch with an expansion team.

But I don’t make the rules.

But the other thing about Connecticut and the Connecticut Sun moving to Houston because they were bought by the Fertitta family, the Thomas Fertitta who owns the Houston Rockets, and I assume that they’re going to be called the Houston Comets again, right?

Like they’re going to try to…

Yeah, they’ve…

They’re not going to be like the Houston Sun.

No, no, no.

They already said that they’re going to be the Comets.

Okay.

Well, that’s good.

But the other part of…

The part of it that’s very frustrating, and again, the way that you feel about San Francisco sports teams, I feel about Boston sports teams and Boston City and New England, the region.

We’ve heard this from you.

Yeah, like whatever.

If a genie gave me one wish and it was like, you could make the city of Boston not exist or you could have everything else, I would literally not know what to do.

And of course, everything else would include this.

Never mind.

The thing that really frustrates me, especially within this particular timeline, and yes, I’m talking about America, and yes, I’m talking about politics, and yes, I’m talking about identity and race and gender and all kinds of stuff.

It really sucks that, number one, there’s not going to be a team in Boston or proximate to Boston because Boston, regardless of how I feel about their organization and their city, that’s an important basketball city, man.

That’s an important basketball city and it’s an important basketball market, right?

Number two, like the Connecticut Sun were owned by the tribe, right?

Yep.

And they played at like the Mohegan Sun, and that was such a unique thing on par with the Green Bay Packers being owned by their fans, right?

And my understanding is that the Connecticut Sun did not get a say in where the new ownership group would move the team to.

The WNBA was like, no, no, that’s for us to decide, not you, which on top of striking an incredibly condescending and patriarchal tone within the context of the WNBA, women’s sports in general, it really doesn’t feel good when, you know, I don’t know how anybody would say this, it’s like you’re basically forcing a team away from Indigenous people and then saying that they can’t sell to who they want to or that they don’t have a say whatsoever.

It’s just like the optics are fucking terrible.

And, you know, not to get too whatever about this, but like, man, the WNBA, they wanted to play hardball in these negotiations and the players got what they wanted for the most part.

There were concessions made, let’s not say.

We can have an entire episode about the new CBA and the WNBA.

But these guys, and I use guys on purpose, these guys can’t get out of their own way.

They have this unbelievable sports entertainment product, and I hate using those terms, but you know what I mean.

They have this incredible thing, and it’s like they trip and fall two out of every three times when it comes to like building it up and growing the game and making the WNBA into something that people will become fanatical about, like you and I are, and like so many millions of other people are.

It’s like the league succeeds despite its leadership, not because of its leadership.

Hashtag patriarchal Kathy Engelbert.

Oh, yeah, don’t even get me started on Kathy Engelbert.

She’s a terrible commissioner.

She’s a terrible, terrible commissioner, and Nafisa Collier was so damn right to call her out.

All right, we’ll talk about that more.

We’ve got to wrap up here, Dave.

Okay, so final thoughts.

Bummer point to leave us on, thank you.

No, no, no, this is the thing.

We’re not going to go on a bummer.

Final thoughts about anything, but keep it light.

Keep it breezy.

Give me something good.

Give you something good?

Okay, I will give you something good.

I need to go back and find the audio, but approximately three months ago, I predicted the Blazers would end up the eight seed in the West, and I am this close to being correct.

How’s that?

That’s pretty good.

What about you?

What do you got?

So what I got is recently, it was my partner’s birthday, and we had a nice little couple of days.

We went to a couple of restaurants and had a nice little party, and I was waiting for a couple of other things to arrive in the mail and so on and so forth for presents and whatnot, but the one thing that she had asked me to get for this milestone birthday of hers, I’m not going to go into detail about what that is, was something that I, in fact, ended up getting, and it is, John, you know those balloons that are in the shape of a shark that you put a little helium in, and you have a remote control, and it flies through the air?

Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?

No, I have no clue.

Imagine a balloon, like a long balloon that was in the shape of a shark.

I understand what you’re saying.

I’ve just never seen it before.

Okay, so you know what a shark