Hello and welcome to the hoop collective podcast. We talk about the NBA. We're doing it on Thursday,

early afternoon. On the East Coast, I'm on the West Coast this week in LA joining me from New

York City is the curator of the Bontemps poll, which we are celebrating today, Tim Bontemps.

Stop the day, baby. Big day. The Bontemps straw poll, the BS poll. I've encouraged branding on this

poll and I am advising him to call it the Bontemps poll. It's all I'm going to say.

Joe Lennarty has bracketology. There's no reason why Bontemps can't have the Bontemps poll.

Joining us from Dallas is a little under the weather, but persevering. God love you, band McMahon.

Howdy partners. I'm on the podcast, despite skipping my first called in sit game in a while last night,

but I can't miss a can't miss Bontemps straw poll. God you missed an incredibly rare game that

that calves Maverick's game on Wednesday night where the calves actually got scoring from their

starting wings. Of course we're opening the strumple top talking about Windows favorite team that

the Cavaliers and what's talking about MVP can is let's get to the bar speed. Get to the

bar steve it's baby. All right, so without further ado, the first there's going to be is there a

plan for three MVP polls? Yeah, that's the plan. The first of three. And very quick on the methodology

here, Bontemps talks to 100 likely voters. So it is the exact same. It's not, you know, it's not a

projection. I mean, it is, I guess a projection, but the goal is to replicate the voting pool at the

end of the season, talk to a couple people from every market, talk to some international people,

talk to national people, try to give us best of a look at the moment as we can of what the MVP race

looks like. You talk to broadcasters, you talk to writers, you talk to radio people domestically

internationally, which makes up the pool. Will this be the exact 100 voters? No, probably not,

but it will probably be somewhere in the range of 85 ish percent of the voters. And so therefore,

it is it is proven to be extremely accurate. All right, Bontemps, let's start from the back of the

...