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Learn more at vertexinck.com. All right. We're here, the young ones on The Athletic NBA show. I'm Jared Weiss. I'm joined by Law Murray, our Clippers writer for The Athletic, and Will Guillory, our New Orleans Pelicans writer.

And Law, you just got back from All-Star.

How much did it suck?

I don't think it sucked.

I mean, other than Sunday when I try to find food and I literally had to go to the damn arena to do it.

I mean, your choices were listen to Kid Leroy and the NBA crossover or, you know, go to Walgreens and stock up. You couldn't even go to the damn food court. Anyway, yeah, All-Star was cool. Was there really like a food court at the, at the hotel where you were staying? Or it's just like the food options are so limited in Salt Salt Lake you have to go to a food court to get decent food. Okay. So you should know what my strategy is for booking the All Star Hotel because I've done this two years in a row. Tried and true. I don't do the media hotel, bro. I'm not going to be where everybody else is going to be. I'm going to be somewhere else in the cut.

Okay. I had a definitely cut a deal. I was at a place called the Metropolitan Inn, and it was definitely an end, two ends. And, you know, I didn't cost the company a lot of money and no one knew where I was for 48, 72 hours. It was cool. See, that's a bull. I don't know nothing about that media hotel stuff. Is it possible to be in the mix and salt lake?

Is there a mix in Salt Lake to be in? I don't know. Maybe I'm hating. I'm going to have the jazz fans. It depends on what kind of mix you talking about. Yeah, buddy. I mean, I think it's a bull move that you're going on Marriott because anyone who's in the industry knows everybody does Marriott.

There's always like a few randos that do Hilton or like someone does Hyatt, which like credit to them, Hyatt is by far the best value for a rewards program. But like there's five million Marriott's. I'm in a Marriott property. I won't say which one. I'm sure somebody will figure it out as soon as they see it in Indianapolis right now,

because I'm covering the Celtics Pacers game on Thursday. All the damn statues up in their place. It's funny because like, you know, Marriots are so, they're all exactly the same that even though they're all kind of like, at least a lot of them are nice. You're just so used to it it when you're working at this job at least that like they all kind of seem like the same crap every

single time so it's fun when you get to say at one of these little what was it the washington

what did you say it was the metropolitan and metropolitan and there we go all i need is a is a running shower

bro that's really it.

All right. Well, Will, you're recovering from Fat Tuesday and Nola right now.

Thank you for sobering up enough, presumably, to do the show for us.

Man, it was a crazy Mardi Gras for sure. I'm barely sober as we speak.

Shout out to the like eight water bottles I drank this morning before I got on the pot.

But nah, man, it was a crazy Mardi Gras the whole weekend.

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