Sleeping on the Suns, Brian Flores and the Failure of the Rooney Rule, and Joe Thomas on the Super Bowl and the Pain of Losing

The Ryen Russillo Podcast

The Ringer

Sports

4.8 • 13.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2022

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Russillo shares his thoughts on the first-place Phoenix Suns as well as the class-action lawsuit filed by former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores and how the Rooney Rule has backfired (0:23). Then Ryen talks with six-time Pro Bowler Joe Thomas of the NFL Network about playing football in the trenches of the offensive line, playing for Kyle Shanahan, the Bengals' challenges vs. the Rams’ defensive front in the upcoming Super Bowl, the mental and emotional hurdles that come with being a part of a losing team during a rebuild, Flores’s discrimination lawsuit, Baker Mayfield’s future in Cleveland, and more (13:56). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (56:12). Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Joe Thomas Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The press box is here to catch you up on the latest media stories hosted by Brian Curtis and
0:04.6	David Schumaker. These guys have the insight on the biggest stories you care about.
0:08.6	Check out the press box on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:23.5	Yeah, we're gonna start with some good news. That's gonna be the Phoenix Suns. We're just
0:26.0	gonna start with some bad news and that's the Sprite and Flora stories. We're gonna have Joe Thomas
0:30.1	on it as well. And we'll do life at the end. Okay, as always. All right, first off, let's do
0:35.8	the Phoenix Suns story because this doesn't feel like we're treating them like a 4119.
0:41.8	That's where the Phoenix Suns are. 50 games in, they're 41 and 9. What actually puts them
0:46.1	only three games up on Golden State. I'll touch on this a little bit later in the open, but I
0:50.6	think it's very predictable. We already kind of know who Phoenix is even though it's still only a year
0:54.9	into this NBA finals first year of Chris Paul and this group. And here they are destroying everybody.
1:01.3	And I don't know, I guess are we holding out hope that it's a wide open field because they
1:07.2	haven't won before. Like if they had won last year, we're able to hold off Milwaukee. We all
1:12.0	be saying it's Phoenix and one tier by itself and then everybody else. We probably would be. We'll
1:16.8	get to some of the rules and why that kind of happens. But let's look at the resume a little bit.
1:20.3	Okay, remember they started one in three. And I remember watching in the first week. I go,
1:24.8	this doesn't look very good. Like this is the one and done kind of fluky thing. Does this mean
1:29.6	Chris Paul is getting old? No, it doesn't mean any of those things because from that point on,
1:33.2	they've gone 46. They had in the, they won what 11 in a row. They had an 18 game winning streak.
1:39.8	They went from one in three to 19 and three at that point. Their clutch numbers are incredible.
1:46.0	And that's really telling because look at last night's game against Brooklyn. And by the way,
1:49.3	with Brooklyn, like they fought, they hung, I guess, Hardins heard a little bit. Kyrie was kind of
	...

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