 That's a good final image right there 14 year vet and he's a champ and he's up early Channing Fry joins the show right now. First of all, good morning. We just learned the video of me dunking. Holy crap. How good is that? It must have been early in the career that we'll send it to you to make sure you have it. You know what Channing yesterday we barely got to get into it and it was a kind of a heated topic. It's a heated topic in the country. I know it's Wednesday, but now that we've got like grownups talking about banning court storming. I feel like this could go on forever. So one we've had we can arrest them. I submitted electric fencing. No one likes that. What? Just for fun. Have you been on a court that was stormed? Yes. Don't lose. Don't lose. Who cares? What are you talking about? Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Right. Right. Like, yeah. And I said this, we talked about this yesterday. Like, there's only one guy ever in the history of maybe college sports that I'd really be worried about his health. That's J.J. Reddit. Right. I'd be worried if somebody stormed the court, somebody would punch him in his face. He was hated that much. Everyone else? Like just put your hands up and walk off the court. Like why are you trying to run where drunk kids are running? It happens. It's part of college sports. Like it's not that serious. And it seems like only the coaches that lose make a big deal about it. So stop losing. Stop losing the unranked teams. Coach better. And maybe no one's going to storm the court. That's the stupidest rule I've ever heard in my life. See, Channing, I said, aren't you opening up the floodgates, like where else in the world can 30, 40, 100 kids run up on you and you not have to defend yourself or do something? Isn't it open up the floodgates though for issues? No. I've got the courts stormed on me three times and honestly, I just put my hands up, right? We lost to, I think Oregon State. We lost to, in my four years, Oregon State, Washington State, and maybe like Stanford at the buzzer. And you see me just walk off my hands up and security runs to me. Nobody bothers me. But like, you know, if you're going to run off while they're running on, you're going to get hit. It's physics. It's physics. They don't know their equilibrium is off. So listen, if you were to just stand still, somebody like, you know, Caitlin Clark, I'm pretty sure Caitlin Clark, the generator of millions of dollars, security is going to come get you first. Security is going to come get you first. If you just put your hands up and just like, hey, I'm just trying to get off. Somebody's going to come find you. It's not that big a deal. Those poor walk-ons are just going to get pummeled. Look, no fans. You'd air for the grades anyway. So come on. You get all the gear and you're there for the grades. Come on. Let's keep it a buck. Poor champ. He's the only one. The only one fighting it. I just hate that it's due because I just disagree with everything about dude. Nobody likes to do. Nobody likes to do. If it was anybody else, I'd probably make an exception. But it's due. It's like, you know, elbow mop. They're fine. Janning. Clay Thompson, he's continuing to come off the bench. And you've been on this early. You've been saying they should do this since November. What made you feel that way so early on? I think you saw him early pressing. And even the year that they won Wiggins and Clay, they are such good teammates and such good like team guys. That's always like, well, if I don't play good, he'll do it. Or if I don't play good, Clay will do it. To me, you've got to put the pressure on one of them to come out and play good basketball. And then also for me, Clay right now, coming off of all his injuries, I'd like to showcase him. Ring some of that firepower off the bench. Clay is a top 75 player of all time. I don't care what about that list or whether you made it or not. But Clay is that good. And I think if you bring him off the bench or a guy like Chris Paul, you can keep that rhythm going that you need. So you're going to introduce the young guys like Kaminga and the rest of them to allow them to put them in good situations to win games. To me, playing Clay, Steph, Dremond, Kaminga, everybody in the first lineup, you're not getting any firepower off the bench. When they win, they have a great bench. Think about Sean Livingston. Think about Andre Guadala. Think about those kind of guys coming off the bench. Now you have Clay Thompson coming off the bench. It's no wonder that they're doing great. He's going to play us 34 minutes anyways. So with all that being said, the struggles, the up and downs, is this the last year Clay Thompson's on the Warriors? Does he go and start somewhere else or does he go back there? Man, listen, we're talking about Breonna Stewart. Take that change now. Look, I know a lot of teams that go pay him crazy. I think it's up to him. Let me go with my gut here. I do think it is. I do think this is his last year. I think there's a team that is going to pay him crazy, just to not be on the Warriors anymore. Obviously, the Warriors got to make decisions. I think they're going to go younger now. I think this is kind of their last full run. If Clay doesn't have a crazy playoff run, I can see somebody else saying, hey, we'll start you. You've got 35, 40 minutes a night on a good playoff team. I can see somebody throwing some money at him. Man, just my brain explodes. It's just the truth, because whether they think they're going to win, they're going to say, well, do you have $20 million for Clay Thompson or $30 million or Joe Shmoa? He going to put people in his stands. You had Clay Thompson to Dallas. You had Clay Thompson to the Lakers. You had Clay Thompson to Sacramento. You had Clay Thompson to anybody. You're like, all right, well, we've got a chance. We're going to be a playoff team. I mean, he's just a weird picture in another journey. It's a weird picture of an Orlando match. It is. Yeah. It's like D-Way going to Chicago. You're like, ah, I get it, but that ain't it. That ain't it. It's going to be weird, and it's going to take a while for us. I guess Damon of Bucks Jersey was a little bit weird as well. And that's a great segue, because they've won three straight now. And we all know, for the beginning of this Doc Rivers experiment, it felt like, uh-oh. But for what we all do for a living, it was fantastic. What is your opinion, not just on what they've been able to do, and it looks like they're figuring things out, but kind of Doc's entrance as the Bucks coach and all the talking that he was doing? Man, where do I? OK, where do I? So I know a bunch of Clippers guys. You know, obviously, I think Doc has had success in this league on different teams. I think this is an interesting situation for him to come in. I think no matter who you, you could have Phil Jackson on this team. I don't know if I put the Bucks above, and it's a hot take. I don't know if I put them above a healthy Philly or Boston, regardless. I just don't think they're built that way. I think I'm a little disappointed that they really, they're always going to be good, because you have Yanis, you have Dame, you have Brooke, you have good pieces. But they haven't evolved for me, right? They haven't, like, adjusted to the times. I feel like they are very, very good during a regular season. I'm curious to see what happens if they get an unfavorable matchup, how they make adjustments, which is, I think, their biggest problem. I don't think they're an adjustment team. I think they're just, do we do harder? And that's what I worry about. But you have Yanis, and if he can be healthy, he's a monster in the playoffs, controlling the pace of the game. But I think Doc Rivers is just there to make Dame and Yanis work as best as they can. So I don't think it's about X's and O's. I think it's about superstar management. So he did a pretty crappy job at the beginning. He won three in a row. I think a pretty big win against Minnesota. That was kind of impressive for me. But it'll be interesting to see what happens during the playoffs. Because teams are going to say, during a regular season, you ain't hacking Yanis like that. During the playoffs, teams are now stacked. And think about the Knicks. They've got four or five dudes that are six-nine physical that can just guard him, right? And Dame, he's playing amazing. I think he has the most fourth-quarter points in the league right now. So for me, it's like, I don't really see them both play great at the same time together. It's kind of weird. It's almost like Luca and Kyrie. They can play well together. Just not like, it's not like Penny and Shaq. It's not like Kobe and Shaq. You know, it doesn't, it makes sense, but it just doesn't look, it looks weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's my thing. As much as we talk about the inconsistencies of the Bucks, right, they're still sitting in third and they're looking at, if it was today, we're looking at a unhealthy Philly. We're looking at Orlando Magic team. I still like them getting out of the first round and then playing somebody else in a second. I still feel really, really good about the Milwaukee Bucks with the circumstances. Totally. I mean, if they play those two teams in the first round, I think that's a quick 50-piece nugget. That's four and done. I just don't think, I don't think Orlando shoots well enough and their first year guys, I love Orlando. I think they need a true point guard and some shooting. And I think they're gonna be top five in the East. But to me, that's the issue. It's like, what are our expectations for Milwaukee? You have Giannis in game. So you're happy that you beat up on a hurt Philly or a young Orlando? No, we need to see them in the Eastern Conference Finals. That's the expectation. When you have players like this, when you have two players that are probably top 15 in the league right now, and that's a lot of pressure, but it's also what you get. I mean, you have an older team. You've stopped developing your young guys. You've started, you've really bought into this is our time, which you should. And so for me, okay, you got out the first round. Congrats, here's your cookie. Now who you gotta play? What happens in the Eastern Conference Finals? Are you going there? Those are my expectations for them. So I feel like I know your answer then. What's more likely for this particular Bucks team, a first round exit or going to the finals and winning? Man, no, I don't think they win. I'll be honest, they not beating Boston. Right, fair enough. I just don't think so. Boston is too complete and to their bench, their system, their defensive versatility, their range of shooting, superstar power. Okay, let's say Yannis and Tatum, okay? And then you have Jaylen Brown and Dame. So those four just go out the window. Boston has everything else. Yeah. Or Zengis, Drew Holiday, boom, boom, boom. You're killing. You're too soon to start to need to win you two games, you're coaching your bench. That's four games in the playoffs. This one's easy. They happen to get them to eat or something in the first round, they could very well lose in the first round of the playoffs to the Miami. How well they'll play in New York next. Yeah, they got Miami, New York, they don't want that. They don't want them problems. They want Orlando, a beat up Philly. They want something to kind of warm up and understand. They don't want Miami because listen, like no matter who's on Miami's team, they gonna get grandma and grandpa out there and next thing you know, they're gonna average 12 and five, make good basketball plays. Like what are y'all doing at practice that no one else is? Oh, they're probably practicing. They're probably practicing, that's it. Man. Man, it's crazy. Y'all got a lot of hot kicks in there, they're gonna lie. What are you talking about Lou? These are good takes. Cause that's your team. You like that, cause that's your team. You know what, more so than adopting. You don't think Miami can beat Milwaukee in a four game and in a series, first round of the playoffs. You never count Milwaukee out how they're built. You know, they're a system team so they can plug in and plug guys in and out. But they've been just as inconsistent as Milwaukee has this year. And Milwaukee's been able to survive and stay in the third place. So that's the only thing that's different for me. But I want to stay on the bugs really quick because we always make a big fuss about Doc. But Yannis recently said he doesn't watch a lot of film, doesn't watch a lot of basketball. And I thought he said it in Jess kind of trying to get people going. He said he likes to be surprised going in games to see what guys do. What was your take on it? Well, you know what my take was on that. One, if he thought that was a joke, that's not funny. I just don't think that's funny. As a leader, you have to be the most prepared. I played on teams with guys like Brandon Roy, Steve Nash, LeBron, even guys way back, Stefan Marbury. All they did was watch film. And it wasn't a joke. It was like they get in a car, they'd have a driver just so they can continue to watch film. So for me, it was like he probably does watch film, but that's not really funny. I didn't think that was funny. I think your team has been pretty inconsistent this year. I think for you as a leader, obviously you want to portray that I'm doing everything possible to help my team win these games. So yes, they're on a three game win streak, but I think it just depends on what happens this year. If they don't win the big thing, then people are going to come back to that unfunny joke of, oh, I don't watch film. So it wasn't my favorite quote. It was bad timing too. Like you guys are losing, you just got fired a coat. Like it just, it was rough. And you're right, it wasn't funny. He's had four coaches in nine months. So it's like, and you don't, oh, and I don't watch film. It's probably like, yeah, you probably should have kept that one to yourself. You put that one back in the pocket, you know? Read the room. Can we talk a little Lakers for a second? Cause I know you've talked about the title window being officially closed. I believe it was zero chance at winning the championship. Do you still, are you still there? Has it moved at all? With the Lakers? Yeah. No, that's a zero. That's a zero. That's a zero. That is a zero. Good try. Hey, I love you guys. You know, I mean put it this way. If we stop right now, who they playing in a plan? The, the Warriors? That's a 50-50 chance right there. That's tough. And then you gotta go against a, a young, a, a young Minnesota. Or Dallas. Yeah. Or Dallas, who's cooking right now, stop it. Bro, listen, that's my guy. I love you. If I saw him, I'd tell him the same thing. Hey, you had a great year, big guy. That's crazy. You're 39. I sweat going up the stairs. I need a breath. Wow. You out here averaging 25. But it ain't it. Impressive. There's no way no one could say, now if they win, I will come back on this show and say, you know what, I retire from media because I don't know what I'm talking about. But they got, they got to climb Mount Everest. They got to climb Mount Everest. You know what's at the top of that? Yolkich. And there's nobody in the Western Conference, maybe other than, I'll say the Clippers. Yeah. Because Kawai's ballin', he's the best, most untalked player in the league right now. Barbecue in the whole league with no words. It's crazy. No TV, no words, just cooking everybody. But no, the Lakers, no, thank you. I'm sorry. Yes. I love the Kawai part. Okay, so let me ask you this then. Cause now we're already starting the Willie have a farewell to our wonky, rumors about LeBron in different cities. Do you see a world in which he leaves LA for one last hurrah and a shot at a title? Oh wow. No, that would be the dumbest thing you could do. What for what? You're a Laker. You're about to have your number in the rafters with Kobe and Shaq and Kareem. What other place can you do that? You've already done an LA. You've already done it in Cleveland, right? Now you're in LA. You want to move from your $30 million mansion to where? Oklahoma City? To Dallas? To San Antonio? Stop it. No. He's living luscious. He's like this, ah, we're in the seventh spot as he looks at the sun, looking at the Hollywood sign. He's like, well, all right, here we go. Another game, it's just the ease of life is crazy. Yeah, I only played on the Lakers for like a quarter of a season. That's a different experience. Playing in LA is a different experience. Absolutely. And I played in New York. If you can be successful there, there's no reason to leave. You know, when they get rid of people, people are like, now I go, you know, I'll wave this, just let me stay. You know, it hurts going from LA to Orlando, LA to Charlotte, LA to New Orleans. It is, it ain't the same. LA is beautiful. We got to have Channing on more just to keep shitting on cities like I do when we see more games. No, no, I'm crapping on the city, but I'm saying it ain't the same. You know it's not the same. Look, there are certain cities where you got outfits playing at the beginning of the year. Then there are sweatsuit cities. Okay. You're not leaving. You're not leaving a fashion city to go to a sweatsuit city. I sold my soul. I sold my soul at Winter Memphis for three years, bro. Trust me, I know exactly what you're talking about. Don't you sold for 90 million? Don't start, Channing. Don't start, Channing. I want to win too. Channing, start. We were doing good. Leave Memphis alone, Channing. Talk about Memphis, Channing. Leave Memphis alone. We were doing good. No, no, listen. Look, you can have all the ribs you want in Memphis, right? Look, honestly, when you did that, I was like, dang. I didn't know your injuries or whatnot, but I was like, I think they had still had part of the grind house there. I thought that was a good matchup for you. Obviously the city's not my favorite, but they got a certain culture there. It worked. So it's different than going, it's different than going to Detroit. It went from a good fit for literally, all right. Oh, great fit. Oh, yeah. All right. Great grind, because the Parsons contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't mess that up, buddy, but hey, you living good. I see that fancy painting behind you. Yeah. He's living the best life of everyone. I look expensive. Hey, kidding. So you don't think LeBron waits and goes wherever Bronny gets drafted or wherever he goes. We think he's staying in LA. Stop it. And then I said this before, but number one, LeBron is a dad, right? The problem is sometimes I think he forgets that he's a dad, so he's hyping his own kid up. Like for me, I got a 13-year-old boy. Now, if he's like getting ready to go to college, I'm like, man, yeah, Hendricks. I'm gonna league him, but then I'm gonna realize that, oh crap, I'm chanting fry. Like people are gonna pay attention to this, especially if he's not playing the best that he can. So for me, it's like, if Bronny plays in the league, when he does, I think he is a league player. I don't know if he's going this year, next year, whatever. Just an opportunity to play in a league, Bron will be happy. I think he's done it differently than his own, than his dad. I think if Bron can hang around, if he can hang on by a thread, even if he's 42, and Bronny's gone to San Antonio or someplace like that, but those two to play and be on the same court, I think that's gonna be pretty impactful and pretty awesome for them, both of them. Now, Michelle hates the San Antonio. I know, I don't want him to go to San Antonio. I wanna throw him back. I just told my team, because then I'm put in a precarious situation chanting. I'm even wearing his first hat today. Don't do this to me right now. I'm an experienced professional. To me, I think if you're gonna get somebody like Bronny, San Antonio's the safest place to put him. Why do you think the NBA put Wemby in San Antonio? It's the safest place to put superstars like that, where they can grow into their opportunity. Could you imagine Wemby in Detroit? What? You look, come on now, that ain't it? They put him with the best coach ever and said, hey, we gonna put you on TV just every so often. A little bit. And then there's no pressure to win. Don't worry about it. And you can live in your little bubble in San Antonio. No state tax. I wanna bring it back to 2016 when you get to Cleveland. You said that they had sticks up their asses. Yeah, for sure. What did you mean by that? And how did you remove those sticks up their butt? Well, first of all, I wasn't moving. No sticks up, no butts. But so I got traded from Orlando. We were one of the worst teams in the league. I was with Scott Skiles, who I like and appreciate. But his practices sucked. They were three hours. We had to do like closeouts every single day. We had to do layups for 30 minutes, like tedious, boring, boring stuff. And we were still getting drug by 30. So one day I told Skiles, I was like, man, Skiles, man, look, I'm 33 at the time, whatever. I said, man, look, you tear the skin off my ankles doing all these closeouts. You know, dang well, I don't play defense like this. So we kind of had an understanding I didn't have to do that. When I got traded to Cleveland, I was like, hold up. We don't got to practice this and we're winning? What are y'all thinking about? Y'all don't talk to each other? This is ridiculous. So me being me, I put every single player on a text chain and then started, you know, wait up at night to watching the games and then started just texting everybody. And then they were like chanting, leave us alone as late, blah, blah, blah. Then I send funny gifts. Then I send, you know, rude things and things probably like HR would talk to me for. And then honestly, everyone just kind of ganged up at like hating my text threads. And then a month later, everyone started to love him. And so it was like, hey, Karee, you have a book reading. Why don't we three people go to the book reading? Right, whatever it is, right? He had a sound bowl reading, right? So I went to that, you know, Braun had a shoe release. We're like, hey, let's three, four people, let's go to this. So it just turned out to like actually take time away from your life to go hang out with your teammates. Like they're not that different. We're all cool. Like, I think Kevin, especially was like, dude, Kevin, you're just chilling and cleaving by yourself. We're like, you got a big old house. You got all this expensive liquor. We're gonna come over to you and throw a party at your house. And so we literally used to throw parties at Kevin's house, right? Cause he had the best, obviously the best charcuterie plate, but you know, he had the best liquor too, right? So for me, yeah, we were like, why not hang out? Listen, we're not practicing. We're drumming teams. Why, what are y'all mad for? I just got paid for more land though. Come on, man, we gotta have some fun while we do this. So we started having fun and started working and yeah, like you started to see people started to talk to each other more, hang out more and obviously it worked out. Just a text thread, you guys. See, Lou, we wanna hang out with you and you won't respond and it hurts our feelings. Lou losing Atlanta. He's with his people. I know Atlanta people are different. He won't do anything. All right, so you guys won the championship that year that of course then led to the argument that I just, I'm not a huge fan of the, if Draymond hadn't been suspended, the Warriors would have won that series, but it is an argument that's been made many times. Why? Had nothing to do with Draymond. It was Andrew Boget, I heard, was the biggest issue. If you watch the film, Andrew Boget, the first two games, regardless of staff or anybody else, made the biggest impact on our ability to win. So he was blocking shots at the rim, setting big time screens, rebounding, outletting, like he was doing everything. When he got hurt, you notice we started driving the ball over and over and over again, like relentlessly. And the only time we'd settle for a three is if like end of shot clock or you were wide open. But to beat Golden State, you had to play street ball. You could not play, let's just shoot threes with them. You were gonna get crushed, right? They can go on a 9-0 run like this. You make a mistake, you know, every game that we lost, we'd look at the film and they were so, I mean, it was wild how good that team was. You made a mistake, oh, that's three points. You made another mistake or a turnover, oh, that's five points, four points. Like, you're like, dang, I'm down 12 now. How did that happen after three possessions? Well, you had turnovers, you didn't, you know, get to the body, you didn't communicate, you didn't know the assignment, like Andrew Boget was the biggest issue for us. When we started driving the whole, he would block everything. So when he left, when he got hurt, we were driving to the basket, getting layups and then getting our defense set so that we could actually have an opportunity to grab and hold so they weren't run around like crazy people. It was, he should get, he should get the most credit. It wasn't about Dre Ma. We were going to win that game regardless. Dre Ma could have played, you could have put Scotty Pippen out there, Dennis Rodman. We were going to win that game. Channing, this has been awesome. If you don't know, you probably already do. Road Trippin is the podcast with that fool, Richard Jefferson and Allie Clifton. We appreciate the time so much, we could probably go on for another hour. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, anytime, anytime. We'll take a break. We'll be right back. Run it back, run it back, run it up, run it back.