NFL preseason REACTIONS: Mendoza & Simpson impress + latest Kawhi news, end of Buss-Lakers era?

**Damon Bruce** (0:02)
Oh my god, it is fill-in hosts. People always flip when you see a fill-in host. Don't do that today. We promise to at least live up to the Nick Wright standard, whatever that is. My name is Damon Bruce. Happy to be working with Ty Butler today, the two of us working together for the first time. Ty, this episode of What's Wright with Nick Wright, presented by Boost Mobile. It is 492, and let's promise not to crash the car, and give it back to Nick when he returns from vacation. Agreed?

**Ty Butler** (0:31)
Listen, listen, if all goes to hell, we just pick up our Boost Mobile phones, and you get Nick on the line just to correct things. But what I promise you won't happen is you're not going to get takes like if Katie had to do it all over, or if the Warriors had to do all over again, they wouldn't sign Katie. You're not going to get those types of takes. You'll get better ones.

**Damon Bruce** (0:50)
Let me tell you right now, LeBron James is a pretty good basketball player, and thank God that Nick discovered that. So all of us could also enjoy LeBron James. We had no idea he was even good until Nick told us about him. But it is obviously great to be here. We thank everyone at The Volume and Blue Duck for getting us involved today as well. Thank you. Thank you.
How do you know Mr. Wright through the years?

**Ty Butler** (1:16)
Well, he's become a great friend of mine. Back in 2018, 2019, I was fortunate enough to produce this show, the radio version of the show at Sirius XM Mad Dog Radio for my man Nick. We developed a nice rapport, some chemistry.
Since then, he's just been tremendous, man, blessing me with this opportunity. Look, don't get it twisted. We're in for two weeks. I will take my shots at Nick because of his Chiefs lofty expectations. But that's my big brother, so I'm excited to sit in and fill in for him here.

**Damon Bruce** (1:53)
What is officially in radio years, a million years ago, the both of us were filling in the same week on Jim Rome's show. When you're filling in, you listen to the guy who's coming before you, and I wanted to hate Nick Wright, and I listened to him, and I thought, jeez, this guy's pretty good. This is when he was just a radio guy down in Houston filling in. Then he did the same thing. He's like, all right, who's coming on after me? I want to hate that guy, and he listened to me, and he goes, you know, that guy wasn't bad after all, and we actually called each other, and then out of nowhere, we get the Warriors-Rockets rivalry, and so I got to be on Team Steph. He was on Team James Harden, and ever since then, I've been right about almost everything that Nick and I debated in sports.

**Ty Butler** (2:37)
I was going to ask you, who won that rivalry between you two guys?

**Damon Bruce** (2:40)
I dusted him. It's the Warriors, the dynasty, four titles, Rockets, none. So I know we hated KD joining the Warriors, but guess what? It was a party when it was happening. It was an awful lot of fun. Either way, Nick has been a great friend to the both of us in our careers, and watching his career absolutely launch has been one of the best things I've seen happen to a buddy of mine in this godforsaken industry we've chosen. So let's do the best we can to make sure we get this right for Nick. By the way, do we know where he went on vacation? Where is our man Globetrotting right now?

**Ty Butler** (3:18)
Well, I was texting with him last week. He said he's in Europe, but I feel like this is the darkness retreat.
He's going in and going to come out and figure out whether or not he is still going to be a Chiefs' Homer. Because I promise you, if that man returns from Europe and picks the Chiefs for what would be the ninth consecutive year to win the Super Bowl, we're going to have some problems, man. We're going to have some problems. So hopefully he figures himself out and he comes back with an ounce of objectivity. Because you can't come off a 6-11 season and say, yeah, we're going right back to the Super Bowl. That can't happen.

**Damon Bruce** (3:59)
Time marches on. And as you can see by my gray hair, it's written all over me. You are a fresh young man. It's going to come for you too. But time marches on. And time is not the friend of the Kansas City Chiefs. I know we'll get to that a little bit later. But we begin straight to voicemail brought to you by Boost Mobile. Again, this episode of What's Wright? with Nick Wright brought to you by Boost Mobile, number 492 And the topics we are not getting into today.