Thinking Basketball podcast. My name is Ben. Welcome back to another episode. It is March 3rd,

2006. And I am, Cody, just absolutely excited today to talk to you. It's the highlight of my week, but really, I mean, we've got eight teams shaping up right now in the playoff picture.

I counted one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, which means in the semifinals of each conference, if the brackets break the right way, we could have just an absolute bloodbath. We could have World War

three. I guess you can't say that now. We could have a real, we could have a real dozy of a

conference semifinals in the second round of the playoffs if the brackets shape up the right way.

How you doing? It reminds me, I don't remember when it was. Maybe it was

23. There was a moment in the Eastern Conference where it was like, no matter what, we're going to get a matchup where Joelle and Bede is in there. You got the Cavs at their peak. You got Janus at his peak. And I thought there was one more in there. That looks like a really interesting team. And then I'm pretty sure most of them

got injured. Maybe it was the Celtics.

Yeah. Maybe it was the, and I'm pretty sure like three of the four teams then sustained a huge injury. And it was like, oh, that was really anti-clamatic. So I'm hoping that we can actually have like this great buildup for, um, you know, I feel like I've seen some discourse where people are like the season's kind of meh and I'm like maybe the season is meh

because we're seeing that the playoffs are going to be so exciting. And we just need the playoffs to start at this point, right? So I think the season itself has actually been pretty interesting. But now we're starting to see that it's like, oh, wow, we might see some pretty interesting stuff happen in the playoffs. And I think we're all just really excited about that at this point. I think the season's been pretty good. I think the start was really sluggish for me. Very me. But when you look at some of the emerging teams, you look at some of the runs, I mean, the spurs and the pistons and young teams. And I think what, if I had to guess at what people are really trying to kind of the

Junice Croix of what they're trying to put their fingers on there, Cody.

Yes, we've got to get French off early in the show today.

I would guess it's the idea that the league is in a changing of the guard moment.

And that any time in sports and especially basketball culturally when there's a transition,

basketball fans are very slow to crown anything new that can exist on the pedestal that

they put their idols on.

So whether it's a new player or a new MVP or a new team, in the moment as it's happening,

there's this sort of, you know, inauthenticity.

This you're not, you're not legitimately as good as the 16 Warriors or the 96 Bulls or whatever. Meanwhile, when the 16 Warriors were starting the year, everyone was like, you're not as good as the 96 Bulls. and when the 96 Bulls started the year of 41 and 3.

Every time I went to a dinner party,

my uncle in Boston,

who was a longtime Celtics fan,

...