After Hours with Amy Lawrence PODCAST: Hour 1

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Learn more at Goalie.com today. Woo! I recovered! Have you recovered? I feel like it took me a bit. It took me crashing to recover. I went to bed on Monday morning, having been awake just shy of 26 hours, and I tried to read. I really did.

I have a Star Wars book that I'm into right now that I'm enjoying, and I would really like to be able to read more than one page at a time, or a paragraph at a time. But I couldn't even get through three sentences on Monday morning. My head was nodding and nodding. I was laying down. It's probably not smart to lie down and read when I'm trying to actually get some pages done. But I was lying down and my head would droop and it would droop, and then I would realize that my head was about to hit the book. And so I'd wake up and open my eyes and kind of shake my head. No, I just want to get through this section.

That's it. I just want to get through this paragraph, for heaven's sakes, but it did not happen. And I didn't even need drugs.

Not those kind of drugs. I didn't even need any sleep aids to help me. I fell into a fairly deep sleep. I don't remember what I dreamed about, but I know I was dreaming and I wouldn't be surprised if it was football that was causing me the dreams. So before I fell asleep, I wanted to kind of share with you something that popped into my brain, because football is so all-consuming. And this time of the year, even if they're just two games or really from about the holidays, I would say week 17, 18, through supersized wildcard weekend and divisional weekend and on into championship Sunday. And now as we ramp up for the Super Bowl, it becomes even more intense. There are fewer games, but that means the scrutiny and obviously the stakes are so much more intense. And I was thinking about how here we are almost at the end.

I finally got my Saturdays back. There's just one game left. And while I will miss football, it never truly goes away. It just morphs into a different form.

It's an amoeba. So instead of having games, we've got combine and draft talk and we've got coaching hires, which by the way, there are still a bunch of teams that do not have head coaches. We have a ton of coordinator positions open.

We have not gotten our answers or seen yet how the map of quarterbacks will change coming up. So there's so much on the horizon. It's not going to die down necessarily.

It just takes a different form. But when the games are done, at least there are a few more hours where we can finally call it a weekend. Take the weekend. I'm off for the weekend. Well, that's not generally the case during football season.

It's more like we're off for a half a day before we get right back to football between college and the NFL. And so as I was sort of falling asleep, I'm not sure that I was asleep yet, but I was getting ready for bed and I had this this kind of epiphany that I decided I would share. And so I did on Twitter. I didn't put it on Facebook, but there's a reason for that.

Facebook won't let me access my own show page on my phone. So whatevs. So as I was getting ready for bed, I was thinking, OK, I've been awake 24 hours. Well, actually, at that point it was 25. I've been awake 25 hours.

The adrenaline has worn off. The dog walked me. It was not me walking Penny on Monday morning. It was the dog walking me.

I had to listen to music while I was walking the dog just so I wouldn't fall asleep or stop moving. I was pretty sure at that point I was going to dream about football, but I was reminded that from the age of 16. All I ever wanted to do was talk about sports on the radio. I didn't peg a talk show host as the gig that I would have for 20 years.

That really never crossed my mind. I wouldn't have known the first thing about becoming a talk show host. I just knew I loved radio. I loved listening to games and events on the radio.

I wanted to do play by play of basketball. But that's what I loved and had to figure out a way to make a living. Weirdly enough, turns out I'm pretty good at this talking thing. And so I was thinking about it Monday morning.

This is all I've ever wanted to do. And for more than 20 years now, and I'm trying to think when did I make the jump. I made the jump to full time sports radio in 2002. But I didn't do, I didn't hit network level until about 05 part time. And then 07, 08 is when it became my full time gig.

So it's more than 20 years in, in sports radio. And it's the passion that never wanes. There are days when I don't want to work. There are days when I don't want to watch sports. In fact, I'd rather do anything but watch a basketball game or a football game or anything else. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to take notes.

I'm over it, right? Because it's work. I know it's not manual labor. I'm not telling you it's manual labor.

But it is work. And my friends who are outside the business and maybe have a more casual interest in sports, they will want to talk about games. Or hey, did you see this?

Or I saw this. And there are times even with my family, my closest friends where I think, no, I don't want to talk about sports. And no, I don't want to get together and watch a game. Because it's work. It'd be like a plumber wanting to fix his bathroom in his spare time. Or someone who, well my mom teaches math and actually does calculus for fun.

So she's the aberration. But really when it's work, it is something you need to get away from. It's not something I generally do for fun anymore. But it's the passion going back to age 16 before I even really knew how, what, where, when and why of this journey, this path. It's that same passion though, that same love. It's always been a labor of love.

It is labor, but the love is greater. And so it keeps me going. And I just put that on Twitter and woke up on Monday afternoon, thankfully had a good seven hours of sleep.

I felt like a new woman. And I was blown away by your responses. I honestly did not really expect a response. I wasn't looking for you to validate me or anything like that.

I don't eat social for that. I've got my faith and my family and my friends to remind me who and what I am away from work. But I was really blown away by all your kind words and your messages. And I feel like even as I was sifting through them, please forgive me for not responding to all of them. It's impossible. I would never get any work done. And I'll just be honest, I already spend hours a day on social media. I just can't do more. We're talking hours a day on social media. It's one of the downsides of the digital age, but also one of the downsides, one of the huge downsides of just having one producer to work with now.

I don't expect a Jay to do all of that. So it kind of falls on me. But I realized how many of you have been following my career, not maybe as long as I've been in sports radio.

Because I've had a bunch of local stops. But there are people out there that I hear from every now and then who will say, I listened to you in Oklahoma. I listened to you in Rhode Island. I remember you doing this game. I remember you on this platform or this network. I remember listening to you at your former network and I followed you to CBS Sports Radio, which is such a huge compliment to me. I am so grateful for that.

But I would also say, please tell me that you believe I've improved as a host because I am so, so, so thankful and also humbled. Every time I think about how there are no tapes out there, there are no digital recordings of me when I first got into the business because it was bad. It was bad. I got fired multiple times, not because of what I was doing on the air. That was a different story. But I have been dropped from rotations. I've had program directors tell me to be more like the guys.

I've had other program directors tell me, one of my favorites is right before I made the jump to CBS Sports Radio. In fact, the PD at the time did not know that I had already started negotiating for another job. Because you know how it is.

You've got to keep that close to the vest. And in my business, if you tell your bosses that you're about to take another job, they'll pull you off the air right away. And I just wasn't ready for that. So I already knew that I was likely going to leave my previous employer. But I hadn't yet shared that. And I remember a program director pulled me aside.

This was, I don't know, late 2012. And he said, I want you to know we've had a conversation about you in upper level management. And we've determined that you've pretty much gone as far as you can go. It was hard to look at him without crying. It was hard to hear that and not be completely crushed, even though I knew I was getting ready to leave. So he explained to me that they would continue using me, but that some of the dreams and the goals I had of kind of expanding my role at my previous network were not going to happen.

Because we feel like we've invested all we want to invest in you. About five weeks later, I left and started this job. And, you know, now it's been 10 plus years and it's been eight plus years of me doing this show five nights a week. And it's never been a linear journey, whereas a straight line, you walk the line, you just keep moving. No, it's been pitfalls. It's been failures. It's been disappointments.

It's been crushing painful stops. But it's also been incredible to, for the last 20 years, get the chance to do what I love. And I realize not everybody has the opportunity or has a job that they love. Some people have different priorities, right? Some people don't necessarily need a career that is full of passion and that is a realization of a dream. Some people just want to go to work, get their paycheck and go home.

And I have no problem with that. But I could not sink as many hours and devote as much of my life. I could not pick up and move from city to city and state to state and region to region, sight unseen. And, you know, start over in my life without having a passion that keeps me going. And so every now and then I like to stop and kind of pinch myself like, OK, you were up 25 hours.

OK, you're delirious right now. OK, it feels like football season has been eight years instead of eight months or whatever. But you still get a chance to do what you love every single night. And the opportunity to be on the air right after big games like the AFC and NFC championship. It's an honor. It's humbling at times that I have the opportunity and that you all tune in to actually hear what I have to say.

So all of that to thank you. All of that to say, if you weren't listening and you weren't following along, of course, I would not have the job or at least not have this job. It matters that people tune in.

It matters that you're engaged. Our social media continues to grow like nobody's business. I mean, it's it's unbelievable. I keep thinking we've peaked and people are done and that's not the case. And I don't necessarily mean followers.

I mean interaction. I mean, the number of people who reach out. I'm still hearing every week from people who are finding the show for the first time. People who reach out to say, hey, I was going through a really tough time in my life and listening to your show gave me something to look forward to, which is.

That in and of itself is overwhelming to me. It feels like such a responsibility. And yet I know that the show, because it's lighthearted and it's a little irreverent because we laugh like hyenas. And by we, I mean me, because we do a lot of laughing and we try to. You'll find reasons to smile and have fun on the show.

I know that gives people a distraction and an escape. And so I get it. It just. Wow. Wow. To think that I was we were happy to keep you company, but that listening to to me do the show or listening to the show and hanging out with us kept you going in times that were really hard.

I'm not even really sure how to process or compute that. And so I want to say all of that as a huge thank you. But also this. It's not as though it's all sunshine and roses and things don't ever go wrong or that there aren't disappointments. I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to I'm not going to cry because it's disappointing or what I'm about to share with you, but mostly because I've just been emotional about it today. I have not mentioned this before on the air.

It's the right time to tell you. I suppose we and by we, I do mean producer Jay and I had plans to go to Phoenix for the Super Bowl. Have not been since before Jay worked on the show. And so it was going to be his first opportunity to go. I have not been since Miami.

Tampa, obviously, there was no radio row last year. I didn't have a contract done. And as it turned out, Penny was just starting insulin. So I really couldn't leave her. And and all of my energy and excitement and anticipation was set up to go to Phoenix. We are not going. I won't get into the details why. Only to say it was not our choice. I'm very disappointed. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not.

We are. We've had a really well, I won't speak for Jay. I've had a really hard time wrapping my brain around it. It's been difficult at times.

I've I'm embarrassed by the fact that. You know, I told people that we were going to be there and people are expecting me to be there and I'm not able to follow through. It feels like we're missing out. I mean, it feels like a huge disappointment.

So all that to say, I hadn't mentioned it for that reason, because I needed to be in the right emotional space to tell you without. You know, going off the deep end or getting upset or I just we're moving forward. That's what we're doing. It's again, it's life, not life doesn't always work out the way you want it. Work certainly doesn't always work out the way you want it. There are successes. There are fails. There are highs.

There are lows. There are incredible triumphs. And then sometimes there are disappointments and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. And believe me, I tried. I we tried.

We spent a bunch of energy trying. But it's not going to work out this year. And I don't know what's going to happen moving forward. I'm trying to just take care of these next two weeks and do the best that we can. So to that end, we are already starting to work on our Super Bowl week and our coverage. We are not going to do what we've done in the past. We will have some special guests.

And Jane are actually really excited. We've got our guest wish list and we're starting to work on those. Now, we're not planning on doing four and five interviews a day, not being there.

It's too challenging because of the logistics, but also because of the production limitations here. So we're doing something a little different. We're going to try for a couple of high profile interviews or new people that we've never had on the show each day. But we're also going to pivot a little bit and do more in the video space. So we're working on something called Super Six. We're going to have six different videos for you. One every day of Super Bowl week, starting on that Sunday night slash Monday morning. And we're working on some various goofy plans.

Trust me, as well as some ideas. I even asked Mom because she's not a huge fan of football, but she watches and they watch more this time of the year. She watches because of her husband.

But I even said to her, Mom, you're a casual fan. I know you're going to watch the Super Bowl. What types of topics or like funky trimmings around the Super Bowl do you care about? What do you think would make a good and interesting and kind of fun video? So we're going to do videos on Facebook and videos on Twitter, and they're going to be exclusive to each platform.

So you're going to have to go find our social media sites. We're going to work in our YouTube channel. We're going to incorporate Super Bowl themes and we're going to have fun with it. And we've just decided, as disappointed as we were, it's not going to stop us from doing great radio.

It's not going to stop us from doing what we love. So I haven't answered your questions about Super Bowl for that reason. Wanted to make sure I shared it with you. Of course, I'll have to say it again because the audience turns over. But to come back to my original point, thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your messages. You don't have to take the time to write to me. You don't have to take the time to let me know that you're a faithful supporter of me and the show. And so many of you did.

And on a day that I was exhausted and a day where I just felt like I was out of energy, you lifted me up. So I appreciate that. You do that a lot. Now, some people still hate me because I won't blame the refs for the AFC Championship, but, you know, buzz off. No, don't. Just keep sending me your funny messages.

Here's my favorite, Producer J. My favorite is that the NFL rigged it so that the Chiefs would win because the NFL wants the Chiefs to be in the Super Bowl. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why the NFL would prefer the Chiefs over the Bengals. First of all, the Chiefs just won a couple of years ago and went to another Super Bowl, right? So it's not like we're talking about a new, fresh storyline. Second of all, Joe Burrow is the flavor of the month and he's earned it.

I'm not being cheeky about that. I'm saying, like, he is right now might be the most popular player in the entire NFL. He's him.

He's him. We can't get enough of Joe Cool and Joe Burrow and Burrowhead and his cigar smoking and yada, yada, yada. I mean, he's earned it. But right now, you can't look anywhere in the NFL without seeing Joe Burrow or hearing about Joe Burrow. And the next big thing is going to be the Burrow contract that breaks the bank, right? Like that's going to be the big that's a bigger story right now than Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady is how much money is Joe Burrow going to make? Because he's the next quarterback up and obviously has had an incredible start to his career. It's almost crazy to think about the fact that his first season was interrupted by a torn ACL.

It's like that never happened as good as he has been in coming back. The Bengals fans are extremely passionate. They've never won a Super Bowl.

It would be one of those fresh storylines. So for the life of me, I can't figure out how, first of all, you could get all of the owners to be on board with the NFL rigging something. Second, like how in the world would the would the Bengals go along with rigging it for the Chiefs? And you know, the NFL is the owners. They're the ones who make all these decisions. But then how could you get all the officials on board? And, you know, there's dozens of people that work on the NFL cruise and nobody figures it out.

Nobody says anything about it. And they somehow just keep all those secrets. I mean, it's mind blowing the number of people who actually believe that the NFL orchestrated the ending. And everybody just kind of played along and nobody wants to leak it.

You know, nobody wants to write a book or tell their story. But also, I really don't understand at all why you think the Chiefs would be more attractive than the Bengals right now. I just, I mean, if you have some ideas, please tell me. Because honestly, I feel like there's a little bit of Chiefs fatigue and that's part of it. People wanted to see the Bengals in the Super Bowl, as in fans wanted to see the Bengals in the Super Bowl. But what about the Bengals is not as attractive. They have just as much star power as the Chiefs. What about the Bengals would not be as attractive in the Super Bowl? Wouldn't it behoove the NFL then to give the fans what they want and make the Bengals go into the Super Bowl? I mean, especially with we got a hobbled Mahomes who knows how healthy he's going to be. He's not nearly as good. I mean, I don't know.

Tyreek Hill's not there. People have had these thoughts before. It's just back before social media, they would just be in their basements saying them to themselves and no one would really listen to them.

Now they have a platform and everyone else who thinks this has a platform, so we hear about it more often. And I know fans are not logical or rational, especially when they lose money or their picks are blown up or in that space they're extremely emotional. I get that. But if you stop to think about it for even one second and you're going to tell me the NFL rigged it because the NFL wanted the Chiefs. I just need to know one reason.

One reason. Because the Chiefs, as I say, they've been around now for five years. People are tired of hearing about Patrick Mahomes kind of like they were with Brady or Manning or anything like that. Nah, the Bengals to me would be the more attractive if you're asking who the NFL would rig it for, which is just, I mean, even the words coming out of my mouth, it's so ludicrous.

I swear to God, I'm not a lunatic. Why don't we rig it for the Lions? Seriously, if we're going to rig it, let's go all in.

I think they tried. People would argue. Alright, so you can find me on Twitter, ALawRadio, when we welcome our Bengals guest from Cincinnati. We're definitely not going to be asking him about whether or not the game was rigged. But we will be asking him about the exit interviews that took place on Monday because all the Bengals, except for Burrow, I did not see Burrow.

We didn't find him, so I don't believe he spoke, but of course people spoke about Joe Burrow. So we'll let you hear not only their reaction, but also our insiders' reaction of these past 48 hours for the Bengals. We've got basketball. LeBron James did not play, but there's still a lot of buzz around the Lakers. Celtics finish in Boston on Saturday night. Instead, the Lakers were in Brooklyn to take on old friend Kyrie Irving and the Nets. Steph Curry with another huge career milestone. Luca, his fifth 50-point game of his career.

So we've got a lot to do. I mean, we're just going and blowing, baby. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio.

You are listening to the After Hours Podcast. Out to Dinwiddie, now to Luca. At the foul line, shoots the turnaround over Bay, and that is good. Hit the rim twice and bounced through. Here's Dodge.

It's top of the arc. Played by Bogdanovich. They cleared out for him. To his left at the elbow. Behind it, now fades away and hits it. And there is a 51-point game for Luca.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Luca Doncic with another 50-point performance. These are becoming fairly commonplace in the NBA night after night, it seems. 53 for him is his fifth 50-point game.

And yet that wasn't the only thing that was garnering his attention and his effort on Monday night. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Chuck Cooperstein on the call on Mavericks Radio.

A 6-point win for the Mavericks as they hosted the Pistons. You may have seen either the video on social or if you're watching TV or maybe we're just about to tell you for the first time. He and the Pistons bench assistant coaches were jawing back and forth with each other. And so Luca, it was very obvious. You could see it on the broadcast and again on posts on social.

Luca was asked on Valley Sports Southwest after the game what was going on there. The assistant coach, he started to cheer me in the first quarter. So they didn't like when I cheered back.

Now they say play basketball. If they're going to cheer me, I'm going to cheer back. I ain't scared. I ain't scared. I like that.

That's very American of Luca Doncic. I ain't scared. So yeah, it's kind of fun when you get guys who are this good who can walk the walk even as they talk the talk. It's not all my little trash talking. No problem with that.

It's basketball. Gets me going for sure. I don't have no problem with that.

Do you enjoy it? Yeah. See, that's kind of the thing. You've got to be careful that your trash talking doesn't actually motivate a really high-level, high-profile player. Larry Bird, one of my favorite athletes of all time, he was notorious for the trash talking. We know that there are players in the NBA. Well, Patrick Beverley is a big talker. He's a big everything, really. I'm trying to think of some others.

Marco Belletti is here in the studio. Can you think of others who are current players who are big talkers? Steph is very demonstrative.

He does the night-night sign and he shimmies and all this stuff. I don't know how much he talks, but there are a lot of guys who are out there and actually will talk to their defenders. Oh, remember Lance Stevenson blowing in LeBron's ear? I mean, there are guys that will use, oh, Draymond's a notorious talker, will use the conversation to try to get their opponents out of their game and to play with their heads, so to speak. Yeah, and there's a lot of guys, I mean, Kevin Durant will do the too small and all that stuff, but how much are they talking to their opponents?

It's hard to know exactly. I mean, Draymond, his mouth is constantly moving, so you would think that he's trash talking the whole game long, so it's hard to know exactly until other players tell you. You know what I mean?

Like, Kevin Durant, I mean, Kevin Garnett never stopped. It was a trash day. Everybody knew it was notorious, but you found out because other players told you. Like, you didn't know it. You knew he was talking, but you don't know exactly what he's saying until other players tell you.

So, sometimes we don't find out all the stories until after they retire, which is unfortunate. So, there are about seven seconds left in the Mavericks win against the Pistons, and Luka actually goes up to assistant coach Jerome Allen on the Pistons bench and essentially has the last word, as you can imagine. Know your role and shut your mouth, you jabroni! I don't think he said that, although I'd be really impressed if Luka learned the word jabroni. I had to Google it, and I had a bunch of people who explained to me exactly what it meant after Kelsey dropped it on the stage in the AFC Championship ceremony. Anyway, so Luka went back over to Jerome Allen, and they were kind of barking.

Well, I wouldn't say they were barking then. They were talking back and forth, and maybe to put the cap or the exclamation point on what had happened during the game. Doncic was laughing at the end, right? So, all's fair in love and basketball. Meanwhile, he goes 17 of 24 from the field. He hit five shots from deep, 14 of 18 from the free throw line, and then eight rebounds just for fun.

Luka was going. I mean, the first half was pretty productive. I think he had only 10 shots, 27 points.

So, when you look at what he was doing offensively, you know, just being able to keep us in the game. The Dallas Mavericks are a smidge above.500, so they're working on it, but there's a lot of teams in the Western Conference that are kind of in that same space. One game below.500, one game above.500. That includes the Golden State Warriors.

If you don't mind, we'll do one more here. A milestone again for one Steph Curry. Curry catches Pompek, puts it on the deck, drive again, scoop to the hoop, it's up and good, and another unassailable record goes to number 30 as he passes Wilt Chamberlain and becomes the all-time leader in field goals in Warriors history. With 8.46 to go here in the third quarter, Stephen Curry has put his name into the Warrior record book yet again. Well, when you go past Wilt Chamberlain, that's saying something. Absolutely.

I'm gonna tell ya. It means I'm getting old. You gotta keep playing to keep breaking these records, Steph.

100%. Nah, it's special. I think everybody who breaks a Wilt record, you know, feels a certain type of way because there's certain ones that nobody's gonna touch. But definitely, you know, blessed to, again, have, you know, 14 years representing Doug Nation, you know, putting up a lot of shots.

Thanks to a lot of them who have gone in. That's pretty cool, though, so definitely one to celebrate. Steph going for 38-12 and passing Wilt Chamberlain in most franchise field goals made. That's what a legendary accomplishment. I mean, Wilt Chamberlain's one of the greatest athletes to ever walk this earth, so the fact that Steph was able to do that and a foot shorter than him, it's special.

It mentions his height. It's like, I'm gonna pump you up, but I gotta make sure you stay humble at the same time. Brothers can do that. Teammates can do that. The Splash Brothers, they're back again.

I mean, it's amazing. After everything Clay's gone through to see some of the games he's had this year, even as Steph has been out a little bit. But yeah, together they combined for 66 points in addition to, you know, 15 rebounds between the two of them, so I'm excited that the Splash Brothers are back.

But they're right there in that same kind of area, that same range where they're hovering just a little bit above 500. This was a win on the road in Oklahoma City. Man, it certainly seemed quiet there at Chesapeake Energy Arena, but Tim Roy and Jim Barnett on the call on Warriors Radio. So we've got more. The Lakers are, I wouldn't say they're still grousing, but people are still grousing about the missed LeBron call at the end of Saturday night's prime time game between the Lakers and the Celtics in Boston.

And then they were on to the Nets, but no LeBron playing in this game. And then we'll start to kind of pick apart some of the football news as well and let you hear from the Bengals in their exit interviews. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence. You can find me on Twitter, ALawRadio, or our Facebook page. Phone number 855-212-4227. You are listening to the After Hours Podcast.

This is After Hours with Amy Lawrence. Oh, Damian Lillard, ho-hum. Yet another game in which he is over 40 points. On this night, as you hear with Travis Demers on Blazers Radio, 42 and 17 of 17 from the free throw line, which I love it.

Taking advantage of those, if it's free, it's for me, opportunities. And the Blazers needed every last bit of it against the Hawks because they won by just four points at home versus Nate McMillan's team. And yeah, Damian Lillard, he's a major headache. Damian was hot with single coverage. You know, he did a good job of getting the ball out. They did a good job of moving the ball and knocking down shots.

You know, that's what you do or should do when teams are double teaming. And you know, when we didn't take the ball out of his hands, he was pretty productive. Yeah, the thing is that Damian Lillard, not only can he score, but he can affect the game in other ways like many of the top scorers in the NBA or really in any sport. Whether or not he's actually scoring, you always have to assume that he can or that he might or that he will if you give him an opportunity, which means he attracts so much attention from any opposing team.

You have to game plan for him because when you don't, he's going to burn you. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. The Lakers-Nets game that took place in Brooklyn a few hours ago really drew the ire of one producer, Jay, because there was no Anthony Davis. There was no LeBron James. And Jay was upset when I spoke to him earlier because he felt like, once again, the Loge management idea is a ripoff for fans.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just because I noticed looking at Nets tickets here in the New York area how the game for tonight's Nets-Lakers game, the Lakers are in town, of course that's going to be a more expensive ticket. But this one was like significantly more expensive than a regular Nets game. And just, you know, not that I was going to buy a ticket to the game on a work night.

No, you've got work. But anyone who did, you buy the ticket to the game, which was like four or five times the normal price of a regular game, you know, less opponent. Okay, but I would say partly because people were looking ahead on the schedule and thinking, oh, LeBron could be closing in on the NBA scoring record.

So that's probably part of it. But also he's playing at a really high level, too. But I think going back, say even a couple weeks ago, for people who were trying to figure out, based on this scoring average or this number of points per night, how many games would it take him? And he is also supposed to play at Madison Square Garden coming up, what is it, tomorrow night? Tuesday night?

Something like that. So according to the team, he's got significant pain in one of his ankles or knees or legs or feet or something like that. Oh, no, he's an older dude.

And obviously he's got a lot of miles on his body. So yeah, he did not play. But he was there. Anthony Davis was already scheduled to have a day off because he's just coming back off injury.

So they want to make sure that they're not piling on him too quickly. So maybe not the type of game that fans expect. And I can understand why people would pay big bucks for the ticket. You don't know how many more times you're going to get to see LeBron in Brooklyn or at Madison Square Garden. I wonder how steep the price is for tickets there, because generally they're far more expensive at MSG than they are in Brooklyn at Barclays Center.

So maybe we'll look at that and Producer James can do a little research. But as it turns out, there's no Kevin Durant either in this game. So I wouldn't say it was devoid of star power because Kyrie was playing, but there wasn't nearly the bright lights in the big city.

That's what a lot of fans expected when they shelled out hundreds of bucks for the tickets. As it turned out, the Nets built a big lead. And then, this is crazy to me, the Lakers opened the third quarter with a 14-0 run. And all of a sudden, poof, that lead was gone.

Though they stabilized and they were able to pull away at the end. Kyrie Irving with 26 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, as he is the man right now. As for LeBron, because he didn't play, he is still 117 points shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I don't think we should be surprised.

I think we should congratulate him and celebrate him as much as possible. Continue to enjoy the shows that he put on because it's not going to be for too much longer whenever he decides to play. But I'm enjoying the show and I wish we could have got a chance to play against one another, but who knows what could happen down the line. So Kyrie Irving and the Nets, who are missing their other superstar, beat a depleted Lakers roster. Right now though, without Kevin Durant, the Nets are just 4-6. And remember, they had put themselves in that kind of rarefied space with the Bucks and the Celtics as the top teams in the East.

It won't look pretty all the time. We've used zone before, we've played small before, we've played big before. So on that end of the floor, we'll figure it out. We're hovering around top 10 in the league.

If we can stay in there, in that realm, we'll be okay. But the fouling and the free throws and the rebounding piece, we need to take care of. Yeah, they gave up 16 offensive rebounds, which is a big deal.

And he hears Jacque Vaughn talking about playing small. So that was one area where the Lakers really had them on the glass. And when you're at home, you want to try to protect the paint, you want to try to protect your rims. I wouldn't say you're going to get more calls necessarily.

That sometimes can be a myth if there are no superstars out there. But you want to take advantage of your own friendly rims and your own space and depth perception and familiarity with the territory, all that jazz. And I think that gives you a better margin for error when it comes to chasing rebounds.

At the very least, boxing out. But when you're playing small, sometimes you just have guys that leap over you at this level. And so yeah, they gave up a lot of offensive rebounds and second chance points too. But only nine turnovers, which I thought was a huge deal for them taking care of the basketball. Patty Mills, 21 points off the bench. Speaking of coming off the bench, Russell Westbrook had a double-double tonight, 17 points, 10 assists. And while we're speaking of milestones as well, he passed Gary Payton to move into 10th on the NBA's all-time assists list. Somebody would tell me, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, you'd be top 10 assists. I look at them like they was crazy in the NBA.

I never dreamt of being in this position. Yeah, so this is what happens. We've mentioned it with Tom Brady before, Aaron Rodgers. Just athletes who have a lot of longevity and are still productive and love or hate Russell Westbrook. He owns some significant records in NBA history. He averaged a triple-double over the course of one season. He now has 8,972 assists, so very soon will be over the 9,000 mark. I haven't looked at the list, but you can imagine he still has the opportunity to continue moving up on the NBA's all-time list.

And it is cool for him. He's been through it over the past few years. He's moved multiple times. He's been traded multiple times.

Some of the moves were by choice. He wanted out of Oklahoma City after committing to them, but seeing everything else around him just kind of fall apart with the thunder. And it really hasn't been a great fit with the Lakers, but I give Darvin Ham credit. Because even though Russ comes off the bench and he's not part of the starting lineup, weirdly enough, even on a night when there's no LeBron and no Anthony Davis, he's still not in the starting lineup. But he's found a role. He does play 30 minutes off the bench, which is more than some of the starters play. And even though he's always going to walk that fine line between brilliance and turnover, he had a half dozen turnovers. He's a guy that has at least become more comfortable with Darvin Ham running the show and them running with Russ. Now, the Lakers are still peeved about a missed foul going back to Saturday night. So I guess we will be talking more about refs and calls and our perception of their calls coming up next.

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