Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Is Playoff Correlation Overrated?

**JJ Zachariason** (0:01)
Rich, did you hear the big news out of the sports world?

**Rich Ryan** (0:04)
I can't believe it. We've had such a strong rivalry, the Knicks have with the Sixers over the last couple of years, and having to face now one of the greatest basketball players of all time in LeBron James on top of that is just going to make us-

**JJ Zachariason** (0:17)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not talking about LeBron James here, we're talking about Dazon Stribling running with the Ones. I'm JJ, and over the last couple of years, I've been doing everything I can to be a Best Ball bro. Last season, things finally fell into place.
Maybe I became a Best Ball bro, but I'm still looking to learn more about this game, and I still want others to come on this ride with me. So even if you consider me a Best Ball bro, this could be your year. This could be the year that you officially become a Best Ball bro.
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Welcome in to another episode of Becoming a Best Ball Bro. I'm JJ Zachariason, joined as always by my Jets loving co-host, Rich Ryan. Rich, what's going on, buddy?

**Rich Ryan** (1:57)
It's the preseason, buddy. Hope springs eternal. Nothing bad can happen from here. Right, JJ? Right?

**JJ Zachariason** (2:05)
Yeah. Yeah, right. We had some cold open ideas, and the one that you were going to throw out there was about Geno Smith taking that punch. I forgot all about that, that even happened.

**Rich Ryan** (2:16)
That was the one and only time that I had an office job in my life, and it was the start of my second year in that job. So everybody knew me. I'm on the West Coast. I'm the Jets guy. I'm from New Jersey. And so when it happens, every guy in the office, maybe for like a 30-minute period would come over and let me know in case there was a world where I did not know that Gino Smith had broken his jaw via a practice squad player, that yes, Gino Smith would be missing a considerable part of the season with a broken jaw.

**JJ Zachariason** (2:42)
What was the backstory as to why he punched him?

**Rich Ryan** (2:45)
It was just a debt. It was a $600 debt with IKN Kampali. I don't know if it was charity related. I think someone, I think Gino had dedicated his time or vice versa to like a charity event, like a camp that summer. And some money was owed and Gino was being quite arrogant about it. And IK and Kampali did not enjoy that arrogance and landed the one-two punch on our guy Gino.

**Adam Levitan** (3:10)
Crazy.

**JJ Zachariason** (3:11)
So crazy. Last week, we talked about just some exposure stuff in general on the show with my portfolio.
But we haven't done a lot of like risers and fallers, ADP stuff in a while. So we're going to go through some big risers and fallers since it's right before camp starts. We're about to see some crazy things happen. So we have some names and such that have been rising basically since the end of June, end of July. I went on vacation. We had that recap type episode. And then last week, like I said, we didn't go over this kind of thing. So we'll just go through some players and I'll throw some takes out and give you some like how I feel about it. But why don't you kick things off Rich? Let's talk about some risers first.

**Rich Ryan** (3:51)
Yeah, let's start with two running backs who I'm just personally blaming you for these rises, especially the second one. One is Jonathan Brooks coming off another injury, the other is Jordan Mason. Two different paths, I think, to having success in Best Ball, but people are liking their profiles entering the summer.

**JJ Zachariason** (4:09)
Yeah, I mean, look, I've had this take for a minute now that I think that Jonathan Brooks could just jump Chuba Hubbard in ADP eventually. We're already seeing Chuba falling, which spoiler alert, that's one of the fallers, so I'll just talk about it here. But Chuba falling and Jonathan Brooks rising, it's the hot new commodity. Look, in the draft guide, I have Jonathan Brooks as a target because what I do for the targets and avoids is that I'm looking at my rankings, my tiers, and I'm seeing my overall, where I have them overall as well, and I'm looking at where they get drafted on the major platforms. I think that this is a case where Best Ball or some of the more prestigious high stakes platforms, you're going to find that Jonathan Brooks goes higher on those sites versus a Yahoo or ESPN. With that being said, there's usually a couple of week lag, so I think that we're going to start to see some change there. Now, I look at my portfolio, I'm at about 11-12 percent Jonathan Brooks right now, so I'm ahead of market. I do think that there's going to become a point in time where I don't want to be stupid about it.