Good morning, sweet world, and welcome to the No Dunks podcast on the Athletic Network. It's

Tuesday, June 16th. I'm still Jay's Skeets alongside me. Tass Melis, the bearded one, Trey Kirby,

and our super producer, JD, and we got a very special guest today. He has a staff writer for The Ringer, and you've heard him regularly on their

NBA podcast. Before The Ringer, he was the editor of Yahoo Sports, hit NBA blog, Ball Don't

Lie. He really turned that site around, in my opinion. The previous editors were a

bunch of clueless hacks. He's your man, and he's mine. It's Dan, what's up, man?

Not much. It's a joy to be joining two of my most esteemed bosses on this podcast. And of course,

I'm talking about Taz and J.D.

Yes, that's right. Well, you blew my mind, Dan, when we asked you to come on to this podcast to talk about a

couple of columns you recently wrote for The Ringer, that you said the last time you

think you were on some iteration of this podcast, whatever it was called at the time,

was back in 2010, I think you said, when we were doing like a decade ago when we were

doing a July 1st Canada Day free agency blowout show or something and I think we had

you on. Is that right?

Yeah, my memory of that is I was at my old 9 to 5 job because when I was freelancing at Yahoo,

I wasn't doing this as a full-time job yet. and so I was in like a cubicle at a tech news company

having just like played hooky to write about Kevin Durant signing an extension with the thunder and and Maddie O asked me if I could come on the show and I had to like go into a hallway into like a stairwell to talk to you guys for like 10 minutes on the phone. And it was, it felt like rebellion, but who knew that it would be, A, my future, and B, the last time I would talk to you guys for a decade. I can't believe it's 10 years ago. It's almost 10 years ago to the day as we approached the beginning of July. I think Tassus, Trey, whoever was there, I don't even, Trey, were you even there at that point? I'm not even sure. No, I was the editor of Baldot Lion. Dan, you did not check in with me. I could have used to that day. Oh, God. I think we had like a barbecue going out on the patio. Jayne's Ash, is that, yeah. Oh, my God. I think we had, we had like a barbecue going out on the patio, uh, Jayne's

that's, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, drop the camera. That's for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Almost put the

camera on the grill. Just like, oh, well, Dan, it's great to catch up with you here. I've

yeah. Yeah, run us through the past 10 years real quick. Yeah, no, I was like, I mean, I would never presume to book your show for you, but like, guys, I've been here. I've been around. You know, I'm due. I'm due for the, but it makes me very happy to be here today. Well, last week, you penned a two-part column titled The Biggest Offseason Questions for every NBA team, not headed to Disney.

And as you wrote, right off the top of it, for all that's left unsettled and undetermined about the NBA's plan to resume, the 2019-20 season, this much we know for sure, the eight teams that won't be making the trip.

The delete eight as John Hollinger has so brilliantly classified them, that is so good. So those eight franchises at the bottom of the standings you wrote about, the Warriors, Cavs, Wolves, Hawks, Pistons, Knicks, Bulls, and Hornets. I thought this, I mean, you do tremendous work, which is why you took over at Baldwin, Boldolmite for crying out loud. I like this because it's a little different, right? You know, we obviously have done a ton of podcast on looking forward to resuming the season. You know, what we've just heard with Kyrie Irving and Dwight Howard and the coalition maybe about whether that's a good idea. We've talked a ton about that and we'll continue to do so. But this was cool because it's like, oh yeah, we do know that there's not going to be these eight teams.

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