Hello and welcome to the Daily Dang. I'm Dave DeFore, joined this week by my good buddy,

Eric Name, our Milwaukee Bucks Beat reporter. Eric, you gotta be nice and refreshed after

the time off. I know last year was kind of crazy, covering a championship team, kind of got a lot

of work. You work longer than than everybody, didn't you? Yeah, I did. I worked a little bit longer

than everyone, but that's cool. I actually got vacation this time around. Again, I don't want to

sound like grateful for anything that I do. I have a cool job, fun. But yeah, that was a grind going

one season right into the next one. So I was happy to actually have some time off. And yes, I'm

refreshed. I'm recharged, rejuvenated, ready for a new season. Are you prepared for your own

personal championship bump that you're about to get? Oh, I don't know. You know, I don't know

anything about that. If things are coming my way, I'm more than happy to take any of those things

on and profit off them. That would be great. All right. Well, look, we know that often the season

after a first championship for a franchise, I mean, it can go either way, but usually we'll see

these teams in the mix for number two. I mean, it just kind of happens that way in basketball

it seems. The bucks right now are seen as the second best team in the east behind the nets.

And granted, we saw that the nets pushed them as far as they could with just Kevin to rent. I mean,

if Kevin to rent shoe size is what a half a size smaller is a whole different conversation we're having.

But I want to ask and even those second places, it's not like they're being, you know,

and no one's saying they're going to miss the playoffs is not disrespectful. But are we somehow

overlooking the bucks and should they be the favors in the east? I mean, it's really tough to say

because we saw so little of the full strength in that series in that second round. And I think

there's a couple of ways you can go, right? Like one way is maybe that's what we see again, right?

There's plenty of question marks about the nets. They're older than the bucks are up and down the

...