Hello and welcome to the game theory podcast. I'm your host Sam Vassini.

We're presented by the athletic. God, it feels good to say that.

I'm here today with John Hollinger, as you probably saw in the episode description.

Today we're going to break down the Eastern Conference as it goes into the bubble.

It's just going to be a little bit of a reset.

Basically, I'm going to ask John for his general thoughts on the Eastern Conference as a whole as we go into Orlando.

And then we're going to run through team by team. We're going to talk

about what we think of that team heading into Orlando, what we think its chances are. We're

going to talk about the players we're most excited to see on each team, and then we're going to

talk about where we think it'll all go wrong. Obviously, the where it'll all go wrong question

will be a lot more interesting

for teams like Boston and Milwaukee than it will be for Washington where the answer is, well,

fucking everything, right? So, John, it's so good to have you here. How are you doing, man?

I'm doing great. Hold them up, just hiding from humanity for another week and watching a lot of basketball.

Yeah, so what does your schedule look like right now?

Because I feel like mine is just like all filled with phone calls.

Like I've dealt with like three phone calls from agents today.

And like they're all like great phone calls.

You know, deal with sounds like a misnomer because I actually enjoy

talking to people around the league. And then I just watch basketball and, you know, try and

talk to college coaches and agents and executives. Like I feel like I'm doing a lot more on the

phone now than I am in terms of watching tape. So what does your schedule look like? So I guess for me, I've been spending a lot of time getting my hands dirty in data,

...