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Marshall Garvey, author of Interstate '85: The Royals, the Cardinals and the Show-Me World Series, joins the show. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 3:26-4:39 : “The ’85 Series always stuck in my mind in a really weird way just because of all the emphasis on Don Denkinger’s missed call. It just seemed a little jaundiced to me, but it stayed in my head for 20 years, kinda rattling around in there. It got even more layers in my mind when the Royals finally won it again in the mid-2010s. … My buddy Jonathan Daniel, he wrote the book Suds Series…that’s the ’82 World Series. That (book) got me on a train of thought when I was taking a run one day…and it just like blew up in mind, like, ‘Oh, my god, ’85, no one’s really written about this. … I’m gonna write the definitive book about ’85 and find out there was more than The Call,’ and boy, oh boy, did that turn out to be true.” 7:17-8:40 : “It meant everything. This World Series was just, and still is over 40 years later, an epochal moment in Missouri’s entire history, and Missouri has a really rich history, with lots of innovation, lots of crucial events both for the country and even the world at large. … It was especially a point of pride ‘cuz it was a defiance of bicoastal expectations – a lot of people wanted a Mets-Yankees World Series that year, a Subway Series – and instead it forced all eyes on Missouri. … It was a transcendent moment for the just over 5 million people living in Missouri at that time. I thought that was really beautiful.”              30:03-31:10: “It was obviously a very tough thing. It was tough to miss a big call like that and all the hate mail and threats he received, but what I emphasize is that Denkinger learned to live with it, and he learned to live with it pretty fast. Denkinger embraced it, he never tired talking about ‘The Call,’ and again, I do not think The Call comes close to defining him. There was so much more to him and he was a great umpire, but he learned to embrace it, learned to live with that flaw and even could have fun with it. Like, he would sign autographs of him, Worrell and Orta, saying, ‘Oops! – Don Denkinger.’ I think that’s one of the big lessons: learning to embrace that folly and not let it define you at the same time.”   31:58-32:45: “Joe Beckwith changed the book and honestly my life. I realized what the stakes of the book were: getting this done for someone’s dying wish. That was really heavy, and it changed how I look at my life. … I think about him every day. I miss him a ton, and I’m just grateful I got to make that connection just in time.’”   37:45-40:07: – “I got a copy of The Wax Pack early on in the book’s development, and I fell in love with it. I was blown away by the ease and depth of Brad’s humanistic storytelling. My jaw hit the floor at how fun and irreverent but also earnest and detailed it was. I knew I wanted to tell a deeper story about ’85, but when I saw that humanistic prose, I was like, ‘This is a good model for what I wanna do. This is your aspiration.’ But a few months after that, this is where the story really gets interesting. In September of 2021, I purchased a videogame on my Nintendo Switch called Return of the Obra Dinn. … When I got back to it, Brad Balukjian’s writing style – I felt I was able to elevate my style and be a lot like that – and all the things from Obra Dinn, the things that taught me about looking for specific clues, being able to identify people, capturing their legacy in a larger narrative. Obra Dinn inspired me every step of the way.” *If interested, Interstate '85 is available for purchase⁠ ⁠here⁠⁠, among other places.

Paul Knepper, author of Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, joins the show. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 7:02-7:42: “He realized very early on that these people... were trying to get something out of him. He was cautious and kind of withdrawn before that, and I think that maybe that experience made him add even another layer between him and the outside world or certainly between him and people that he didn’t know well and people that could potentially take advantage of him. So it led him to be very protective in that way going forward.” 14:22-15:07: “It’s always hard to go straight from high school to pros. … I think in certain ways it was harder for Moses as the first. I think he faced tremendous backlash because of that, but also there was no infrastructure in place. There was a lot less moneyin professional basketball in general then, certainly in the ABA. It was a head coach, an assistant coach, and that was it; they didn’t have 10 coaches who could kinda babysit him and take care of him and make sure that he’s doing his laundry and paying his bills and all that. The other thing I think people forget is that very few people were even leaving college early at that time.”              19:38-20:21: “If you think of more recently maybe a comparison would be a Tim Duncan, who also had no flash to his game. He was better with the media in that I don’t think he was as standoffish, but he didn’t really give the media anything either. … It was almost like on the court and off the court there was no personality to him, and I think that’s how a lot of people saw Moses. Moses played with a scowl on his face. I always say Michael Jordan and Kobe also played with scowls on theirface, but then they’d go into the interview room and they’d flash that million-dollar smile and it was like you saw a different side of them; Moses just never gave you that.”   36:11-36:45: “When Moses signed with Philly in ’82, there was a lot of concern about whether they -him and Doc[tor J] could coexist ‘cuz they were the two previous MVP winners. Andthere was the whole ‘Well, there’s only one ball, and you’ve got two dominant players; how is this gonna work?’ And they both had big egos in their own way. But Moses really set the tone for that from Day 1. He said, ‘This is Doc’s team. I’m just here to help. I’m just here to help Doc win a championship.’”   39:50-40:05: – “He was a wonderful father figure to many, but not necessarily a good father. And he was a kind and gentle man who may or may not have beaten his wife. And so how do you reconcile that?” 44:37-44:48: “What I really admired about Moses [was] he didn’t give a damn what anybody else said, what anybody else did, what was popular, what was cool. He had his own moral compass.” *If interested, Moses Malone is available for purchase⁠ ⁠here⁠⁠, among other places.

Steve Steinberg, co-author of Mike Donlin: A Rough andRowdy Life From New York Baseball Idol to Stage and Screen, joins the show. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 8:34-9:55: “Our interest is what was really ticking in the guy’s mind, what was he feeling, what was he thinking. And the years that we write about, and especially Donlin’s years, there were so many newspapers in New York City, more than a dozen of them. And in the early 1920s, by the way, they started merging. … These newspapers had a beat writer. And each of these newspapers had a sports editor, and each of these guys had their own connections. … You can sit at home and go online with some of these, Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, Genealogy Bank. But I found that there’s nothing that replaces going to the New York Public Library and just sitting there with a microfilm, which I think some people find a terribly boring thing. But I find it thrilling and exciting ‘cuz it’s like going back in a time machine; you don’t know what you’re gonna find.”   14:53-15:46: “I’ve heard from more than one person that when they read the beginning of the book they don’t like this guy very much, but by the end of the book they see another side of him emerge. … The fact remains that when you have these people that are more complicated it makes for a much more fascinating story. … I just find that the juices flow more when you have somebody who’s not so saintly.” 20:05-20:45: “Many famous actors in the ’30s and ‘40s, they got their start in vaudeville, just going out on the stage. You would go to a vaudeville theater, and over two hours you might see everything from a 9-foot tall Russian man to someone who had a beard that was 80 feet long to dancing dogs. And you would see a skit, and Mabel Hite would do these little skits, and they may be only 10 to 15 minutes, but the variety was the thing. These were variety shows, and it was a fascinating world of entertainment at that time.”     25:34-25:56: “This was a real love affair, and I think it captured the nation. They were maybe the first power couple, decades before that phrase even existed. But Mabel even understood it herself. And she was quite a businessperson even though she had this persona onstage of a wacky, goofy kind of person.”   31:20-31:56: “McGraw and Donlin actually had a pretty complex relationship also. It’s interesting to note that John McGraw was only about five years older than Mike Donlin. McGraw was a very young manager early on, so it was a little bit almost like being contemporaries. In 1905, maybe Mabel was dating Mike and controlled his drinking; that was the year they won the world championship, the Word Series, but you’ve gotta give McGraw credit for that [too]. McGraw felt he could control anybody, whatever the shortcoming of the personality flaw was.”   If interested, Mike Donlin is available for purchase⁠ ⁠here⁠⁠, among other places.

Historian, journalist⁠ and novelist extraordinaire Kevin Baker, author of⁠ the 2024 CASEY Award-winning book on the history of New York and baseball, The New York Game, Baseball and the Rise of a New City, joins the show. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 6:23-7:28: “I had this contract some years ago. I had to write several other books through it; I kept kind of going away from it and coming back, just trying to keep hearth and home together. But Andrew Miller who came up with the idea…he was very patient through all of this. I really didn’t know how to do this, sort of writing a history of both this incredible city, the leading city in the Western world in many ways for much of the last couple hundred years, and baseball. And in the end, I ended up writing a ludicrously long manuscript. I mean it was close to 2,500 pages altogether, and I finally passed this in and threw myself at the mercy of the good people at Knopf.”      13:30-15:43: “The New York game, though, became baseball, and this was something they did not want to hear about. They did not want to think any of it came from England, so Albert Spalding, of sporting goods fame and early pitcher and early team owner, set up this baseball commission around the turn of the century, into the 20th century there, to determine just where baseball came from. … And Albert Spalding said, ‘Great. Thanks very much. It’s all-American. I told ya. This is wonderful.’ … Pretty much all lies. Abner Doubleday was sort of the Forrest Gump of the 19th century. Fascinating guy. He was everywhere where anything happened. … But he did not invent baseball or indeed have anything to do with the game. He never so much as mentioned it in any of his writings.” 22:02-22:16: “[Tammany Hall] created a New York that was tremendously dynamic, but also oppressive, a place where you could get almost anything as a favor.” 24:30-24:50: “[Babe Ruth] really was just this amazing, Herculean character, hard to believe. And he hit New York at the precisely right time. He hit at this time when New York was becoming the town of hoopla, of wild exaggeration in its own self.”   25:36-26:10: “Suddenly, the Great Depression is upon us, and this is the time when New York really thinks of itself as kinda this virtuous, gritty, hard-working city. And again, the heroes of the era are perfect. People like Carl Hubbell, one of my father’s favorites on the Giants, who looks like he could’ve been an Okie picked up on Route 66 on the way out to California. You know, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, quiet, hard-working guys.” 34:08-34:47: “We should realize the bad things that happened and the bad things that our ancestors in America did, but you don’t want to make history just an endless history of calamities, of disasters, of horrible cruelty, even when there is that element. You want to make it also what it really was as well, which is a story of aspiration, of achievement, of accomplishments, of getting past some of these eternal prejudices.”   38:10-38:17: “A book like this, you really stand on the shouldersof giants, both in terms of baseball and history.” 40:50-41:16: “That’s the interesting thing, too, how history works. A lot of these stories about the old Giants, who were my father’s favorite team, I learned from him initially, so I had that. Being born in 1958, growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I had his knowledge going back to the ‘30s, and he had his father’s.” 46:38-46:45: “Cities change. If they don’t change, they’re Venice, just sort of trapped in amber.” If interested,The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City is available for purchase⁠ here⁠, among other places.

New York Times bestselling author Keith O'Brien⁠⁠, author of⁠ the widely acclaimed Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, joins the show. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 9:32-11:24: “From a process standpoint, what the records really helped me to do was create timestamps on a timeline. When you’re writing a narrative, and that’s what I’m looking to do any time I do a book, I want to write a narrative, a real story with a beginning and an end and a climax, all of that. … So when you’re doing that, timeline is really important to you. And I already had one timeline that was locked solid; I’ve got the baseball season. … Now, with those federal case files, I have a whole raft of different timestamps, so that while Pete Rose is in Los Angeles and the Reds are on a four-game win streak and he’s swaggering into the clubhouse and giving grandiose quotes to reporters about how great the Reds are, at that same moment, the FBI is knocking on the door of his closest associates in Cincinnati. These are dominoes that are falling. And I think what that did for the narrative was is it built an urgency to [it] in the final half of the book. You can feel the walls closing in around Pete Rose.”     14:29-16:38: “Pete Rose gets away with what he gets away with because he is charming. … The reporters –the beat writers in the ‘60s, ’70s and into the ‘80s – they loved him. … And I do think that Pete’s race did matter. I don’t think that a Black player in the 1960s, ‘70s and in the early 1980s could have gotten away with the kind of stuff Pete Rose did on and off the field.”   22:38-22:58: “He suffered from gambling addiction even though he struggled to admit that. And what does an addict do? They can’t stop. And I think that is ultimately what happens to Pete Rose. He cannot stop. And that’s what pushes him over the edge to gamble on his own games.” 24:10-24:45: “We, as baseball fans, know a lot of the key moments in his career – the batting titles in the late 1960s, the All-Star game [in] 1970, the playoff runs of the ‘70s, the Big Red Machine years, the World Series, etc. ... What I wanted to do when we were talking about those moments was sorta peel back the layers of those onions and talk about what was going on in his head. What was he thinking? What was he feeling?” 27:58-28:15: “I realized very early on that this truly is a Greek tragedy...and my job from a structure standpoint was just to stay out of the way.” 39:17-42:02: “Could Pete Rose be restored from the ineligible list? And if so, would he then be voted into the Hall of Fame? That’s an interesting question. And something certainly has changed that I think is relevant and that could move the needle with Major League Baseball’s front office, and that is Pete is gone. … If Pete Rose had been restored to the eligible list and voted into the Hall of Fame while he was alive, he would’ve stood up there on a warm weekend day in late July at a time when Major League Baseball’s partnering with legalized gambling apps and he would’ve absolutely rubbed Major League Baseball’s face into all of everything that has happened. … All players should be voted in or not voted in based on what they did on the field; it is the only thing we know for sure. And if what they did off the field is so wrong then I think we should put that on the plaque at Cooperstown, put their mistakes right there next to their accomplishments for all of us to see.”

Writer and historian Tim Newby⁠, author ofThe Original Louisville Slugger, a fun, thorough and important narrative covering the life and baseball career of Pete Browning, joins the show. Browning, one of the best hitters of the 19th century, a deeply flawed but charismatic and pioneering man, has largely been forgotten more than a century later, although Tim's endeavor has worked to bring much-needed awareness to the man and his influence. Enjoy! Here are some highlights – 4:40-5:08: “So I took the rest of the summer and just started researching and digging in, and I really found that this story is a story that I could tell. And stories that I can tell are often about overlooked, underrated kind of influential figures or bands or musicians, whatever it may be. And Pete was that to me. Most baseball fans aren’t really in tune with 19th-century baseball. Most baseball fans have no idea who Pete Browning is. But all baseball fans know of the Louisville Slugger.”   22:48-23:53: “There’s a level of thought to it that we need these bats, and he eventually gets the first bat turned by what becomes Hillerich & Bradsby. But it also is convenient for him as somebody who’s odd and eccentric and superstitious like him. Putting so much stock into your bats makes it easy when you’re having a bad day to have a reason for it. ‘It’s not my fault. These bats only have a predetermined number of hits.’ … Pete’s bat was a massive piece of lumber that very few people could swing easily. … Pete’s bat was 48 ounces, and to put that into perspective, Aaron Judge swings, I think, a 33-ounce bat. When Aaron Judge gets on the on-deck circle…the batting donut weighs 15 ounces. So that means he’s warming up with a 48-ounce bat, which is what Pete swung on a daily basis.”   33:21-34:14: “The separating fact from myth and fiction was a big goal, but it was [also] something I really enjoyed doing with this. One of the things that was really helpful was I went to the Hall of Fame and there was a sports writer from Louisville, AH Tarvin, and his dad had been around in the 19th century. AH Tarvin would’ve been a young child at the time, but he had some memories from then. … I was lucky enough to go sit and look at all his papers and writings and notes, but again there was no one Rosetta Stone moment of opening it up and it said, ‘Here’s who Pete is’ and ‘Here’s what was true and what wasn’t.’ It was sometimes finding the answers, sometimes making a good educated speculation on it, sometimes finding a little bit of the story there.”   35:10-35:24: “As a writer, as a historian, you can’t beat that direct quote, right? I can say it and it can still be what they said, but when you hear how Pete said it and it comes from his mouth, I just think it gives it a different weight. And it allows you to be in the moment there.” If interested,The Original Louisville Slugger: The Life and Times of Forgotten Baseball Legend Pete Browning is available for purchasehere, among other places.

Nonfiction baseball writer Eric Vickrey comes on to discuss his terrifically poignant and inspiring book, Season of Shattered Dreams, which recounts the deadliest accident in the history of American professional sports, the 1946 Spokane Indians’ tragic crash as their bus was passing over Washington's Snoqualmie Pass. Here are some highlights – 12:23-14:45: “No one from that [‘46 Spokane Indians] team is living, or anyone associated with the team. But there are some family members still around; I probably couldn’t have done nearly as thorough of a job without their input and the information they provided. For instance, Jack Lohrke’s son provided me with his military documents that told me what infantry and battalion he was in, so then I was able to kind of really dig into that and kinda track his movements throughout the war, which is how I wrote that first chapter about him. … And then a couple of family matters actually had scrapbooks of old letters and photographs and things that they saved and they were able to share those. And that was really cool ‘cuz I got to kinda get the players’ voices in the book even though they had passed nearly 80 years ago.”    22:29-23:55: “A very fine line to walk. I was able to reach I think 12 families of the 16 players involved, and they had different sort of levels of involvement and willingness. Some were very excited about the project. There were a couple family members who found it actually too painful to talk about even though it’s been this long, almost 80 years…but still were so supportive, I would say. And I got some very nice letters when the book came out from family members saying, ‘Hey, thank you for honoring our relative in this way.’ And that was kind of ultimately my goal of the book. … I certainly kept in mind as I was writing, like the chapter about the accident, for example, that family members would be reading these painful details. … It was just kind of pulling all the information together and telling this story accurately but in a respectful way.” 30:31-30:50: “It’s funny. Both of those guys [Milt Cadinha and Joe Faria] actually blew out their arms the following year, almost in the same manner, in the same way after throwing 200 innings over the course of a few months. So even though they weren’t directly involved in the accident, they were still significantly affected.” 39:53-41:21: “In Jack [Lohrke]’s case, he actually wore, for the first couple years after the accident at least, under his New York Giants uniform he would wear this red shirt that he pulled off the bus that he took with him that day of the accident. It was kinda his way of honoring his teammates, so he did that, but yet he never spoke about the accident. He was very reluctant to talk about it. … His [Ben Geraghty’s] dream was to manage in the major leagues, and so he continued managing in the minor leagues and that meant he had to ride the bus. So he was sort of reliving this accident over and over, and he coped with that by drinking heavily on bus rides. And ultimately that led to some health complications at a pretty young age. They both had very different ways of coping, and their lives took different turns.”    If interested, it's available for purchase here, among other places: https://www.amazon.com/Season-Shattered-Dreams-Baseball-Everything/dp/1538190729/

Evan Ream, Communications Manager for NorCal Premier Soccer, comes on to discuss his colorful and inspiring debut book, Not When, But If? Here are some highlights – 8:35-9:17: “Nobody really knows what Sacramento is, especially from a national standpoint. The chapter of branding the team there, ‘Well, we need to brand the team, but first we need to brand Sacramento.’ Because what does Sacramento stand for or what do people know about Sacramento other than it’s 90 minutes from San Francisco and 90 minutes from Lake Tahoe? I honestly didn't know too much about Sacramento when I first started covering the team. Even though I lived in Davis 10 miles away, I had never really went to Sacramento for the most part. And so I had to figure out what Sacramento was.”      20:37-21:17: “They did the simplest thing ever and the smartest thing ever and something that too many, doesn’t matter what professional sport or who’s playing or whatnot, people just don’t do. All they did was just listen. They just listened to the fans. And when the fans are like, ‘Hey, we want this, this and this,' they were like, ‘OK, we can do that.’ Whereas in a lot of American professional sports…it’s like, ‘No, no, no. We need to overproduce this. No, no, we’re smart, we’re the owners, so we know what we’re doing, so we’re gonna tell them what to do,’ when in fact you’re completely out of touch with reality.”   45:50-46:02: “The sport has grown a ton; it’s just that the gatekeepers in the media world don’t understand that and have refused to accept it for the most part, however it is getting better.”

Sports writer and scientist Brad Balukjian stops by to discuss his fascinating, thought-provoking and important new book, The Six Pack: On the Open Road in Search of WrestleMania. Here are some highlights – 5:29-5:49: “The book really is about the line, the border between fiction and fact or myth and reality and work and shoot in Kayfabe terms. … to really find out where myth blends into reality and where that line is.”      9:34-10:09: “I was trained on more of that participatory journalism style, which you don’t see as much of anymore, but I was reading Gay Talese and Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe and all these practitioners in the ‘60s of kind of first-person narrative journalism. And that was what I always wanted to do ‘cuz I just think that if you can do it well you put the reader in your shoes, and they can kind of experience things as you experience them.”     25:25-25:54: “I’ve always been more of a process than destination person. So I always knew that even if I didn’t get every person to talk to me, what I could always tell is my own story and the story of trying to get someone to talk to you. And I think if you’re honest and you bring the reader in and you show them what you’re going through, you give them a chance to root for you.”   34:27-35:37: “As a writer when I learn more about the working conditions, where to this day the wrestlers are independent contractors without health insurance, it was just unconscionable to me. And so I thought if I have the opportunity to bring awareness to this issue, I want to take that opportunity. … A lot of these guys from that era end up with CTE just like the football players do. It’s the downside to wrestling not being taken that seriously, where they’re [regarded as] somewhere in between entertainers and athletes and stuntmen, yet all those groups of workers have unions and protections, but not wrestlers.”   42:35-42:59: “When I approach someone and I wanna try to capture their essence in one chapter, I’m gonna go with what they give me, right? And Tony [White/Atlas], the shoe thing was a big part of his life. … But it was not just sort of a fun fact; it was relevant because it related to the other dark stuff, the trauma.”

On the heels of the Dallas Mavericks’ 9-3 start, Jason Gallagher returns, and you bet the head of production at The Old Man and the Three (and ThreeFourTwo Productions more broadly) comes ready with analysis of the Mavericks’ scalding start as Luka Doncic has led the way with 30.7 points per game, the second-most converted treys after Stephen Curry, and the lowest usage rate of his career other than his rookie season. Jason touches upon the improved fit between Doncic and Kyrie Irving now that they’ve had adequate time to jell, teen center Dereck Lively II’s instant success, Grant Williams and Derrick Jones Jr. starring in their respective roles, Tim Hardaway Jr.’s sixth-man brilliance, ultimate team expectations and so much more. 5:05-6:08: “The second pleasant surprise and the second I said was that Dereck Lively needs to become the second coming of Tyson Chandler. Again, he’s not Tyson Chandler. However, he looks incredible. He looks so good that you actually see some of the deficiencies of not having more support in the big area. … But when Lively is healthy and when he’s in and when he’s not in foul trouble, they look pretty awesome. And then the third and sort of final one is some of these role players, they look incredible too. Grant Williams has been Steady Eddie for us, and he’s not only a good vibes guy on the bench, which every team needs; he is amazing from the 3-point line. He’s just a little bit more versatile than role players we’ve had in the past and same with Derrick Jones Jr. Derrick Jones Jr., who is an NBA journeyman, I can’t recall him looking this good, really ever.” 8:28-8:47: “If they’re playing a team, say the Wolves or someone like that, [they have] the ability to be able to speed up but then also grind the game to a halt and make it a half-court contest. I think Dallas has the versatility, offensively, to play both ways.” 12:55-13:25: “In terms of bringing in these huge stars, I’m sorry, the NBA is too good, and you have to have a training camp and you have to learn how to play together. And those are the positive signs we’re seeing from Luka and Kyrie and why I feel really good about this team, even with the defensive woes. It’s simply because they look like a team that has an identity, a philosophy, schemes. If you’re a team with that in place, you have a leg up on a bunch of other teams.”   18:12-18:29: “When you watched [Doncic] last season, you literally had the thought, ‘This is not sustainable.’ As great as he is, it is not sustainable to watch this guy control the entirety of every single possession, and it [ultimately] played out exactly how we thought.” 24:33-24:48: “Now, in my head, Luka has to show that he is clearly better than Jokic to win the MVP, and I don’t know if he’ll do that. But it’s funny that our brains do that, all because Jokic has a ring.” 26:39-28:17: “Being a big next to Luka, you just have a very specific job…and he’s excelling like crazy at that. … If I am, say, playing the Mavericks in the playoffs and I am scouting, the very first thing, the literal No. 1 agenda item is ‘get Dereck Lively in foul trouble.’”   39:19-39:30: “In terms of growth from year over year, it’s been nice seeing them just handle these bad opponents because they didn’t. I can tell you, ‘They did not do that in the past.’”

Alex Kennedy, Chief Content Officer at BasketballNews.com and host of Running Up the Score, a biweekly live sports show airing every Tuesday and Friday night, stops by to wind through the Western Conference just as the league readies for tipoff. The Nuggets are Alex’s leading squad but far from the conference’s only contenders. Oh, and he has firmly taken a seat aboard the Wemby Train. Who’s coming with him?   2:44-4:03: “This is a [Nuggets] team that has been together, this core has been together for years, and they have so much chemistry. And I think that’s one of the most undervalued things in sports. We tend to get excited about these big, blockbuster moves and player movement, but chemistry and continuity really, really help and go a long way when you’re trying to contend for a championship. … There are a handful of contenders: Denver, Phoenix, the Lakers, and then, I think, to a lesser extent you go and look at Sacramento, Memphis, Golden State, Clippers.”   9:52-13:19: “We haven’t seen a player like [Victor Wembanyama], ever. … LeBron James said he’s an alien. He was like, ‘I don’t want to use the word ‘unicorn.’ That gets thrown around too often. He’s an alien.’ Giannis said he could be the best player in the NBA. I mean, these are superstar players that are raving about him and talking about him coming in and just dominating the league. Giannis even said, he was like, ‘I need to start winning some championships now because Victor Wembanyama’s coming.’ … It was interesting; in the first preseason game that Victor Wembanyama played, we saw [Chet] Holmgren and Wembanyama match up against each other, and it almost feels like the future of the NBA a little bit – these huge guys with crazy length that are kind of position-less that can do a little bit of everything and are super-skilled.”     17:49-18:13: “I still think there is a coming-out part to be had for Anthony Edwards, and I’m a huge fan of his game. I saw a ranking today. I think it was in Sports Illustrated. They were ranking the top five shooting guards in the league, and they had him at No. 3. I wouldn’t be surprised if after this season we’re talking about him as No. 2 and up there with Devin Booker, who I think is easily the top shooting guard in the league.” 33:09-34:13: “Everyone’s on the same page now. They really came together, and I think some of the drama that existed there…they’ve all acknowledged their role in what happened, and it seems like they’re ready to move forward. … This team has a ton of talent. They’re one of those teams that you kinda put the question mark, like, ‘OK, well, if they stay healthy, they can be very special. I hope that Zion [Williamson] can be healthy and have a full season. He’s so much fun to watch; we’ve just kinda been robbed of that as of late.”      36:00-36:43: “I think the question is can they take that next step? Can they become a legitimate championship contender? And if not, we could see this be the last year where this core is together. Guys could leave in free agency. The organization could decide to blow it up and make a ton of different changes. So, yeah, I’m very curious. The Clippers have a ton of pressure on them to kinda make it work. … There were reports toward the end of last season that the Mavericks were starting to worry that if they don’t put a contender around Luka [Doncic] that he’s going to want to go elsewhere, and that’s so common in today’s NBA.”      *The Steven Adams injury news broke after the recording, as did the Antetokounmpo extension.

Jake Fischer, Yahoo! Sports senior NBA reporter and the author of Built to Lose, makes his fourth appearance to break down the Eastern Conference's biggest storylines as the season approaches. Tune in to hear why he regards the Celtics as favorites, his thoughts on Evan Mobley's next leap, rookies you should keep an eye on, Jake's dark-horse team out East and so much more. 4:16-6:30: “I am pretty bullish on the Bucks. … but I think that Boston is the favorite. I’m not so certain that Milwaukee got so much better as opposed to how much better Boston got by adding Jrue Holiday to what they had. … I just think the Celtics’ top six is way better and stronger, and that’s kinda how I like to look at things, from a playoff standpoint. … The fact that Boston has its same core four basically of Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Al Horford, you throw in Kristaps Porzingis and then Jrue Holiday, that’s a pretty strong, switchable, malleable group.”        10:18-10:58: “The Clippers haven’t put Terance Mann in any deal, and the draft capital that they’ve been able to figure out they could potentially send to Philadelphia in addition to the original offer of a first-round pick and a pick swap just hasn’t gotten there to close that gap for the Sixers, so I don’t think it will. The last call I had about this, before we were recording, was like 30 minutes ago, and my impression following that call is that [from] the Sixers’ side of things at least, they don’t seem to think much will change from a negotiation standpoint between now and the start of the regular season. So, if something were to happen, it would definitely be something out of left field.”       12:24-13:01: “Can he be a linchpin on offense? Can he be a legitimate stretch 3-point shooter that makes defenses guard him out to that perimeter and then he’s got opportunities to make plays off the bounce, attacking closeouts? It’s all about Evan Mobley in terms of what they’re ultimate ceiling is, and I think we’ll know within 10 to 15 games. We knew 10, 15 games into last season that Paolo Banchero was gonna be a force driving to the rim and he was gonna be one of the greatest players in the league at getting to the foul line. We’ll know pretty early if Evan Mobley has taken that step or is in position to take that step.   13:53-14:34: “The Knicks could easily be the third seed and host playoff games and what have you. To me, the question marks are going to be there about Julius [Randle] in the postseason until they’re not. … I am struggling to see the next leap from them being a good team to a great team. I don’t know what it will be, but I feel like there is some move that has to be made for them to kind of take that next step.”    15:49-16:19: “Tyrese Haliburton was one of the most impressive players I saw in the FIBA World Cup. I’ve really come to appreciate him as a personality and a mind as much as a basketball player from my conversations with him. … I’m a big fan. I think he can lift that team pretty high, especially if all the other complementary pieces can continue to perform.”       22:24-22:54: “There’s an organization pressure, especially when you’ve got…right now, the Eagles are one of, if not the, leading candidates for the Super Bowl…the Phillies are six wins shy of winning a World Series. That city’s pretty used to winning right now, and if the Sixers come out and they fall flat on their face I think it will be heard rather loudly and clearly.”   *Our Built to Lose book special, Jake's previous appearance

Andy Liu of the Light Years podcast is back yet again; for a record ninth time, in fact. His task this time? Helping Aaron preview the Golden State Warriors as they attempt to bounce back from a 44-38 campaign in which just six games separated them from 11th-place Utah and they were eliminated by the Lakers in the second round. Andy and Aaron discuss last season’s challenges, summer acquisition Chris Paul’s fit, Draymond Green’s leadership, Andrew Wiggins’ value and Klay Thompson’s future, among other timely topics.      7:31-8:39: “They tried to downplay it. They tried to make it seem like they would get through it. But that was the punch that ruined the season. It ruined Draymond Green’s standing as a leader. Nobody respected him or wanted to listen to him after that. … It wasn’t 100% Draymond Green’s fault, but any time something happens that’s like that, you end up not having the same voice you did if you’re Draymond Green. And I don’t think he’s had the same voice for a while now. … I think it just makes things very, very difficult for him to be that guy for this team. I think it works if you’re Steph and Klay. It doesn’t work if you’re Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga and some of these younger guys who don’t necessarily want to hear it from him.”      17:35-17:47: “Steve’s Kerr biggest job this season is to find a way to get Chris Paul to buy in on coming off the bench. Because if Steve Kerr can’t do that…this team is cooked.”   20:53-21:14: “I think this thing is tenuous. I do. … The first 10 games are gonna tell us a lot about where the Warriors are gonna be the rest of the season.”       23:54-24:14: “That’s part of the game that maybe last season they weren’t good enough getting Steph the ball because Jordan Poole wasn’t passing, Kuminga didn’t know how to play, [James] Wiseman didn’t know how to play, JaMychal Green didn’t know how to play Warriors-style basketball. It’s hard. And I think Chris Paul is one of those people that’s smart enough in the NBA to just pick up off the bat, easy.”     28:46-29:21: “Look, he’s not gonna be the No. 2, but he’s such a good player as the No. 3. It’s very reminiscent of what Aaron Gordon did in the NBA Finals, where if you’re gonna leave him open, he’s gonna make you pay. And he’s gonna be so good defensively. He does all the glue stuff. Shout-out to the Warriors, 1 for trading for him, taking the risk, and then 2, identifying that he’s gonna be able to do all those things. And of course Andrew Wiggins has to be the one that wants to do those things, right? I think of Kuminga as someone, and again different phases of their career, but Jonathan Kuminga could be Andrew Wiggins, pretty easily.”    37:17-39:04: “I think, moving forward with Mike Dunleavy [Jr.] and Kirk Lacob, they’re not losing the Xs and Os or the strategic path of where they want to go. I think they’re smart enough to do what [former Warriors president and GM] Bob Myers had done the last decade. What I do think that they’re losing is the relationships, the kind of mending of relationships that Bob Myers could do, how Bob Myers can calm Draymond down and build a bridge between Draymond Green and Steve Kerr, build a bridge between Steph Curry and the young guys and kinda get people bought in, get [owner] Joe Lacob bought in. … Now, one thing I do think that may happen is that if this Chris Paul thing doesn’t work, Bob Myers has never really shown an inclination to make big moves at the trade deadline. I think that changes with Dunleavy and Kirk [Lacob].”   41:34-41:40: “I think Klay will probably, most likely take a little bit less to come back to the Warriors.”   47:22-47:40: “All of these guys are pseudo-contenders, right? There’s just a ton of question marks for all of these guys, and I would hesitate to put the Warriors in a tier below the Lakers or a tier below the Suns or a tier below the Miami Heat. It just doesn’t make sense to me because everybody has the same questions.”

Enjoy Ethan Scheiner discussing his new book, "Freedom to Win." Here are some highlights: 3:23-6:23: “The thing that is so incredible about this story is that it is an unbelievable marriage of politics and sports. That really is the thing that jumps right out. … This communist country, Czechoslovakia, which had started to become free, suddenly got invaded by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union said, ‘We’re not gonna allow this country to become free,’ and so all of a sudden the people of this little country were crushed. And they found that there was only one way they could fight back. … So they turned their whole world into supporting their team to try to fight back against the Soviets on the ice, and I just sat there going, ‘This is actually politics and sports completely overlapping. I think this is the greatest story I’ve ever heard.’”       14:08-15:36: “It took me a little while to realize that I actually had to tell the story from a more personal angle. At first, I just thought the history of hockey in Czechoslovakia was so amazing, that it was this country where hockey was so central to fighting the Soviets. … I thought that was enough. … ‘The great narrative nonfiction books, the things that really draw people in, are really focused on individual human beings at extraordinary times, so you need to focus more on the individual human beings.’ Then all of a sudden, I said, ‘Oh, my gosh. This Holík family has had this extraordinary history that actually also at the same time tells the story of this incredible country, and it’s woven into this unbelievable story of hockey and sports fitting in with everything.’”   32:06-35:27: “At one time, the communists in Czechoslovakia had imprisoned the national hockey team and sent two guys and sentenced them to 15 years in the uranium mines. So people actually thought that the Soviets had forced their hockey to die so that the Soviet team could become good. And so as time went by and Czechoslovakia had a hockey team again, people thought they weren’t allowed to beat the Soviets. So this was all part of this sense in Czechoslovakia, ‘The Soviets are keeping us down, and they’re using the communists to do it.’ … The Soviets won the 1968 Gold medal, but Czechoslovakia was so happy to have beaten the Soviets. And people actually got a sense of ‘You know what? We actually seem to have real freedom now. We even are allowed to beat the Soviets.’ They actually believed that.”       47:20-48:06: “We tend to think of democracies falling apart because a bunch of people in the streets start chanting and come in and run roughshod over those in power, and then suddenly grab the gavel and say, ‘OK, we’re in charge now,’ sort of Doctor Evil style. But more common, what happens is people gain power through free and fair elections, but then use the instruments of power to completely undercut democracy. And so that’s a big fear that people have [that] could be happening in the United States; that’s certainly what happened in Czechoslovakia.”      58:07-59:07: “We’ve heard this chant before when we get to 1989, as now there are hundreds of thousands of people in Wenceslas Square, and they start chanting, ‘Dubček! Dubček! Dubček!’ over and over. And he steps out onto this balcony as 300,000 people are chanting his name. And so he hasn’t been seen for 20 years, and he’s this symbol of hope, and they’re chanting his name. And in this moment, he had planned on reading some remarks, but he’s so touched by the moment he pantomimes embracing the crowd. … It’s a stunning moment.”

In a tightly packed Western Conference, where only a handful of games separate the first- and thirteenth-place teams, Sean Highkin of Rose Garden Report is encouraged by the Portland Trail Blazers’ start. Specifically, the Blazers have gotten All-Star-caliber, not to mention career-best, contributions from Jerami Grant and Anfernee Simons. Such stellar play from Portland’s secondary stars has enabled it to weather a difficult early schedule played about half of the time without franchise cornerstone Damian Lillard. Here are some Highkin highlights on how Portland was able to stay afloat, lottery pick Shaedon Sharpe’s early flashes, what’s ahead for the Blazers and much more:    6:15-7:07: “I don’t think they’re a title contender, and I don’t think they think they’re a title contender either; that’s the other part about it. Joe Cronin, the general manager, went into the season saying that he doesn’t think this roster is complete and he doesn’t think it’s good enough right now to contend and that it’s still kind of a work in progress. … Going into the season…I said they would probably make the playoffs as a 7 or 8 seed out of the play-in. At this point, I’m pretty comfortable saying that I think they’re gonna be Top-6 just because they’re currently in the middle of the toughest part of their schedule. They’ve had a ton of road games.” 19:45-20:03: “Already, [Sharpe]’s way ahead of where certainly I thought and where I think a lot of people even in the organization thought he was gonna at this point, so that’s something everybody’s really encouraged by. And honestly, for Blazers fans that I talk to, they haven’t really had a rookie that was exciting like this since Dame.” 25:45-27:15: “Well, [Grant]’s just found the exact right balance. … This spot that he finds himself in in Portland is kinda the perfect middle ground between those two [Denver and Detroit] situations, where he’s not the first option most nights ‘cuz everybody knows it’s still Dame’s show, but he can be that guy. That game against the Knicks, Dame was out in that game and he was able to do that. He’s had a couple of other 30-plus-point games this season. He had that game-winner against Phoenix. He’s been able to do that stuff, and he can do that from time to time when you need him to. So this is like the perfect spot for him.” 28:10-28:30: “In those Dame-CJ years, they never had a third guy half as good as either of those guys. … This is easily the most talented team that Dame has had since those LaMarcus-Batum-Wes Matthews-Robin Lopez teams.” Sponsor: Use code TBPN during sign-up at DraftKings.com to claim your free shot at millions of dollars in total prizes. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800- GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (IL/IN/LA/MI/NJ/TN/PA/WV/WY), 1-800- NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (CO/KS/NH), 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), visit OPGR.org (OR), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/KS/LA(select parishes)/MI/NH/NJ/ NY/OR/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. $200 in Free bets: New customers only. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 pregame moneyline bet. $200 issued as eight (8) $25 free bets. Bet must win. Ends 1/8/23 @ 8pm. Risk-Free Stepped Up SGP: 1 Token issued per eligible game. Opt in req. Min $1 bet. Max bet limits apply. Min. 3-leg. Each leg min. -300 odds, total bet +100 odds or longer. Ends at start of final game of the 2022-2023 NBA Season. See eligibility & terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/basketballterms.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices