Also, one of the key elements of the John Roberts arc, like the Sam Stein arc, is that - although he is smart and a capable 'house wins' casino manager - he has to do that job while dealing with fallout from a whole rogues gallery of idiots, hotheads and chaos agents. It gets to be too much.
My "Casino" 3-3-3 theory of the court. Roberts (Kav + Barrett) is Sam and Alito (Thomas + Gorsuch) is Nicky. Sam to Nicky: 'This place is a license to print laws and the Dems can't touch us, and you risk that for what, drawing this heat?' Sam is a manager, a politician - but things get out of hand.
