This is the downbeat on ninety seven to one the Freak. Yes, hal
right, little Love for eight am. It's the dirty down beat six to
ten am each and every weekday morning right here man, right here in ninety
seven on the Freak. And it's again coming up after this speakeasy this afternoon
fun fun, fun, live, local laughs all damn day long on this
very radio station. Dinghu's morning news coming up in about a half an hour.
Plane stories, there's a bunch of them. Huh. There's some directive
out there to report more on things that happen on planes. I don't know.
I do know. Also, Alyssa Milano's go fund me did it.
It's goal. They're over eleven thousand dollars to send her kid to in their
whole baseball team at Cooperstown. She got her golden Yeah, that was the
whole point of it. I'm sure she made a big donation as well.
I'm sure these kids are really gonna appreciate everything that Cooperstown has to offer.
Yeah, learn about Jackie Robinson. They don't be looking at their phone,
Roberto Clemente and Josh Hamilton when they walk by Ousie Smith's jersey. They won't
be just looking at their phone playing Candy Crush. Yeah, the kids love
candy Crush. You. I play some dumb games on my phone to waste
time. Ain't gonna lie, but that's not one of them. I don't
play candy Crush. It's candy Crush anymore. What dumb game do you play
on your phone? Two and four seven one? Hey, this is hell
man. I love Angry Birds. You'all like Angry Birds hot titled Danny What
I am Myriel? No shame? Tell us what dumb games you play?
Please? I'm playing some match game right now. Merge, some merge game.
It's bad that it's read books man. Time. I've been playing this
game called Tender. It is hard. Really Yeah, keep going right,
Yeah, nothing ever happens. I do know Mistink Goose Morning News every day,
Yes, morning show. It is at eight thirty. This morning,
nine o'clock. Katie's got some food stories for us from the Metroplex. A
guy strutting around telling us what restaurants are good and what ain't. Did you
want to get a hamburger this weekend? Did you go to Herbie's? I
ended up not going and it was just just not where the day led me
there, you know, but it's it is on the a list of places.
I'm fascinated by this Keith Lee fellow who's in town. I'm actually I
want to learn about it. Yeah, because I've heard the name pop up
and I don't I know Ben's gonna talk about I haven't heard the story,
so I need your education. The power of an influencer. Is it a
good or bad thing? I think it is a conversation. He's out here
trying to do good good, but it's it's interesting. He's put some places
up, some polls of restaurants, and we like talking about food and restaurants
things like that. So we'll talk a little bit about that at nine tomorrow
at nine ten, Chris Catan will join us from Saturday Night Live. I
have a bit of a primer for that interview to play for you a little
bit later before we get to the Luca thing. Breaking golf news, Mike
Go Go. This is thirty seconds on Golf Go World number sixteen. Terrell
Hatton joining the Live tour, Gon joining ROMs team John Rams Team John Rams
Teams. Y'all want to guess what's the payout for for Terrell Hatton? Terrell
Hatton under sixteen, sixteen of the world. He's a britt He's one of
you, one of you. He is one of you. You just got
thirty five million, higher, fifty higher, whoa sixty sixty million dollars.
Damn to get Terrell Hatton, who's good. He's a very good player.
Again, sixteenth in the world is saying something. So that's about I mean
the other big name that had been like if there was an idea that maybe
Feenal had been offered and turned it down, Tommy Fleetwood. You know,
there's all top twenty golfers here, so hat and gone over to live and
another one down PJ tour is boy, that is a I mean, that's
a big way. It's big. It's not no, it's not household the
highest highest level, but dude, yeah, that is a long time stud
and he's one of those dudes who's kind of fun to watch because he gets
super pissed out there, the guy most loan to yell f words and you
can be able to pick it up on TV. Yeah, so there is
that Friday night it's MAVs and it's hawks Kyrie out again and Lucas said,
don't worry guys, I'm gonna go ahead and handle this one. Hey Tim
McMahon, are you watching? And he ends up taking a picture like well
Chamberlain with the number seventy three on it. After the game he went off.
It was sort of one of those, uh, maybe I'm missing Look,
there's been national media that bitches a little bit about Luca's dealings with the
referees, but I mean this is kind of one of the first times that
he was not the national story maybe or at least the NBA story of got
a fan kicked out. I mean that's the big thing. Yeah, and
he went on you know, NB on TNT and talked with Shaq and Chuck
and sort of kind of walked it back a little bit. Yeah, and
he's like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm an idiots whatever. He
kind of kind of walked it back, Yes, But it's just interesting that
he kind of was on near the front pages of sports websites for doing something
that maybe he regretted, and then he got to put his shoes on and
walk out on the court again, got confrontational a little bit in his postgame
interview after that. After that Phoenix game, I wonder, you know,
all it would take for Luca. And I understand that English is not his
first language, it's not even a second. But if he would come to
the table with some transparency or humanize himself, because when he's interviewed a lot
of times, he's kind of robotic and doesn't really say anything when he does
speak, if he could just say, look, man, I am incredibly
competitive. I want to win a ring more than anything that I want in
this world, other than maybe the health of my new child. And sometimes,
yeah, I probably do things that the public feels are not very savory.
I do ride the refts, just cop to the stuff, but do
it all based on the premise that you want to win so bad that you
have a hard time containing your emotions, but you're working on it. He
would be left alone. I really believe that if he would just admit I
want to be a champion. I want to bring a to Dallas, I
want to be a world champion. I want to be the best in the
league. That's a lot of pressure I put on myself. And yeah,
sometimes I rag the refs too much. Yeah I yelled at a fan,
I got him thrown out. And probably not my most shining moment. But
it's all because I want to win, and I'm trying to learn how to
to use my emotions and channel them in more positive ways than then these other
ways. I'm a work in progress. Bear with me like that. If
he said that, I'm telling you this would not be a story. And
you know what, he could do it in Slovenian. Sure like he could
do it with his stock Franco or you know, or one of these Slovenian
people who cover the maps and think about it. It's because you're right.
The language barrier I think hurts him on that. But yeah, if he
did a do it in Slovenian and transcribe it, or if it was to
read that, if it was important enough to him, he would get together
with someone who could echo those sentiments and and help him be able to express
that in English. I think he might not care too much, but I
will not. He may not actually feel that way. Yeah, no,
he might not. He might not. He's like, I'm I'm kicking ass
every night. But I do kind of believe that's probably part of it.
I he would never call it a teammates or anything. He's like, I'm
kicking ass every night I'm one of the best players in the league, and
I've got like very like that's what might be going on in his head.
I don't know, but I would say I didn't think he was robotic on
or last week, last Thursday night or whatever night that was when he was
going back at Tim McMahon. It was Wednesday night. He's going back at
Tim McMahon and saying, your first one to writes something bat about me.
That was a dude, just being real and frustrated. So like, I
think, I think we will find like all these good things qualities about Luca
that you're kind of looking for if the Mavericks start winning and going a deep
run again. Yep. And he's hanging out in the pool with Porzingis when
they were in the bubble, you know, like those are all like fun
times and things that we think about. We've seen for the last couple of
years now, frustrated Luca, lots of technicals with Luca and things like that.
It's a little different, and I think you're right. I think it's
fueled by losing. We need to win and we need to be consistent,
and you know what, I think I love Kyrie, but I'm not sure
he's the best Robin anymore, because here we are sitting here forty five games
to a season, and he's missed twenty of them. And that's where it's
like, Uh, it's hard to be consistent when your second best player doesn't
play much. Now, I do take offense to anyone who says, see,
Kyrie's never available when he had stepped on his ankle and literally legit had
to miss two or three weeks, Like that's a real injury. And now
we're talking about a thumb injury right now, that's a real injury. But
still that is like the last two Robins we tried to get for Luca are
the highly unavailable por Zingis and now the highly unavailable Kyrie Irving. And that's
a bummer to me because I think Kyrie's awesome. I was watching the King's
game the other night and I was just thinking, I don't know how this
works. And NBA is impossible to work trades in your head because there's so
many financial implications. It's like, could we trade Kyrie and Josh Green for
Demantas Sabonas because we're just too guard heavy. We need some big boy.
He does some damage and Lively's nice, but if you had a creative dude
like Sabonis but then sacrominary, you're like, why wouldn't And they don't need
you know, they have Daron Fox and they don't need another guard, and
then they'd be in our boat. But just a very surface level like option,
you know, to to turn Kyrie into something gold. I love Kyrie,
I really do. And if they figure it out when he is healthy,
how to you know, how to how to utilize both them, maximize
both them. They'll be fine, but frustrating for sure when he's rarely on
the floor. Yeah, well that game too, they won one hundred and
forty eight to one hundred and forty three. They lose that game if Luca
doesn't give them seventy three points. Seventy three points by the way, same
night, Devin Booker scores sixty two for Phoenix Don't Watch You, and they
lost. You know, as it's coming off the Karl Anthony tan Well was
it sixty two for him as well? Yeah, and they lost. You
know, Luca that Mavericks ended up winning and a big reason they won.
God sham god, I think was doing did a couple of interviews about this
and he was like, the coolest thing about it is when he had a
chance to go for Kobe's eighty one. And this is also on the night
the four year anniversary of Kobe passing away too, there's another element to this
thing. And he was like he was making smart plays because Atlanta had basically
they were selling out on him and he's passing out of the double team and
things like that. So I mean, he could have gone for eighty one.
Maybe he hardly had the ball in the second half, and he sawed
the ball like a normal amount for Luca, but like they were taking the
ball out of his hand and other people were having to score because he had
forty one in the first half and for him to get to seventy three,
he took a lot of fouls and things like that to get me. He
still scored then thirty two in the second half. Yeah, like we had
scored his season average in the second half. So if we're gonna ask that
we did last week when Embiid and Karl Anthony Towns both hung sixty and he
was on seventy, right, that was on yeah sixty plus that was on
Kobe's eighty one anniversary, remember, and at the time, we were like,
is this something that players maybe talk about and like it's because Kobe is
a freaking god to them? Yea. Is that something that maybe in the
day they're like, dude, today's the day, it's Kobe eighty one day.
One of us is gonna we're going for it. Just have somebody go
nuts because the scoring has been wild. So can we also say maybe on
Kobe anniversary of his passing day, that Luca may have done the same thing,
maybe subconsciously. I don't. I almost think consciously, you really think
that I'm going out there tonight. I almost wish that a quiet whisper,
not among coaches, but in the league would be on I think it's maybe
more appropriate to do it on Kobe eighty one day to all the big dog
score, take your shot, just go And it's something that you know,
the coaches don't know about the coach the players just kind of go, all
right, that's all well and good, but you do still have to make
it work, you know. And Luca was feeling it from the start of
the clock in the first quarter. Yeah, you know, it was happening
early for him. They said he was terrible in pregame. Yeah, really,
yeah, Daryl Armstrong said, he was like, you're gonna have a
good game because you sucked in pregame. And it is weird like that,
you know, you get that the first couple of buckets, and I bet
those players know when their stroke is perfect and they know it's gonna be a
big night for him. But yeah, I'm sure that was in the back
of his mind. Look at this, Wilt one hundred, Kobe eighty one,
Wilt seventy eight, Wilt seventy three, Wilt seventy three, David Thompson
seventy three, Luca seventy three, So technically a top five scoring performance in
NBA history, But our little Luca. Only two people have ever scored more
than he scored on Friday end. I mean, what in the world is
it too? Kobe and Will? Will and Kobe? Jeez, I mean,
what are you thinking? Seventy seven? That makes every conversation at eighty
one for a minute, That makes every conversation that was had last week on
this effing station and in this town about him, And is it better?
Like no, you make it work with him, like no, no matter
what, And you know what, you tolerate some bitching. We're all gonna
just need to tolerate some bitching because like it's're awesome. There's people in all
sports that are way worse than Luca that we're willing to tolerate some bitchin and
some weird behavior. Like when you're on that level, he can do whatever
he wants. He's fine. I'm not saying that good. I'm gonna say
Trey Young can't go score seventy three because he could get hot one night and
drain ten threes. And he's got the same amount of technical fouls as Luca
does, Like Jason Tatum's got a bunch of technical fouls. The technicals are
bad. We see it. We're very close to it. But it ain't
like he's collecting those and then not performing every night. He's carrying this entire
franchise up and down the court and they're just trying to be competitive and he's
worn down from playing forty minutes a night, and they've got to get to
a point. They make comments about it every year the last three years.
They've made comments in November. We've got to watch his minutes. We got
to keep him down, we got to protect him. So he's got something
left in the playoffs, and here we are again. He's worn down and
he's got to do it. And I don't know if Kyrie's gonna play tonight.
They need that. They need the balance of Luca is able to put
up thirty and Kyrie puts up twenty five. They've got to get back to
that because the only way this team's gonna win a bunch of games. And
you saw it on Saturday night. No one felt that we're gonna win that
game because it was a back to back. But like tonight, the Magic
are a decent team. They've got a chance to make the playoffs. But
they're around five hundred team, and that's kind of what you are right now,
kind of a bat around five hundred team. You haven't been good since
the first month of the season. I'm really curious to see if they go
wipe them out tonight. They got at Minnesota on Wednesday. That's be tough.
So we've had the last month or so of last season, granted they
weren't on the floor a ton together due to injuries, which is kind of
the same this year. And here we are nearing the midway point. Has
anybody definitively come out either somebody that watches this team closely, like McMahon or
skin has anybody on the team said this that you've heard that that Luca and
Kyrie have finally figured it out or cracked the code or solved the mystery of
how they're supposed to coexist on the floor together. I don't feel like we're
even there. I think they have, but I think we just don't see
it. Well, you haven't seen it because they don't play together, because
they did, but it's hurt this year, like they want some big games
with them playing together this year. That's why I think it works. But
you're right. I mean we're talking about a small a very small percentage of
game they've played this year now of them both playing so and then there's a
part of it's like, as long as it's working in the playoffs, Yeah,
if don't you get it healthy in April, you got to get there,
which was the problem for him last year, and that might be where
we're at this year. Do you think Luca, consciously or not, kind
of demands being acknowledged as the head of the table. I don't think he
has to. I don't think he has to. I think he might even
be subconscious. I think Kyrie acknowledges it too, you know, but Kyrie
acknowledges that Luca is. Yeah, and Kyrie has been the second best player
and still one of the best players on Earth on multiple teams in his career,
and a lot of people felt that's why he was always on the move.
And he gets here, he seems happy, he seems freaking awesome.
Like who doesn't love if you only knew Kyrie from the minute he landed here,
He's like, perfect, I'm glad you say that. Can I play
this for you? Yeah? This is after the game. Luca's going to
the tunnel. You're gonna hear Kyrie because they've got the camera, like the
man social media camera, and Lucas just tired from playing forty five minutes and
scoring seventy three points, and Kyrie's like, dude, you got to talk
to the camera. He just scored seventy three And then they go into the
locker room and you hear the kind of the screaming camera. Something he'll discord
amazing. I'm just tired, and I started dumping a lot of ottom and
stuff. Okay, So Kyrie's like, dude, give the camera something you
just scored seventy three and Lucas just like Luca is not thinking about I want
to do this thing for social media. He's what I think what a lot
of fans probably want, head down and play. He wants to go win
games. Yeah, he's not dating the biggest pop star in the world looking
for attention. Please let me win, give me good players around me.
I want all that. It's really amazing that in all it took was one
game, because look, he followed up the next night with an absolute stinker
by his standards offense offensively though his percentages were horrible and he's freaking tired.
Uh yeah, But all it took was one game for us to be so
critical on Friday. We're coming here today and we're basically saying, let him
bitch. Who cares? I didn't love let him bitch to Tim on Thursday.
But it's like the first time we've ever really seen that out of Luca,
and I think I was that was also coming from a place about being
like almost more concerned about his happiness and well being and does he want to
actually leave? Yeah, That's what I'm concerned OBOI Yeah, because I can
hit I'm used to the bitching a little bit. Did Dirk bitched a lot
back in the day A ton not like this, not constantly, but it's
not ever gotten close to the point of should we consider options because we rebuild
the team. No, figure it out with this guy, and figure it
out fast. Probably. I want to play this one from bo One.
Oh go ahead, No, no, go ahead. This is Bobon real
quick. I thought it was funny. Tonight is a wonderful night. It's
a great night. That was lacing my brother Luka for an amazing night,
me and him together to night seventy six points core Goo Jon seventy six.
Bobon had a big three spot for Houston to get the greatest does that laughter?
Is he truly Coveton? Maybe we didn't Bobi back too, Yes,
just have him at the end of the bit happy Luca's wooby. Yes,
give the man his Woobi. Yeah, bring Bobi and we need the Drogics
boys in here. Yeah. Well any Slovenian whatever makes him happen. Yeah,
I just can't. I'm looking at MAVs all time scoring best games.
Luca seventy three. That was the greatest ever. I mean the second is
sixty and it's Luca thirteen points, so that is blowing it out of the
water. He's going to shatter all of Dirk's records maybe and five years less
playing time. Number one seventy three, Number two, Luca sixty points.
Number three Luca fifty three points. That's tied with Dirk who had fifty three,
and then Luca fifty one, Luca fifty one, Dirk fifty one,
Luca fifty, Luca fifty Do the other guys? How about the only two
other players to score fifty as a maver Michael Finley No, Jamal Mashburn Yes,
Jim Jackson BAM. Jim Jackson and Jamal both had fifty. But other
than those two, your name was either Dirk or Luca if you scored fifty
plus, they were two out of the three js. Mikey Yes, good
job, Luca, and we wanted to honor you by giving you this segment
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