How are y'all doing?

What's crack-a-lacking?

My name is Jay Kyle Mann, and this is the Ringer NBA show.

We're coming to you with another off-season episode as the sand in the off-season hourglass slowly trickles down and disappears. Basketball is no longer. In the rear view, it's on the horizon, but it's blurry. It's not quite here yet. So that means that we have some time to do one of my favorite things, which is just to ponder the higher mysteries to put on the maister rope here not

that i'm qualified to do it but this guy is the guy who's on the other end of the line

one of my favorite people to talk about the higher mysteries and just whatever it is doesn't

matter he's the author of the book thinking basketball he's the founder of the youtube channel

thinking basketball he's the host of the very successful, very fun podcast called Thinking Basketball.

It's been Taylor. Good to see you, Ben. Kyle, did you write that or did you just come up with that off

the top of the dome? Improvised it, man. I'm just, you bring out the passion for the art,

the craft in me, Ben, and I just got excited. That was amazing. Also, probably the most formal exchange we've ever had in the six or seven years we've been podcasting together. That was, I'm like, man, should I just get really, like, clean with my presentation today? I don't know. Maybe you've set the toe. I wanted to give you your proper respect. I did have your credits written out here. so I kind of teed myself up on that, but like I even needed to write your credits down.

And I was thinking about it's funny that it's funny for me to go from, I remember when you made

your first video, because I noticed it, I was so face close to the canvas on YouTube that

I knew what everybody was doing at every moment, you know, when you're locked in. And I was like face close to the canvas on YouTube that I knew what everybody was doing

at every moment, you know, when you're locked in. And I was like, what is going on here? And I saw it. I was like, oh, this is, wow, who is this? And we've gone from there to the other day I called Ben, and it went straight to voicemail. It did one of those, like, you know the person did it. I was like, what the hell is this?

And then Ben calls me back and goes,

sorry,

I was talking to Steve Nash. Come on. That just is a thing that happens sometimes. And I love that like, let's talk basketball. You're making, you're embarrassing me. Well, I just love that in this, like, you know, you get to like meet people and you get to be in proximity to people and players at times. You're like, oh, okay. And Steve Nash still elicits that response for me. I got really excited. So very excited about what you have coming with him. Don't want to spoil it. I brought Ben on because I want to talk like big picture where the league is going, where we've come from. These are always the kind of things that we gravitate towards.

But I want to start here with you've been working on a series with your co-host, Cody.

Great team of people over there at thinking basketball, Mike De La Rosa, apparently a ball himself.

But you've been doing a really cool. Mike's apparently really good. Have you heard caught me to this too? Mike has Instagram highlight reels where he cooks people. If you haven't seen them, they exist. Yes. I don't want to be a part of that. But anyway, I'll pass to him. I am unequivocally the worst player at this point in time on the thinking basketball team. If there's any debate about that.

Yeah, we'll have to get you guys a Drew League team just to see how that goes.

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