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The transcription is about a father and son sports podcast discussing youth sports in Oklahoma. The son, Riker, talks about playing various sports, his teammates, aspirations to play professionally, and his favorite player on the Thunder team. The father, Rob, shares insights on coaching, team dynamics, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. They discuss playing in wind versus heat, being a good teammate, and the importance of practice and perseverance. Overall, they emphasize hard work, dedication, and the bonds formed through sports. What's up everybody? Welcome in to the first episode of the 2nd String Father and Son Sports Podcast and Case Breaks. I'm your co-host Rob. And I'm Marcus. This is the show where 2nd String doesn't always mean 2nd best. Because of digits, no starting required. That's right. We're talking Oklahoma sports from the pros to high school and everything in between. OKC Thunder, OSU Cowboys, OU, Tulsa, and any high schools, we're covering it all. Let's get after it. That's right, man. So, Riker, tell me, what's your age and what sport do you play? My age is 9 years old and I play basketball. OK. And basketball is your only sport that you play? No, I play football and wrestling. OK. Which one's your favorite? Football. OK. What team do you play for? Wrestling Broncos. OK. You like that? Yes. OK. What positions do you play? Safety. OK. Do you have any other positions that you play? No. Alright. Do you have any future positions that you would want to play? Running back. OK. That's a lot of hard work, huh? Mm-hmm. Here's a crazy question for you, man. Would you rather play in the Oklahoma wind, which for those of you that aren't from Oklahoma, we average, you know, like daily, it seems, 15 mile an hour wind. Like, that's the norm. It gets up to, you know, pretty extreme gusts. Or would you rather play in 100 degree heat? I'd probably play in 15 mile an hour wind. OK. Why? Because the wind can make you cooler and then you could lose a lot of energy in the sun. Yeah. What is – what's something that makes you a good teammate? By cheering them up whenever they're, like, down and they get sore and helping them when they're, like, hurt. Yeah. What about – what's your favorite thing about the team that you're on? That they're nice. Yeah. And they're funny sometimes. Yeah. I know, you know, as your parents and coach, I really enjoy watching you guys bond. You know, you guys come together or came together at the beginning of the season and you didn't know each other and you finished that season with some brothers. And as somebody that experienced that as a kid, that's really cool to be able to see your kids now experiencing those same things. Because, man, some of these kids, dude, you will carry them with you for the rest of your life. Like, I still have kids that I played Little League sports with I still am friends with today. You know, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. What about – what do you want to do when you grow up? Like, are you wanting to go to college and play a sport? Do you want to try to be a pro? Like, what is your end goal here? I want to go all pro and that stuff. Okay. Four. What team? Eagles. Geez. I thought it was Eagles. Oh, sorry. I thought you said geez. I did. What about – what if you don't make it? Like, I'd go to probably the Seahawks. No, I'm talking about what if you didn't make it in the pros. Oh, I'd probably play soccer with my friend. Who's your friend? Callum. Yeah. Yeah, Callum's a big time soccer kid, ain't he? Yeah. So, I got some quick little rapid-fire questions that we'll do, and then we will kind of get to talking about some thunder. You want to do that? Yeah. All right. So, touchdowns or interceptions? I would go both. They're pretty both. They're really both good. If you get an interception, you can still score. If you score them, like – never mind. I would do both. Do both? Yeah. All right. Practice or film day? Which, I mean, you haven't really had a whole lot of film day. It's only been nine. But, you know, this year we've kind of gotten to where we've watched some more film and stuff like that. So, would you rather have a practice or would you rather watch film? Well, I'd watch film or do practice because if I'm not good at one thing, I can get more and better at it. Yeah. Yeah. We use film to see where we made mistakes, right? And then we use our practice time to correct those mistakes. Yeah. What about Gatorade or water? Water. As our audience will come to find, we are a water house. Not a lot of pop. It's brought in not a lot of sugary drinks. It's straight water. So, would you rather play early in the morning or would you rather play late at night? That's a great question. That is a great question. Because either way, you could be tired or you could still be tired because you just woke up. Well, I've done both before one day. So, I'd probably do both because if I can survive the work that I did, then I think I can do it again. Yeah. Especially when you were playing baseball. And remember when we had to get up at like 5 a.m.? Yeah. You had to travel all the way to Tulsa? Yeah. And then, oh, yeah, you're talking about wrestling. Yeah. I remember we had the wrestling. You're getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. One time I had to wake up at like 3. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty awful. It was pretty crazy. But, man, we love wrestling, don't we? Yeah. It's a lot of fun. So, would you rather win by a little bit, really close game, or would you rather blow them out, win by 30, like the Thunder does? Blow them out. Why? Because then you'd go into your actual, like, level of hardness, and then you could, like, you could score, and then they'd score, and then keep tying, and see if we could tie it up. So you kind of like, you like a blowout, but you like kind of the team that's getting blown out to claw back, right? Yeah. And make it into a close game? Yeah. Okay. Make it, like, into their level. Yeah. You know, the Thunder does that a lot, unfortunately. You know, they'll come out thinking they're scorching hot from three, and that's generally not the case for whatever reason. We're just not the greatest three-point shooting team. All right, Riker, I got a couple more, and then we will get back to talking some sports. So, Riker, what advice would you give another kid at your age who's maybe wanting to just start out getting into a sport, whether it be basketball, football, whatever, or maybe they're struggling not getting playing time and kind of frustrated with that? So, like, what's some advice you can give to a kid that's kind of struggling right now? I would say, like, practice like you play and never give up. Yeah. Okay. Is there anybody – let's see, actually, let's go – what is your – does your team – does your football team have a motto? Yes. What is it? Walk, hit, don't quit. And what does that mean to you? To never stop and to never give up. Yeah, always be a teammate, man. Is there anybody that you want to give a shout-out to? On the football team? Football team, friends, whatever. Yeah. I want to give two shout-outs to my friend Will for being the best football teammate, and I want to give a shout-out to my best friend, Talon, for being the bestest friend I've ever had. I love it, man. What about anything you want to say to maybe your mom, dad, coaches, anything like that? Yeah. And remember, I am your dad. I know that. I want to say something to Eric, or Coach Eric. I want to say thank you for teaching me all these years and making me love dad football. You know, when I first started coaching this football team, or helping coach with this football team, and I met Coach Eric, I'll be honest with you, I didn't really know what to think, you know? And he's an older guy, but honestly, I don't think that the team that we have and will continue to have, I don't think they would be in any better of a position under any other coach than Coach Eric. Nobody cares about you guys and the parents more than he does. It's a pretty special deal. Going forward, me and him are going to be the new, he's going to be head coach, I'm going to be assisting and stuff like that. I think this is going to be a really great deal for you guys going forward. What about anything you want to say to your parents or anybody? Yeah. What? My dad. What? Thank you for teaching me football. I don't know if I taught you anything, man. I appreciate that more than you will ever know. I enjoy just getting to be out there with you, man. It's a lot of fun for me. And just watching you get better and better as the time goes on. What about you, Riker? Is there any questions you want to ask me? What? What is your favorite thing of being a football coach? Well, kind of like what I just said. Honestly, just watching the kids grow and learn and become best friends and brothers out there who won't bat an eye about going out into war with a teammate and having their back till the end. That's a bond that a lot of kids don't get to have, man. There's a lot to say about the friendships and the bonds that you make through playing sports. It's a special deal. Do you have any other questions? Well, all right. We've been talking about youth sports here in Oklahoma, hard work, practice, loving the game. And if you grow up playing sports around here, you can't avoid watching the dominance that is the Oklahoma City Thunder. So let's switch gears. Riker, who's your favorite player right now on the team? Chase. Why? Because I just like how he plays and it gives me an example of how I should play. Yeah. Man, like – and I know common exceptions are going to come forth, you know, free throw merchant. Honestly, I think he's changed the game and brought it back to a Kobe level of, you know, they don't call him the president of the mini committee for nothing, you know. Yeah. And I think just kind of what he does as a leader, you know, obviously they complain about calls and not getting them, but they do it to a minimum. You know, they do it and then, you know, let's say they're one or two things and then they know it's, okay, I've got to get back to business, right? Yeah. So what do you see that maybe the Thunder could do differently? Like practice more, like probably every day of the week to become the best team in the league in history. They've already won a championship. They can be one of the best or already be one of the best. Yeah. I mean, they're definitely on the correct path, I think. I mean, they're first in just about every team rating there is. You know, I know a lot of people are a little worried about Wimby. Yeah. You know, going down 0-3 to the Spurs really kind of stinks. But I do think that Wimby and them aren't ready yet. What do you think? Yeah, I think they're not. Yeah, like it's – I don't know. It's going to be one of those things where I think it's going to come down to who's injured, who's not injured. I do think that the Thunder will probably make some moves at the trade deadline. They've already said, you know, that they're willing to trade up in the draft, which hopefully the newfound luck that the Clippers have found, you know, they started winning a few games. Hopefully that goes away pretty quick because we own their picks. Yeah. So I would love for that pick to be number one. So we talked about who your favorite player is. Now, is that your favorite player of all time, Thunder, or is that just your favorite player on the roster currently? My favorite player on the roster. Okay. Who would be your favorite player all time? All right. Then that would be on the – On the Thunder. Okay. Yes. Nick Collinson. That's my dude. That man, Nick Collinson is the guy, like he is my all-time favorite NBA player. The fact that he only averaged like 1.2 points a game for his career doesn't faze me a bit because that man gives me hope. Anybody that can carve out a 12-year career in a professional sport where they hardly ever see the floor but are known as the man of the team, man, you've got to love him. Yeah. What about Coach Mark, man? What do you think about him? He's a really good coach to the team and a really good teacher of like moves, shots. He does a really great job of doing like in-game adjustments or even just pre-game adjustments. He's a very good man of film. He loves to watch film. And try to learn off of that and show the players to learn off. Yeah. You don't turn the Thunder around as fast as he did without film, without getting in the lab, figuring out what is wrong, where they're missing out, and changing it. Yeah. If they didn't have film, they wouldn't be at like this level of good. Yeah. It's wild just how dominant they are. And, you know, I don't see that stopping anytime soon. Yeah. They're never going to stop watching film. They're just going to keep learning and learning. They're never going to stop doing it. Yeah. Yeah. And then, like, nobody – who in the East can compare to the Thunder? No one. No one. I mean, they only had one loss to the East last year, and that was the Cleveland, who was the number one team in the East. But it's like – I don't know. There's just something so special about this team that just makes me think that even with Wim Binyana, or however, Wimby, it's not going to matter. We're going to win another championship this year, and that's just all there is to it. Yeah. We always talk about how Oklahoma kids play tough, whether it's youth sports or high school sports, and that same toughness shows up every night, you know. Yeah. With the Oklahoma City Thunder. So my question to you to get started off with the Oklahoma City Thunder segment, what do you like most about watching them play? I love, like, how they can play that good and how they can face another team with good defense, good offense, good scoring, and just good effort. Yeah. It kind of went back to the old school way of thinking. Defense wins championships, right? Yeah. And, I mean, it's pretty. Yeah. They're the number one defensive rated team, and they won a championship. Mm-hmm. Who's your favorite player? Shea. Why? I like how he plays. Yeah. And I can learn off that. Yeah. What's your favorite move that he does? Probably, what's it called? Where you, like, rush the goal and you, oh, you rush that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got a pretty good one, huh? Mm-hmm. Tropico juice. Yeah. French Canadian, maybe. I don't know. I probably shouldn't have said that. Shit. Well, we always talk about how Oklahoma kids are pretty much tougher than any others. Yeah. Whether that's in youth sports or high school. And that same toughness shows up every night with Oklahoma City Thunder. So, Riker, what do you like most about watching this team play? I like how they can, like, do the offense, the defense, the score counts, and stuff that I can learn off. Yeah. They're a great team for kids to learn the fundamentals, right? They don't do a lot of complaining, like some people, LeBron, do. And that shows, right? They care more about the game than themselves, right? Yeah. And, you know, it's just kind of one of those things where you see these super teams getting built for a team that we drafted, you know, except for the handful of guys that we traded for. I mean, Shea would be the number one in that deal. But for the most part, you know, this whole team doesn't exist without Sam Preston. Yeah. If he wasn't there, this team would not be the team that we're in right now. Oh, 100%. That man is, you know, they call Chris Paul the point god, right? Yeah. Well, I would call Sam Preston the GM god. What's that mean? Basically, there is nobody better at being the general manager of a team than Sam Preston. I mean, obviously, I don't know a lot about their history. But, you know, just from what I've seen through trades and stuff like that, there's not a whole lot. Danny Ainge, he's a pretty good one, too. He's pretty ruthless. I mean, he will make trades and make you regret it. Like big trades and make you very much regret it? Yeah. So he was involved in, what, some hardened trades? And, man, who else? Paul George, I think, maybe. But, yeah, it kind of got to the point where he was just getting the better of everybody with every phone call, and people kind of stopped answering. Yes. Yeah. Literally, almost every month he would call someone and say, hey, let me trade to that team. Hey, let me trade to that team. Yeah. You would think the same thing has got to start happening for Sam. Like, I don't see a world where these guys keep answering his phone calls after what he did to the Clippers. Yeah. And then now with the Clippers being in – The robot's great. Well, that and being investigated by the NBA for fraud, like their literal 25, 26 season could probably not get any worse than this. Yeah. Well, no, they probably flopped all the way down to the worst team in the NBA. Well, the bad thing is they didn't flop. They just can't play. I mean, they've got Kawhi Leonard who only plays 50% of the games. You have James Harden who – Can't play. Well, he sometimes cries whenever he gets fouled. Yeah, he does. And, man, he's just not the same. And I know he's getting older, and I know that, you know, 30 in pro sports years is 60 in regular human years. But, like, I don't know. It's just – He just doesn't have it in him. And he chokes in the biggest moments. You know, he went down to Houston and had Chris Paul and got to the Western Conference Finals and then completely fell apart. Yes. How long has – How long since they have won, like, a Western Conference? Man, it's probably been, I don't know, five or six years maybe. No, actually, it may be longer than that. Let's see if I can figure that out. You've got to let them debrief. Huh? You've got to let them bad debrief. Yeah, I've got to go. When was the last time Houston Rockets were in the Western Conference? All right, chat. GPT, don't let me down. Wow. Okay. So it's actually been a little bit longer than I thought. The 2017-2018 season was the last time that the Houston Rockets were in the Western Conference Finals, which they faced the Golden State Warriors. And that was prime time Splash Brothers step in play in 17-18 and took them all the way to a game seven. And then James Harden just completely disappeared. Did they even need a chance to even get in the playoffs? Probably not. They had Chris Paul, too, but Chris Paul got injured. Again. Like spending 70 or 100 million on their stadium and not getting good players, just getting a good stadium? Well, but that's the Clippers. And I do agree with that. I would love to know what's going to happen once the investigation is over into the Kawhi Leonard payments. Because, I mean, somebody was paying him. Could have been a coach. And now it couldn't have been a coach. It was that bald-headed man Steve Ballmer and his shell company. Oh, well. Anyway, nobody really likes Chris. But, you know, where Steve Ballmer has possibly allegedly, if he hasn't been convicted or anything, but allegedly making those payments under the table, under the table, that's where I am so thankful that we have the organization here in Oklahoma City that we have. From the top to the bottom, it is 100% for the people, for the fans, for the employees that work there through, you know, just talking with the different account managers that we've had over the years through our season tickets. We've never had an employee or anything of that nature ever say, God, this is the worst organization. They just treat everybody horribly. Instead, it's always, man, this is the greatest organization I have ever seen. Yes. No bad reviews from them. No good reviews. They're always nice. They're always kind. They're always everything. Yes, and, you know, when you, even the people that work in the arena that don't actually work for the Thunder, like their sole goal is to make sure that you are there and you have a great time. And have great food sometimes. Yes, and have great food, yes. It's pretty expensive. I wish they would bring back that half-price deal more often than the playoffs, but still, it's pretty good. So, you know, we've kind of talked about the organization. You know, one thing that I think is the best thing that the organization does is any time that they trade for a player or they draft a player, one of the first places that they go is to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. And, honestly, that just kind of sums up who we are. Yes, it shows that we care a lot and that we care a lot. Someone that was loved and someone that was, like, a best friend to someone, they care about that and celebrate that. Yes, and, like, honestly, too, it shows that, you know, this organization is about the fans. You know, they want to see the fans happy. They want to know what happened before the Thunder even came. Because if you think about it, like, we have, you know, we've had minor, you know, AAA baseball for decades. You know, we've had minor league hockey. We have minor league hockey again. We need to go see those guys play. Yes, and then, but when you think about it, like, having them take players there and coaches there and show them where we come from, you know, show them that bad things can happen here, but we come together and we rebuild. You can solve the problems. Yes, exactly. And, you know, that really, to me, shows what kind of team the Thunder is. Somebody goes down, it's next man mentality, right? Who's going to step up and shoulder the load, right? You know, and if you go down to her, they're all going to come to you and say, you're okay, you okay? Yeah. Pick you up and take you to the seats and give you a towel, give you some water, give you some ice. Yeah, and, you know, just make sure that, you know, like you said, that they've got your back. You know, you don't have to worry about nothing because, man, when you go into the fire, guess what? We're running in right behind you, you know. And you see that. Even down to the end-of-game press conferences, right? They usually have, what, five, six, seven? I call that a verbatim number. You know, in that press conference. And the way that they have opened their arms to Nick Gallo, man, that guy, if he didn't get a ring, something's not right. Yeah. If they didn't get a ring for the players, I think it's all wrong. Yeah. He's one of the reasons why they made it. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say that. But I do think that he has a big role in the team, you know. But let's see. So we've kind of talked about the Thunder. We've talked about, you know, you as a player and a person, me. Let's kind of talk and we'll wrap this up, kind of what we want out of this podcast. Like what are you – what's some of your goals for this? One of my goals is that I want to get to 1,000 or 100,000 followers and subscribers. Yeah. You want to be the biggest father and son sports podcast? Yes. Okay. All right. Yeah, me too, man. All right. Honestly, I just – I've wanted to do a podcast for a long time and, you know, didn't really have the right time or whatever. And, you know, you wanting to do this with me, like, has been really cool to see how excited you are about it. And I'm honestly hoping that we can grow this thing to however big we want it to be. And, you know, we're going to start – we'll have guests on and, you know, and it will be guests from youth sports, guests from high school sports, college if we can get them, pros if we can get them, you know, just anything and everything in between. And, you know, just keep it family friendly, fun. Yeah. Just something that's special for you and I to do. Okay. Well, Ryker, that's a wrap on our first ever father and son podcast. Man, what do you think? I like it. Yeah? You want to keep doing this? Yes. Maybe hopefully get a little better. Well, going forward, we'll, you know, we'll do some more high school sports and youth sports stuff. Also, you know, as it says in the title, we do case breaks. So we will be opening cards and talking about different cards and, you know, from football, basketball, soccer, we don't care, you know. Eventually, you know, we want to get into doing live videos so you guys can see the case breaks and stuff like that. Even doing live shows, like I said, having guests and things like that. But for now, this is going to be a weekly podcast. Whoever subscribes and listens, man, you know, we greatly appreciate it. We've kind of said, like, we don't really know where this is going to go, but we want to take it as far as we can take it. So with that, like I said, that's a wrap on the first ever episode of the father and son, of the second stream father and son sports podcast and case breaks. If you're not starting, stay ready. Because around here, big hits, no starters required. We'll see you guys next time. How we will end every show is on prayer. Because you can't walk through life without faith. All right? So if everybody pray with me. Lord, thank you. Thank you for letting us do this podcast. Thank you for letting us hopefully get out to as many people as we can, Lord. We're just doing this because we're trying to have some fun, and we want to do fun things together, Lord. If you would, please watch over any and all sports activities that these kids and young adults to Thunder players and in between might be going through in this next week, Lord. Just please watch over them. Pray for safe games, fun games. And just, you know, in your name we pray. Amen. Again, guys, thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Obviously, you know, it's our first episode, so it's going to be pretty shaky, pretty rocky. But hopefully as time goes on, we can get better at this, and you guys stick around, and more and more people come and follow. So if you enjoy it, like, subscribe, tell your friends. We're going to have this out, what, starting weekly? Yeah. We're going to record it on probably like Friday, Saturday, have it out by Sunday, Monday. So, you know, again, thank you to anybody and everybody that listens. We greatly appreciate it.