Hello and welcome to group chat.

I am Justin Verrier.

That's Rob Mahoney.

That's Big Was.

We are back here in Los Angeles. So about a week before you're actually hearing this to go through part two of the preseason power rankings. Typically, we do a little bit of banter up top here. But because we're recording these in advance, because we want to get these out to you as soon as possible and with our lovely faces in this amazing backdrop that Victoria Valencia has constructed for us. We are turning to our friend Rob, who is going to provide us with some fodder in order to get us into our exercise today. I'm always here for fodder. You know, we don't have the news. We don't have the news hook. We don't have something to talk about. So instead, I turn to the New York Times is 36 questions that lead to love. I thought, you know what? This is our training camp. This is our media day. We need to bond. We need to some team building exercises. So every one of these subsequent pods, I'm going to hit you with one of these questions,

starting today, number seven.

Unless something newsworthy happens in which point, you will not hear one of these, but you will hear a new topic. And you will see us in different places recording after the fact. But for now, I present you with this question, do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? I do, but I don't think I want to share it.

Why not? This is, like, kind of dark. I think that's what we're open. Look, we're talking about, we're talking about some bad NBA teams today, or at least not good NBA teams. I think we can lean into some of the darkness. I don't know why I've always just assumed that I would have a stroke.

Really?

Yeah.

I don't know why. There's no reason, no specific, just a hunch.

Every time it's happened to somebody in my life, I'm like, I bet that happens to me someday.

I don't know, like, what the causes of strokes are, why I would be more predisposed.

It's just something I've always felt. This is a crazy question, to be honest.

Has it led you to be more hypervigilant about the prospect of having a stroke?

No. It changed nothing about your life whatsoever. It's just like... It might happen somewhere.

It's just like, for me, I'm just like...

It's a premonition. The end is going to be painful. Yeah. I'd see that's a fairly common way to go if we're talking about like all the typical means. I don't think I have a specific way of dying, but I think I will die early. In fact, I probably will die of stress, probably caused by you doing something. We're going to push a recording time and that would be the thing that puts you over the edge. Rob Ballone's going to kill Justin very. We're waiting the five minutes for Rob to pop on and just I croak right down there. Think about all you could have been doing with that five minutes.

It's so tough. No, but like people, I will say that I'm, I have middle age or I'm having a midlife crisis often as a joke. And people are like, you know, I have middle life crisis. I'm like, I'm 38 years old. Like, how long do you think I'm going? How long do you think this is going to last? We're not getting into the 80s and 90s.

No.

I was not built for longevity.

This is the NBA podcast. How long do you think I'm going? How long do you think this is going to last? We're not getting into the 80s and 90s. No.

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