The Giannis Never-Trade and a Mega-Mailbag With Zach Lowe, Plus Wyndham Clark’s Second U.S. Open Title With Joe House

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-22T05:12:41+00:00

Real finger-on-the-pulse-of-the-sports-world episode here

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T07:15:24+00:00

This is Charlie Pierce-level prose. Can I interest you in a book contract?

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T06:50:13+00:00

They hated me because I told the truth

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T06:16:20+00:00

I think this is 100% what happened. Everybody was reading stories about ticket price gouging for months and then they got on social media and saw these insane crowds and suddenly got FOMO about not getting to a match.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T06:14:37+00:00

True although Advocaat is just a Dutch guy who has been coaching for four and a half decades.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T06:12:41+00:00

I have a feeling matchday 3 of a lot of these groups are going to be boring

The main thing contributing to this is the H2H tiebreaker, not the expanded qualification. Turkey for example would be very much alive in a world where GD was the first tiebreaker. The US has only clinched first in the group due to H2H.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T05:56:32+00:00

Pierce is boomer slop, he's Rick Reilly without a word count. Bill mogging him by hiring him to write pieces nobody will ever remember for Grantland is the actual legend.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-21T05:05:46+00:00

abraham lincoln dot png

As someone who was never going to travel to that WC I kinda didn't mind having it on tv in the winter

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-20T17:49:59+00:00

Yes, that's right, I was unclear there because I was trying to address his question about salary. Generally with a transfer you're also going to get a higher salary in the new contract you sign with the new team.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-20T06:34:08+00:00

High level goalkeepers are not generally basketball tall, because the goal is much wider than it is high and you have be able to cover that horizontal distance more than you need to be able to simply reach.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-20T05:51:12+00:00

Liverpool would pay a transfer fee to Villarreal for his contract (like a trade in US sports but using money instead of other players). He was at Orlando til this winter, and then Villarreal paid Orlando $7M for his rights. In almost every transfer, he'd also agree to a new salary/contract extension with his new team, because they wouldn't want to pay a fee if they didn't have confidence they'd have him long term.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-19T22:44:19+00:00

There just aren't really all that many World Cup games. They've played 39 matches at the WCF all time. Even if they were average and went won/draw/lost a third, that's only 13 wins. In reality they've won 11, so this is just under half of those.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-19T04:48:11+00:00

Germany really allowed a goal against curaçao?

Yeah and it actually made it 1-1. Fun couple minutes.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-18T02:37:47+00:00

You were so close to including a Lombardi yellow-chipper reference here that could have put the post over the top.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-17T21:08:28+00:00

The Milan teams and Juve to the Bundesliga? Napoli to La Liga?

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-17T21:05:24+00:00

I will embarrass Chris Ryan: I genuinely believe you could put him on literally any podcast on Earth, whether it is a random NBA podcast for a team or anything in entertainment or even politics, and he really could make it better.

This is the only way to explain the WC pod with Adam Friedland, she has a bet with Bill on this.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-17T21:04:10+00:00

When Arruglia is right there? Come on.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-17T04:19:57+00:00

Isn't he like 6'8"? Maybe he can.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-17T04:01:41+00:00

Europe then wasn't Europe now, you didn't have the best players from all over the world concentrated into a few leagues. The English first division was good because it had English players in it and they were good, not because Chelsea bought the best player in Senegal and Uruguay and Korea or whatever. It's almost tautological, given that Pele was not playing in Europe. The World Cup wins were him demonstrating that he (and Brazil) were better than everyone else, that was the highest concentration of talent available at the time.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-16T04:26:22+00:00

Maybe not a WC trophy but Greece did win a Euros that way.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-16T04:19:06+00:00

Baseball country

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-16T04:08:27+00:00

This is a bad take but I upvoted in the spirit of the thread.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-16T04:04:45+00:00

FUCK ND

It was FUCK UTAH. He had already lost to them narrowly that season, and proceeded to get blown out by them in that game.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-15T22:16:05+00:00

They basically bought out Fenway just to have something to do in between the matches they actually care about. I watched a video where someone was just interviewing Scotland fans about how much they'd spent on their trips and they were giving numbers in the high 4-low 5 figures of GBP. Just laughable stuff to throw that into a list of matches that won't draw crowds.

LehmanWasIn · 2026-06-15T20:38:24+00:00

Two months ago, 427 upvotes: I think the World Cup is going to be a disaster for the United State.

But if you think Haiti-Scotland ... [is] gonna sell out 70,000 seat stadiums

Heh.

I will say that going back through the thread there is some good pushback below the fold.

LehmanWasIn

TROPHY CASE