Chase Thomas podcast. The Chase Thomas podcast.

My nephew needs me to record. See, I hate, I already hate it. I hate it.

Oh, and welcome back to another episode of the Chase Thomas podcast where I'm still the A4 mentioned.

Chase Thomas going to you live from Knoxville, Tennessee, Everything School, HQ.

Joining me over there at Ball Report, Mr. Ryan, Sylvia, Ryan, good morning, sir. How are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks for inviting me on, Chase. I appreciate it. Thank you for being here.

First timer here on the program, but I've been reading you for a long time now over there at Ball Report.

And I wanted to pick your brain on both the men's and women's hoops teams here with weirdly enough.

It doesn't feel like it, but basketball season is very much around the corner, sir.

It does feel really weird.

I mean, exhibition on Sunday for the men's and then the next Thursday, the Lady Balls get their exhibition.

It doesn't feel right.

It feels like football season, but I guess that overlaps. It's that time of the year already. How many days are we until the actual first game for men's hoops? For men's, I think we're 11 now. 11 days. If I'm right off the top of my head, I think we're at 11, which is just a crazy thing to say that it's already... It feels like they just lost in the elite eight yesterday, but we're already back for another season. I wonder if we're going to be able to pull ball fans from Lakers games, because they're quite invested in Dalton Connect's future. It is funny to me, though, I will say. I don't know if you've thought the same, but I mean, I'm a huge NBA guy. And one of the things that, like, has been hard to explain to the vault, my ball friend, friends here or family and stuff like that, where they're still just so bitter about the Dalton falling. It's like, Dalton's older. And it's just you go through stars just aren't, they're not drafted at 23. Like, it's very rare that you get the Jimmy Butler's of the world. And it's just teams are smart to take the bigger swing on guys who are less certain to be really good right away like Dalton has been for the Lakers. But it's just, um, those guys are usually role players, um, when they come

to the league that good. They can help and plug in right away, but, um, still really Matt that he fell out of the lottery and everything else. And like, I wanted Dalton to go in the lottery, but I understand it. I understood it. Um, I, I'm, I'm curious if you felt the same way. Yeah, I think it was frustrating in the moment because

saw the production that Dalton had. But I mean,

at the end of the day, the chance for him to go

to a huge market like Los Angeles. Now very quickly, he's been one of the most talked about rookies in this class just because you're playing for the Lakers alongside LeBron. And obviously, you have LeBron's son as your kind of rookie mate going into things. At the end of the day, it's probably good for him. I think you would rather him play for a Lakers team where maybe he gets 15 minutes a game in his rookie year, not as much as he would for like the Wizards or something. But you're probably competing for a playoff spot and to try to win a championship. And you're on a competitive team. So at the end of the day, I think it's good. But you're right. I think a lot of Tennessee fans, too, are kind of Lakers fans right now. Yeah.

My girlfriend's family is number one Tennessee fans through and through. And kind of like the day after the draft, my girlfriend's mom's like on fanatics looking for Lakers gear and stuff, ready to kind of, because she never really cared too much about the NBA. So she's just like, all right, I'm a Lakers fan now because Dalton's there. But it kind of does speak too. Like, he was only here for one year. He was only in Tennessee fans gravitated, gravitated to him so much that it's already like, it's like a Hendon Hooker effect where it's like, he gets drafted by the Lions. and you see a lot of maybe former Titans fans even after they drafted Will Levis that were like, all right, lions are my new team.

I'm following my guy. I was even going to say it's more, it's, look, it's not this high, but it reminds me more Peyton. Like I had family members who were Colts fans just because they moved over to follow Peyton. I think friend of the program, Jack Foster, was a Colts and Broncos fan because

following Peyton throughout.

So that's what it feels like to me is I think, I think it's going to stay.

And to your point, Peyton was here for four years.

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