A total disaster has occurred as the New York Knicks have won the NBA title. We talk about the series, the former Sixers who helped, and the guys the Sixers should have gotten. Then we get into a few listener takes on Mike Gansey’s ‘Yeah’ song, some draft talk, and who the next worst possible NBA champion could be.

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The Sixers have the 22nd pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, and for the life of me, I’m having real trouble giving a shit.

The draft has always been more Mike’s thing than my thing, but to say I didn’t care at all would be untrue. I put real work into the YouTube Big Board, I became invested in my guys, and would at least be able to have some opinion about what the Sixers did.

In a lot of ways, The Ricky was built on the NBA Draft. The Ricky has always on some level been about hope (or the lack of hope), and where is hope more prominent than the Draft and the Lottery? “What’s behind Door No. 3?” is always more exciting than whatever is actually behind Door No. 3.

This year though, I dunno. I’m working through my YouTube scouting but I find myself going blank two minutes into a highlight reel — staring at the screen, but not really seeing anything. Sort of like when you’re reading a book and all of a sudden you realize you have no idea what happened in the three pages that you supposedly just read.

Maybe it’s a lack of hope for the team overall. Maybe it’s what I perceive as the slow degradation of college basketball in general. Maybe it’s the letdown of going from the No. 3 pick last year to the No. 22 pick this year. Maybe it’s because the pick came at the cost of one Jared McCain. Maybe I’m just getting old. But I simply am not getting the joy or rush out of this part of the process (non-proper-noun version) than I did previously.

Maybe I’ll get there by draft night, but I’m saying this now with the expectation that there are some people who feel the same way.

The San Antonio Sixers

I can’t get over how Sixers-y the Spurs choke was in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

We’ve all seen that Sixers game before. They come out shooting the lights out, and build up a big lead. But we all know what is going to happen…

Eventually, the hot shooting will stop, the team will progressively panic a little bit more every possession and jack up a three just a bit earlier in the clock trying to reclaim the magic that existed earlier in the game.

The clock ticks down at half speed. How are there STILL seven minutes left in this quarter?

The missed free throws from our star player. The why are you doing that?! moment from one of the guards down the stretch (Fox’s attempted layup that got blocked by Anonuby reminded me quite a bit of Maxey not calling timeout against the Knicks). The holding on for dear life, just hoping in vain that the other team runs out of time or chokes a little bit more.

My little prediction here is that the Spurs win Game 5 but Wemby ends up getting himself suspended for Game 6.

Team Ricky

• Beckett’s Draft Guide has begun, and he laid out all of the wings he hopes the Sixers take and the wings he doesn’t hope they take.

• Then Beckett joined us on the Ricky to talk to us about it.

• Giant Knicks fan AU wrote a little lover letter to one of his former Sixer favorites who is thriving in the Finals.

Team Non-Ricky

• Sixers Adam wrote about which other teams might be interested in Quentin Grimes.

• I like the new Olivia Rodrgio album. We’ll be talking about it on The Carl this week.

• The new August Burns Red album is also awesome. I think it might end up being one of my favorite albums they’ve ever released.

  

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It’s getting a little hard to know where my own feelings stand on these finals. I went in rooting for the Knicks, to confirm we lost to a true Team of Destiny — and really more to the point, rooting against the Spurs, just ‘coz I still think it’s way too soon for them — but that last win of theirs certainly annoyed the shit out of me. They were getting beat so bad that my Knick fan friends had already given up and pivoted to complaining about the refs and concluding that the league had fixed the series in the Spurs’ favor and so on, when the Knicks just decided oh why not let’s fuck around and get this one too. Then it was just like gravity: by the end of the fourth quarter, there was no mistake they could make that wouldn’t lead to the Spurs just making a worse one and still ultimately giving them the W. I understand every ToD gets one win like that over the course of their run, but the Knicks already got theirs in the last round against Cleveland in Game One. I enjoyed that one. Them getting a second one like this just feels showy, arrogant, unsportsmanlike.

But they got it. Now they’re up 3-1 with all the momentum and every famous person who’s ever lived on their side. They’re going to win the Finals. And if they don’t, I’m fine with jinxing them here, because it would be undeniably hilarious after a win like that to for them to then go on and blow the series in semi-historic fashion. But that’s probably not going to happen. Sometime in the next week, we’ll have to deal with the Knicks being NBA champions for the first time in most of our lifetimes. I’m not sure whether that’s preferable for me to the Spurs and Wemby winning a chip so ahead of schedule — can’t say he or they have endeared themselves any more to me over this stretch either — but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be some degree of annoying.

I am happy for Landry, though.

For all the former Sixers who we feared would end up playing major roles torturing us for one reason or another in these finals — James Harden, Tobias Harris, Jared McCain — I don’t think any of us ever really contemplated Landry Shamet being the Last Relevant Former Sixer Standing. (Not counting Julian Champagnie on the Spurs who I have no real memory of even being a Sixer in the first place.) Hell, it’s still sorta surprising that Landry is currently playing a major role period, anywhere: For most of his near-decade now of bouncing around the NBA, he’s been stuck on the rotational fringes, sporadically earning regular minutes due to injuries or shooting heat but often ceding them back before season’s end. He hadn’t played 1500 minutes in a season since he was rookie, and before this season, hadn’t cracked 1000 since 2022. It seemed like his days of being a real factor were over, if they’d ever totally begun.

But I always believed in sweet Landry. I don’t even totally remember when or why I first fell for him; I probably just saw him hit a three for us once as a rookie and was overcome by how right it felt and decided he would never miss again. I loved him dearly in that first season and was both heartbroken and outraged when he was included in the Tobias Harris trade at the deadline and have mentioned my feelings on the matter at every given opportunity — and some not-really-that-given opportunities — over the past seven years. (And for the record, sentimentality aside, including Landry in that trade still goes down as one of the dumbest and least forgivable moves of the Colangelo years — you’re already trading two first rounders for a dude who’s never even been an all-star, why the fuck do you need to include a prospect in that deal too? I got mad a bunch during Daryl Morey’s tenure about him being so steadfast in not overpaying in trades that we usually ended up just never trading for anyone real; I have to remind myself sometimes that this is what overpaying often looks like.)

I still rooted for Landry as he bounced from team to team, still believed that with the right context and opportunity he could prove himself a real guy. But after a couple seasons of him shooting under 40% in Phoenix — on a team that could’ve desperately used some fringe guys stepping up — and then a year spent lost in the Washington wilderness, it did seem like he might be running out of time. It was great to see him get real minutes on the Knicks last year in their conference finals series against the Pacers, but even that felt more out of desperation than anything, Tom Thibodeau paying the price for running his starters into the ground all regular season and playoffs and finally needing to find out who the hell was left on the end of their bench lest Josh Hart dissolve into a pillar of salt.

But this season under Mike Brown, Shamet is not only a real part of what the Knicks are doing, he’s legitimately one of the reasons they’re doing it. Not so much the last couple games, of course; he went scoreless in that Game Four comeback and was 1-7 the game before it. But that two-game cold stretch drops him down to a frosty 49% from three for the entire postseason, after going 7-12 from deep against us in the second round (unfortunate but we would’ve gotten blasted regardless) and an unthinkable 11-12 against the Cavs in the ECFs. There simply isn’t enough playoffs left for him to crash all the way back to Earth at this point; no matter what happens, he’s still gonna end this season somewhere above the clouds.

Maybe that should make me angry, the way the entire fanbase has a meltdown any time Jared McCain hits a three even when she’s shooting on his own backyard hoop. If it happened at the beginning of the decade it probably would. But now I just feel gratified to have been right (or at least right-ish) about him all along. Plus, Landry took enough years and enough teams to finally find his place that it’s hard to act at this point like there’s any world in which he’s currently doing this on the Sixers. It’s like when Carlos Carrasco finally started pitching like an All-Star about eight years after being included in the Cliff Lee trade; after all that time you might consider doing all the second-guessing work but really you’d rather just go ehhh good for him.

Of course, Tobias Harris was no Cliff Lee, and that trade still makes me furious. But I think that ehhh good for him is generally how I’ll feel for Landry when he wins the title on the Knicks. The validation for him (and for me and my decade of Not Letting This Go) feels satisfying and deserved. We’ve been doing this thing for long enough that just about every relevant NBA team has some guy we let get away for one reason or another, most of whom I feel much less magnanimous about in 2026. For Landry to be that guy on the Knicks feels like a mercy that Sixers fans are rarely granted at this time of year.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

We talk about the NBA Finals, Mike Gansey’s opening press conference, and The Ricky’s Beckett Sanderson joins us to talk about wings the Sixers could take with the 22nd pick.

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This is the first of three articles breaking down my thoughts on every realistic option for the Sixers at pick No. 22 — wings today, bigs and guards to follow. I’ve been doing draft scouting for a few years now and am excited about the opportunity to bring it to the Ricky; if you want to see how my takes on last year’s class aged, you can find that board here.

My primary goal is to look for the best player available, with a lean toward wings and bigs. Due to the age and injury-prone nature of Joel Embiid and Paul George, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe are the only long-term cornerstones on this roster right now, and so everything else needs to be built around them. Fit matters — I want whoever we take to work next to those two long-term — but if a player has a meaningfully higher ceiling than the next guy on my board, that wins out. Pick No. 22 is late enough that landing someone who plays well enough to earn a second contract is a good outcome.

I’m not evaluating anyone in the consensus top 12, given how unlikely they are to fall this far without a dramatic slide. That means AJ Dybantsa (my personal top player in this class), Caleb Wilson and Nate Ament are all off the table here. It’s also worth noting that the departures of Thomas Haugh (returning to Florida) and Amari Allen (returning to Alabama) have meaningfully thinned the wing pool. Expect that to push some of the players below up real draft boards between now and draft night.

Read through the full player profiles on whoever interests you, or just skim the Reasoning sections to get a feel for where I have everyone and why. Let me know who you agree with or think I’m missing out on!

Dream Pick Category

Cameron Carr: Wing - Baylor

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’4.5”/7’1”, 184 lbs

Age: 21.5

25-26 Stats: 18.9 PPG, 37.4% 3P%, 1.3 BPG

Plays Like: Mikal Bridges, Trey Murphy

Do-it-all player who combines dangerous shooting volume and efficiency with terrifying athleticism — he just needs to get bigger.

Pros

• Carr’s strongest skill is his three-point shooting, combining high volume (10.6 3P/100 possessions) with real efficiency at 37.3% on a variety of shot types. He’s elite off the ball — 40.7% on catch-and-shoot attempts — but has shown comfort creating off the dribble as well. The form is smooth and repeatable, the kind you project with confidence.

• Leverages that shooting gravity well, attacking closeouts and getting to the rim and free-throw line as a result. His rim finishing sits in the 89th percentile across all of Division I, which is in part a testament to his length and athleticism.

• Dangerous transition weapon with a large jump in rim volume in the open floor. Extremely explosive — he has a wide variety of highlights catching lobs and throwing down poster dunks when he gets a step.

• Makes a bigger defensive impact than his listed height would suggest because of his 7’1” wingspan. Creates a ton of blocks for a non-big and is one of the better wing shot-blockers in the country. The length is real and shows up on both ends.

• Capable playmaker within the flow of the offense. Not a primary creator, but makes the easy pass, moves the ball on second-side actions, and doesn’t put it in harm’s way.

• Strong defensive rebounder who made a meaningful difference in Baylor’s overall rebounding numbers.

Cons

• Play strength is the main concern. Carr can get bumped off his spots and struggles to play through traffic at times. He plays hard and tough, but against stronger defenders, he can turn into a below-the-rim finisher at times. Most players add bulk as they age, but at nearly 22, he’ll need to make that a genuine priority at the next level or it will limit him.

• His lack of play strength has downstream effects on the defensive end as well. He impacts plays with his length and activity, but opponents who bring physicality to him can neutralize a lot of that. The defensive ceiling is tied to whether he can fill out.

• Not an advanced ball handler, though he can get where he needs to go. Like VJ this past year, he’ll need to show some improvement here to unlock more creation at the next level.

Reasoning

Some evaluators will have Carr in the guard category, but I believe in both his ability to play the wing and his fit next to Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe. His shooting gravity, length and off-ball movement make him a hand-in-glove fit alongside both of them — a player who spaces the floor, attacks the glass, and adds defensive disruption without requiring the ball. The fact that he’s shown flashes of on-ball creation at all three levels gives him a higher long-term ceiling than he’s typically credited with. This is the kind of player who doesn’t leave the lottery in a normal draft given how wide his skill range is. I’m not sure he makes it to 22 — his current consensus range is in the teens — but if he does, or if he gets anywhere close, it’s an easy call.

Dailyn Swain: Wing - Texas

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’6.5”/6’10”, 211 lbs

Age: 20.9

25-26 Stats: 17.3 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 3.6 APG

Plays Like: Skinny Franz Wagner, Jalen Williams, Naji Marshall

An elite ball handler and slasher for his size with a very high ceiling as an on-ball wing creator, but needs development when playing off the ball.

Pros

• Has a strong argument for being the best driver in this class at his size, which is what makes his ceiling so compelling. He shot 64.3% at the rim and 83% of those attempts were unassisted — he’s generating these looks himself, not just finishing off a teammate’s playmaking.

• The driving ability is rooted in an unusually advanced handle for a 6’7” wing. He dribbles low to the ground, can break defenders down off the dribble, and posted terrific isolation numbers. Ball handling at this size is the rare skill that gives him legitimate star-ceiling upside.

• Transition WEAPON. He generates extremely high rim volume in the open floor and converts it into free-throw volume as well, where he’s a strong 82% shooter. More controlled as a playmaker in transition than in previous years — he assisted on nearly 25% of Texas’ made baskets in the open floor while cutting down on his turnovers.

• Strong passer for his size. His ability to get into the lane gives him natural leverage as a playmaker, and he’s shown flashes as the ball handler in pick-and-roll, which opens a more expansive role projection at the next level.

• Excellent defensive rebounder, ranking in the top 5% of all Division I players. While he’s skinny, he isn’t a liability on the defensive glass, and his rebounding gives him opportunities to grab and go in transition.

• Defensive playmaker, particularly in passing lanes. He was excellent in that capacity at Xavier in his freshman and sophomore seasons; Texas saw a step back from that, but the tools are there if he puts in the effort to prioritize it.

Cons

• His shot is still a work in progress. Defenders at Texas were often comfortable helping off him beyond the arc and loading up to stop the drive, which both raises questions about his off-ball role and hurts his driving capabilities as defenders can sit back and give him space. The positive indicators are there — 82% FT% on high volume, 50% self-created midrange efficiency, and a decent 34.8% from three on just under three attempts per game — but the shot needs to develop for his off-ball value to fully materialize.

• Good playmaker for his size, but he can get turnover-prone in the halfcourt. The turnovers show up more in set offense than transition, and he is a bit loose with his processing in traffic.

• Swain’s mentality has been inconsistent. He didn’t impose himself as aggressively as you’d want given his profile this year at Texas — stretches of real assertiveness followed by long stretches of passivity. At his size with his tools, that aggressiveness needs to be a baseline, especially if you’re taking the swing with the hopes that he hits the ceiling outcome.

• Defensive effort and impact were more inconsistent at Texas with the heavier offensive load. His lack of strength held him back on that end, and while the environment explanation is partially there, you’d prefer to see the Xavier-level disruptiveness carry over regardless of context.

Reasoning

Swain is a higher-risk bet than Carr given the necessity of his shot developing and the fact that his off-ball fit is harder to project — his role at the next level will be a meaningful variable in whether he hits his ceiling. But the Sixers’ situation is a genuinely good landing spot for him. Picturing Swain’s playmaking and driving capabilities operating alongside Maxey and VJ, who can feast off the ball is a dream worth chasing at this stage of the draft. Given the class strength, I want to swing for the star outcome here, and Swain offers the most realistic version of that among the wings realistically available at 22. Give me the 6’7” ball handler who can generate off the dribble and playmake off his driving penetration any day. Along with Carr and a to-be-named big man target I’ll get to in the next article, he’s at the top of my list.

Solid Selection Category

Joshua Jefferson: Wing/Big - Iowa State

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’8”/6’11”, 246 lbs

Age: 22.5

25-26 Stats: 16.4 PPG, 7.4 RPG, 4.8 APG

Plays Like: Actualized Trendon Watford

A savvy passer and triple-double threat at his size, though limited athleticism and age cap what he can become.

Pros

• His main selling point is playmaking. Jefferson operated as the on-ball hub at Iowa State with some of the highest usage in the country and paid it off — 4.8 APG is exceptional for a power forward, and his feel and approach on those reads is the best part of his game. The idea of a playmaking big who can run the offense for stretches at the four is legitimately valuable.

• Excellent defensive rebounder who turns that into offense immediately. His grab-and-go threat was a central part of Iowa State’s attack. He runs the floor well for his size and either hits outlet passes to teammates or waits for lanes to open up with his own momentum.

• Good hands defensively, generating 0.8 blocks and 1.6 steals per game. His IQ is what gets him there as he finds his way into the right spots consistently. Capped athletically, but he made a strong impact within Iowa State’s aggressive doubling scheme.

Cons

• Jefferson is an adequate scorer, but it’s not a core skill. He can work into the mid-post with his bulk and has a usable baby hook and push shot, but he doesn’t consistently create his own advantages and shot just 51% at the rim in the halfcourt. Without the threat of the shot, opponents can play the pass more consistently.

• The playmaking quality that makes him interesting can also lead him astray. He gets a little aggressive at times and produces a few too many turnovers for a player who will need to run things efficiently in a reduced NBA role.

• Shooting is a real limitation. He did shoot 34.5% on 110 three-point attempts this past season, which shows development, but it still isn’t a strength. It won’t be respected in high-leverage moments, and the fact that he only ever shot off the catch makes the spacing question more acute. The form isn’t broken and his confidence has grown, but he needs it to keep developing to hold down a functional NBA rotation spot.

Reasoning

His age and limited athleticism cap his ceiling — what you see is essentially what you’re getting here. Jefferson is a better fit for a team already in contention than for a young core trying to project three years out around Maxey and VJ. He likely holds down an NBA rotation spot, which, all things considered, is a pretty good outcome at pick 22, but there are players in this range I’d prefer given their room for growth. However, if he does end up in Philly, he’ll help the halfcourt execution immediately, and the playmaking at the four is genuinely useful. I wouldn’t be upset with the pick, assuming other players are off the board.

Isaiah Evans: Wing/Guard - Duke

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’5.5”/6’9”, 186 lbs

Age: 20.5

25-26 Stats: 15.0 PPG, 36.1% 3P%, 15.6 3P/100

Plays Like: Jordan Hawkins, Isaiah Joe

Extremely skinny off-ball shooter who will space the floor from day one, though his high-end outcome is somewhat capped.

Pros

• Shooting, shooting, and more shooting! Evans has an argument for the best off-ball shooter in this draft, posting the second-highest three-point volume among projected top-40 picks behind Ryan Conwell. His feel for how to move without the ball to create clean looks is elite, with precise footwork setting up releases, excellent timing off screens, and quick release speed. All of it translates.

• Loved functioning as the screener in inverted pick-and-roll actions with Cam Boozer at Duke and benefited greatly from the playmaking those actions generated. He knows how to manufacture good looks within a system without needing the ball in his hands.

• Excellent off-ball cutter with the athleticism to finish better at the rim than you would expect, both in the open floor and in the halfcourt. More of a sneaky athlete than his frame suggests.

Cons

• Extremely thin frame. He played bigger than his weight at Duke, but that doesn’t mean he played strong. He’ll likely be a mismatch target on the defensive end and can get bullied in situations where physicality is imposed on him. He’s very similar to Isaiah Joe in this way, where he’ll compete, but it often doesn’t matter to the outcome of the possession.

• Limited playmaking and minimal counters when run off the three-point line. Around two-thirds of his shot attempts were threes — when he couldn’t get one up, he’d reset rather than create inside the arc. Not a shot creator in any meaningful sense.

• More inconsistent off the dribble. That’s not what you’re counting on from him at the next level and ideally not the role he’s playing, but it does cap his ceiling as a secondary creator.

Reasoning

Most picks at 22 don’t become stars, and Evans isn’t a star bet. But if you’re looking for a concrete contributor who will at minimum eat useful minutes in the regular season, he fits that bill confidently. You could argue he’s more of a guard than a wing, but the off-ball movement and shooting will create real gravity at the next level regardless of what you call him. He’s always on the move, always contributing to offensive flow, and has won at every level he’s played. Once the higher-upside bets are off the board, Evans is a welcome addition.

Meh Category

Koa Peat: Wing/Big - Arizona

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’7”/6’11”, 245 lbs

Age: 19.4

25-26 Stats: 14.1 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 2.6 APG

Plays Like: Rui Hachimura without the shot, Jarace Walker

A physical forward who plays hard and has good feel, but doesn’t add enough on either end of the floor right now.

Pros

• Physicality and play strength combined with real quickness is a compelling combination, especially for someone as young as Peat is. He physically dominated a lot of opponents throughout the year, which shows up in his 67% rim finishing efficiency.

• Generated a ton of free-throw volume thanks to his physicality — top 10th percentile in Division I in FT volume. The 62% efficiency at the line is ugly, but the contact drawing ability is real.

• Cutting is arguably his best offensive skill. It was especially useful in Arizona’s scheme, which operated with one of the lowest three-point rates in the country and heavily crowded the paint. Peat’s feel for timing his cuts within that environment is a good sign for his basketball IQ.

• That feel shows up in his playmaking too. Peat is not typically making advanced reads, but he was particularly adept at Arizona’s high-low actions and finding the open man on short-roll 4-on-3s. Makes the correct simple read in most cases.

• Effective offensive rebounder and putback threat. Some of that is scheme-driven — Arizona was one of the most prolific offensive rebounding teams in the country — but the instinct is real.

• Defensive potential is there even if it isn’t fully actualized yet. The strength and quickness are good tools for on-ball defense at his position, and he’s a winner who competed hard throughout the year.

Cons

• Peat is a complete non-shooter. He attempted fewer than 5% of his shots from three, and the form needs a complete rework. This is unlikely to become a reliable weapon in high-leverage moments, which is a devastating limitation for a forward in the modern NBA.

• He settled for a ton of midrange attempts at subpar efficiency — 35% on non-rim twos. These are not shots teams will want him taking at the next level, and without a three-point threat to fall back on, these become his only other scoring option outside of getting to the rim.

• Peat struggled against real size, most aptly demonstrated in Arizona’s disappointing Final Four game against Michigan. He could bully players smaller than him in lesser matchups but got blocked frequently and couldn’t generate the same advantages with as much regularity against NBA-caliber length.

• He often lost the advantages his cuts created and had to settle in the midrange. His fallback on drives was typically a spin move into a post fade, which he leaned on too heavily. Some of this is scheme context at Arizona, but it’s a pattern worth flagging.

• Peat has questionable off-ball awareness on defense. He lost focus too often and was forced to lean heavily on Motiejus Krivas anchoring the back line.

Reasoning

If he could shoot even a little, Peat would be an inspiring prospect. But he can’t, and the midrange game (which he isn’t even good at) isn’t a real substitute at the NBA level for a forward. The feel and athleticism combination is useful, but I keep struggling to see a concrete fit given the shooting limitations. I went back and forth between this tier and the one below before landing here (a feeling that may still shift before draft night). A rotation-caliber body isn’t the worst thing in the world this late in the draft, and to be fair, the Sixers are a team that genuinely needs toughness and someone who competes. However, the path to a meaningful playoff role with this shooting profile is narrow. I’d convince myself to like him, I’m sure, but I really don’t want to have to.

We Traded McCain for This??? Category

Karim Lopez: Wing - New Zealand Breakers

Profile

Height/Wingspan, Weight: 6’8”/6’11.5”, 222 lbs

Age: 19.2

25-26 Stats: 11.9 PPG, 6.1 RPG, 1.9 APG

Plays Like: Ousmane Dieng, Tidjane Salaun

A physically impressive but extremely raw forward who shows flashes of driving capability but will need significant development time before his theoretical ceiling becomes real.

Pros

• Lopez’s biggest selling point is that he’s very physical and strong for his age. He uses that strength to chisel into defenders and create space near the rim on his drives. Toughness translates and has been key for many teams in the playoffs this year, and Lopez has been doing it in a professional league in the NBL.

• That physicality lets him drive through contact. The drives aren’t advanced — he’s mostly using his strength to bump defenders off his line or draw fouls — but he’s particularly effective attacking closeouts, which adds to the importance of his shooting development (see below).

• He has a good enough feel to make the easy read as a secondary playmaker. He won’t create his own advantages, but as a slasher and cutter he can find the right pass when it’s directly in front of him.

• Capable rebounder on both ends. He carries his own weight on the glass without being a standout.

Cons

• Like Peat, he’s just not an effective shooter right now. Lopez is capable when stationary and with time, but inconsistent enough that NBA defenses will help off him immediately. The form isn’t broken, which gives it some chance at development, but this is a critical development area given how much of his offensive game relies on defenders respecting the shot.

• He has a very shaky, loose handle that often makes it so he has to capitalize on advantages created by others. He relies heavily on a spin move when cut off on drives and turns it over more than you’d like as a result.

• His little bit of feel is lost in the open floor with poor transition decision-making. He’ll try to go coast-to-coast off rebounds but struggles with both the read and the conversion. For a player with his physical profile, that’s a major missed opportunity.

• Lopez’s defensive performance is worse than his size and strength would suggest. He gets caught flat-footed, blown by on the perimeter consistently, and loses focus off-ball. High hips as an on-ball defender will cause issues on switches. Projects to guard only threes and fours.

• Has some tools to add off the ball, but he plays like he wants to be on the ball, which will absolutely not be his role at the NBA level.

Reasoning

This is a long-term developmental bet on one of the youngest players in the draft. I can get there on a raw prospect if the defensive floor is solid enough to buy time while the offensive game catches up (or vice versa), but Lopez doesn’t provide that. The shooting is unproven, the handle is shaky, and the defensive effort and positioning are already concerns at the professional level.

It reminds me of the Noa Essengue situation from last year’s class: young, physically promising, genuinely interesting tools and ultimately a profile that has burned evaluators more often than it’s paid off. He’s more than likely heading straight to the G-League for at least a year out of the draft, regardless of where he goes. This is not the bet I want to make as our reward for suffering through the next decace of Jared McCain on OKC.

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Sixers Adam fills in for Mike as we dig in on what makes Mike Gansey a good or bad hire. Then we talk about the Knicks potentially winning the NBA title, revisit Spike’s contrarian view on Wemby, if Chet had a worse meltdown than Ben Simmons, and a listener question about Joel Embiid as a sixth man.

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The NBA Finals between the Spurs and the Knicks seemed like a lose-lose for me. Either the Knicks and the worst fan base in the NBA wins a title and I have to hear about it for the rest of my natural life (we all will), or the Spurs win the NBA title and everyone who crowned Wemby the Greatest Of All Time before he deserved it would double and triple down on this for the foreseeable future.

As it turns out, just like there is a thin line between love and hate, there is also a thin line between something being a lose-lose and a win-win.

It is admittedly terrible thinking about the Knicks winning the title, which looks incredibly likely now. To be clear, we will never escape this. I despise Knicks fans, but in a lot of ways because I know the type (they are remarkably similar to Eagles fans). Whatever the version of a group of 3,000 Phillies fans going to Citi Field and chanting “E-A-G-L-E-S” during the 6th inning of the game is for Knicks fans, we’re going to find out. It’s going to be worse than you think.

But I also get to watch everyone who crowned Wemby not only the best player in the NBA, but maybe the greatest player of all time before he had won an MVP, or a title, or even became one of the best 20 offensive players in the NBA, have to take a breather for the next six months. Maybe we should wait to see if someone gets obviously outplayed by Karl-Anthony Towns, gets muscled by Landry Shamet or boxed out by Jose Alvarado even though he’s 8 feet tall before they take the crown of current best player, or all-time best player.

Wemby is clearly a great player, and often times terrifying on defense. He is super tall and remarkably skilled and athletic for his height. But his rush up the ranks and more annoyingly, turning everything he does and says into some urban legend or “we just don’t see this stuff in current athletes now” has been irritating and more notably, just wrong. Players dunk all the time, players react emotionally when they win all the time.

You may say I’m being a contrarian (that is part of my personality, I’m not doing it to annoy you), but I’m also right. Sometimes when everyone thinks something at once, it’s wrong.

Just let him earn it. It won’t kill you.

TEAM RICKY

AU wrote a tear-jerker about missing Daryl Morey the online Ricky-adjacent GM (the guy, less so the GM).

We did a Carl Landry Record Club about rapper Mandy Rose and Finley Quaye.

Mike gave three PF/C prospects that the Sixers could take with the #22 pick on the latest Ricky

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Sixers Adam is guest co-hosting on today’s Ricky..

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So the Sixers have a new GM. I don’t love that his last name already sounds like a nickname — you can just picture the frat bros hollering “GANSEYYYYYY!!!!” as he shows up at the dorm with a case of Miller High Life — and I don’t like that we’re always gonna have to deliberate which moves to attribute to him and which to Team Sorta President Overseer Guy Bob Meyers. But otherwise I don’t have a strong take on his hiring. In four years of Mike Gansey being the Cavs’ GM under Koby Altman, the team made some good moves, some OK moves, and some not-so-good moves. He didn’t do anything particularly spectacular or dumbfounding that I can recall, and they stayed at a very-good-but-not-quite-good-enough level the whole time he was there. I had never given him a second’s thought before his Sixers hiring, and had he not come over, he could’ve been Cleveland’s GM for another decade and I doubt I ever would have. He just sorta seems like a guy.

Most GMs are just sorta guys. It’s hard to remember that as a Sixers fan sometimes, considering there have been like five GMs this century in the NBA who have been notable figures, and the Sixers happen to have employed two of them in the past 15 years. (Three, I guess, if you count Collar Guy.) With Daryl Morey, we not only had a GM (technically team president, I know, I’m still gonna call him the GM) who had played a relatively key part in changing league-wide strategy and discourse for decades, we actually had a guy who was interesting, weird, personable and really kinda funny, for reasons both intentional and less so. And that’s the thing about him that I might find kinda tough to move on from.

I have pretty mixed feelings about the legacy Daryl leaves as our GM and about his dismissal in general. Were it up to me, I probably would’ve kept him on, just because I think GMs are mostly fungible and Daryl’s more smart and good than he isn’t and I’d rather just kinda ride with his strengths and weaknesses, The Devil I Know, etc. The Jared McCain trade still infuriates me for a half-dozen different reasons — and those aren’t even the only reasons available to get infuriated about the Jared McCain trade — but I wasn’t out for blood with Daryl. I still respect him being willing to make a long-view trade that he had to know would make him enormously unpopular in the short term, even though I think his current post-trade unpopularity is pretty well deserved.

Regardless, I also had no problem with him being fired. Strip all the other stuff away, and I look at it like this: He got six seasons to get this team over the hump — a relatively small hump too, considering all we were really asking for was one conference finals appearance — and he didn’t do it. That’s not entirely on him, obviously, and a lot of the stuff that went wrong for this team was out of his control. But some of it was in his control, and he did put himself in the hole both with some of the moves he made and some of the moves he didn’t (or wasn’t able to) make. In some ways, the team is in a better place than where we were we he came on six years ago, and in some ways, it’s in a worse place. After six years, that kind of stasis usually results in you getting fired.

So I was fine with the franchise trying things out with a new GM. But I sorta forgot that getting a new GM means actually getting a new GM. It means letting a new guy into your daily life — one who might be annoying or unpleasant or just kinda eh. I dunno if our boy GANSEYYYYYY is any of those things yet, but regardless, he’s definitely not gonna be like Daryl. No one is like Daryl.

Not that being like Daryl was always a great thing for Daryl. He could be arrogant and dismissive. He could be odd in ways more unnerving than winning. He could be strangely susceptible to AI slop. But he could also be insightful, humorous, even charming in his own way. And his failings were pretty distinctly human, the kind that anyone with genuine personality tends to have to some degree. He was, at all times, a richly drawn character.

And his podcasts with the Ricky were just all-time legendary shit. There will never be an equal for them in any sport or on any media platform. You just won’t have another GM going on a team-affiliated (but not team-run) podcast and feeling much more like a third guy in the booth than an actual team official being interviewed, answering questions with some inevitable degree of spin and truth-massaging but always like a real person, just another Sixers fan who also happened to be the single most important person in shaping the team’s present and future. Mike would yell at Daryl about something like he was responding to a Liberty Ballers blogger trying to write about Arnett Moultrie being the face of the franchise, and then the three of them would move on to the next topic. Like it was normal. It wasn’t. But Daryl being Daryl, it didn’t feel that strange. Which was the strangest thing of all.

Most Philly sports figures try to put their One of Usness over by palling around with the Phanatic and making big deals out of their cheesesteak or Wawa orders or whatever. Daryl did it by genuinely being a super-online sicko who already knew most of the inside jokes and cared way too much about everything. The latter approach is way tougher to sell — and much more likely to get you in trouble — but also just resonates on a much different, much deeper level. There’s a half-decent chance that Daryl is reading this very article at the exact same time that you are, getting furious about some parts of it and silently, begrudgingly nodding at others. That’s not even him being a narcissist, that’s just him doing what any of us would do if someone was writing some bullshit about us on the internet. He wasn’t above it, and he didn’t pretend to be. You had to respect that about him.

Well, I had to respect that, anyway. Maybe you legitimately pined for a more normal, boring GM — one who you didn’t have to have opinions about beyond the trades he made and the contracts he signed. I’d get that. It’ll be a refreshing change of pace to have one of those now, if nothing else. But however GANSEYYYY does in the job, I’m pretty sure I’ll miss Daryl, and I think you probably will too. We’ll never have such an RTRS GM again.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

The NBA Finals are starting, we talk about the Spurs vs the Knicks, and Chet Holmgren’s Ben Simmons-like breakdown. Then we talk about three players the Sixers could take at #22 in the NBA Draft.

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The Sixers hired their newest President of Basketball Operations, Mike Gansey (on the 8th anniversary of Burnergate). We talked about the hire and what it means for the team going forward. Then we give grades to Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey for the 25-26 season. Then Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor joins us to talk about Gansey, and explain and discuss the NBA’s Lottery reform measures.

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With the Sixers out of it (as usual), I have really two choices for the remainder of the NBA playoffs (as usual). Those two choices are either barely pay attention (which I do sometimes), or decide which outcomes will bother me the most (which I’m doing this year).

There usually no positive outcomes once the Sixers are eliminated, only which are the least negative. So with the Knicks already in the Finals, and the the Thunder and Spurs heading to a Game 7, I figured I’d give a little insight into how horrible each of these outcomes could be.

To be clear, these are very personal, I’m not saying these should be your rankings as well. I’ll scale them from 1 (Won’t Bother Me At All) to 10 (Catastrophic).

The Knicks Win the NBA Finals - 10

Knicks fans are currently the worst sports fans in the United States. They first want you to acknowledge them as some sort of a sad sack, “it never works out for us, we’ve been waiting for so long,” dedicated and deserving group, but then immediately insist you bow down the superiority of the team and the City That Never Sleeps. They simultaneously insist that you know that they haven’t won in so long that you should be happy for them, but also celebrate them for winning even though they haven’t won anything yet.

They also live very close to us, will never shut the fuck up, and are generally distasteful.

They’ve also got an insane number of annoying famous fans, who all act like their dream is to be Knicks bloggers or something, just your rag tag bunch of millionaires who date super models and just happen to find themselves courtside. Ben Stiller, Marty Supreme, Turtle from his basement in Ohio, they can all go fuck themselves.

The team themselves don’t particularly bother me, except for Brunson’s weird celebration where he smells his thumb (??)

I know there will be someone who is like “oh duhhhh you’re a Knicks fan!” And I know Mike likes to bring it up with his bullshit little smile that he doesn’t know what he’s doing as well. Dude, I was 16. I’m 49. If we’re all the same at those two ages, I’m happy to page through your old photos as well. I promise you, the fact that I loved John Starks (still do) has very little to do with how much I hate these current fuckers.

We’ll have to resort to reminding them that their team leadership (Rose, Wes) are both Philly guys.

The Spurs Win the NBA Finals - 7

I can’t take the Wemby stuff man. I just can’t do it. In this case, both the fans and the player himself are super irritating.

The group of NBA Twitter dorks who spent three years slobbering over Jokic and insisting his defense was “actually good,” have quietly ignored his recent failures and just moved over to glazing The Alien. Every time the guy dunks we’ve got to act like we’ve never seen a tall person before, and the fact that a person who can dunk without even jumping actually dunked is such a sight to behold.

And Wemby himself, just the fraud of all frauds. Everything about him is a put on. The false competitive Kobe guy Wemby, the thoughtful guy Wemby, the tough guy Wemby, the monk guy Wemby. I just can’t, man. I’m sure there will be a time where he “owns the league” or whatever, but I don’t feel like dealing with Mr. French Ethical Hoops just yet.

Plus, if he really cared about winning, wouldn’t he just learn how to do a sky hook and score 80 points a game?

The Thunder Win the NBA Finals - 1

The Thunder don’t bother me at all. I love Jared McCain. I find SGA actually far more fun to watch than most people seem to, and I don’t think they flop any more than any other team.

Team Ricky

• The Statman (Beckett), wrote how the entirety of the Sixers failures does not rest on Daryl Morey shoulders alone.

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The Knicks are in the Finals, some are saying it makes them feel better about the Sixers. Does it for us? Jared McCain starts a Western Conference Finals game and Wemby sends his goons after him. And we give our final grades for Justin Edwards, Paul George, Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid.

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Watching the playoffs right now feels like watching a completely different sport than the basketball the Sixers spent all season trying to play (even beyond the 7’5” alien that Spike and AU seem strangely upset over — yes Victor Wembanyama is that good, he deserves the praise he is getting). Every contender left standing has waves of players who can dribble, pass, shoot, defend, make quick reads, survive physicality and seamlessly slot into whatever the game demands. The ball flies around the court. Rotations tighten. Weaknesses get attacked instantly.

Meanwhile, the Sixers spent most of the season trying to survive off star power, isolation scoring, and hoping enough minimum-contract specialists could duct tape the rest together.

Daryl Morey getting fired immediately after the Celtics series has painted him as the clear scapegoat for the team’s issues, which is understandable. A lot of what’s gone wrong the past few years has Morey’s fingerprints all over it. The three-star roster construction philosophy. The constant cycling through niche role players. The obsession with theoretical optimization over functional playoff basketball.

But this wasn’t just a Morey problem.

Nick Nurse coached this team the way he always does: with a system heavily reliant on stars creating advantages in isolation while role players filled extremely narrow responsibilities around them. Ownership played its role too, consistently prioritizing star-driven marketability and financial flexibility over depth and team success.

As a unit, the front office, coaching staff, and ownership have actually had a remarkably unified front this year, which honestly might be their most shocking accomplishment given the lack of cohesion we’ve seen throughout the organization since the Sam Hinkie days. The problem is that everyone was aligned behind a philosophy that feels a lot closer to those Sam Hinkie days than where basketball actually is right now.

Modern playoff basketball is less about what you do well and more about what you do poorly that opponents can expose. If one player can’t shoot, teams ignore him. If one player can’t defend in space, he gets hunted every possession. If your offense depends entirely on difficult isolation shotmaking, playoff defenses eventually suffocate it.

The Sixers have often built the opposite, accumulating specialists instead of complete playoff players. On paper it could sometimes look like depth, but in reality it was usually just individual skills disconnected from one another. Jabari Walker can rebound but not defend. Dominick Barlow can defend but not shoot. Adem Bona can protect the rim (sometimes), but fouled constantly and seemed unable to catch the ball when it was passed to him. That’s all a bit of a simplification, but the truth is that the best teams in the league have more-well-rounded players with multiple skills that they can leverage to make a difference in short bursts, even against playoff-level competition.

The disconnect shows up even further in the players the Sixers have let go, who are actively contributing for the two best teams in the sport (seriously, watch this Thunder vs Spurs series if you haven’t been already, it’s incredible basketball). We lost Julian Champagnie in February of 2023 — who can both shoot AND rebound by the way, wonder who could have used help with the latter — for the sole purpose of seeing Mac McClung win the dunk contest in a Sixers uniform. We cut Isaiah Joe in October of 2022 to save a little extra guaranteed money. And then of course, there is Jared McCain.

While the value we got for McCain is the highest (some picks are better than nothing), he is still the cleanest example of the overlapping weaknesses between the front office, coaching staff and ownership. Everyone has seen the “We sold high” clips somehow still going around 3.5 months later, and I won’t deny that Morey dug himself a hole in that press conference. But this was on everyone.

Nurse didn’t want to play McCain because he didn’t fit into the star-focused, iso-ball offense and athletic, turnover-focused defense that Nurse prefers. Morey didn’t mind the roster loss because he wasn’t able to effectively quantify the importance of team dynamics and the personality/work ethic of McCain (even beyond the fact that he was still returning from a meniscus injury, as they themselves stated throughout the year). Ownership played a part too, because they wanted to duck the tax and save money in some way as opposed to truly prioritizing the depth and talent of the team. Three different branches of the organization, all arriving at the same flawed conclusion for different reasons.

Now I’m not going to sit on my high horse and say that these are franchise-altering decisions or that they would have changed the outcome of the Knicks series. When you get swept with an average scoring margin of over 22 points per game, you’re more than one or two minor roster moves on the margins away from truly contending. But the players the Sixers have lost are exactly the types of players modern playoff basketball keeps rewarding. Not because they’re stars. Because they play hard, move the ball, process quickly, embrace roles, and contribute to cohesive team basketball.

Grit, mindset and a willingness to put forth the requisite effort to win no matter what it takes are all outside of the stat sheet, and that’s a reason players like McCain, Champagnie, and Joe have all been able to contribute for other teams after being deprioritized by the Sixers. Each individual loss can be explained away. What’s concerning is how consistently the Sixers have kept making the same type of mistake. The margins matter now more than ever, even if they’re harder to quantify cleanly.

That’s why firing Morey alone probably won’t fix this on its own. Because unless the entire organizational philosophy evolves — from ownership, to the front office, to the coaching staff — the Sixers risk spending the next few years trying to perfect a version of basketball the rest of the NBA already left behind.

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There are a lot of things I don’t like about Spotify. But I have to give it to them, they do some pretty neat things that get my attention about my own consumption (like Wrapped, even though I think they’re kinda lying about the music).

To celebrate their 20th year, I woke up with a playlist of my all-time most listened to songs. Not only was it fun to go look at, it’s actually a good and pretty deep listen.

For some reason, I decided to write a little bit about each of the songs. This is how I spent most of my Memorial Day. You can listen to the playlist here:

Two things before I get going here:

1. This is definitely not all time for me, as when we started the Carl Landry Record Club I started a second account around 2020 for the pod, and slowly transitioned to only using this account by about 2022 or 2023. So it’s really just my most listened to songs since then.

2. On the podcast, The Carl Landry Record Club, we like to listen to albums people love and talk about them. If you’d like to suggest an album, do it at the link below. With that, in random order, here is the list and my thoughts.

Gang Of Youths “The Angel Of 8th Avenue” - This was the first single of their album “Angel In Real Time” and I’m pretty sure the only song we had from it for a while. They’re one of my favorite bands but not particularly prolific when it comes to releasing music. This song is a perfect example of what a band would be like if they combined only the good parts of U2 and Bruce Springsteen (I don’t like either artist but love this song and band).

Linkin Park “The Emptiness Machine” - Their return with new singer Emily Armstrong. This is one of those songs that actually did not hit me right away, but slowly grew on me and I never got tired of it. May have felt differently if I was still working at an Alternative radio station.

Ethel Cain “American Teenager” - I know she says she wishes she never released this song or something, but I’m glad she did. Preacher’s Daughter is a pretty special album and this song within the context of the album I think makes a lot of sense, as it’s clearly much more poppy sounding than the rest of it. I am pretty sure the fact that the lyrics are so serious and sort of dark and the sound is so poppy is on purpose.

Gang Of Youths “Do Not Let Your Spirit Wane” - Simply one of my favorite songs of all time. The lyrics are perfect, it’s somehow 7:33 and it leaves me wanting more when it’s over. It’s one of those moments where Gang Of Youths shows that they do big better than anyone.

Joan “Face” - One of the things that Spotify does well (to its benefit and detriment) is feed you music that it’s pretty sure you’ll like. One day it fed me this song (and then the EP it came from), and boy was it right. Somehow like a combination of Peter Gabriel and the Backstreet Boys, not only did I become obsessed with the EP, but then with the band (it’s two guys, I guess that’s a band).

limpbizkit “Dad Vibes” - Their first song since the Gold Cobra album (I think), and the first song they released during the full limpbizkit revival that I had been predicting for years, before anyone else, and that nobody gave me credit for. I was obsessed with this song for like a month and then never listened again. It’s been fun to revisit it.

Julia Michaels “All Your Exes” - I could write a book about how big Julia Michaels should be as a solo artist. She’s already very prolific as a song writer for others, but her solo stuff, particularly up through this song, really deserves a bigger audience. Unfortunately I felt like they tried to paint her as a normal pop star when I think she should have lived more as sort of a solo pop punk act as her songs are both angsty, awesome and feel pretty honest.

Sueco “Salt” - Sueco was an artist I discovered on TikTok. I mean, I didn’t discover him, I mean that’s where I personally first found him. I went back and listened to everything he had released, and this song is just an incredible ballad. He doesn’t seem like he’s as popular as I think he should be but I think one of his songs will do that for him.

Matt Skiba “Good Fucking Bye” - I love this song from Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, and I’ve always loved it, just not sure how it made this list. I don’t ever remember being addicted to it. Maybe just one of those songs that winds up on every playlist. “You made me such an asshole, I wish we’d never met,” is a banger of a line.

Joan “Magic” - Would end up on the full length album “This Won’t Last Forever” but these listens are from its appearance on the “Face” EP. Joan is part of a group of super poppy bands that I have a hard time defining. It’s not pop punk, it’s not power pop. But I do think Joan does it better than all of them.

Ethel Cain “Thoroughfare” - This is my favorite song on “Preacher’s Daughter.” I don’t particularly love long songs, but when I love a long song I love it forever. This song feels like reading a great book. It would fit in so many different artist’s catalogs. I think it could be a Pearl Jam song, it could be a country song (insert some good country artist that wouldn’t make you sick), I don’t know, it could be a Guns N’ Roses song.

Against Me! “Thrash Unreal” - The first song on the first album they had that really had a commercial push, New Wave. I’d imagine this album is sort of polarizing within the Against Me! fan base but it was when I really discovered them and I love it. I remember I was working at Q101 in Chicago, and Kevin Manno I think was doing overnights for us, and was a huge AM fan. I think I told him to play it every hour if he felt like it.

Gayle “ABCDEFU” - I am aware since I became a fan that people think Gayle is some kind of industry plant (whatever that means) or something. This song is awesome and I think kind of perfect. Also, having seen her live, she’s definitely talented and a great performer, and I think has a bunch of really cool interesting songs. I hope she keeps going.

Olivia Rodrigo “Driver’s License” - My take on this song is that as big as it was, it’s still underrated. I really think it’s one of the best pop songs I’ve ever heard. It scratches every itch a pop song does, and somehow leaves you feeling it’s slightly above the fray. There are a lot of big hits that just get forgotten largely over the years, but I think this song will probably go in the opposite direction.

Falling In Reverse “Ronald” - I had never heard about this song till I decided to listen to it when I saw the cover art and it reminded me of Andrew WK. This is simply one of the most fucking insane metal songs you’ll ever hear. It was the only thing I listened to for weeks. Even if you don’t like heavy music, I think you’ll say “what the fuck was that” when you hear it.

Brand New “The Quiet Things No One Ever Knows” - Kind of feel lame as an enormous Brand New fan having such a regular person song on the list, but the list is the list. This song came out before I discovered Brand New, which happened in 2006 with The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Of Me, an album a different Manno (Ryan) correctly told me was amazing and I didn’t quite get at first. I don’t know, this is a great song. I love it still.

Every Time I Die “Dark Distance” - From my favorite ETID album Radical, they are a band for me that is the ultimate hit or miss band. The songs I like, I love. The songs I don’t like, just sound like throwaways to me. This song just to me, shows what they’re best at. They no longer exist, I hope you got a chance to see them at a Warped Tour or Ozzfest or something back in the day.

The Wallflowers “Maybe Your Heart’s Not In It No More” - Hey look, what if the Wallflowers came out with a new record that was actually awesome and kind of sounded like it was exactly in the pocket of their most successful stuff, just that the guys were older and delivered it that way. They did!

Alkaine Trio “Mercy Me” - I think this album, Crimson, is pretty unassailable. Like many bands on this list, I discovered them in the middle of their career so I have an affinity for that stuff and the stuff that came after it more than I do the earlier stuff. The first album I ever heard from Alkaline Trio is Crimson, and it is my favorite.

Gang Of Youths “Spirit Boy” - Angel In Realtime was a grower for me, just like every Gang Of Youths album is, but this song was not. Immediately it was my favorite song on the album. GOY lyrics are always one of the best things about the songs, but this one is particularly good. “God died today, and left me in the cold,” is quite a way to begin a song.

Gang Of Youths “Atlas Drowned” - My first experience with Gang Of Youths was what I believe was the very first suggestion for The Carl Landry Record Club when it was just a Covid-era feature of the Ricky. After listening to the album (Go Farther In Lightness) a couple of times, I found it to be good but not outstanding. It was Atlas Drowned, months later, that popped back into my head and I couldn’t escape it. It’s one thing to write a great arena rock song, and and another that would crush in an arena. This is the latter.

Brand New “OK I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t” - The first time I ever saw Brand New it was at the House of Blues in Chicago in 2006, and I really didn’t know much of any of their catalog. Jesse Lacey, the singer, was very sick, I think it made the show itself seem more dark than it would normally be. This song came on, and the thing happened where everyone was singing the song so loud you couldn’t hear him. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to go home and listen to the song.

War On Drugs “Change” - I will never forget that the moment that War On Drugs album I Don’t Live Here Anymore came out, the band was for some reason on The Ricky. Adam (the singer) ate grapes loudly through the pod. This is a band that has headlined Madison Square Garden. In any case, this album just to me feels like late Fall. This song has often times been the song in my mind I can’t escape. It feels like equal parts hope and regret. Not necessarily the lyrics, it’s how the song feels.

Joan “Eyes” - I can’t express how much you should listen to the Face EP from Joan. I think there’s only one miss on it, and it ain’t this one. When Joan nails a hook, they really nail it, and they really nail it on this one. It’s one of those songs that when it hits you, play on repeat over and over again. When it kicks into second gear at the 70 second mark, it grabs hold and won’t let you go.

Silverchair “Straight Lines” - Though it’s hard to pinpoint a favorite band, I’ve loved Silverchair longer than I’ve loved any band I think. If there’s a favorite band, its Silverchair. I will not forget where I was when I first heard this song, that they streamed on their website before it officially “came out” in 2007. A longtime fan, it had been a long while since they released music. We recorded it off of the stream, and threw it right on the air on Q101 in Chicago, where I worked at the time. I was able to book them to play our Christmas concert “Twisted” at the Chicago House Of Blues, where they played on the final night I worked for the station. A career highlight, for sure, and a magnificent song.

Papa Roach “Scars” - Pretty crazy to think that Papa Roach has now been popular for over 25 years, as “Last Resort” came out in 2000. They are still very popular in their world, still doing big numbers touring and still releasing rock radio hits. They’re one of those bands that has just enough songs to do an 80 minute set of all awesome songs. It’s tough when the first song you ever release as good as “Last Resort” was, but man “Scars” is just a perfect song, living in that world that is just too uptempo to be a ballad but is spiritually a ballad. GO.. FIX… YOURSELF!

Gang Of Youths “In The Wake Of Your Leave” - This was not one of my favorites from Angel In Realtime until I saw them perform it at Brooklyn Bowl, the only time I ever saw them live. Not exactly sure what it was, but I appreciated the song more, and it’s no longer a skip for me as it was at one time.

Yungblud “Hello Heaven, Hello” - His cover of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” at the Ozzy tribute concert turned him into an artist I was aware of to an artist I was actively trying to learn more about. At about that time, he’d released Idols, his new album. This is the first song on that album, a nine minute, slightly too big for its britches song that almost feels like what it would sound like if Def Leppard listened to a Fall Out Boy album and decided to write its answer to November Rain and release it right after they recorded Adrenalize.

Sueco “POS” - The first Seuco song I ever heard. Probably the only song that can ever pull of screaming “Shut the fuck up!!!” 15 seconds into the song.

Gang Of Youths “Unison” - Not much to say about this one, just another amazing track from Angel In Realtime.

Lana Del Rey “Cruel World” - As a current Lana devotee, it’s hard to imagine that three or four years ago I’d only heard of Lana Del Rey, and never listened. She was regularly mentioned on Red Scare, but I’d sort of tuned It out as I was never too interested. It was when they reviewed her most recent album Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, that I decided to go have a listen. It was Ultraviolence that stuck out to me (as I once had a Clockwork Orange tattoo that I got when I was 17 that is now covered him), and this is the first track. It wasn’t 60 seconds into the song that I thought to myself “I have to listen to every song she’s ever released now.”

Gang Of Youths “forbearance” - I would imagine if you’re reading this and haven’t listened to Angel In Realtime, you’ll give it a try. When you do that, reading about where the album came from (or listen to the interview we did with the singer about it), you’ll learn about his journey after his father’s death finding out about another life he led. The songs are deeply personal, and this is one of them. “And the world is not quite done with me yet.”

Gang Of Youths “The Man Himself” - I love strings in rock music. I loved when Smashing Pumpkins did it years ago, I love when Silverchair does it. I have no problem with things being overproduced, because I think sometimes it’s magic. This song starts with violin, has a ton going on, but I think it’s beautiful.

Butch Walker “Fuck It (I Don’t Like Love) - I’ve mentioned Silverchair as an all-time favorite band, and Butch Walker is probably my favorite solo artist of all-time. I really just sort of am into every phase he’s been through, the power pop in the beginning, the Springsteenish Jersey rock period, and then this album that came out during Covid called American Love Story. Funny enough, the album cover is tattooed on my right hand, but it’s far from my favorite Walker album. I was going through something, and it seems like he was too. The songs are still great, though some of the subject matter feels a little cringey too listen to now. This one still holds up though.

Linkin Park “Given Up” - The first song on Minutes To Midnight is such an absolute monster. I miss that we’ll never see Chester Bennington perform it again. No idea why I’ve listened to it so much over the last few years, though I suspect its that their return just made me go back and listen.

Robyn “Dancing On My Own” - There is no backstory here. Only that when she was first popular in the 90s with Show Me Love and Do You Know What It Takes, I probably was a bigger fan than most. I’m not trying to be some OG Robyn guy. Who doesn’t love this song?

5 Seconds Of Summer “COMPLETE MESS” - My way into 5 Seconds Of Summer was Ashton Irwin’s (the drummer) solo album Superbloom. They’re a good band, hit or miss for me personally. They’re obviously insanely good songwriters, and this one just caught me for some reason.

Spanish Love Songs “Routine Pain” - This album, Brave Faces Everyone, was one of the albums that was suggested for The Carl that truly stuck with me. It lives in the vibes of the best Against Me! albums. You can imagine being in a small concert venue, sweaty, everyone chanting “let me ruin my guts tonight!” The first song on the album starts off with the lyrics, “On any given day, I’m a six of ten.”

Amy Shark “Only Wanna Be With You” - You can file Amy Shark away with Julia Michaels as a pop artist that I think should be more popular than she is. An Australian, I discovered her covering Silverchair on Triple J’s Like A Version. I just think this is a great pop song. If you like Olivia Rodrigo, imagine her just with a little more experience. What lyrics would Rodrigo write if she was 30 not 20.

Linkin Park “Bleed It Out” - Minutes to Midnight ages very well, and this is one of the songs that ages well on the album. Going back and listening, it’s just amazing how raw this album sounds.

Smashing Pumpkins “Mayonaise” - What a beautiful song. It’s on this list because I was learning how to play it on guitar so I had to play it over and over again.

Ashton Irwin “Skinny Skinny” - Ashton Irwin is the drummer for 5 Seconds Of Summer. This is a song that sounds like it’s about his battles with bulimia. From a lyrical perspective, it’s pretty interesting. The song itself is almost impossible to compare to anything in that it’s equal parts minimalist (the verses largely just him and an understated acoustic guitar), but with moments of hugeness. Also sort of interesting that fellow Australian Daniel Johns (lead singer of Silverchiar) had his battles with anorexia which were what inspired “Ana’s Song.”

Hinder “Lips Of Angel” - This song gets better as the years go by. I don’t know what else to say about it. Here’s a good related story: when Hinder first debuted I was the Music Director at 94WYSP. Their first single was a real piece of shit called “Get Stoned.” Every other rock radio station played it but us, because I was convinced it was a huge piece of shit. Even though we weren’t playing it, the band and label decided to do a low dough show (I think the tickets were 94 cents) at the TLA. Nobody showed up.

Ethel Cain “A House In Nebraska” - Preacher’s Daughter so successfully captures a mood and a vibe that it’s almost impossible to listen to any of the songs without listening to the rest of the album. I can understand her frustration that “American Teenager” was the song that everyone gravitated to. If I was to present one song to represent the entire album it would be this one.

Rage Against The Machine “Freedom” - This is absolutely a great song, but the reason I played it so much in this time period is because it was being considered as the intro song for Evan & Tiki at WFAN, so I listened to it a lot.

Julia Michaels “Anxiety f/Selena Gomez” - There is something about this era of Julia Michaels. It has a very specific vibe, a very specific sound, but most importantly I think is that the lyrics are all so specific and relatable. “I make all these plans with friends and hope they call and cancel.”

Amos Lee “Seeing Ghosts” - Obviously Amos is a friend of the podcast, and a friend of mine, but lost in that is that long before I knew Amos I was something of an Amos Lee super fan. It’s a funny dynamic, as I have very specific opinions about which of his albums are best, though I keep much of that to myself. I think Dreamland, which he released a couple of years ago, is one of his best. This song just sounds like it’s being performed at Red Rocks in the rain. It’s massive, but isn’t overproduced, it’s just his voice and the big and spaciness of the music itself.

Linkin Park “Heavy Is The Crown” - A good song from the Linkin Park return from Emily Armstrong that is sort of a paint-by-numbers heaving song from Linkin Park. The highlight of the song is a scream that very purposefully matches the Chester Bennington 17 second scream in “Given Up.”

Alkaline Trio “Surprise Surprise” - The guys still got it. This is one of those songs that makes me wish I could sing. I would really love to belt out “Surprise, surprise, I lost my appetite!” in any place besides my car and sound good doing it. They’ve always been so good at writing punk songs that are catchy, but this one is just so grown up.

Honest Av “I’d Rather Overdose f/MOD SUN” - What a fun song. Here’s the story: I saw this guy doing his broke boyfriend character on TikTok (Honest Av), which was kinda funny. Because I watched the videos, I got his music in my algorithm, and I got his new song, this one. My old music programmer brain got working and I just felt like this song would get a lot of requests. So, I even though I only barely know him (we work for the same company), I emailed Kevin Weatherly, the legendary KROQ programmer about the song. For some reason, he read it, responded to it, and they throw it on the air. It reacted well and had a pretty good run at KROQ and a bunch of other alternative stations. I was pretty proud.

The Wallflowers “6th Avenue Heartache” - In my opinion, the best song from Bringing Down The Horse. I remember seeing this video on MTV when I worked overnights at the Sunoco next to the Granite Run Mall. The album is still a monster, one of my favorite ever.

Creed “One Last Breath” - An awesome song but the reason it’s here is because somehow it became the anthem of 5:30pm on the 94WIP Afternoon Show.

Limp Bizkit “Eat You Alive” - I think the LB album Results May Vary, the one album without Wes Borland, is tremendously underrated. This was the first single and I do not think it gets the respect it should get. Is it gross? Yes of course. Is it awesome? Yes obviously. Why have I listened to it so much over the last few years? Not totally sure.

Gang Of Youths “You In Everything” - Another song from Angel In Realtime which just has so much going on. I listen to this album and just imagine the writing and production of it must have taken forever. There are a lot of lyrics, there are a lot of layers to the music, but they all melt together beautifully.

The Fray “A Light That Waits” - My favorite album of 2026 is the new album from The Fray, the first full length without Isaac, their original singer. They have continued as a three piece, with the guitar player as the primary vocalist. I was surprised after I fell in love with the album to see that most reviews panned it. I disagree! What an accomplishment.

Lana Del Rey “Ultraviolence” - This is the title track on my favorite Lana album. She’s at her darkest and spookiest and most ominous on this album. I am disappointed that she hardly tours because it’s made it challenging for me to see her live, but it all kind of fits that she’d be elusive in that way. I like Lana Del Rey because her music is awesome and also because I think she is indisputably cool.

Gracie Abrams “I Love You, I’m Sorry” - Sometimes when I’d be on long drives I’d listen to every song in the Spotify New Music Friday playlist. This one popped up and it was an instant re-listen for me. Sometimes short songs feel unfinished, but sometimes they’re just long enough to leave you wanting to listen again. I think as soon as I parked I texted Friend Of The Pod Jason Lipshutz about how great it was.

A Perfect Circle “The Outsider” - No clue why I’ve listened to this song so much other than it’s excellent.

Rage Against The Machine “Know Your Enemy” - Was also in the running for the Evan & Tiki intro song (I think this one ended up winning the internal vote). I think Rage songs are great openings to radio shows. I’m not the first person to think this obviously.

Ethel Cain “Family Tree” - Just on here because I listened to the album so often.

Red Jumpsuit Apparatus “Face Down” - Great song, but I’ve got to be honest, I don’t remember listening to it on purpose very much!

The Fray “Songs I’d Rather Not Sing” - My favorite song on the aforementioned new album from The Fray. It reminds me of
”Skinny Skinny” by Ashton Irwin in that it’s so quiet and it lets every word shine through.

Alkaline Trio “Radio” - Would probably be on any most listened to list of any streaming service I’ve ever had for any period in my life. Two parts of this song I’ll always scream and sing. “Shaking like a dog shitting razor blades,” and the chorus “I've got a big fat fuckin' bone to pick with you my darling! In case you haven't heard I'm sick! And tired of trying. I wish you would take my radio to bathe with you, plugged in and ready to fall.”

Silverchair “Without You” - When people ask me why I like Silverchair so much, it’s not Frogstomp I point them to (though the album is quite an accomplishment), it’s Diorama. This is the album where Silverchair became the fully realized version of their best selves, which started to come to fruition on the album which came out before it, Neon Ballroom. It’s monstrous and beautiful, and was never truly appreciated because Daniel Johns got sick while touring to promote it and it lost all its momentum.

Linkin Park “When They Come For Me” - Linkin Park made a lot of great songs, this is one of them. I think generally A Thousand Suns and Minutes To Midnight are, not like, slept on, but I’m not sure people understand how good they are.

The Format “Holy Roller” - Gone for 20 years and come back with a song this good? It’s like four songs in one, with a massive hook, and was on repeat for a few weeks for me. It was fun to see them, as they seem very happy to be back touring.

Jimmy Eat World “Big Casino” - Probably my favorite Jimmy Eat World song, also helped get on this list because I was learning how to play it on guitar. “Well there’s lots of smart ideas in books I never read, when the girls come talk to me I wish to hell I had.” Yes I like this song the most even though it’s not on Clarity or Bleed American.

Marvelous 3 “Every Monday” - If you want to hear the very best of the 90s alternative power pop, you will listen to Marvelous 3, the Butch Walker fronted band that had one hit, but many songs that would have had every right to be a hit as well. They reunited over the last few years, and my brother and I went to see them in Atlanta and it was everything I hoped it would be.

Spanish Love Songs “Self-Destruction” - This also comes from Brave Faces Everyone, which I mentioned prior. There are only one or two skips on this album, and every chorus is something you want to pump your fist and yell. “It won’t be this bleak this forever! Yeah right.”

100 Gecs “Dumbest Girl Alive” - This was a Carl Landry Record Club suggestion, and became an obsession of mine for a month or two there. This is from their awesome album 10,000 Gecs. It’s fun to hear Nu Metal influence on current acts, especially in this sort of chaotic hyper pop house arena.

Sueco “Mullholland Drive” - Just listen to songs like this and tell me Sueco doesn’t have it. He’s got it.

Artemas “I Like The Way You Kiss Me” - This song was big on TikTok apparently, but was my way into Artemas, who is awesome. I would have never imagined myself liking music like this, meaning dance music that probably sounds better when you’re on drugs. Maybe it makes me feel young.

Rage Against The Machine “Bombtrack” - I saw Rage Against The Machine when I was much younger, and went to go see them at Madison Square Garden a few years ago on the tour that was cut short because of Zach De La Rocha’s injuries, and would never restart it seems like due to whatever broke them up in the first place. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

Tool “Stinkfist” - Aenima is truly one of the greatest rock records ever recorded. Think about how intense this song is and then realize that it was all over MTV. What a time that was. This album was a soundtrack to an entire year of college, and when it hit streaming again it was amazing to revisit. It doesn’t miss.

Metallica “Don’t Tread On Me” - The Black Album is my favorite Metallica album, and I’m not embarrassed at all to say so. More people should be honest about this.

Phoebe Bridgers “Funeral” - A song so great I can’t believe more people don’t love it. I first discovered Phoebe Bridgers when Amos sent me the song “Me and My Dog” by boygenius (which later became the inspiration for a tattoo). This was one of the songs that really stuck with me.

The Fray “My Heart’s A Crowded Room” - Man, I guess I must have really listened to this album a lot. I think lyrically it’s a great turn of phrase, that is “my heart’s a crowded room.”

The Fray “Emerald” - Sounds like an 80s minivan rock song that could have been recorded by Phil Collins or Mike and The Mechanics or something.

Nyck Caution “Pressure” - One of my favorite rappers, who has more great songs than you can shake a stick at. You might recognize this one as the song that usually introduces the 3pm hour on the 94WIP Afternoon Show.

Rise Against “Paper Wings” - My favorite Rise Against song from my favorite Rise Against album. Excited to go see them this Fall, I just wonder if they’ve released so much music that I probably won’t hear a bunch of the songs I like.

Lana Del Rey “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard” - Some LDR songs sound like they’re from the darkest and most depressing Broadway show of all time, and this might be the best of those.

Finch “What It Is To Burn” - One of the best songs of the screamo era.

Staind “Home” - Sort of surprised this popped up, not because I don’t love it but because I don’t remember listening to it that much. Most people remember Staind from the songs that came after this, post “Outside.” And there are some great songs there, but Dysfunction is their best album front to back, and happened when they were firmly in the nu-metal genre. I remember seeing them at the Electric Factory for a show that had to for some reason be rescheduled (also vaguely remember it being on or near a holiday), and the place just being coated in sweat. The good old days where they would fit 3,500 people into that place.

Brand New “Can’t Get It Out” - I mentioned before that Silverchair’s Diomrama kind of gets lost because of the album cycle being interrupted by Daniel Johns’ sickness. Brand New’s Science Fiction gets the same treatment as while the album was being toured on, Jesse Lacey experienced a cancellation that would sink the band for a long time. The album itself is fantastic though, and a nice reminder that these guys are my age and grew up on the same 90s rock I did.

The Beths “Expert In A Dying Field” - A good song that I don’t remember listening to that much!

Spanish Love Songs “Generation Loss” - Nothing specific to say about this song, only that it being on this list shows how much I listened to this album as it’s not one of my favorites from the record but it’s still on there.

Lil Peep “Crybaby” - I think 2024 was the year I discovered Lil Peep, as I was in a Brand New rabbit hole on YouTube and happened on to this song that sampled “No Seatbelt Song.” There is just something about Lil Peep that is special. One of the originators of a genre I guess referred to as emo rap, though he’s the only artist I’ve ever listened to in the genre. May he rest in peace. “I’m making music to cry to.”

Cold “Happens All The Time” - Revisited this band a bunch when they toured again and I went to go see them do an acoustic show at City Winery. A really good band that lived in the Staind world, and had some ups and downs. During one of their tours they played The Fire in Northern Liberties (before it was Northern Liberties). I went to see them and because I was with the radio station, they invited me on to their tour bus where they were watching a Bum Fights VHS. That’s all I remember.

Metallica “One” - I got back on a kick of listening to this song after I finally watched the movie Johnny Got His Gun, which the video for the song used clips of. What a disturbing movie.

Yungblud “Idols Pt. 1” - Honestly not one of my favorites from the album.

Joan “Heartbodymindsoul” - Honestly not one of my favorites from the album.

Yungblud “Changes f/Nuno Bettncourt, Frank Bello, Adam Wakeman)” - This is one of the best live performances that has ever been captured on tape. He performed it at Ozzy’s final concert, and somehow stuck out among some of the greatest bands in metal history. If the audio doesn’t convey how amazing it is, just watch the video and how he won the crowd over. Really an all-timer.

Taproot “Favourite Song” - I will always love my nu-metal bands. I had some favorites that everyone had (like Godsmack), but also had some favorites who were less massive, like Taproot. I think Blue Sky Research was one of the great albums of the genre. They’ve had a brief and minor resurgence, but I thought they represented themselves well with this one.

Rage Against The Machine “Calm Like A Bomb” - If a rock band can have three straight awesome albums, they’ve got a guaranteed spot in music history (in my opinion). Rage certainly has three straight with Self Titled, Evil Empire and my favorite of the three, Battle Of Los Angeles. Tell me this song doesn’t make you want to run through a wall.

Rage Against The Machine “Born Of A Broken Man” - Probably my favorite Rage song, I love that it’s so personal. Rage has a ton of songs with some sort of political message (which is fine, not really why I listen), but to hear a song that seems so deeply personal like this one. “Born of a broken man, never a broken man.” Right on, brother.

Brand New “At The Bottom” - Daisy is Brand New’s Pinkerton, I think. It was misunderstood and underrated, but then became slightly overrated. However, it was Daisy that I really heard that Brand New, at their heart was not Taking Back Sunday, they were Nirvana. There are some misses on Daisy but it was a pretty brave album and announced who Brand New would become.

Say Anything “Alive With The Glory Of Love” - … Is A Real Boy is a pop punk masterpiece. I got to see them for the first time in years a few months back, and was glad I got a good performance, as it seems like Max (the singer) can be sort of inconsistent in this way. I remember having this amazing argument with my Program Director Mike Stern at Q101 about this song. “Why is he singing a pop punk song about the holocaust? What does he know about the holocaust?” Mike said. I just thought it was a funny objection. Great song.

Alkaline Trio “Stupid Kid” - My favorite Alkaline Trio albums are Good Mourning, Crimson, Agony & Irony and This Addiction. From the earlier albums, I like specific songs, but not the entire albums. This one, from From Here To Infirmary, is just undeniable. They’re so good at writing songs I’m surprised they never got paid to do it for anyone else (that I know of).

Avenged Sevenfold “Critical Acclaim” - I was a real pain in the ass when I was a radio programmer. I would always get mad when the label picked what I perceived was the wrong single. When A7X was releasing their self-titled album, the first song to get released (as the cred metal single) was “Critical Acclaim,” so we played it at Q101. When they eventually released “Almost Easy,” I thought it wasn’t as good, so we just kept playing “Critical Acclaim.” It annoyed the record label, but we later found out did not annoy the singer M. Shadows, who visited the radio station on their tour just to tell us how cool it was that we were playing it. What a fucking monster this song is.

Brand New “Sowing Season (Yeah)” - One of the best songs from one of the greatest rock albums ever released.

The Front Bottoms “Twin Size Mattress” - Years ago, Brand New decided to do two shows where they would play two of their albums at each show. One was at the Paramount on Long Island at the other was a Starland Ballroom in Jersey. I was lucky enough to go to both, and opening for them in Jersey was a band I had never heard of called The Front Bottoms. Within 10 seconds I leaned over to my wife (then girlfriend) and said “I love this band.” This one from them I think captures everything that they are.

Against Me! “Because Of The Shame” - What an awesome album White Crosses is. Imagine if years before this I had told you that an Against Me! song would start with a piano and some “oh oh ohs.” Just an awesome, hooky, Springsteeny rock song. “With my name tattooed into your skin.”

Backstreet Boys “Incomplete” - Backstreet Boys are obviously an arena act again, playing the Sphere over and over again because it continues to sell out. It’s easy to forget that in the middle of their career they sort of fell out of favor. Their comeback album Never Gone was decently received, and this was the lead single. I think it’s as good as any BSB song. I did get to see them play the Factory as part of the promo tour for this album (thanks Joe Daddio) and later met a few of them at the Society Hill Sheraton, where I think I had the opportunity to go bowling with at least AJ and I passed it up because I wanted to go to bed.

Traveling Wilburys “Handle With Care” - Can you believe there was a band with Tom Betty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne? I feel like history documents this but no one really notices it. I’ve never gotten sick of this song and once every year or two listen to the album over and over again.

The National “Light Years” - I like this song but do not remember listening to it that much. I don’t have much introspection on it.

Skid Row “Slave To The Grind” - Title track of one of the best rock albums ever recorded. The time has probably passed for this band to ever properly reunite, which is a shame. I do respect how much the band members seem to hate Sebastian Back, as it would have almost certainly been a big payday. To be clear, I don’t hate Sebastian Bach at all, I just find it amusing they are sticking to their guns. In any case, this album is heavy and incredible. Our shitty cover band used to play this song and I’m sure we sucked at it.

Sabrina Carpenter “Vicious” - Sabrina Carpenter has some awesome songs. I love this one, though my favorite one is “Fast Times.”

Amos Lee “Dreamland” - The title track on Amos’ fantastic 2023 album, has one of the best hooks of his entire catalog. One of those songs that makes me wish I could sing.

Linkin Park “Waiting For The End” - In the running for one of my favorite Linkin Park songs of all time. It’s just so weird, but it still sounds like them. I wish I was a musician so I could explain what’s so weird about it. Showcases everyone, but not in a “your turn my turn” way.

The Fray “Still Got You” - This list might be the best advertisement in history for this album.

Wild Pink “ILYSM” - I hate saying bands are overrated or underrated, but Wild Pink is certainly underrated. I never saw this song coming from them, that almost channels Pink Floyd in a way. They make beautiful songs and this is one of them, but it stands out because it’s sort of peculiar in a great way.

TortureTwinn “Red Light” - One of my favorite discoveries of 25/26 is TortureTwinn, a project from a gentleman named Andrew Devin, who has the story goes quit his normal job and decided to make the musician thing work. I saw one of his Instagram videos reposted by Laura Jane Grace, and decided to check out his music. It’s sort of like a Springsteen meets Depeche Mode thing, with whispers of hair bands in there as well.

Amos Lee “Worry No More” - Just another one of the outstanding hooks and hopeful tunes from Dreamland.

Lana Del Rey “West Coast” - Lana Del Rey writes music for David Lynch movies that haven’t been released yet.

George Michael “Freedom 90” - Is there a better couple of pop albums from an artist than Faith and Listen Without Prejudice Volume 1? I do think the great songs on this album have aged in amazing way. The production holds up, the songwriting the same, and there’s just a little bit of everything in there. There’s pop, R&B, rock and everything else in there. This song is magic.

Brand New “Jesus Christ” - This is one of those songs that as soon as the notes from the guitar start at the concert, everyone goes crazy. I can’t really explain what it is I love about this album, just that I do.

The Verve Pipe “Colorful” - Amazing that it’s on the list. I do love the song, though I don’t think much about it. The time I discovered it is it is featured at the end of Rock Star with Mark Wahlberg, after he’s done being famous and performing this in a quiet coffee shop or something.

Dean Lewis “In A Perfect World f/Julia Michaels” - I don’t remember how I came across this song, maybe because I am a Julia Michaels superfan. It almost sounds like she’s doing a song with the male version of herself.

Butch Walker “6 Ft Middle Age American Man” - I dunno, the lyrics are kind of cringey and a little much but the song itself is a good one.

Pharrell Williams, 21 Savage, Tyler The Creator “Cash In Cash Out” - Someone must have told me to listen to this song because I’d never find it on my own. But I still love listening to it. I forgot about it and then this list popped up and I rediscovered it.

The Japanese House “Sharing Beds” - Never heard of this song. Seems like a psy-op to put it on the list.

Jared McCain is playing a lot for the Thunder, including a 24 point performance in OKC’s Game 3 win. We talk about how McCain looks and rehash the trade, give out grades for almost all of the current Sixers, and talk about the report that Jameer Nelson is an internal candidate for the Sixers open President of Basketball Operations position.

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Andrew Unterberger is a Knicks fan.

This was the realization I came to reading his post from earlier this week when he announced that he was cheering for both the Knicks and the Thunder in their respective Conference Finals matchups.

I know this is rich from me considering that in my teens I was an actual Knicks fan, but maybe it takes one to know one. I can assure you that there is not a team or a fanbase that I hate more than the Knicks and their aura farming mouth breathing fans at the moment.

In any case, back to Andrew “Spike Lee” Unterberger. I think he’s an excellent writer. I’m truly honored that he’s such a big part of the Ricky. One of the reasons i know he’s a good writer is that regularly I yell at what he’s written out loud as I’m reading it. This week, I didn’t get past the subject line before gasping.

I am aware it is possible to have a rooting interesting in a series once the Sixers are eliminated. I’m also aware that this could be for a rival, for one reason or another. But I sniffed out more than that with AU. I sniffed out actual fandom, likely due to proximity for an extended period of time.

This happens of course, quite often. There is no doubt that while Mike is primarily a Phillies fan, he is secondarily a Dodgers fan. This is not just in a “makes his wife happy” way, it’s in a real way. I suspect he feels the same way about the Lakers. He may deny this, but you talk to someone about sports for three hours a week for 13 years and you figure some things out. I am not criticizing Mike for this… it happens. He’s been out there for a decade and a half, the Dodgers and the Lakers aren’t like, natural rivals to our teams, and it just kinda happened. As well, I’d say my three years working in New York made me kind of a Yankees fan. We run the Yankees Radio Network up there, they’re not natural Phillies rivals, etc, etc…

This has happened to AU with the Knicks, though he probably won’t admit it. There are a couple key lines in his post that give this way.

I can’t even feel the same as Spike about their fans — most of the Knicks fans I know are actually pretty cool.

LOL, are they? I am not sure how many links I should share here of Knicks fans being decidingly uncool, but we’d probably need to build an entire data center to house them. I’m sure AU did stand next to two unassuming ones for two and a half hours one time, but to say they’re “pretty cool” in light of the evidence to the contrary is honestly Stockholm Syndrome stuff.

Most importantly, I need them to embarrass the fucking Cavs. The fact that the Cavs, that Donovan Mitchell, made a conference finals before us has been maybe the toughest part of these whole playoffs for me.

Ah yes, our long-standing war with Donovan Mitchell must be held sacred. I mean, he did wear a t-shirt making fun of Ben Simmons once, and we all know we’re very dedicated to defending Simmo the Savage’s honor. Not to mention, was Mitchell totally wrong? Aside from that, I can’t think of one moment where we’d have any issue with him.

What has happened here is AU has lived in New York for too long and has a soft spot for the Knicks. It disgusts me but it’s understandable. I just wish he’d admit it.

All that said, I do feel good about AU’s support of the Thunder largely being about telling everyone to fucking relax with Wemby. Let him earn it. He’s 8 feet tall, he runs like a gazelle, it’s possible he ends up the best player of all time. He should probably make the Finals first though. The Thunder won the title last year, had the best record in the league this year, were 8-0 in the playoffs until that point, and had played six of those games without their second best player. They lost one game in double overtime after a week-long break, and immediately their entire run was being extinguished so we could slurp up Wemby. Relax!

Team Ricky

• We did a deep dive on Bob Myers with Ethan-Sherwood Strauss (who covered him for years) and Saam Esfandiari (who has podcasted about him for years).

• Here’s AU’s fucking piece of shit column.

Team Non-Ricky

• Marcus Hayes has some sources that pretty unsurprisingly say that Josh Harris badly wants Bob Myers to run the Sixers and Bob Myers badly doesn’t want to do it.

• Tony Jones says that Jameer Nelson is the real only internal candidate for the POBO job and gives us some other names as well.

• A new Sixers Adam Mock Draft roundup on what the Sixers might do with the 22nd pick.

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Well, at least I’m still watching. There have been years this decade where the Sixers’ exit from the playoffs has been so dispiriting, so poisonous and so unshakeable that the idea of consuming anything related to the sport of basketball seems unpalatable for months and months to come. So I guess this year, the Sixers’ bow-out must’ve been one of their less soul-crushing defeats, because I am indeed still tuning in for this next round of NBA playoff basketball — not all, but some, the important parts. And I’m even rooting for the team who beat the Sixers.

Don’t worry, this is not gonna be some nihilistic post about embracing the NBA darkness, or some Stockholm-Syndromed plea for grace for our new tormentors — though you may very well still end up hating it anyway. I am not rooting for the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Playoffs in the sense of me wanting good things to happen to them. Nor am I rooting for the Thunder in the West because it will give me any particular joy to see Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren belting out “What a Pro Wants” at Oklahoma City’s second straight under-attended championship parade. But as Sixers fans and as NBA fans, I just think they kinda owe us.

If the idea of Josh Hart and his refusal to carry his arms normally when he walks strutting to the NBA finals is unacceptable to you, I certainly can’t say I don’t understand. But to me, there’s nothing more annoying in the NBA than being demolished in the playoffs by a suddenly-juggernaut-looking opponent who then turns around and goes out like a punk in the next round. If the Knicks are just a team of destiny this year — at least as far as the Eastern Conference goes; there’s probably no amount of basketball mysticism that’ll give them a chance against whoever comes out of the West — that’s fair-ish enough, I guess. It happens. But if they went out in five in the conference finals, it’d be like... well what the fuck was that even for then? We got blasted to smithereens by these assholes in our own building and they didn’t even have the decency to make the finals after that? It all feels extra disrespectful. It all feels extra pointless.

Now if this was the Celtics who’d just beat us and were now one series from the finals, I’d still be howling at the moon for them to lose in three. Some teams fill me with so much hate to the very core of my essence that all of my other sports fandom platitudes and truisms just go out the 50th-floor window when we’re talking about them. Actually really just one team: the Celtics. Maybe after two playoff series losses and one total beatdown the Knicks are on that level for you; I can’t get there. Hart is really the only one of them I actively loathe, the rest range from minorly annoying to wish we had him. And I can’t even feel the same as Spike about their fans — most of the Knicks fans I know are actually pretty cool. When I was watching Game Four in a bar next to a couple Knicks fans annoying the shit out of me as I was coming to terms with the inevitable, I ended up just sorta laughing with them by the end of it. They were still locked in with the Knicks up 37 in the fourth, annoyed that Tyler Kolek was missing threes to put them up 40. I couldn’t relate, but I understood.

Most importantly, I need them to embarrass the fucking Cavs. The fact that the Cavs, that Donovan Mitchell, made a conference finals before us has been maybe the toughest part of these whole playoffs for me. And it didn’t even really feel like he or they earned it — they needed seven games to beat a mid Raptors squad missing multiple starters, then they needed another seven games to beat a crumbling-after-wildly-overachieving Pistons team. And they didn’t even win because their main guys finally turned the corner: James Harden no-showed in a Game 7 for the millionth time in his career and it just didn’t matter. Donovan Mitchell was fine. The Pistons took the L a lot more than the Cavs took the W. The Sixers and Joel Embiiid coming back from 3-1 against Boston was far more meaningful than the sum total of the Cavs’ accomplishments in this postseason to date. It is shameful that they are still playing in the playoffs while we are not, and I cannot abide another series victory from them. Hell, I’d rather not abide another single-game victory from them.

I don’t even totally remember where my Donovan Mitchell-specific distaste comes from. It started, of course, with the “ROOKIE?” nonsense as he and Ben Simmons were squaring off for Rookie of the Year back in 2017, but as my friend Jonny pointed out on Bluesky Tuesday night, that doesn’t feel like a great reason for continued beef when our collective hatred of Simmons surely clears by this point. It’s fair, and I don’t have great reasoning beyond that: Mitchell seems like an OK guy and teammate and I generally think he’s a very good player. But somewhere along the line I latched onto him being a fraudulent choker and that’s only crescendoed for me in the near-decade since. Maybe because so many of the Sixers’ (and Embiid’s) primary rivals from that era — Jayson Tatum and the Celtics, Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets, Jimmy Butler and the Heat — have gone on to success so far beyond what we can hope to match that they can’t even really be considered rivals anymore, the fact that this one guy has basically remained in our same orbit has laser-focused all my hater energy on him. Whatever the reasoning it barely matters at this point. I can’t have Donovan Mitchell going any further than this.

So yes, I certainly did get a great deal of joy on Tuesday night from the Cavs’ belated succumbing to the Danhausen curse. Not that I really needed more shots of a delirious Timothée Chalamet hugging Tracy Morgan in my life, but it felt like karmic validation that things were Not As They Should Be for Cleveland to not only be in the conference finals, but leading Game 1 by 20-plus points in the fourth quarter, taking early command of a series they do not deserve to be participating in. For the Knicks to have enjoyed one of the great comebacks in NBA playoff history to secure the victory doesn’t necessarily feel right either, but it definitely doesn’t feel so wrong to me. I hope they do it again in Game Two.

As for the Thunder... I don’t feel quite so strongly, but I’m getting there. And this isn’t even really about Jared McCain, who I still do love and want good things for. But it is getting a little annoying to see my timeline fill up with “OH WELL GUESS WE JUST HAD TO GET RID OF HIM FOR NO REASON” self-immolation about his playoff performance anytime he does anything. During the first half of Game One of Spurs-Thunder I saw so many Process Trusters stabbing themselves with rusty forks over McCain that I assumed he must’ve been on a massive heater, and I checked the box score to find out he was 1-2 for two points with zero assists in four minutes. It’s really any time he hits a shot now. I get it but like also... c’mon.

But whatever, this isn’t about McCain, it’s about Victor Wembanyama. I don’t have any real hate for Wembanyama (yet) and I’m not as annoyed with the slobbering over him as Spike Is (yet). I don’t totally know what my feelings are about him in general. But... it’s just too early. We haven’t even seen him in the playoffs before. We need him to hit his head on the ceiling a couple times before he breaks through. If he starts winning now, then I guess that’s just it for basketball for the next decade? Longer? Basketball as a 29-team competition for the silver while the eight-foot guy with the 35-foot range remains unchallenged on the championship podium? I dunno. His takeover is probably inevitable and ultimately I guess that’s fine, but we should still get a couple more years first. Year Three is too early. Let’s be reasonable here.

And then in a Knicks-Thunder finals? Eh. I probably won’t be actively rooting for the building to collapse, but I doubt I’ll care enough about either team to actively pull for one of them to win or lose. I’ll probably be overseas for a lot of it anyway, maybe I’ll just let someone fill me in on how the movie ended when I get back. And honestly being able to not really care about the NBA finals will be a luxury I hope to be able to afford. If I have to spend my June still focusing the sum total of my negative energy on Donovan Mitchell or Victor Wembanyama it’s gonna be a fucking drag. Sparing me from that is truly the least the Knicks and Thunder can do.

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.

Bob Myers is either hiring the new President of Basketball Operations, doing the job, or both. We know Bob Myers ran the Warriors, but there’s so much more to know. Joining us for this podcast as we go deeper into Myers are two people who have covered Myers for years. Host of the Light Years podcast, Saam Esfandiari, and Ethan Sherwood-Strauss, now of House of Strauss, formerly of The Athletic and ESPN.

Subscribe to Light Years here: https://www.bluewirepods.com/podcast/light-years-a-golden-state-warriors-pod

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Josh Harris and Bob Myers spoke this week. We talk about what they said. We also address the question of whether Daryl Morey was right in a debate with Mike, whether Woj should be GM, and an SNL cast member stole Mike’s bit.

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