Speaker 1: No, no, come home.
Speaker 2: Come on this episode of the Heat Check.
Speaker 3: COVID.
Speaker 4: Yes, COVID, it's everywhere. I have currently entered health and
Speaker 4: safety protocols.
Speaker 3: I don't have COVID, but I'm just out. I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna be out for a few days.
Speaker 4: Nobody is safe from COVID though, in the NBA or
Speaker 4: in the NFL, especially role players, but even even Lebron James.
Speaker 4: Games are being shut down. Star players are out. Teams
Speaker 4: are having to field like six seven, eight players.
Speaker 3: I mean, what are we doing? And guess what? Like
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going away. I don't think. I
Speaker 3: think this is a.
Speaker 4: New reality, a new frontier, as they say, a new
Speaker 4: hurdle to the game.
Speaker 5: So go ahead, rock drop down on the beat.
Speaker 3: O Marion, O Macron. I mean it's uh, it's here.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: O Marion is not he's somewhere. He's alive.
Speaker 4: He's alive, O Marion, I've got an icebox where my
Speaker 4: heart he hold on.
Speaker 3: Hold on one second. If only Omicron was as fun
Speaker 3: as Omarion. Not as fun.
Speaker 4: Definitely spreading like wildfire, just like O Marion seed Uh.
Speaker 4: Omaron was fucking with a bunch of entertainers and he
Speaker 4: was I've.
Speaker 3: Got an ice fox. Anyway, I'm just fucking around. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to make COVID funny. It's not easy. It's not easy.
Speaker 4: Apologies for folks who recognize that I missed Monday's episode.
Speaker 4: I was too out with COVID, so I was out
Speaker 4: with the COVID booster. I got maderna mRNA. Apparently the
Speaker 4: FDA EPA DHA, whoever is saying CDC I think, is
Speaker 4: saying the mRNA booster is the best.
Speaker 3: Why is it the best?
Speaker 4: Well, it put me on my ass, and you can
Speaker 4: tell that means it's working. There's something in there. It's
Speaker 4: given you something. I don't know what it's doing in there,
Speaker 4: but it's like Omarion is in there with all kinds
Speaker 4: of screws and like like a needle nosed pliers handling
Speaker 4: my immune system, trying to make sure that the next.
Speaker 3: O Marion that comes. My wife is like, hey, bitch,
Speaker 3: get out the way. I know who you are. I've
Speaker 3: seen you before.
Speaker 4: So there's the actual protection of COVID, which is the
Speaker 4: O'mion booster.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: But maybe maybe we should have seen this outbreak coming.
Speaker 4: I mean, NBA has been clamping down on testing since
Speaker 4: Thanksgiving and Lebron has been the first domino to fall.
Speaker 4: I mean, they could not even find a way to
Speaker 4: protect This is how we know that the NBA doesn't
Speaker 4: know what they're doing with COVID is because they didn't
Speaker 4: even find.
Speaker 3: The loophole for Lebron James.
Speaker 4: Like they hadn't created they hadn't planned for Lebron James
Speaker 4: getting Omari on like they didn't know. You know, they're
Speaker 4: like hadn't found the Lebron James rule, Like Lebron James
Speaker 4: close contact. We all know we protect Lebron James at
Speaker 4: all costs. He hits a guy in the face, he's
Speaker 4: out one game, that's it. Like he gets COVID, You
Speaker 4: test him and test him and test him and test
Speaker 4: him some more, and then you test some other guy
Speaker 4: and then that's his test, Like right, like that's that's
Speaker 4: what should have happened. But they didn't even know to
Speaker 4: do that. So to me, that proved that the NBA
Speaker 4: has no idea how to handle COVID. This's a new
Speaker 4: frontier for them because when it came to Broun did
Speaker 4: not only not get special treatment, I think he got
Speaker 4: royally fucked. I think actually, even if he was a
Speaker 4: role player, I'd feel bad for him.
Speaker 3: And Braun is not used to getting.
Speaker 4: Less than star treatment. So here's what happened. This is
Speaker 4: the first shoe to drop in the age of COVID.
Speaker 4: First and foremost, Lebron James is vaccinated. I don't know
Speaker 4: what his booster status is. Don't ask me, I don't know.
Speaker 4: But due to close contact on November thirtieth, Lebron James
Speaker 4: had to test for a breakthrough case. He tested negative
Speaker 4: at first, and then the second test came back positive,
Speaker 4: which then put him into the league's COVID protocol COVID protocol.
Speaker 4: So this is what happened, and then all hell broke loose.
Speaker 4: So apparently Lebron James had to figure out a way
Speaker 4: to get back to LA from Sacramento himself that tuesday
Speaker 4: that he tested positive, and he wasn't allowed to have
Speaker 4: anyone travel with him either.
Speaker 3: And then when he returned.
Speaker 4: To LA he basically had to isolate himself away from
Speaker 4: his family as well. So had to find accommodations for
Speaker 4: his family, all the peeps, and find a way.
Speaker 3: To isolate himself. And I know he's rich. I know
Speaker 3: he's a billionaire, but like that's annoying, Like that is stressful.
Speaker 4: You're all of a sudden gone from the king to
Speaker 4: like a pariah in like an instant, you know, like
Speaker 4: you're a lepard.
Speaker 3: Now, hey, you got COVID. Have you ever seen anyone
Speaker 3: that you know and you know.
Speaker 4: Them personally and then they tell you they've got COVID?
Speaker 4: Like you, it changes how you see them for a while.
Speaker 4: Like I lived with someone who got COVID and they
Speaker 4: had to quarantine the basement while I was moving to DC.
Speaker 3: And like she's young girls, twenty and I'm like, I.
Speaker 4: Don't care that you've tested negative sixteen times.
Speaker 3: Like you can't sleep anywhere near me?
Speaker 4: Get off that couch, no, Like, uh, you stay over there,
Speaker 4: Like give me spray some light style.
Speaker 3: That was Lebron James though, And this is what Lebron said.
Speaker 3: He was pissed. He was super pissed.
Speaker 4: That's probably an understatement, actually, he said, Yo, it was
Speaker 4: a big time inconvenience. Usually when you have a positive test,
Speaker 4: I'll test you right away to make sure.
Speaker 3: This was not that.
Speaker 4: There was not a follow up test after my first positive.
Speaker 4: It was straight to isolation and then you go into protocol.
Speaker 4: That was the part that angered me. He never felt sick,
Speaker 4: never had any symptoms, he had already tested negative, and
Speaker 4: yet draconian COVID rules it was for the king. He
Speaker 4: was like, I will if it was like, oh, I
Speaker 4: had a positive COVID test, if what I had, by
Speaker 4: the way, it was a false positive, Like this was
Speaker 4: a false positive. He had tested negative eight consecutive times,
Speaker 4: never really even had COVID, still had to go through
Speaker 4: the ringer, And he said, if what I had was
Speaker 4: a positive COVID test, then what are we even doing here?
Speaker 3: Like what is this?
Speaker 4: What are we even talking about? I thought they handled
Speaker 4: it extremely poorly, and like they did, they did. He
Speaker 4: did not have COVID at all, and he, like I said,
Speaker 4: was clear to play. Before he was clear to play,
Speaker 4: he had to test positive eight separate tests, eight separate times,
Speaker 4: which is why he got on Twitter and tweeted all
Speaker 4: those fishial emojis and the thinking emoji like something's fishy.
Speaker 4: And I was like, wow, Lebron James is a conspiracy theorist. No,
Speaker 4: he literally had a false positive. Couldn't play in a
Speaker 4: game against Sacramento. If they did beat Sacramento without Lebron,
Speaker 4: but who knows, Like they could have lost that game,
Speaker 4: and that game was important.
Speaker 3: And thank you to.
Speaker 4: Lebron James for being one of the only people who
Speaker 4: are speaking out against what we think. I think as
Speaker 4: a collective is like, I don't even know what we're doing.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what's right. I'm not sure what's wrong.
Speaker 4: I just know what you guys are doing is wrong.
Speaker 4: Like I know pretty much everything that you guys are
Speaker 4: doing is being handled poorly. If they can't handle Lebron jameson,
Speaker 4: how do you think they handle like someone like Wayne
Speaker 4: Ellington or Austin Reeves. Shout out to Austin Reeves, great shot,
Speaker 4: and overtime they're calling him the new Crusoh. And then
Speaker 4: you add in then you yeah, then you add in
Speaker 4: the fact that you've got new omarion variant and you
Speaker 4: have a new testing protocol where people not only have
Speaker 4: to be vaccinated and now also have to be boostered.
Speaker 4: And the NBA is just in a tailspin, like they
Speaker 4: come back from Thanksgiving and everybody's got COVID, everybody's testing
Speaker 4: positive for COVID. You've got omarion, which is the most
Speaker 4: literally the omicron variant is the most transmissible variant we've
Speaker 4: ever seen. It's mild, but it's transmissible as hell. Like
Speaker 4: like Omarion and Adam Silver said, he's a mild mannered guy.
Speaker 3: Adam Silver said before the season he was.
Speaker 4: Positive, he was confident they would not have to postpone games.
Speaker 4: He scheduled the entire season upfront, unlike last season where
Speaker 4: he only scheduled half and was like, we'll see how
Speaker 4: things are going with how many postponements and where we
Speaker 4: put everyone in.
Speaker 3: The back half of the season.
Speaker 4: I think this is probably a miscalculation on his part,
Speaker 4: like truthfully, because I don't know how they're going to
Speaker 4: deal with this at all moving forward, Like not even
Speaker 4: like you to leave. It's not even fully vaccinated. And
Speaker 4: now they're like, yo, you also need to have boosters.
Speaker 4: Like you not only need to be fully vaccinated, you
Speaker 4: need to also have boosters. Bulls have now lost two
Speaker 4: thirds of their team in three days. They've had to
Speaker 4: cancel their last two games, So I'd say that was
Speaker 4: a miscalculation on Adam Silver's part. All of sports are
Speaker 4: having some trouble with this.
Speaker 3: Currently.
Speaker 4: As I walked into the studio, they've already moved a
Speaker 4: couple of NFL games around as well.
Speaker 3: Kings.
Speaker 4: Sacramento Kings, of course, hilariously are in full protocol, like
Speaker 4: all of them. Alvin Gentryes in protocol, like Daviondaron Fox,
Speaker 4: Marvin Bagley, like the bag.
Speaker 3: Boy, the fans, the whole city.
Speaker 4: I think actually Sacramento as a whole was in protocol.
Speaker 4: Like the Sacramento radio guy, Damien Barling, He's in protocol.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: Nets also had to play with eight players. Just the
Speaker 3: other night. It was just Kadie and Patty Mills out
Speaker 3: there rocking out. It was just that was the only
Speaker 3: two that I knew.
Speaker 4: Even when you've got guys like DeAndre Bembrie that are
Speaker 4: in protocol like everyone. You had a guy David Duke
Speaker 4: Junior playing on the Brooklyn Nets. Do you think right
Speaker 4: now in these times we want to be rolling out
Speaker 4: David Duke in Brooklyn. Not in these times or any times,
Speaker 4: black kid named David Duke.
Speaker 3: No, No like that.
Speaker 6: Kids at the end of the bench, Poor Dante Devencenzo
Speaker 6: rehabbed his high ankle sprain for six months, got cleared
Speaker 6: to play this week for the Bucks, and they need him, boy,
Speaker 6: because there's a bunch of other bucks that are in protocol.
Speaker 3: And then boom dive Covid o Marion.
Speaker 4: So I mean, the shit is having an impact, and
Speaker 4: I think it's gonna change who's gonna make.
Speaker 3: It to the playoffs and who's not.
Speaker 4: Because in this league right now, with a significant level
Speaker 4: of parody, one or two games in December, January February
Speaker 4: is the difference between four seed and a six or
Speaker 4: seven seed.
Speaker 3: So this is Adam Silver's Nightmarre?
Speaker 4: Is it not like we talked about how earlier this
Speaker 4: year how COVID almost derailed the finals. What do you
Speaker 4: think it's gonna do moving forward with new, more transmissible variants.
Speaker 3: Are they just.
Speaker 4: Gonna stop testing players because that's what happened earlier, Like
Speaker 4: they weren't testing players at all that were vaccinated in bunniers,
Speaker 4: vaccinated in bunniers.
Speaker 3: Because we don't know, Like we don't really know.
Speaker 4: We've got guys like Antonio Brown faking vaccine cards. My
Speaker 4: sister sending me text messages being like can I see
Speaker 4: your vaccination card? Like no, no, bitch, I do not
Speaker 4: need you pulling off a fella knee off.
Speaker 3: Of your sisters.
Speaker 4: This isn't like a fake ID when I used to
Speaker 4: drink when your ten years So this is not the
Speaker 4: same I've been ten years older. She's it's like, it
Speaker 4: is not the same as like I'm nineteen, Hey, sis,
Speaker 4: can I borrow your your driver's license?
Speaker 3: It's like no, I could go to jail. You could
Speaker 3: go to jail, like for a very long time.
Speaker 4: So I'm wondering this, are we going to get to
Speaker 4: a point where the NBA just stops testing all together?
Speaker 4: Because that's what was happening before. They weren't testing vaccinating
Speaker 4: vaccinated players because they didn't know really anything.
Speaker 3: They didn't know that.
Speaker 4: These breakthroughs were going to happen at mass and then
Speaker 4: guys who weren't vaccinated have like a higher quote unquote
Speaker 4: viral load, paging doctor Crik, like higher viral load, and
Speaker 4: then like, okay, what happens, Like now do fans need
Speaker 4: to sign waivers if you go into an arena and
Speaker 4: they're not testing players that are either not fully vaccinated
Speaker 4: or not fully boosted, or what if someone has COVID
Speaker 4: it's a breakthrough case and you're not vaccinated, you're wearing
Speaker 4: a mask and you're on the sidelines right there on front,
Speaker 4: in the front row. What if you get COVID because
Speaker 4: you didn't know Marvin Bagley's bumb ass had COVID and
Speaker 4: he falls on you with this sweat and his breath
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden you're on a ventilator.
Speaker 4: Like our guys, like, these are real realities we need
Speaker 4: to be calculating in our mind because this isn't just
Speaker 4: like a seatbelt law. This isn't like, oh my body,
Speaker 4: my choice, I can go through the windshield. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: what if you could go through the windshield, And because
Speaker 4: you went through the windshield, like ten others also went
Speaker 4: through the windshield, it's.
Speaker 3: Closer to that.
Speaker 4: And that's where I think we're at is I'm not
Speaker 4: sure that the NBA knows how to really calculate how
Speaker 4: to move forward without possibly facing lawsuits. Maybe we're gonna
Speaker 4: get to the point where everyone just has to sign releases.
Speaker 3: Hey if you get COVID.
Speaker 4: If you get COVID and die, we are not at
Speaker 4: fault like that happens in America because we're so so
Speaker 4: happy as it is, like you have to sign releases
Speaker 4: for fucking everything. You go to six Flags, Hey, if
Speaker 4: you fall out of our rollercoaster and die. It's not
Speaker 4: our fault. Just want to let you know. You gotta
Speaker 4: say this in advance, like who knows? And this illustrates
Speaker 4: that what.
Speaker 3: We know nothing?
Speaker 4: No one knows anything. NBA doesn't know anything. I don't
Speaker 4: know anything. The scientific community they sure as hell don't
Speaker 4: know anything either, And that all trickles down because when
Speaker 4: the smartest people in the world don't know anything, and
Speaker 4: it's a developing situation, let me tell you this dumbass
Speaker 4: is like me.
Speaker 3: No negative amounts of things like, that's where we're at.
Speaker 4: They're now saying that omicron could have mutated in one
Speaker 4: single immunocompromised human being. So somebody with lupis or diabetes
Speaker 4: or oh, what's it not lupus, lime limes immunocompromisation, that's
Speaker 4: what I meant.
Speaker 3: That person can now develop the crick variant, the crick variant,
Speaker 3: the love variant exactly. Yeah, get out of here, crick,
Speaker 3: stay out of here.
Speaker 4: Trisk get So it seems impossible now to solve if
Speaker 4: one human, one random immunocompromised human anywhere in the world,
Speaker 4: can create a new variant inside of their body like
Speaker 4: a little uh, like a test tube. I mean I
Speaker 4: don't know what we're doing, and if that's the unknown,
Speaker 4: the one thing that we do know is that there's
Speaker 4: gonna be more things coming up, more variants.
Speaker 3: Who knows what next?
Speaker 4: R and B singer, I'll be joking around about what's
Speaker 4: coming next. And as I went to air this WOJ bomb,
Speaker 4: this is the bomb. Just as I suspected, the NBA
Speaker 4: is trying to skirt around and trying to change the
Speaker 4: rules cause they know what's up there. Like, as it stands,
Speaker 4: our rules are gonna fuck us from getting money. So
Speaker 4: the NBA and the NBPA are currently discussing modified COVID protocols.
Speaker 4: The two had already agreed to start testing on testing
Speaker 4: vaccinated players without booster shots on Friday, but there are
Speaker 4: conversations around further testing in protocols with the uptick positive cases,
Speaker 4: and then he followed the next day with this. The
Speaker 4: increased testing will run December twenty sixth. The January eighth
Speaker 4: mask will be required for players, coaches and staff on
Speaker 4: the bench, in the locker, wait in training rooms, while
Speaker 4: traveling with teams.
Speaker 3: Per memo share with.
Speaker 4: The teams fun times, uh, just in time for All
Speaker 4: Star weekend. That's gonna be in one of the coldest,
Speaker 4: most miserable places in the country.
Speaker 3: Cleveland, the land. Not Miami, where you can do everything outdoors.
Speaker 4: Nope, in a place like Cleveland in the dead of winter,
Speaker 4: where you have to put yourself in a tiny, enclosed
Speaker 4: space with a bunch of fucking thoughts. Because that's what
Speaker 4: happens is a bunch of ratchet girls come to All
Speaker 4: Star weekend, probably to pull a Britney Runner or two
Speaker 4: and probably end up with Omicron. That's what we're gonna
Speaker 4: You go want a baby and some child support, end
Speaker 4: up with Omicron, and now our whole league is in
Speaker 4: fucking shambles. They're probably never gonna stop testing. They're like, oh,
Speaker 4: we're gonna wait for a down tick. Let me just
Speaker 4: be very very clear, folks, I am a pessimist, but
Speaker 4: I am a realist. The Downtick's not coming.
Speaker 3: That's all the.
Speaker 4: Time that we have for this heat check. We will
Speaker 4: be back Monday, I know, optimism. We will be back
Speaker 4: Monday early Squirrely with a new episode talking about the
Speaker 4: most surprising team in the NBA not named the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Speaker 4: Do not forget to download, subscribe and tell all your
Speaker 4: friends follow US, at social on, at this heat Check,
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Speaker 1: Secure, Sam, I'm so.
Speaker 2: Liveries.
Speaker 3: This is cra easy shame. Not like girls like
Speaker 4: Mm hmm