Harden’s Moment, an NFL Schedule Glut, Owning the Jazz, and a Boston Sports Check-In—With Bryan Curtis, Bill’s Dad, and Ryan Smith

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Now in your filial. Adi, utis, fia ala. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandel. We're also brought to you by the Wringer podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchable some Monday night.

We did a tropical thunder. We're doing comedies all month on Netflix. You go to Netflix. They have a million comedies. We've done a bunch of them on the rewatchables are already including Fletch, long came

poly, Ghostbusters, 48 hours. The list goes on and on and we've also done this month, we did trap a thunder. We did Ghostbusters and we did that last month. We did there's something about Mary and this Monday we're doing Borat, which is an absolutely hilarious movie.

I've watched it once I have to watch it again before we record the episode, but just laughing my ass off. It's 20 years old, it's still really funny and it's going to be Monday's rewatchable. So stay tuned for that scheduling stuff this Sunday, some recording this on Thursday. We don't know what's going to happen in the game sixes on Friday to trade and Cleveland

and then San Antonio, Minnesota, who knows? So on Sunday we might be doing two podcasts was that well. We might be doing a part one, part two after each game seven. We might be just doing one after the game sevens or if there's no game sevens and just the game one we'll be doing one episode, but we're going to be live on Netflix and we'll

“let you know on social media what the time is if you want to join us so I'm looking”

forward to that. We have an action pack podcast on this one coming up after the break. I want to talk about five guys that I'm looking at heading into these game sixes that we have, a double head arm Friday night, really, really interesting that a basketball. Bryan Curtis is going to join us to talk about the NFL schedule at least was today,

but just in general what the leagues are doing here with all of the games and is there just too much sports or we had in there or as too much sports a good thing. We're going to talk it out. My dad finally decided to come on after boycotting for a week and a half after the Celtics loss, but Boston Sports is in shambles so had him come on to talk about it for 20

minutes and then last but not least, Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith who's never been on the

podcast. They finally got some look with the lottery. His story is fascinating how we ended up only not just the Utah Jazz but also the hockey team as well and he hired the angels from Boston and just a lot of stuff about what it's like telling an NBA team.

So this is a long fat content field podcast. It's all coming up next. We're going to take a break, bring in ProJep and then I'm going to talk about the NBA. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought through by Fandwell. It's been a wild playoff front, not over yet.

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Game six is always intriguing, but I think these two for different reasons can't wait

to watch.

“I've already broke the news to my wife that that's what's going to be happening for us”

on a Friday night. Caves minus three and a half at home to finish off Detroit. Minnesota getting four and a half points trying to stay alive against San Antonio and look, Minnesota looks like they're in trouble for different reasons. Then Cleveland looks like they have the upper hand against Detroit, Minnesota just looks

Cleveland Detroit, this series has become more of a math problem where it just feels like that Detroit's max is around 105 points and Cleveland could just get over that they're going to win. Detroit and the playoffs, 14th and threes, they've only made 10 threes a game, 49% on twos, 13th, they have the fourth highest amount of turnovers or almost at 16th game and

they're just running out of guys that they can put out there and crunch time that they can trust.

“So I think they're in the most trouble of these four teams, but I have five guys I'm”

watching on Friday night for different reasons in the two series. First one is Julius Randall who was a huge reason I thought that the timbre was one game one and then has been a lightning rod ever since 1313 for 39 and three losses. And has just looked really, really awful at times trying to challenge one be trying to challenge what the spurs are doing to them.

And it's like Randall has these moments where you've like, I thought after game one I was like, he's the key to the series. I'm not sure if the spurs have guys to guard him and then by the time you finish game five you're like, can they play Randall, I mean, this is a story of his career.

He's made multiple NBA teams were always questioning how good he is and I guess this

is just who he is from a basketball standpoint. He's made next year he makes 33 million the year after he makes 36 million. So he's the most obvious trade candidate. And he's a guy that when things start going against them, you can kind of see it. He wears his emotions.

He wears the nobody believes in me kind of mask on his face and can get really frustrated. And on top of all this, talent has been great in the playoffs through the next. So you have this trade that was I thought one of the more fun trades we had this decade. And the next are clearly not winning the trade and Randall, defense agenda sadly is hurt out for the year, but Randall, the swing guy from Minnesota might not even matter.

He might be awesome a game six and it might not matter what San Antonio, but I'm watching him if he's bad, I don't see a world where Minnesota can win when Edwards is in 100. 100% on the flip side. I'm going to lump these two together as my second guy, Fassel and Champenny on San Antonio. They made five threes a game during the season and shot 38% combined.

And I thought a pretty reliable, I always felt like their threes are going in.

In the series, they're 21 for 63, 33% basically. I mentioned this because Wendy and Fox and Harper had been a disaster from three in the series.

“There are all 27% or worse, Wendy, I think is a better three point shooter than Harper”

what came in the lead wasn't supposed to be a three point shooter and Fox has kind of bounced around where there's you watch certain games and you think maybe he could make a mother times you never think they're going in. I mentioned all this because they lost game four, there were six for 26 from three. And if you're looking at like how does San Antonio blow game six and how does this go back

to San Antonio game seven? To me, forget the Minnesota piece, forget how if Edwards is 90% healthy 95% healthy, forget how great Wendy is, forget how awesome Dylan Harper has been as this place went on. You can beat San Antonio simply if they missed threes and I don't 100% trust their three point shooting.

So I'm specifically watching Bassel and Champenny because if they're making threes in the

first half and Wendy's doing Wendy's stuff in the heart rate like San Antonio that'll

be it. It'll probably like an 18 point but if the threes are starting to bounce around and they

“can't get in a rhythm, that's what I want if I'm a Minnesota fan.”

So you could say this about almost any NBA team with like, oh, the threes don't go in, it's tough to beat them. San Antonio specifically, I don't totally trust their three point shooting and I think this is the Achilles heel of the team the more I watch them. And if it goes south in a game six and you go to a game seven and I'm still nervous about

your three point shooting in Minnesota comes in as the fuck you off a dog, just trying to bully them and you know, really test them and all of a sudden, each guy is looking on nervous taking those threes. That's the recipe for San Antonio blow in the series. I do not think that will happen.

I would not bet on it. But it's a team that sometimes they'll be up 14 and all of a sudden they start looking a little creaky because the threes start bouncing around. So we will see. All right, Cleveland Detroit, I assume San Antonio is going to be Minnesota and I would

probably not bet on game six. I think Detroit's done. I think they have slowly broken as the series has gone along and even game five, which, you know, they play Paul Reed, the entire fourth quarter and the entire overtime, I think because my next guy in my list, Jane Lynn Durin, has gone south to the point that they

He's a 2011 guy at her in the season 65% he's a 10 and 8 guy in the playoffs, 50%. There's some stuff teams are doing him in the playoffs, like we've talked about. They're just not guarding Thompson anymore. They're preventing Durin from rolling, but his confidence really seems gone around the basket.

Like these little flip shots that he is to make, I, again, I'm safe for the 19th time.

I voted for him second team on BA and he, I don't know what happened.

I have a theory that I'll mention in a second. He also doesn't seem as explosive. There's a chance he might be hiding an injury even watching the way he's running stuff from knows, but, but compounded with Stewart has just been basically unplayable in the last series, Jenkins, 21% from three.

Now, he's playing crunch time and has it been making threes at all. Holland can't shoot. Levert is a classic trick or treat guy. They can't find five guys to close games with, Robinson missed the game because he had back issues.

I assume he's going to play game six, so they have to go K Thompson Robinson to buy us some Durin or beball ball, as long as they can possibly go. The Durin line up is plus 10 to the playoffs every non-cade line up to disaster and it's like the old Dr. Rivers area, as the play of series goes along, the number of guys you could trust in the series starts dwindling and you started at eight and suddenly you're

at seven, then you're at six and Detroit just might be at four.

“The Durin, here's my theory, he's a restricted fridge at the summer and I think, especially”

after the season he had, you assumed he would be getting a max or close to it, like maybe something 40 million year, maybe something close to John Jackson contract, but it doesn't have it yet. And now he's not playing well in teams of scheme dim differently and to me, this almost feels like he's unraveling a little bit.

I, this happened for different reasons to Antoine Walker and the Celtics played the net's two years in a row in 0203 and Kenny Martin, just for whatever reason, had Antoine's solved. He just had Antoine couldn't do anything against him. And I really think it changed Antoine's career.

That and his free thershooting went sideways, but he just was never the same.

And with Durin, I would assume that it's not going to happen, he's 20 years old, but I always get really nervous when somebody goes full section A private pile in a playoff series, which is what's happening. Like him, him not playing in the fourth quarter, no T is just, I just couldn't believe it. And the guy that we're watching does not resemble the guy for the regular season.

“So is he going to bounce back in game six in Cleveland?”

Is this just going to get worse? I think you have to watch. We'll know in the first like six, seven minutes with him. The next guy, Max Struse, who singlehandly swan game five, a notorious trick or treat guy, he'll do this twice a series where he'll look awesome.

I did like the way he was defending Kate. If he's not the trick or treat guy for them, then it has to be Merrill, I think, but I think it needs to be one of those two. They need like that little influx. Shooters another one.

Shooter every year, nobody wants shooter, and then in a playoff series, you completely trust them. At some point, we'll figure it out with him. Ruse when he's going, I really like how Cleveland looks, and he found a play that I've

never liked him because he was on Miami and the Celtics would always play him, and he always

felt like he was killing the Celtics. Even though you go back and look at the game logs, he didn't have like two good games in series, which is what he does. A reader named Obey Jacob mentioned that Struse is slowly morphing into the macho man Randy Savage, and ever since I got that email, every time I watch Struse, it feels like he's

reinvigorated to me. He really does kind of look like the macho man.

“I think he started talking to him and he'd be like, oh, yeah.”

But when you watch him in game sex, just think of the macho man, it makes the backstreet experience so much more fun. We'll see if he swings game sex. Last guy has to be James Harden, has to be. Looked washed and game one in game two.

Looked washed for the first, I would say 43 to 44 minutes of game three to the point that I didn't think he should be playing. Then huge game three ending, he was really good in game four, 11 assists, 24 points. Then he was their best guy in game five. He, him and Moby, Moby was really, really good.

I thought, too. I thought Moby was really good the last two games actually, but Harden at 30 and, you know, it's weird. On the one hand, he is 58 turnovers in the playoffs, 22 in this series, and there's moments when he just looks old and Detroit's made him look old.

And the Sarah Thompson looks like he's, athletically, at, you know, a different planet than 36 year old James Harden at this point. By the way, I did nothing. That was a foul on a start Thompson. That's a no call.

But Harden, he's played 185 playoff games, which has to be, I didn't look this up, but

“has to be like top five or top six, ever.”

He hasn't made the conference finals in eight years. He made it in 11 and 12 with OKC. He made it in 15 with Houston in that crazy series where the Cooper should have beaten them in game six and Harden was on the bench as the Rockets came back. So he like barely gets credit for that one for me 11 and 12, who was a six man and

OKC in 2018 was the one where he carried a team to the conference finals. And then ended up losing a golden state in the famous three point rock fight that Houston just could have made anything after Chris Paul got hurt and hasn't made it since. So we've been talking about his playoff legacy or lack there of Zacklow famously called him guard car on the loan, which I don't even know who that was more insulting for.

But we've already litigated this. We've already the jury came out, came back into the verdict. His 2020s have been kind of secretly terrible and will get lost in the shuffle when we go through his career, you know, how great it was in a lot of ways. But the playoff stuff was bad, but last year died against Denver game seven.

It just really, really, really awful. And you can see it right away 24 died in the last two Dallas games 23 really died when he was on Philly in the last two Boston games 22 Miami series did not end well for him 21. The last two with the Brooklyn series against Milwaukee when he was hurt. Well, that thought, that's probably my favorite James Hard to play our performance until

what we've been seeing with Cleveland, but in the 2020s, 22, 6 and 8 stats are fine. But we were there. We know what happens and you just can't trust them. Diring it is, how amazing would it be if 36 year old James Harden went on like a heater right now, if it basically starts with the end of game three and it runs through and he's

just awesome for the rest of this Detroit series and then goes into a Nick series and becomes this, oh, he's been in the Western conferences entire career except for that brief Brooklyn

stand in that brief Philly stand somehow never avoided a never ended up playing the next.

So I don't think he did. I don't remember James Harden playing next, so James Harden in MSG, revamping his whole playoff legacy thing pretty fun or it could be pretty painful. I don't know. I was thinking about his greatest playoff moments, so you can think of the worst playoff

moments and we could do that for an hour and I'm trying to think, what were the best

“ones and honestly nothing jumped to mind and my mind drifted to 2021 when he was hurt”

on that next game and his greatest playoff moment was probably the exact well called the greatest theoretical playoff team ever when Ham and Kyrie and Durant were a healthy but then I really liked how he played in that walkie series after he was hurt.

I thought he was heroic and game seven basically playing on one leg, doing everything

he could that just tried to set stuff up for them because he kind of had to play. And as crazy as it sounds, I think that was my favorite James Harden moment, all the other ones were kind of negative. He's in a situation right now with Mitchell where he can kind of drift back and forth and be impactful but not impactful and do a little seesaw thing with Mitchell, which they've

figured out for the most part, it's okay. But I like how this is lined up for them because they need Thompson to defend Mitchell. They can't play one of their other defensive swings because then they just don't, the shirt has no scoring at that point. I mean, you could argue maybe they just go all defense and throw away this scoring because

they can't shoot anyway. But if Thompson's shadowing Mitchell and he's around them, then you're going to have to let hard and do what he's going to do against pick a swing man on Detroit. So it's set up for him here and then against the next next round, they might be able to just try to hunt, brunch and as much as they possibly can and or pull towns out, hard

and don't want to do an awesome popping stuff, this is kind of set up for James Harden to be like, you thought I was dead. I'm not.

“You thought you thought I was guard Carl Malone watch this, do I think this will happen?”

I don't. I do not. But it's in play, it's better than he was on the Quippers where he had no chance to do anything. I have hard and career wise, I've been the mid 40s of my pyramid, I have them actually one spot higher than George Garvin and I have them two spots behind Sam Jones and Walt

Frazier who were two of the best clutch players in the history of the league and especially

to Garvin who, you know, I wrote about this in my book but had a chance he was up three one. The crazy Garvin did make the finals but the bullet series for Garvin was kind of his version

of a James Harden didn't do quite enough when it mattered and then Harden was a million

of those but who knows maybe it's a better late than ever a clutch situation for James Harden. Would I bet on this? I would not. We have no idea what to expect from James Harden.

My prediction, I think Cleveland finishes the, I think I feel the same way that I thought about the Toronto Atlanta series. I think Detroit's going one direction and Cleveland has solved them in a lot of different

“ways and the only way they don't win, I run a quiz if James Harden completely sucks.”

I think they're going to finish off the Detroit game six. I don't really know what's going to happen in Spurs Minnesota. I would almost go with Spurs when by double figures or Minnesota obsessed them in wins. Watch the three point shooting. These games are going to be great and I can't wait to note both.

Watch about that, watch both of them and then on Sunday talk to Zach Will about what happened and where we're going in round three. We're in take a break. We are going to come back with my friend, Rankers. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandwell, Fandwell, give you better payouts

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“All right, the on-butts have been out of my life is here, Brian Curtis, taping this before”

the NFL schedule release. I'm sorry, I had to pull you away from the anticipation of just staring in front of your computer, just waiting to see who the cowboys were playing in week 10.

I never understood this day, I had never, I could've stood them for blowing it out.

There's stuff I want to talk about that I've met through a schedule day, but do you get scheduled day? What is this? It's terrible. It really is terrible.

The one they had this week or we're leaking week two Thursday night football. Yeah. Why? Not week one. Not Thanksgiving.

Not Christmas. Week two. It's like am I supposed to just schedule my life right now around week two Thursday night? Well, you already know who your favorite team is playing road and home before whatever.

So I guess it's just for travel purposes, but leaking out all the international games and what their plan was for Thursday Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, all that stuff. Kind of defeats the purpose of schedule day, that's not why we're here though. I feel like there's a moment happening right now with professional sports and money and scheduling and trying to figure out how to just file these giant media deals and you can feel it happening

in real time with college football with the NBA and with the NFL specifically. In the NFL now, they're going to have nine international games this year. They're pretty transparently discussing how the 18 week schedule was coming. You're seeing the owners just kind of leaked that out. The season this year, we're starting week one.

It starts late this year. We're starting September 9th on a Wednesday.

First week we go Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Monday.

The playoffs don't start until January 16th and the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day. So they've just declared war on everybody's lives and we love the NFL and we're addicted to it like it's a drug and we can't fight back, but is there a tipping point where there's

we've reached peak TV 10 years ago, right, and it wasn't just about the quality of TV, it was about how much this feels like peak sports TV, except I don't know that we're quite there yet. As you mentioned, what's still out there, 18th NFL game, expansion maybe in every league, certainly the NBA, but maybe also hockey, baseball, bigger TV deals, more, you know, more sports schedule on days we never used to have sports, I just feel

like there's more out there somehow, even though it feels like almost too much right now. You can feel it, and I've talked about this before with the UFC in WWE have been really smart about strategically picking these weekends that were kind of dead weekends last weekend, which seemed like it was going to be a little bit of a slower weekend because basketball would finally slow down, hockey would finally slow down. It was a little more manageable.

It was the week after the Kentucky Derby, and that's always a crazy first Saturday Sunday.

And yet last weekend had a pretty good UFC card. My son thought it was the best UFC card of the year. There was a WWE event that was being promoted all the time. This week has PGA tournament. I just feel like everybody's gotten better at both stretching out their schedules, but then also targeting dead weekends, and then just kind of flooding us.

“And it's the first time I ever really remember feeling like I have trouble staying with”

everything. There's just too much. I haven't really watched a lot of the NHL playoffs this year, and I usually love the NHL playoffs. I just haven't been able to watch that much. I want to ask you about that, because ever since I've known you, you'll text me on like a Tuesday Nimes, like you watched in this pelicans game, you announced you did something that crazy

tonight. Right. Wait, what? That's on. Yeah. So always feel like you're the highest consumption

person I know. Yes. You feel like you've reached your limit? Well, especially because of the TV and movie stuff that's out there, too. And then like Survivor 50 is really good this year. That's another 90 minutes that has now been thrown into into my week, but the combo of like the basketball with how they, how the college football seem to just get longer and longer, and how January is now just absolutely loaded. And we kind of finally get a breath in February. I'm complaining about

free sports. Otherwise, I guess, they're not free because we're paying for the streamers. But it feels like there's less breaths in the schedule, whereas like even like when we started Grantland in 2011, and there was the NBA lockout. And we were panicked. We were like, what the fuck are we going to talk about every week? What are we going to do? I remember when I was a kid when they had the baseball lockout in '81 and then the other one in '94, and it just was like traumatic. It was such a monkey

wrench in the day to day life, and there wasn't stuff to replace it. Now there's a million things to replace anything with. And I wonder if that's part of this is all the leagues and the sports field pressure to constantly being front of us. So make sense? It does. I mean Thanksgiving Eve is

“the funny one for me that when you and I were growing up, what was Thanksgiving Eve? The survivor series?”

That's that Thanksgiving Eve tradition. And that's not a sports night. It really spent much time thinking about it all. Yeah. The NFL schedule leaked that just came out. Packers Rams. Thanksgiving Eve. And that's a funny one, right? Because we know when the NFL came for Christmas day, they wanted to stop on the NBA. When they started programming those Saturdays and December with really good games, they wanted to stop on the college football playoff. Who are they

stopping on on Thanksgiving Eve? It's just attention. The attention economy. Go to your point though. They just want to be in front of us on another night and get the money they can get because you open up a new window and somebody's going to pay for it. So everything crests with the NFL with this, this Thanksgiving thing, which you just brought up. This Wednesday night game that

they'd never had three Thursday. Black Friday, Sunday and Monday. There's going to be five days

out of six where we have NFL including three on Thursday. So part of me wonders is the NFL

“just trying to break up families and trying to get everybody divorced. I think that has to be asked.”

Right. It's a more single, more single male sports fans. Maybe better for the NFL. I don't know what they're thinking there. But the Wednesday night thing blew my mind because that's a pretty you know, that's like when you're in college, you come back and you go out with your high school friends. Right. When that's a day usually people travel. Like even we've we've struggled with even trying to program that from a podcast standpoint. Because you can see the audience goes down

for those five days because everybody's traveling everyone's with family and people might watch football. That's it. The NFL's like we're doubling down. We feel like we can actually own this entire stretch. Family and us does those are your two options. And Wednesday night is just aggressive and part of

one-off events versus like having the week to week stuff. So they have the Wednesday night opening

“game in Australia. They have the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. That makes sense from an”

Netflix standpoint. I don't get it from an NFL standpoint except for money and attention. Money and attention, which you can see because all these games on Thanksgiving are bangers. Right. Packers, Rams, Bears, Lions, Eagles, Cowboys, Chiefs, Bills, and then the Black Friday game is Broncos Steelers. So you're not just trying to dominate a holiday when you have a captive audience. You're trying to post a huge number. Yeah. Which really started last year.

Remember, they put Cowboys Chiefs on Thanksgiving and what people forget is that game had more viewers than either of the conference championship games last year. Unbelievable. Who's the highest rated

non-superbowl game in the season? Right. 57 million people watch that game. So with the end,

it's almost just like you're, you know, shocking all trying to get fireworks. You know, you could put a crappy game on there and it would do very well because thanksgiving people are at home. They want to watch football. We infos not try to do that anymore. They're just trying to completely dominate. Also, really hard to figure out what's an awesome game. I talked to Gabe Spitzer and Netflix about this because he knew, you know, they, they obviously

have at least some saying requests for what they could put in for the Christmas game. Right.

“And when you, the basically the only thing you can have some sort of sense out of is who's playing”

him. So it's like, if we really like the Patriots and we really like the chargers, could we make that a request and be like Patriots in LA against the chargers? Can that be our Christmas game? But how do you know? Like we have such like, with the giant speed team, you'd actually want a request for Christmas because they have a fourth-place schedule. They have a new coach. Start, they might be really good. Maybe they're this year's Patriots or would you say,

"Well, the Patriots are in the Superbowl last year. Let's get them." And then they have the year from how and they're six and eleven by the time the game happens. So yeah, I look at these things and it's like these games all look great. But the only one that's actually probably really reliable is Eagles Cowboys because I know those two teams hate each other is homesy. We're going to be in that cheap Spill's game. How's this ASL stuff going to go? Are the bills going to be good?

What are they going to look like next year? I just, you don't know. So on paper, it looks great. But I understand the philosophy of the Packers Rams, Bear's Lines. These are like the signature teams in the league. We've 12 out of 32. They're not putting the Panthers. They're not rolling the dice with like the Raiders. Yeah. And you're also putting something that's a rivalry no matter what. Yeah. So you're not going to Cowboys Falcons. Right. Cowboys Jaguars. Because that's like,

you know, at the very least, it's going to be a division-grudge match. All right. So let's say we're in the room. We're two of the owners. And we're worth a lot of money. The league has all these media deals in place. They've figured out this roundabout way of using the paramount thing and the chance to be able

to renew to basically redo a bunch of their stuff at the end of the decade. Combine with the

NFL that we're selling to ESPN. So now they've just kind of moved some games around and made them worth more. It's like, yeah, we have these three double headers, Monday, football, ESPN games. We're just going to grab those three and we're going to sell them the highest bidder. Netflix or YouTube. You guys tell us we're going to sell the opening night game. NBC, sorry. You don't have that anymore. Get a problem with that. Do you have a problem with that? What is NBC going to say? That's unfair.

What they're really doing is we can aim this Sunday, Fox and CBS games. They're getting destroyed from the one o'clock in the four o'clock or in our case in the West Coast to 10 o'clock in the

“one 15, whatever they are. I think those games are going to probably suck this year, right?”

I agree. And this is what happens with peak sports TV as you do hit the wall. There just aren't that many good games. Now fantasy and gambling can make a bad game into a watchable game for some people, but they just aren't that many at the end of the day. We just where you get to 18th game where you get to expansion, right? Then they start to the wheel start to go on motion. But you're right, man, if you're an NFL owner right now, just think about this. How far we've

come from 1993 when we've put Murdoch came in with crazy money, $400 million a year, $400 million a

year. I remember talking to Jerry Jones one time and he was like, when they brought that offer in, he was sitting next to Pat Bowl on the owner of the Broncos. And he goes, we Brian, we were just kicking the shit out of ourselves under the table just kicking each other with more than a million dollars. It's amazing. You can imagine now how many broken femurs there would be for all the money going around because there's like, there's like three rooper's right now. You know, you have so much

crazy money because the streamers want in, they want more NFL. And the networks know that

networks with two different agendas that are perfect for the NFL, right? If you're a network, you want the continuity of every Sunday, I have a game, every Sunday night, I have a game, Monday, I have a game versus Netflix, YouTube, Amazon. They're like, we just want like impact. Amazon's a little better at the continuity stuff. Netflix didn't want to have a week with game. They wanted to, you know, their schedule the way it works is they want to populate their

main screen with like, here's the biggest thing this week. So they only needed like three or four YouTube, YouTube's the one I can't really figure out what they want because they already have the Sunday ticket. And yeah, just having these one-off games like it, like, does you, I don't even does YouTube even, this almost seems like a vanity thing for YouTube. Like, we're YouTube, watch this,

“we have NFL, but it's not like they need it. I think Netflix needs it a little bit. The streaming”

strategy is fascinating and also because they can always change their minds. Yeah. The networks are

like, as you say, we need Sunday football. We need these two times slots, or if you're NBC, we need the night game, we need that every week. That's like part of that's, that's we have to have to keep this network alive. But if you're streamer, you can be like, you know, what, we're not interested in full seasons. Oh, wait. Read negotiations coming up. Hmm. A couple years now, we are interested in full seasons that turns out.

Just football so popular. Yeah. I would argue for prime having the Thursday night football has been really good for them. Yes. Um, they figured out their strategy with all their sports stuff as I think a little different than anyone because a lot of it's ad driven. Um, they, I think eventually they're going to have a lot of product stuff down there that you're going to see over the next five, six years, they're going to figure out a way to integrate when you're on prime. Oh, I like that

ad. You click a button and also, and I'm buying a pan or buying Dave Chanks, cooking something with some Momofuku sauce and like I thought that's also good and all of a sudden, I'm ordering it. So they have like their own set of agendas. Netflix has the, we're, we're in front, we're the leaders. We just need to keep populating our stuff with one off stuff, whether it's the Kevin Hart roast, one week, or a stranger things, or an elderly Mike Tyson, right, or the press box with brand

Curtis, like, whatever it needs to be. We're so wait on the call-up on that one. But the, the,

“the way it might be. I think they're written to say I'm any football games they're getting.”

You too, but I don't understand their strategy. I don't, I can't really elaborate because I think sometimes, and you saw this with the Amazon with the Matt with the Masters, to me, that's a pure

vanity move. They don't really need the first round or first to runs the Masters, right? But you get it,

and now, like, all of the higher-up level suits are like, going to a good stuff. We have the Masters, and now you, you basically, you're in this, like, secret society, for you just get to go in, play the course, you get to warm around. I don't really understand YouTube. So what is YouTube? What do you think is motivating them? Well, I, I, I'm kind of with you. I don't know if they know what their strategy was sports is yet, but there's this great luxury at this point in history

to not know. If you're Fox, you can't lose the NFL because then it's the mass singer and season 800 of the Simpsons, and that's it, right? You're, you're, you're, you're toast. Yeah, but if you're a

“streamer, you can play around with stuff. You know, what if we have old Mike Tyson come out and fight?”

What if we have, may weather pack you out? What if we have a guy climb the building? Yeah, exactly. Like, you can play around and just sort of see what works. You know, you still have to hit numbers and all that kind of stuff, but like, I don't know. And to me, it's like building a sports division is a big step up, right? Dabbling in sports. Say, hey, let's go get I and Eagle, and let's go get Greg Olson and let's, you know, put together a little fantasy and answer booth, and, you know,

get one of the networks to produce the game for us. That's dabbling, right? That's a level. If you say, we want a sports division where we have people hired, working for us all the time, we get a week of NFL program. That's a lot. And so a lot of money and it also takes a lot of talent and know how. And when you and I've seen this, you know, week after week watching the NFL, not every network is as good at that as others. So then you bring yourself under this

microscope, or we do in this right? Does our game suck? Do our replays suck? Do our announcer suck? It's easier to dabble. Yeah, and they're listening to all the media critics and podcasts like

this, and that's where they're getting feedback from, basically, because they, they know not to

trust social media and things like that. So it's, first of all, you could not listen anything, or anything, or you could be like, did we do that? Like, when Amazon, when they had the outage during the, what was it the last minute of, what was it the playing game or, is the playing game, right? It was Charlotte. And Amazon just disappeared for 20 seconds and everyone nuts. Like, that's a catastrophic moment for for people running sports and Amazon. That's your worst case scenario.

ruin a game. It's pretty hard for a production to ruin a game if you care about

“who's playing and, you know, they can, they can only do so much. Like, NBC is thrown away the pre-game”

at halftime shows for every sport they've covered for the last 20 years. Nobody really cares, right? They're like the basketball show to, I don't know what they're doing, but then nobody cares, it doesn't matter. Um, with the football piece. So if they add another week and it's clear, they want to go now. I, I thought it was really notable that they pushed the Superball the way to February 14th. The Superball O is without fail has been the first Sunday in February and it's either

February 1st through February 7th without fail. Single digits. No long number. Now we're in 14 and I almost feel like it's a feel or to see this is how it's going to work for us when we go to 18 weeks. What kind of number do we get if we, if we push it back and I don't know where this part ends either because think about this from the beginning. So they, and they're also insisting on doing the preseason. So you're talking August all the way through February now. One, two, three, four, five,

that's seven months. It's a seven month season. That seems amazing. It does. It does. But if you were

going to grow, wouldn't you grow into February? Right. Like staggered. There. I don't know. There's something about the way the schedule was set up where college started, people were kind of back from summer break and all that stuff. Kids went off. School started for little kids. Kids are in college and then the NFL would start. And now it seems like they're kind of conceding that territory to college football. And the college football's the other one. That like

Indiana's first game last year was August 19th. Their last game was January 19th. It's a five months schedule. Not counting on the practices. So you're showing up in Indiana and mid-June and you're going all the way through the middle of January. That's insane. We zero. It's like one of the concepts that makes me laugh about peak sports TV, which we got too uncomfortable. We have week one. But before week one, we have week zero. Where are games? Right. Like, but zero is not a week.

They're not a good game. So it doesn't count as a week, but it's weeks. There's something to watch. Yeah. But February to me, that's always been the dead zone of sports. It's a famous quote where somebody asked the sports writer, why did you why'd you quit and said February? Because there is anything to write about. So if you're the NFL, what if we stretch that another week? We just keep going and bet that you're not going to want to watch regular season NBA as much as you're

going to want to watch us. Right. February was always first for the sports community. It was vacations.

There was always conferences in February and early March. It was always kind of the time everybody reset. And then March madness would hit. Now March madness is going to get longer. Like, what are they? What are they? Did they add like another 14 teams or something? And they're about

“to do. They did. Because, you know, they're like, literally hot teams. What are enough to pick a champion?”

This is one of the things that I wanted to talk about. These different leagues are doing stuff that everybody is like, please don't do this. Like, not only the fans, but the people that play and coach the sports are like, yeah, don't do this. And whoever's in charge is always like, nah, actually, we're going to do it. Thanks for the input. Like, the NBA, I think pretty consistently across the board. Everybody is saying this season is too long. Kurt Goldsberger had a great piece

for us today about all the leg injuries. And it's something him and I had been talking about paying the scenes for months about, is there a way to actually capture? It did something change. Because you could see in the basketball reference minutes from 12 13 years ago, like the league leaders and minutes versus the league leaders now, people are 500 minutes less. It doesn't make sense, but it does make sense when you watch outsplay all the leg injuries. And where are we going with all

this stuff? The bet that's being made is that they will take the money and they will watch us roll our eyes and they'll say, you're going to watch anyway. I know you're going to watch. And let's leave you and I could do a self audit about this, right? Did we need a seventh team from every conference for the NFL playoffs? Absolutely. Those teams have sucked by and large year after gear. Did you not watch those games involved in the set? That was one round. It's like, you got me. I kind of like this.

Yeah, I wasn't against that idea. If they added two more teams, I think that's now a mistake.

“NBA play in game. I think you're pro, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I'm pro. You're pro. I've”

injured. They bet that they could have teams that would often have a losing record or be right around 500 and they put them in the postseason that the bill Simmons will watch and you watched. NBA Cup by watch. Am I a bad parometer, though, because I'm going to watch anything.

What if, you know, what would the NFL have to do to actually put a number on the score board

where they were like, oh, people really hate this? This is a good question because somebody asked

“me this, what's the number for each sport that would make people go, what the fuck are you guys doing?”

Right? Which so the NFL said we're we're going to have a 20 game schedule next year. People would be like, what? You know, no, no, no, no. We're tapping out. You can't do that. And I think for the NBA, just staying even is about as far as they can push it. Like, if they would have to 90 games, I think honestly, people would revolt. I think that would be awful. College football. I don't know what the number is. Indiana played 16 games last year. Yeah. That's that's more than the

1972 as many as the 1972 Dolphins played. No, my God. And somebody was at the University of Texas, you know, in an 11 game college football world. Yeah, it feels like a ton, but I've watched

every week of it. Right. It's amazing. And it's it's it's fun. Everybody's like, oh, this sucks.

It's a new world. It's like, yeah, I haven't reached that point yet. So you're good as you're good from late August all the way through January for college football. I mean, I tell you what, you know me, like, I'll watch any football game. Starting Thursday. I'll watch all day Saturday and I'll watch all day Sunday, Sunday, take it. By Monday now, I'm dragging a lot. Yeah. I'm just like Joe and Troy

“come on. I'm like, I'm not not watching this, but I feel like I'm dragging your worn out. That's what”

that first weekend of the NBA playoffs is like by like the eighth game. I'm like, woof. Need that. I love this. I'm in, but I'm dragged. This is I'm tired. Yeah. And I'll tell you what it is is, you know, you've heard all these people talk about how confusing the world is now with the streaming

services and how hard it is to watch things. They're not wrong, but they also lack the historical

perspective of you and I where it's like, it is also in certain ways easier to watch everything now. Yeah. They're more college football games at the click of a button than there ever were when I was kid, right, even when I was in college. It takes us to have a paper view game when I was in college. Like, here's one of our crappy games. This is put on paper view. If you didn't come to the stadium, like, it is now there's so much it's easy to watch stuff. Now is it a pan the asked to go from

streamer to streamer and back and forth to television yet? It is. It totally is. I understand that. But there's tons of stuff on. There's tons of stuff on without really trying to watch anything. Yeah, my life has spanned this entire kind of run we've had because I'm old enough to remember game six of the 1981 finals. Tape the late in Boston. This is the Celtics winning the title. It was not on live and I was I was in fifth or sixth grade and it had to go to bed

then wake up for the game. My dad woke me up at 1130 so we could watch the game to see what happened. The other choice would have been just less of it on the radio. But when you think about like all the NBA games that were lost over the years, they were NFL. I've talked about this before, but it sucks so much to be an NFL fan if you were in a city. They if you were like a jets fan and you're living in New York City and they would do the thing where they were sucks to begin with.

Well, that sucks to begin with. But they would show jets giants. You would only have two games. So be one one and one and you know thing can compete with the home team and that was it. You didn't get to watch any other teams. So you're really tied to the the little game breaks. The half time stuff, the highlights, the the ticker on the bottom. That was kind of all we had. So I look at the stuff now where we're arguing about it's really hard to find where every single game

is on. Like that's a decent problem to have. I think what's weird to me is like the Lakers play off game the other night in LA was not on normal TV. And that's where that discuss back to the question of how much money is enough to actually make it less likely people are going to like your sport. Because there's just LA is a huge city. It's got people of all kinds of backgrounds. And there's people that just aren't going to pay for peacock in LA, right? That probably love the Lakers

that either had to go to somebody's house or had peacock or just had to find out what happened afterwards. And that's where I think you lose the narrative a little bit. At the very least like the games in the local cities, I feel like should be on normal TV. That reminds me of old school and I felt when there would be a cowboy's game when I was a kid that wasn't sold out by Friday. Oh, that's right. Radio things like, oh, should we get tickets? We're not going to watch the game.

The home blackout, the home blackout, which is now nobody even understands that concept.

“Back in the day, there'd be this thing. Remember that into the week?”

Well, you don't plan this because there's probably people listening. I don't even know what you're talking about. You had to sell out the game or it wouldn't but it wasn't on on local television. So if you lived in Cincinnati in the Bengals where 10,000

So their fans could see the game. They would give me charity sometimes. That was that. I remember

that being a thing. But you'd start to hear this murmur late in the week. It's a time to go buy tickets. Right. Because otherwise we're not going to be able to see the game. Again, it's just like a totally different era of sports. But was that that was at the get the Laker game that was a $90 get in price? There was the cheapest Laker ticket of the season. Was that game four versus OKC? Do you see that? It was like, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right.

Well, that's happening now with World Cup. The tickets are starting to drop big time. Remember, they price it at all these crazy heights. And now it feels like the get-in prices is going to keep going down. World Cup is another thing. I mean, you could argue this is the craziest sports content here we've had with a big football getting longer. Adding adding World Cup when does winter Olympics start? We did it. We did it. That's right, Bill. I feel like a bad news.

And just you have a chat watch February 6th or 22nd. You might remember some hockey.

“Yeah, I did watch the women's hockey and the men's hockey. That's, but honestly, that's how much”

sports I've watched. I don't all this stuff is starting to blend together. Dude, I'm with you. I just feel like, I mean, I'm like, Mike to read, I feel like Mike to Rico. We're just like rush to go off to call another year to that. Really? Yeah, so it doesn't happen 10 years ago. It does. It has so much stuff. It's three months ago. It's so much stuff. Yeah, again, like, I think if you went to young Bill and young Brian, it'd be like, this is dream. Because do you remember those

nights when you'd be like, there's nothing on? I killed watch sports. I'm starting to really have trouble, like, as I just proved with the winter Olympics, the stuff is just going in one ear and out the other when you're watching it. And unless it's something I really have to focus on, which is basically for this podcast that I fell in basketball. I'm just finding like, like, the baseball playoffs last year, which I watched a ton of. And now if you quiz me on what happened in the 25

“playoffs, I'd be like, well, Dodgers played the Blue Jays. I remember that game seven, who did the”

Blue Jays beat in the previous round? It starts to get iffy. I'm like, I don't know. I watched it.

I never used to be like that. Mariners? Mariners? Blue Jays Mariners? I think Mariners. That's

so. Yes. Is the Mariners? If we between the two of us, we can reconstruct the last six months of sports. We don't have to help each other. Well, it's like, I had Letterman on last week. And one of the things I asked him was about, like, with the 6,000 shows, do you, you know, he did 6,000 shows across the board, did they all start to blend in together after what I was like, yeah, I don't, you know, and remember little pieces. But you don't remember it like the, like when Jimmy Kimmel goes on

his show for the first time in Letterman show, he remembers every moment of it. And I wonder with sports that influx of it, if that's just going to be what happens with our memories. Where there's so much content, there's so much go out that three months after the winter Olympics, I could remember if we had the winter Olympics yet. From part of it's the media, it just everything goes fast. I was looking for some reason out with ESPN.com, so a page, and I told

to sure why the other day, but I went to the house. It was that experience, like, it was different, kind of kind of like going to the old apartment building you, you know, lived in when you were a young young young adult. It didn't have our crafts for their writers anymore. You just have to hope they were at something. It was like going to the old apartment, the apartment had been turned

“toward down. Yeah, that's what it was like. But I can't remember this, it was one of these,”

one of these sports stores that leaked out of your, your brain in mind, but some huge sports story that I had before. And it just wasn't, it was barely on the homepage. And I don't even blame me as Pianna, it's just the world moves very fast now. You know, it's not the SI cover that comes out on Thursday and you're like, okay, yeah, that was a week. That was what happened this week, right? Our brains are just ugly. It's like, oh, there's something that's a WWE thing tonight.

What's up? What's going on, Rhonda Rousey? And it's fight tonight, okay? And you just sort of ping-ponged to the next thing. It couldn't have been this much slower, 45 years ago. I think it was. I honestly, you know what, I don't think, though, I think if you and I were like a living agate page, it wasn't that slow because there's just a lot. There was a lot going on, but we just couldn't watch it. We didn't have access to it. Not on a, not on a Tuesday night.

Well, I wonder if part of this, so social media basically starts for what it looks like now,

probably like 18 years ago, 2008, 2009, wrench. Sure. Before it was, we were in the bookmark economy. If I wanted to find out about anything, I had my whole slew of bookmarks. I had websites I went to. I had writers I liked. I had a couple of message boards for my favorite team, like the old school message boards.

Now, I just probably go to Twitter or I go to a couple of the Boston Sports Reddit pages, and that's kind of what I do, but I wish I could actually go back to the old bookmark thing, but if you'd be bookmarking things that wouldn't even be able to know how to serve you the content correctly. The ringer's kind of anomaly in that respect. You can go to our website still and see all the stuff we have.

There's not a lot of places that are easy to do that now. Apple news is one that I always go to

do now every day, and I always look to see, because I subscribe to that, I get all the different websites. They do a pretty good job of curating what's going on, and that's like the closest I have to a bookmark experience now. I agree. Because if you're anywhere else, people, and again, we've benefited from this, being in the sports business, but everybody jumps on small things now. So it feels like nothing. It feels like everything is big. People, I mean, just imagine, when we were young,

milk chypers seem like a lunatic, because he cared that much about the NFL draft. And now he's in Normie, because every Twitter account you follow cares about the draft and is already caring about next year's draft, even though it just ended. And so just everything seems big, you know,

“which is everything seems important, and then I think at the end of the day, nothing seems”

important or as important. Or everything seems big, but it's not like the Jay, like for the Boston fans right now, the Jayland Brown, Jason Tatum, trying to interpret all of these little weird videos. I don't know, like if we had this in 1982, this is all I would have done as a little kid is trying to figure out, wait, Michaela doesn't maybe like bird, and just gone during myself crazy. Now you can, you know, Jaylen's done multiple Twitch streams. He just did some

other interview. Tatum now just didn't interview, then the people around them, then you have team act being able to die on a weekend of pretending he had to talk to Jaylen Brown when he obviously did. And all that's kind of meaningless. Like we're going to go through it now with Janis over the next couple of weeks as people decide if he's going to get traded. And that's another thing is like people trying to sift through the bullshit of the quote unquote information

reporters. Is this actual information or is this there an agenda behind this information? What

“how do I, you know, in real time you're trying to decipher it like a police detective?”

What are the next few weeks of LeBron going to look like speaking with? We're starting this week with the weird McMenderman story about he was upset that JJ Reddick got a game ball and he did it. So he walked out of locker. It was like, what is this? Your 41? There he told you,

the third best guy in the team. It's like one last time, right? Like when they have the movies,

you know, the action movie with all the elderly action stars. This is really like we got what we got more and more in us. Well, this is what I've been pushing for with the Warriors for weeks. And I actually think has a real chance to happen is LeBron going into the Warriors with Curry, with Dreyman, they trade Butler's contract and a pick for Anthony Davis. And they just do the old guy team and just go and sell out in every NBA city. And if you're LeBron,

you've two choices. You either see now we're doing a LeBron segment. You can't fucking resist. I care. But if you're LeBron, you take the minimum and try to win a title or you do the expendables in Golden State. And you just have this two-year, you know, you're everywhere, you're sell out everywhere, you're the biggest story wherever you go. And in a weird way, you've stolen some spotlight from OKC and San Antonio who are the teams that are going to win

the titles next couple of years. But you have something different. You're basically like in the

Hulk Hogan after he gave up the title to the Ultimate Warrior. But he was still the biggest so out that they had, but he did need the title or like what Andre the Giant was like,

“I think that's what's sitting there for LeBron. I think that's his only move left.”

But this goes back to the attention economy. If they do that, there would just be stories that come out of that all the time, which is one of the reasons you would do it. You think LeBron's interested in the attention economy? I do. I do. I do think he is. Do you think Dreyman Greene's jokes would go over better with LeBron than they did with Charles Barkley? What do you think of that? I know you talked about it, but tell my audience. I just watched that moment. I'm like

stream on Greene. Are we sure that first of all, we sure that he's good. Maybe we're past that as an announcer. But second of all, like to be a good announcer, I think you just have to have that ability to let people make fun of you a little bit, to have the ability to eat it. Charles Barkley has a great ability to eat it. Steven A. I'll say in this, when the next lose to the thunder in the finals here in a couple of weeks, Steven A is going to come on there. Hang his head on the show.

Forro, I can't believe it. I was so excited and he's going to let himself be vulnerable. Can Dreyman do that on television? There's that. And then there's also, as we've talked about

person's moves. 100%. And I don't know if he's a move seller. If the wealthy other guy

“get their stuff in. Yeah. Like, there's a respectfulness that you have to have in that situation”

for your him. Even though I thought Barkley definitely seemed to be provoking him a little bit, which I didn't think got enough. You know, he's basically just saying it was face. You guys are done. It's over. You know, and probably odds are Dreyman Greene is going to handle that that well. But then he handles it the wrong way and comes back and I'm with something that was in really factually accurate. And it was just awkward. You know, it's exactly what you don't want when you're on those shows.

Like, you watch the Amazon show, which I think is the closest we have to a good show right now. There's a mutual respect with all those guys. They're not going to hang each other out to Drey. But in general, the inside the NBA piece is interesting because it's the first time they've really had backlash and I don't know how much of it is faired, how much of it is in fair, but they've also been in everybody's life for such a long time.

That it's kind of this is an inevitable way that this could probably end, but that whole thing has felt off the whole year. I love that show. But the ESPN fit, some of the time that they have, the fact that they don't have the same time they had after the games, which is I was when I really thought that

show was at the most important. And to me, like, Shack's, Shack is the biggest issue with the show.

Like, it just doesn't see. It seems like he's there because it's fun to be on the show, but it doesn't seem like he follows basketball at high enough level anymore. Like he doesn't know who people

“like Baylor Sharman are. Like, you're on a studio show covering a sport. You know, you have to,”

there has to be some sort of a modicum of following the game. So it just feels, it's like watching a little like watching the Warriors at Ironically, where it feels like they're having trouble trying to reinvent themselves. It's an interesting experiment, if can you take something that's so awesome in one place that is a Turner network and just transport it to the other place? Would it be the same? And the answer is, no, kind of the same,

same in a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, when they were doing their obits the other night that had, you know, that felt like inside the NBA. Yeah. They were talking about Ted Turner, that felt like inside the NBA, but in their moments really, something just feels different. They have a chance to flip the narrative again. These next couple rounds, I think. I think, you know, the basketball's better, there's more of a spotlight on them. It'll be easier for somebody like Shaq, because there's only

four teams left. You can just watch the game, if you know, who's the players? Yeah, I don't know who Shaq goes outside or is. But yeah, look, this is, this is what happens. One other thing I had for for this schedule stuff before we go. So the NBA season 82 games, six playing games, four playoff rounds, conceivably a play in team could play 114 games in a year, Cleveland and Detroit will see what happens tomorrow night, but are on pace for 28 playoff

games. So combined with the 82, that's put you at 1-10. I can't remember what the record is, but I think though, I want to say like that, oh, maybe the 05 spurs, somebody in the mid 2000s put like a hundred and eight hundred nine games, something crazy. There's no world in where the basketball, they'll scale back to schedule. I don't think they're not given money back. It's actually more likely they're going to add teams. Yes, and create more inventory.

Hockey is definitely adding more teams. Yes. The WMBA to everybody's core for the league adding more teams, more teams, which people are just stupidified by. And then baseball might be adding more teams, which was dead five minutes ago and then snows back. Yeah, I'm just, here's the

thing. Whenever there's a playoff expansion, I always get a little nervous because you can never take it

back. Right. You know, we're talking about this with college football now, right? Are they going to 16, you think they're going to 24, whatever, you know, what's going to happen there? And the thing is, I'm always like, I would be happy to experiment for a year and see how we feel about this, but the thing is you can't do that. It will never come back because you'll get money and then you'll say,

“well, who wants to give money? Can I think have they ever unwound? They really haven't. The only thing”

they've ever unwound was the two, three, two, the NBA Finals going back to the two, one, one, one. But that wasn't taking away games. It wasn't taking away games. And it just, it feels every thing. I mean, it's like, you know, with that long ago, the college football was two teams. That was, that was it, right? Yeah. You had the balls, but it was the BCS match one and two, and that was it,

and then you bigger and bigger and you can never go back. And that's the thing in a just world,

you'd be like, okay, we did too much. Let's just scale it back a little bit. We know that would never have. It's weird when everybody in the league seems to think the NBA should cut 10 games.

Right. Well, the irony is when they get NBA Europe going, I'm talking about that later in the podcast

with Ryan Smith, briefly, because the Utah Jazz owner was coming on later. There's probably a world where if they can get, so I'm talking 25 years from now, if NBA Europe can get to the place that needs to get to where we just have an actual world championship, where they have the schedules kind of aligning, and then it's like a best of three with the champion of the NBA and the champion of the, or they play it in the October of the next year, however they do it. I just

feel like if you, if you gave Adam silver, if you got him drunk and gave him some truth serum, I would think it'd be like, this is what I'm really thinking. The actual world championship, because the league's in a crazy spot where most of the best young players are from not here, which Perkins has been talking about on TVs, making it seem like we've lost our cars to Japan. We're losing, we're losing basketball. It's like, people are fine. The basketball's

still good. I don't really care where the guys are from, but it is a little weird. So we'll get a world championship and then guess what, more games? Well, then, actually, the world championship should be three or five games. It should be seven. What about nine? I don't know. What month can we put it in? You know, it sounds like to recap. You're not delighted by the NFL ads, but you're also watch out the games every week, which is where we are. I've stand. I've stand. I'm sure you're okay with

more football. Yeah. I mean, it did feel like a grind. I remember when Joel and I went to the National Championship a couple years ago for the ringer, and it was on a Monday,

“remember that we've been like a huge, I think it was a divisional round in the NFL the night,”

the day before it was, and we like Monday, we get to the stadium in the land where we're looking at you're like, whoa, there's a lot. That was the National Championship. NBA, you'd go lower, lower. And then baseball, which is headed for a strike, I wonder where they're going to end up. It feels like the season can easily be shorter. That's one where, especially with the picture injuries and how hard it is just to keep everyone healthy. It feels like 144 would be

perfect, but then you know, every other, yeah, and they lock, we all lock it in the playoffs. Like, here we go. Yeah, and you could, you in baseball, it feels like you could actually make the baseball playoffs maybe even a little longer. I don't want to see. Yeah, I don't want, I don't want to go

there because once we do that, we'll never go back to the current, with the current stage. You know,

the only one that I kind of like is the PGA, where to the spring. Yeah, just the PGA being like, you know what we're doing some of this wrong. We got to have more West Coast stuff. We got to have more stuff from prime time. Let's like rethink some of our ideas, but the PGA is not going. We have more majors now. We're now having six, like the PGA that having the four majors, I think has been really, I think like they have four anchors in their schedule that the casual fans like myself can

just jump in and be like, oh, PGA is this weekend. Here we go. All right, brand Curtis. How's it going with Joe Anderson? Love the guy. How's it going with shoe maker? You know I love the guy. I want both of those guys. It's all Texans on the press box. Sometimes I've been working with you and shoe maker now for 15 years. You believe that? It's a long time. We're sending like our work relationship

“to the ninth grade in high school. That's how long we've all been together. In a couple of weeks”

it'll be 10 years at the ringer. Yeah, I can't believe that. 10 years together are this website. Unbelievable. All right, brand Curtis. Great to see you. Thanks for popping up. Thanks, Bill. And now it's time for today's with the assist segment presented by state farm. Basketball full unpredictable moments, big swings, clutch plays last second finishes. You just

never know around to round, but the one constant is having teammates you can rely on. And throughout

NBA history, we've seen some unforgettable duos. Everybody, you can almost feel it through the decades. You got Kobe and Shack in the 2000s. You have MJ and Pip in the 90s. You're Bird and Mikael and Magic and Korean in the 80s. You're going through counts and have a check in the 70s. The great duos, are we going to have one now in San Antonio? I think it's going to be when being Harper are going to be when 50 years from where we're talking about the great duos from

the late 2020s or early 2030s. Maybe it's those guys. I would say the best duos in the 2020s

“you'd either go brown and take them or you would go yoke jimmerry. I think for two players that just”

just seemed like they brought the best out of each other. Yoke jimmerry in 2023 probably my favorite duo combo where just we felt like they might win title after title after watching them in the

guess what? That's where state farm comes in. They've got easy to use digital tools like the state farm app and neighborhood state farm agents as well when you want to talk to a real person. Like a good neighbor state farm is there with the assist coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. All right. People have been asking for him ever since the Celtics

got eliminated. People thought you were too mad to come on. Then people thought maybe you're never

coming on again. They didn't know where your head was at. The Patriots are falling apart. The

“Celtics fell apart. The Red Sex season is over and my dad is here. How are you feeling?”

Well, as you just described, I'd also include the Bruins. Not only losing, but not getting the Toronto traffic. So I was trying to decide when you said I had to come on today, which what's team had I was going to wear? Yeah. Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, or Red Sex. And I decided, I don't like any of them right now. So I'm wearing my Ruby's dad hat. Your dog Ruby is our special needs puppy. She's had some trouble in your one. Who gave you that hat? Just had a curiosity.

Michelle, Ruby and Winnie here. All right, so Bruins, you sit down for the lottery. They have to go back from five to six to make beliefs. It's just one instead of go up every year. Every year, somebody jumps ahead. So what happens? They might believe jump up. Get the first pick and now. Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah. And you and I were on a thread with our, enough you, Brian. And so that that was just a kudagra on top of everything that's been happening to our sports teams.

And now we have this whatever's going on, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum. It's Jalen Brown still on our team. Jalen Brown still on the team. He was on the Jennifer Hudson show this week. And some of that stuff and uh, sense and twitch. He, um, he's out there. You know, I wish instead of going on the Jennifer Hudson show, he was back in the gym, dribbling and shooting free throws. He's resting his body. So you went to game seven. I went to, I went to the four

home games. We won game one. Look, really good. And then I saw a three-turbo losses and including game seven. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you want to happen? Do you, would you, you're just talking is my dad, the, the boss of fan self-expand? What do you, what do you want to happen? Do you want

“them to keep Tatum and Brown together? Or do you want to move Brown when his value's high?”

Yeah, it's a hard, hard question. But if the package was perfect for Jalen Brown, I would move him in a heartbeat. I don't know what that perfect package is. I'm just kind of tired of watching him and uh, okay. And us, you know, 10 years, 10 years of watching his offensive game. You're, you're, you're, you're good. Well, something, I, I think, I don't know, refer the Philadelphia got it into the referee's ears, but I watch the tape of a couple of games.

Almost every time he goes in to make a shot, he pushes off. Yeah. And they don't usually call up in the regular season, but it, it's apparent that he can't get his space unless he pushes, whereas you see some of these other guys and other teams and, you know, they get to their space quickly and shoot quickly, but I'm worried he's turning 30. He's got his athleticism is what has made him the star he is. He's been having difficulty now getting his jump shot off without pushing.

He can't make three throws. He's a black hole in terms of the ball going into him and not moving. Yeah. And he can't dribble. I don't understand after 10 years where he can't dribble, but

well, I'm higher on him than you because yeah, I know you are. You've always been higher on him.

“Well, I always valued the durability. I always thought he played hard and gave a shit. And I think”

the more we step back from the season, I think it was pretty weird that Tatum just showed up with six weeks left and they had to figure out how to incorporate that. In real time, it was fun to watch, but it doesn't seem like they ever, they had these two styles and they talked about it. Jaylin talked about it after game seven when he said, I felt like we were playing more like us in game seven. Well, why do you think that? Because Tatum was a playing because you guys were pushing the

ball because you had the ball more. But I do think fundamentally, you know, obviously the

listeners aren't privy to our phone calls. We always talk about stylistically,

Tatum likes to bring the ball up, take his time, figure out what he's going to do, whereas I think

want two separate things on a basketball team. Well, it's an interesting point because I'd say

for the first two thirds of Jaylin of Tasem come back, he deferred to Brown and Brown was still

the offered dog in the offense. Tatum was more, a lot of time in the corner, the way he was as a rookie. And then when they got into the playoffs, it kind of switched and Missile has shortened the bench. And to be honest, I know you and I have talked about, I don't want to see the Brown or Tatum bringing the ball up. I want to see a guard bringing the ball up. I don't want to see Tatum dribbling until there's nine seconds left and he does ISO. And I don't want to see Brown

bringing it up and losing the ball over and over. I want to see white or friction bringing the ball up and play Brown and do a Tatum at the high post or move them around. We stopped moving.

“Those two guys bring the ball up. I think that one Twitter clip, somebody had a great job”

of pointing out what Philly was trying to do with Jaylin where it was just basically fine go one on one, knock yourself out. You'll make half of these, but we're not letting the three point shooters do anything and they stayed home with everybody. And it was a lot of Jaylin going against good defenders trying to like bang against them and get his spot. It'll be the same thing with Tatum. It wasn't just that though. It really struck me after watching the Nick Philly series.

I think Philly was really really happy to see Tatum or Brown bring the ball up because when they went ISO and B just stood there. He wasn't moving around. He didn't have to move around. He wasn't wasting energy. We weren't tiring him out. In the fourth quarter, he was white or wake and you watch the next and it was a completely different way of attacking and beid. They moved

“them all around. And they wanted him and pick and pops all the time where he had to come out.”

And Tatum and Brown bring in the ball up. How many times did we have seven or eight seconds left

and suddenly somebody had to take a shot and then beid again never moved? Yeah. So it was funny.

They were doing that to us with Keda, the pick and pop stuff, especially with Vusovic. Just trying to get him where he'd have to jump out a second to laid out a three pointer. And then the Celtics were never doing that to him beid, which was just bizarre. Which, you know, boy, here we go. Did you put Joe back in second row? I'm not going there, but if Tatum and Brown consistently are bringing the ball up so that him beid can just stand there and be lazy and rested, that's

a coaching decision. That's a coaching strategy. If you're in the coach of the Celtics, I have Mozilla. I have my guards bringing the ball up and I have the ball moving all around the, and I have been be tired by the fourth quarter. Well, this goes to what I said, uh, I said, like last week about it felt like they treated that Philly series as kind of a tester for what they were going to do around two and around three. Let's see, what do we have with Vusovic? What

do we have in Tatum brings the ball up? We have a more bench shorter and they never took Philly

seriously enough until it's too late. You and I were both struck by Steven's press conference,

“which was riveting. And he seemed both pissed off that they lost the Philly. I think he knew that”

Philly was not good, but also pointing out like he didn't even think we were that good. He made a point of pointing out the three and eleven against the best teams in the league. He brought up Shireman and Hugo, which Hugo, which I thought was notable and how important Hugo's going to be for them next year. Meanwhile, Hugo got buried after after the trade deadline. So I don't know, I felt like they weren't 100% aligned watching the press conference.

I agree. I mean, you and I talked about it afterwards that one of the great things about the regular season and how they over achieved, which was great, because none of us expected 56 wins, was they used 10 or 11 people. They didn't tire out, Brown and Tatum. They had wings coming off the bench over and over and running. You know, one thing about, you know, I'm not a real fan of a loss, but boy, he runs his tail off. Yeah. Hugo runs his tail off. Shireman runs his tail off.

What happens when they're not, when they're sitting on the bench, isolation again. We saw it except for the championship here every year for the past four years, isolation. But you bring those guys off the bench. They're moving all over and they're getting offensive rebounds. Right. And they're frustrating like you saw with the next day with Maxi for four games.

we had a real really bad coaching series. And I thought, I've said this. I thought Missulu

“was great there on the regular season. I just wonder, Big Picture, what did they learn from it?”

You know, the trade that they made to get under the luxury tax, getting rid of assignments, really did change the team. Because one of the things that made that team, the thing you and I

liked was they always had two guards out there. Right. And it was two of the three at all times.

And one of them was usually hot. And if two of them were hot, they were beating anybody. But usually you can get one of them going, Richard, trick or treat, wait. The shooting was was, you know, I just thought they put a lot of miles on them. I wonder, like about thinking about things that would have done differently, would they put less miles on weight and brown and not really cared where what seed they got? I thought that was one of the lessons of the season. Does it doesn't

really matter what seed you are? You've managed to healthy your guys are in April. Two thoughts on that. I can recall during the regular season three or four games that we won because Simon's got hot. Yeah. Nobody else was hot. He came in. He got hot. And he would play the whole fourth quarter. And you know, that trade made a huge difference obviously in terms of our depth. Not just shooting guard, but a guard who could make a shot. You know, when our shots

aren't falling and we don't have those subs in there grabbing offensive rebounds. We're just a static team. Yeah. Moving. Do you feel like the window is these NBA teams have these four year windows? This is a team that just lost in round one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the city in the mid to 22 finals and 24 finals. We thought they're going to make the finals last year and they had the crazy next lap. Tatum gets hurt. And now you look at teams like okay,

seeing San Antonio and they just seen so much better set up. You know, unless there's an awesome trade. Right. You know, and they do have some, they have a trade exception. They have the mid-level data. The other thing that struck me though, and you've just brought it up about seeding. In retrospect,

“I would have preferred to have been the fourth seed. I think we matched up really well with the”

trade. Yeah. I think we matched up really well with Orlando and eight, you know, and the fifth seed as well. And we put a lot of miles on ground to get to the second seed. And he just looked a little tired to me in the playoffs playing all those minutes. Can I throw a trade at you? That I've been thinking about. Does this involve anybody from Milwaukee? No. I'm starting to get nervous about the honest stuff. Yeah. I can't think of that segment I did on my podcast a month or so ago

about older big men and what the track record is for year 14 and on and you know, with Tatum and

Brown, you always feel like with those two guys you can build around them. Figure out some sort of

strategy in jail and turn 30 next year, Tatum's younger than he is. And that's like a five year window. Janice, it might be two. It took a good point. And so now we're condensing this window where you're also going against OKC and San Antonio who have all these young players and they have all the contract staggered and they've built it to add all of these pieces. It's like, you know,

“you have these lightning and a bottle seasons. And I think we had one in 24 when we were able to”

get poor Zengas and Drew and everything kind of aligned and they spent a lot of money for that season. They, you know, the opponents fell in the right way. I think that's happened in the next this season where what you just said the opponents fell the right way. Yeah. Which didn't happen, you know, we faced a filler team that if we played them three weeks ago, we would have swept them. We faced a filler team that had one good weekend them and we just happened to hit them that one week

and then they died immediately. So I just, I wonder, like, is this the time to take a swing and I keep thinking about New Orleans and whether there's a way to to get back Zion and Tray Murphy

with Jalen and some picks and whatever else needs to go in there and basically end up with Tray

Murphy making half as much as Jalen and then taking this enormous flyer on Zion and trying to figure out, can you put Zion in in a winning organization with the different fan situation and what's there and if nothing's there, you bail on it and now you're paying Tray Murphy half as much as Jalen. Like I wonder, I wonder if Steven's just thinking about stuff like that.

it's hard to, it's hard to know what he's doing. Yeah, he's almost like the contract to make a work because Jalen is going to make like 58 million. But I wonder, like his Brad is so outside the box with how he thinks about stuff that I wonder if he's thinking, yeah, on his two-year window where I'm probably not winning the title anyway or can I try to reconfigure this so I can have, you know, I got a pay preacher, that's the other thing is they have to pay Richard 7 million

to subcoming here in 7 million after free agent. He's a guy that's worth 20 plus. And do I need a center or would be the other thing I'd be thinking of? Like if I'm trading Jalen,

“do I need a bigger guy? Like do I have to, should I think about subonus?”

Do I think about subonus and trying to get more Sacramento Kings first round picks that or is it a good guy, though, that he hasn't finished the season in a couple years. Yeah, well, they shut him down this year. I'm just trying to think, how many centers are out there that can make an impact? Do they feel like a need a center, the boost of each thing obviously failed? It's, it's, my guess is, well, you again go back to the press conference. He's

seemingly intimately that there'd be changes. Yeah, he wanted more, he wanted more stuff at the rim. He wanted more convention on team. It felt like he was clearly tired of the style that they played. After that press conference, I did look at different teams and different big man. Doesn't necessarily have to be a center, but a big man. I mean, Utah has a couple of people,

“as an example. There are teams that if Jalen was in the trade, I think you could get a big man”

and a wing back and I'm just not sure if Steven's is ready to trade Brownie, he flattered him in the press conference in a couple days later in the newspaper and maybe that's the kiss of that,

but I know, but that's, I've always wanted to keep these guys together. This is everything that's

happened the last few months has started to make me wonder like, does Jalen just want his own team? Yeah, and does, well, I talked about this a week ago. It just feels like the body language seems to be heading that way, in my opinion. Yeah, you wonder. I mean, we said so close to the bench. I always watched Tatum and Brown together and it was weird with Tatum coming back with so little time left in the season, but it was even even weird, you know, we went to that game

seven. Molly was able to go and we went to a bar first and we were sitting there and having a

“drink and there's two Philadelphia fans sitting next to us. They're fully gear on and the guy”

says to the other guy, "It's so great that Tatum's not playing." And I said, "What did you say?"

He said, "Tatum's not playing today." I was flabbergasted. Game seven, I just never expected

he wouldn't give it a shot, I guess. I didn't know he wasn't playing. But it's understandable considering he had a half injury to the other calf, but they pretended it was a knee injury, but it was a calf injury. But did I have any confidence when I heard that? No. Not too much confidence, no. Yeah. I mean, the reality is, I was there for game five, we're up three games to one. You win game five at home, like you're supposed to, like all, like the other teams did.

We're up three, you're gonna get five. Right. Yeah. Tatum doesn't get hurt in a game six. There is no game six. Would we have beaten the next? I don't know. It would have been a fun series.

The thing I will never understand is why they put all those minutes on Tatum that has never been

explained properly. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. I don't understand the quotes he had after about, but his right leg still isn't 100% the size of the left leg. And just stuff for us, like what you've told him? You said you were recovered. You weren't recovered? And if that was the case, then why wasn't he on a minute's limit? Why is Wemby on a minute's limit? But he's not, why was there's been a bunch of guys in the league who, like the mellow ball, the whole year,

was under 30 minutes because they were trying to keep him healthy. Why were we putting minutes on him like that? No, I agree. And if I was chiseled now to be the, I would have a meeting and be like, the fuck, why did we, why did that guy play 43 minutes and game five? What are we doing? Well, it seemed like there was such an impetus to get the second seed instead of the third seed. When we retrospect, we lost three games at home anyway. So it did it matter? No. We were better road team at times during

the year. Whatever. Something there will be some major trade. I don't think you'll love watching Janice just for the record if that's the trade. Well, not really your type of guy. No, I'm not saying that's the great, the greatest trade. That's out there. But I certainly think there are going to

Red Sox, we don't need to talk about it's disgusting what's happened. It's not just that it's

“frustrating, disgusting, unreal that the Fenway group that has billions of dollars has become”

the cheapest franchise in the league with the highest prices to go to a game. Yeah. It makes no sense. And you know, I'm not going to again this year. I'm revolting in your your son's rich and you're still

not going. I mean, think about that. Well, look at the third base. We have a guy hitting 162

who's who's five feet tall. I don't I mean, it's just an abomination and what the Fenway group has done to the image of the Red Sox. They got they got there four championships and then they said that's enough. Yeah. They're like, what use suckers are now just going to pay for tickets for the rest of your life. Yeah. And you can come in the eighth inning and sing sweet Caroline and buy your pink hats and blue hats and and we're going to make more money. Oh, it's a shame. It gets risky

“when you start playing that game of chicken with your fan base. I think it does. Especially in this”

era, you know, you're you people who are just like, well, if they don't care about the team,

I'm not going to carry either. We've seen, right, we've seen the Red that happened in the early 80s a little bit and it happened a little bit in the in the 90s, too, where you could feel people like, all right, is this how you're treating us and we'll go over here, you know, and there's three other teams and bunch of other stuff to do. Well, you can go online now and get great seeds anytime you want. Right. That's a really shameful position that they've put the fan base in. And they also don't have

the signature guy, which there's been years where they haven't, but they were, I think putting all the eggs in the Roman Anthony basket and that is not not gone well, which is, which is, you know, is he, is he fragile and injury prone? I don't know, but once again, he's hurt. All right, we've talked enough about the Red Sox. The Patriots are the other one. I know that's been the big topic. Well, the, the heck you've just been the big dinner topic in New England for five weeks.

It's not just that, we've talked about this for 20 years. Every time things seem pretty good with the Patriot franchise, something happens, whether it's deflate it or spy gate or, you know, some scandal or the owner of the team in a spa twice getting caught or it's just one thing after another. And this is just the latest. This is a really bad story up here. It's not going to go away. It seems to have legs, you know, as a week goes by and then there's a new photo or a new story.

And I feel ballet. I really liked the love the job the coach did last year, the thought he had the locker room. Really all going the same direction. The camaraderie was great. We overachieved. We didn't have a bat. We had a somewhat easy schedule, but we overachieved. And now here we are again, and nobody's talking about the players. Right. Now the articles are about the coach. Yeah. Yeah, we would almost been better off losing in Denver.

It turns out Drake's hurt. The variable thing doesn't happen. And then all the dialogue is about, can they, can they get back? Can they get there in the morning? Instead, I mean, they're going to trade for AJ Brown on June 1st. It seems like a, almost a formality at this point, which would be the thing everyone talked about. I, so I'm trying not to talk about the variable thing that much, because it's such a bummer of a story and the, you know, every side has kids and it's just,

I don't know, it makes me, it's a little unseemly, but I wonder like how you become the way he coached the team, where he's like the patriarch of this Patriots family and everything is about family and team and being right for people and hugging each guy as they come off my field. And now,

“well, that same disingenuous as he's doing at this year. That's, that's, I think that's a really”

way, good way of phrasing the most important question that people up here are asking,

what's it going to be like? Is he going to be in the hallway hugging everybody again? Are the players going to look at him a little bit differently? Or maybe maybe a little bit more. Coach is getting after it. It's, it's a, it's a sad story. You're talking to families and

I'm just looking forward to the season of waiting for the schedule to come out today.

“That's not the, yeah, that's not what's in the paper. So you care about the schedule brand”

Curtis and I just did a whole segment about this that we think the schedule release days ridiculous, but you like it. I haven't seen the schedule yet. No, but do you like it though? You like looking at it and being like, oh, we're playing it. Yeah, I like, I like you just love it. No, I looked wonderful. That's going to be a tough game. Where's the buy? Yeah, I like all that stuff. We talked about the reason that I brand Curtis I'm was we talked about this content what we have now and how

the football is adding these extra games and there's going to be a Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving and all this time. Right. You've been watching sports the entire time I've done you, which is my whole life whenever it's on. Do you feel like there's a difference now with the amount of sports that's on or is it just harder to find? It's a little bit of an overload.

“So you feel the overload a little bit. Have you watched a much hockey playoffs as usually watch?”

No, well, that's not unusual. Once the grooms got knocked out, I don't watch as much. Yeah, but you would watch, like, you would watch to root against Montreal and you picked right players. I've watched a couple of Montreal games. I watched the color of a game yesterday. But my heart's not in it. I like the Bruins team. I thought they over achieved. I like the new coach.

We're a couple players short. We don't have a first-line center. But I like that we did as well as we did.

I have optimism for that team. They seem to have had their act together. Wow, Bruins number one in your rankings. Well, it's kind of weird, isn't it? I'm going to be back with the paths. We still have Drake May. He's going to be healthy this season. There are teams going to be good. I'm going to be good drafts. I'm going to be fired up by July. I am, too. I'm going to be fired up for the, I just wish the focus was on the draft picks.

The movement of first year to second year players progress, stuff like that. It's just not there right yet. Yeah, maybe it will be. You don't think he's going to step down to you. I don't know. What I'd be 100% shocked? No. Salad neither. But to me, like a leave of absence seems more realistic. Like he comes back when real training camp starts or something. But you know, in the NFL, that's pretty massive for your coach to just not be around for too much. I don't know how

they're going to handle it. And the owner is 88 years old. 86 years old, whatever he is. Right. So yeah, I hope he doesn't step down. I wouldn't be surprised if he does step down. I don't, none of us know the whole story. I hope it isn't the story that the paper keeps printing, but I don't know. I love how you're so forgiving of variable and yet you've

demoted Joe to the second row again. No, I didn't have to defy the motor. You said he's back in the

second row. I've had it. Well, that's private text between you and me. You were done. You were so mad after the series. You wouldn't come up as mad, but I couldn't even get you to come on today. You were still mad. And I'm not defending Raywell, by the way. I know. I don't know the details, but it doesn't

“look good. And I'm not putting Joe in the second row, but I think he has a testing year coming up”

that will determine whether he's here next summer. Wow. Yeah. No. What TV shows are you watching? The three Chicago TV show. I watched the movie recommended. Oh, crime. I don't want one. Yeah. Yeah. I still don't understand how they got. He got the copy of the time. No, you can't spoil it. Okay. So you like crime 101 more than reports, you like rip more than crime. I like rip more. All right. I didn't quite understand either one of them at the end, but I have to watch

it a second time. You know, I agree with you on the lead actor and crime 101. It was a little too

past for some sort of. Yeah. I just didn't think he was good enough. That was my biggest issue with the movie. And I liked him and other stuff. Like I thought he was great and rush. Right. I don't know what he was going for. Yeah. I don't know what he had. What his plan was and one on one. I didn't get it. Was he like intentionally was hard to figure out and that didn't think it worked. I thought he just came across a little weak, weak in personality, weak in demeanor. It would have been a great

like early 2000s Russell Crowe during his proof of life error role. That was like what I needed from

they're thinking. It would have been good before he gained 200 pounds, but he wasn't good.

Did you see Projectile Mary? No. What channels I don't know. That was it was a movie. This was Brian Gosling. Oh yeah. I was the biggest movie of the year. No. No. A wait for it to come on cable.

“It's on Amazon right now. Oh, it is. Or yeah, it's on all of us. You have to pay for it. But”

well. Sure. I just put it to your account. Yeah, just put it to it. Just charge it to my bill. What other TV shows you watching? You love the Madison. I like FBI. I like the Madison. What about it? What about the Yellowstone Spinoffs? You're not that one. Well, yeah. I mean, I like the U.S. Marshalls. You like that one. Marshalls. I like that one. I haven't. The other ones, I think starts tomorrow night. You love the Madison now. I like the Madison. Yeah. I like the acting

the Madison. Yeah. You and I talked about it last time I couldn't stand the two daughters of the two. Yeah. Two to your favorite actors, though, Kurt Russell. Yeah. Show five. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand there's a season two already coming. Right. And a season three. I think you're ready. You're not watching you for you. No. It's not my. Yeah. As you don't watch that one. As you say, when I want to do something, you're not a demographic. That one, I know. I definitely don't

think you'd like that. There was no news. CBS shows this year. Boston Blue, you're okay. No,

“I think you jumped out. I watch it, but it's poorly written. And I, you know, I like”

dining. I liked him in blue bloods because he had an edge to him. Yeah. He's too nice to

guy in the new one. But you never did the pit. That was the shocking one to me. Yeah.

Yeah. I never sent you to like the pit. I don't get it. I miss that one. I did two episodes and then got caught up in life and haven't been able to get back to it. So maybe this summer. All right. Well, keep us posted. All right. That I thought you did okay. You weren't as angry about the self-exes I thought. Well, it's a good thing we didn't do this two weeks ago. I can have to go. All right. Yeah. All right. Dad. Enjoy all the sports this weekend. Do you have a PGA pick?

Oh, Shafflay. Oh. Shafflay? Shafflay? Yeah. We calm Zander. Oh, Zander. I like Zander. Zander. There you go. It looks like for me, Shafflay's been in a slump. It's iron. So I'm doing so well. But all right. One joy. I'll text you over the weekend. We're going to come back and take a break. Come back with a Utah Jazz owner. Ryan Smith. All right. We're taking this late Wednesday afternoon. So if anything happens over the next 25 hours, don't play a must. Ryan Smith is here. He's the owner of the Utah Jazz

who finally had some luck in the lottery. What'd you do? What kind of what kind of tricks were you

“doing the week leading up where you like wearing the same shirt every day? What superstitions do you know?”

So I'm incredibly superstitious. And so what I decided to do was not go to Chicago. I mean, I've been there. I've been in that lottery room twice in the back room or once in the back room, once kind on the side. And then obviously last year with my wife on stage, actually with all the kids sitting there and and that walk of shame. That walk of shame hurts. It steams for a really long time. And I was like, look, I'm over three going to Chicago. I'm going to stay home.

And like I sat at home, watch it with my family. Did our usual Sunday church stuff went went went and sat there and like I'm one for one doing that. So that's a lot better church. That might have been the key. Maybe that's the thing. Yeah, I have to do that for sure. I said in the podcast. Okay. No, you go. We had a record attendance at church in Utah on Sunday. Well, they moved it to Sunday to the lottery. Usually it's Tuesday now. I said,

then, my podcast the other day, I thought they need to go back with the, I don't like the representatives. I want the people in the room who have the most stake. Either give me all the owners or give me the GMs, like the people, because the most famous moments ever were paved the busher when in the patricuing lottery. And like just like almost losing his mind or or Jared West when he didn't get LeBron James that year in 2003, I want to see the weight of the

lottery and the people who actually care the most. So we've gotten away from that. Is it or you're just twisted where you're looking at people? It's a drop of their life, most of their life that kind of been able to put their thumb on the scale for things or be successful and they have no control over this. Yes, that's exactly what I want. All right. So walk me through the emotions. So you're supposed to be what number you were

Yeah, non televised, but we were four. And so you know, you kind of, kind of hope in this draft.

“I mean, I think everyone was kind of had this, could you stay top four? I mean, that was the”

discussion leading up or how would you do that? And then, you know, that our, our kind of floor is eight. And that's, that's kind of where you're thinking. And you know, I was, and mentally tell myself, I'm perfectly fine at seven. It's great players all the way through. And, you know,

it was almost unbelievable for us. Like, I mean, first of all, when the envelope, here's what's

crazy. Like, one of our camera guys came down and gave me the envelope. I just got this today, actually. Wow. And so that, when that was pulled out, first of all, when Sacramento was pulled out, like my, my 13 year old lost his mind and just went down because he saw purple. Right. And then the jazz, you know, and then we got in the top four. And then, you know, obviously Chicago Memphis. And then it was never, never moved up, right? This is the first time ever. Never,

never, never, never. So the, the faithful lottery system, I don't care who you are is kind of sitting

“there. You're just like shaking your head a lot. And it's a, it's a crazy feeling. And I think,”

I think that, you know, I'm sure Sacramento has some of that feeling right now. I'm sure, you know, the Brooklyn for sure. There's no way not to. There just really isn't. And if I'm a, if I'm a consumer of sports and entertainment or television or drama, like, that's a pretty cool event, you know, because it, it's, you know, the pain. I mean, I, I had people show me videos of restaurants here in Utah, like erupting, the restaurant, the entire restaurant. And it's, it's pretty cool.

So we had the opposite. I remember the worst Celtics one. Well, there are two bad ones. We had the 97 and 2007. So it was Duncan was the prize one year. And then it was Durant, Oroden and Zither them. Let's get one of the top two. And the Celtics got fifth that year. And it was the opposite of those videos, where the people in the bars, like, oh, it was like, you know, it was like a traumatic event. You're just looking at the recipe. Like, what did I just waste the last year for? Now you're

out of the woods. Like, you actually have the kind of team you want. You've had to, you've been in

some libraries. You traded for Jared Jackson. You have Mark and Instelia. You never got rid of him.

Now you have a top two pick. You base Bailey. Like, this is, this was a three year Odyssey to get to this point, basically. Yeah, especially taking over is a new owner, new ownership group, or we come in. It's probably not how you want to design, you know, your, your 10 year when you start. But

“just a little bit where you just trust the team you brought in. And you say, hey, where are we at?”

And what are your goals, honestly? Like, our goals are when a championship in Utah. It's never happened as well. And I just don't think we're going to tip toe into that, right? I think that it's going to require a running start a little bit of help. It's going to require, you know, a different, a different level of building. Then probably maybe what it takes to make the playoffs. And even even those groups that, you know, have done that in the past, just given our market, given our

luck, given where things are. It's like, you know, you've got to start and that starts with with our front office and our coaching and like how we're going to go through this. And we've been closed. I mean, I took over that dawn of in a Rudy team, you know, we're, we're trained man destroyed us in the, in the, in the state polls at the time. And man, that was a helpless feeling because it was kind of ours to have. And then, you know, kind of had to make some decisions after that.

And so, you know, here we are. Like, I like where we're going. I like the assets that we have going forward. We have all of our picks plus plus and a lot of young talent. And, and I honestly, I think every team's going to have to do this. You know, I think, I think this is a lot of my point around the lottery reform and everything else is like, the way we're going to have a certain number of teams that are going through the rebuild process and the rebuild experience. And all have

different sizes of markets. And, you know, I think is a league, which I love, we'll ask ourselves really hard questions around what do we want that rebuild experience to be. Yeah, I long should have taken. I've heard you use that word before. It's interesting because the other word is tanking. But it's really a rebuild because you're, you're trying to get to a much higher place than you're in. You, you guys became the lynch pins for this in February, which was really

the first time all the tanking slash rebuild dialogue happened. And I was part of it. I definitely

did one of the first podcasts being like, we, we've got to fix this. Like, this is the earliest,

I don't know how you would do another strategy, especially when you're looking at San Antonio who gets to one and four in three straight years. And now you're watching the playoffs and all those guys are awesome. And they're 20 and 20 and 20 and 22, the foundation of this tenure contender. So if you see that, like, how do you not try to emulate that in some way? I don't know.

“Well, I think first of all, I don't think there's an ownership group that wants to go”

through this, right? I think that's first of all. No one in the league wants to do this, especially like you look at our situation when we're, we're taking over, right? I mean, you want to do the opposite, like, you want to go fast, you want to flex up, you want to show, you know, your fanbase that, like, you got some juice and like, naturally. Yeah. And so when you come in and you're like, okay, let me tell you what we're going to do. I know we got the all-star game coming here this year.

And we've been waiting on that. We're going to do a trailer to all stars, not a popular spot to be, right? But you got to have conviction, you got to have alignment. And then, you know,

you always start off with a retool, right? We're just going to retool. And then you get some

point in what you're seeing with a lot of teams. They're like, no, no, no, no. If we're going to lay up in a weird way, like, don't lay up in the water. You know, the water's 200 yards and we're going to get on a three. Like, like, we've got to, we've got to figure out how to, how to get out of this

“position and right or wrong. And I think you saw this with San Antonio. The decisions become pretty”

easy to, in the, in the top part of the track. Yeah. Right. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're betting between some pretty amazing options there, you know, being in those draft rooms and kind of being on the other side, you get to a lot more challenging or, you know, it's challenging all the way across, but, you know, drafting eight nine every year is a little harder. Well, I look at the situation you had when you took over. I don't know how much you want to say about it,

but you had mentioned go bare. You had the foundation of a team that was really consistently good but had not done as well. Maybe it's people are hoping on the playoffs, right? And then, I don't know if it had run its course, but it felt like it was hitting a little bit of a wall. And then you have a franchise guy who the rumors started immediately. He wants to go back to New York. He wants to go here. He wants to go there. And this is the conundrum of the league, right? You

go through this process. You get a franchise guy. But then you also for ages, so you might not be able to keep the guy. Do you think there should be more mechanisms in place that favor the team when you've had somebody for, you know, five years, seven years, nine years with the, like, there'd be luxury

“tax stuff, like benefits you could get for just having stability?”

Yeah, I mean, look, this was all pretty new to me, right? I mean, my first day, we were kind of in

the middle of the COVID and we had like two days to like sign down in Rudy or 30 days. It was that short window. If you remember, I remember having two days before Monday, before we got a kind of go into it with Rudy and I remember going up to his hotel room and being like, hey, bro, like, what do you care about? Yeah. And actually, I was like my first meeting ever, it was just him and I talking because we knew each other before. And, you know, there was, there was a process and going and sitting

down with Don and going through all that. You know, I think you almost, from what I'm learning about these championship runs, it's a little, it's a little bit like you almost don't know what you need and tell you get on the track. And, you know, it's, it's like this, I got to have a little more than the other team. So it's a little bit of a moving target. So, you know, running it's course of a team, you'll see that this year, whatever will happen, the narrative will be around a

couple of teams and get bounced out, they just don't have enough. And, and they've got to bring more than the next group. The hard part is when you're already asset down and you're, you're over the cap, you know, like we were, we were into the tax. We'd given up a lot of picks for Conway.

And so, it's like, how deep do you want to cut into your future when you've bounced in the first

round, like three times, right? You know, and I think when Danny, when Danny originally came in, he and I had a lot of real honest conversations about that. And, um, ultimately he's like, hey, look, I've done this before, this what we're doing and Mike, this is how we're, we're going to think through this. And, you know, he had been coming from a place where he'd been knocking on that door with a really good team of Boston for some time. That he had kind of put together and then obviously the

year he lives, like, they end up going back, re, adding one more piece. Almost you don't know what you got. And it's just one more piece than that didn't work. And then one more piece. And, you know,

let's be honest. You can't just deal with Celtics people, you stole both ages, you stole

will hearty, you just go, just go back to the will with Boston. Just keep taking our people to answer my call. Yeah, Brad, Brad, Brad, your phone number is blocked and Brad's phone.

“Yeah, but, but I think the other thing is also, one of the things I do love, I'll just be honest,”

and it's not to get on the okay C terrain, but what do things I do love is just, I mean, with your kitchen in SGA, it's just how they haven't let the narrative come, like they've been pretty forward thinking on both of those individuals about, no, I like this market. I want to be here. You know, you know, there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of narrative that comes out, well, you're in a smaller market, you're in this for that. Like, it's loud enough for these players.

You know, we see this in hockey, you know, there's a lot of these players play the worst one there in the biggest markets. You know, and I love the fact how they're embracing that market, there's nothing you can't do from okay C, nothing you can't do from Utah, there's nothing you can't do from 10 further. There's nothing you can't do from these places, and I think that,

you know, we've always had players who had their best years in Utah, always growing up,

like you look at Hornus Act, you look at Bouser, you look at D-Will, they'll all tell you after the fact, like I had my best years in Utah. Right. Why is that? Because they could come get locked in, they could actually, you know, do it in, you know, it's interesting because we're such a global media market, we're instead of one or two voices, everyone's got a voice, like, you know, and so it's a little bit like we're playing in the United States and we're playing in Europe.

Yeah, there's a difference there. Right. Well, you're unique in two ways, one, oh, a lot of ways, but you came in, you didn't have new owner syndrome, because I was feel like when the new owner comes in, they feel like they have to, this crazy splashy move, and, you know, show for the moon and try to improve the team, and that's usually when they get in the trouble.

You did the opposite, you had to basically start a rebuild, but then the other thing,

you're, you are Utah, like you're from there, you, you, you belong to that whole area, you're really invested in building up not sports, but just the culture of the mentality of what people, how people see Salt Lake, how people see the city and the state, which, more normally when people come in, like Chism, Chism bought the Celtics was a huge Celtic fan, but also it wasn't living there the last 20 years now, he's back. You, you were Utah guy,

you even had chances to maybe get some other teams, and you were fixated on, no, it has to be this team. Yeah, so, so when we went through this process like it was, I would, I mean, there's no secret. I was looking at Minnesota, I, you know, it's all my company to SAP, you know, I've come from tech, you know, I spent my whole career in tech, didn't do one thing else, and everyone's like, well, what company are starting next, and I was like, you guys, I want to do hoops,

play hoops every morning, I love going out to Boston and just hanging with the angels and like watching hoops with them, and I'd go down to summer league and play golf with D.A. and like, you know, I just sit next to them in the sweet watching players, and I was like,

“this is so fascinating. Like, I'm such a junkie. And, and it was the only thing that intrigued me,”

and so when the opportunity came, you know, everyone's like, hey, what are you going to do? What's next? And it's like, no, I, you know, and I call that, I'm going to say, hey, look, like, I'm really interested in this, and, you know, for whatever reason opportunity came to me on Minnesota, and, you know, you know, the owner there Glenn was like super nice, but was he going to sell? Was he not going to sell? He's kind of a little bit of a seem like a situation,

was a little runaway bride, like, how's it's going to go? And, um, so we had worked down to it, and we didn't really down almost to the dock level, like we were, we were drawn up docks, and, you know, my wife was just like, what about her season tickets for the jazz? And it was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

“all that. I remember I was on the golf course. I pulled over in the trees in the cart.”

I was like, hey, look, man, I can't, I can't do this. And then I went back to the family and on the jazz forever and just said, hey, there's ever a chance I turned down something else, even if I could buy a little bit. Like, if not, I'll just be the best sponsor you've ever had. Like, I'll do anything. And, you know, they called back, like six months later, and we're like,

if I go to a piece, we're going to do the whole thing. I was like, what? And they're like, well,

we need an offer. And I was like, I don't know what that looks like. And then ended up pulling up the Forbes valuation on my phone and doing a deal. And then I was like, oh, guys, for real. The Forbes valuation, this is an academic accurate. Well, I, I don't know what you go off. It wasn't right today. Yeah. Four years ago was very different. Right. And then, and then, you know,

“we remember calling Adam. And I said, well, we probably should talk to Adam and Adam. Calm,”

there was, we were all on the phone together. He said, hey, we're transitioning the team in Utah, and this, and that. I didn't call me back. It was like, we're in another conversation. It was a little bit like,

hey, look, if you're lucky in life, you're going to work in the NBA, if you're really, really,

lucky, you can be a governor. Yeah. There's like no one gets the team. They grew up sneaking into the arena and then they grew up cheering for. Like, this is on herdev. And like, so it's not lost on me, but that's also a lot more weight. Like, I know what it's like to be a jazz fan. Like, like, I, I had a funny one today. We were in the drive. I just got back from Chicago. We were like, the combine interview and, you know, interviewing all the players. I'm sitting there and, you know,

an Austin and said all this up, it was phenomenal. It did a great job. And, um, but can't abusers in there and I'm, you know, I asked one question, but I didn't say much all the time. I was kind of auditing the class, but Carlos is also one of our scouts and a little bit like, you know,

“Carlos could only take us to the Western Conference finals. Like, what do you think you can do, right?”

And that's the fandom coming out. Like, I know, I know the pain of not getting over the hump

for Utah and so long and being like when I took over and, you know, one of the second or third

most winnings franchise in the last 30 years without getting over the hump is kind of crazy. And so, you know, I think the lottery moment for every jazz fans, every jazz fan was like, oh, it's like, whatever, it's just nice to get a little luck. It's nice to feel. It's nice to have the light shine a little bit. You know, and I think I think there is a little bit. I mean, there's no way to not look at it the last couple of years and say, hey, there's lucky part of

our game, so it'll be a little bit, right? And, you know, it's, but if you, if I look back at my career, like, I was extremely lucky, you know, and, you know, in, you know, in tech and when you were born in the, in the timing and when I graduated, you know, college and where I went to work and what I almost went to go do, but didn't, right? And so it looks a part of all of it. I didn't even think of the part that the lottery was in Chicago, the biggest nemesis of the Utah Jazz, the two finals in a row.

And somehow, somehow, somehow, Chicago gave it back a little bit.

“Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's good. A lot of healing. Probably stay a lot of healing left. Still,”

still today. And then the other weird thing about this lottery is there's a top four, and I actually really like the next couple guys, too, but I think there's pretty clearly a top four. And you guys have these indirect ties with two of the four, right? We're, you have Boozer who played for the Jazz for years with the best years at his career and is now involved with your team. And then AJ who went to, got pulled out, went to prep school there, went to BYU. I know you guys are a little

bit involved with the, you know, successive BYU. So you've probably gotten to know him a little bit, right? Yeah, I mean, I go to BYU's like a mile from my house. So like it's, it's kind of, it's my alma mater. It's where I would just school. It's where I play hoops three or four times a week. That's like part of why I live where I live. It's a little bit like, you know, if you can live in Raleigh or whatever, you're right next to campus, like I like the college town fill.

And you know, I also grew up here. It's weird. Like my parents, I was born in Eugene, Oregon. It's crazy Danny and I were born in the same hospital, right, in Eugene. Yeah. And my dad was, you know, there was four of five kids. And he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go from, you know, University of Oregon and the late 70s to BYU. You probably couldn't get to more polar opposite spots and moved us here. And, you know, he grew up in Washington State. My mother's from Palo Alto, California. And, you know,

we kind of settled here. And, you know, I started a business here on that my wife here. Like, I have a lot that I've been given because of the state and everything else. And for me, it's not that, you know, I just went to school there. Like, I grew up running those halls because my dad was a professor of BYU. And, like, everyone thinks it's like, oh, you're just in charge of, are you just like to be with hoops and sports? And now, it's like, it would be really weird,

Like, at BYU, it'd be really weird if I wasn't all in on there. And all in on you top.

“It's a little bit of like, that every time I go there reminds me, and I feel like where I came from,”

you know? So, so it's cool that, you know, a potential top, top picker, wherever it ends up, is like, it's coming through here. And I'm sure all the Dukeies feel the same way about cam. And, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of how it's gone. I mean, I get the amount of text I get from everyone from Duke, like, and you know, there's a lot of them. Like, the decisions easy, like, whatever it is, they're coming. So, and you got the BYU contingent. It's like, there's a lot of drama

around this, and a lot of insight, narrative, and it can be an interesting 40 couple days here. Well, the Utah thing, I think, has evolved of really this century, but from where we used to think, like, I'm living in Boston, I don't know nothing. I'm just like, I'm Mormons, BYU, Utah, snow, Sundance, that's like, all you know. And it really feels like that shifted over the last, I would say 15 years, now you have a hockey team, and there's just feels more energy around Sundance.

“I think almost like peak now, it's moving, is it moved, where's it moving to Colorado?”

Yeah, basically, but you know, I'm sure you're a place out with something, but in general, real energy

around the city, and then you also have this weird stuff, like, you have the stupid secret labs of Mormon show, there's real hot stuff show. That's right, right out of Sundance. Right. So, there's all these different things going on with Utah. That just didn't exist 30 years ago. What's fair and unfair about the Utah thing? We'll shoot. So, if you think of a Utah, like, most people aren't from here. Like, I'll just say that. Like, you know, you know, my dad's from

Washington, you know, if I look at, you know, my, my mom's from California, my wife's from Las Vegas. There's not a better place for family life. There's just that. Like, I'm fortunate, I got siblings all over, like, there's just something about Utah. I also think it's like, look, most states can only own one or two things, authentically. Like, what do you actually own or our position as that, that no one else has? Right. And, you know, as we, as we went through

our jersey designs, if we gone through this, I've been asking myself and looked over the last couple years, like Silicon Slopes, the tech community, and the innovation in Utah. We're probably the number to innovative hub, and everyone's going to be like, no, it's Austin or no, it's it's

“almost a time in 2008, I think we had as many start-ups or, you know, IPOs is New York City. Right.”

Like, you start looking at that and it's like, why? And, you know, people can say to Utah and sell out too early when they get businesses, but if you look at what's come out of here from this next phase of influencers and how the world works. And, you know, everyone has a different type of folks. The amount of people that come in and, you know, ski here and visit here. I just saw pictures of the economy, David, down at Southern Utah and the Amma. Yeah, like, like, I saw that, like,

but it's crazy who comes through here. Yeah. And it's like, most time people vacation here, but, you know, I don't think we've done a very good job over the last 30 years, like, branding our students. Yeah, because they're like a small market, but you're not. Yeah. Oh, there's, like, I said this on day one with the NBA. There's nothing that we haven't common with the small market. You go to our airport. You can jump on a plane and go to Paris, go direct to Hong Kong, or, or

Sokaria, you can go to London. Like, that's not a small market. You don't have the due connections, right? You've got a tech ecosystem that is insane. So if you come out here and get a job in tech and it doesn't work out, you can get five other jobs in tech. Right. Right. What we get branded for is because, you know, we don't have the urban living that most people associate with a big market. And that's because when you come to Utah, you actually kind of want to spread out.

But we're the fastest growing youngest demographic in the country. So what people also don't know is within Salt Lake City, you within 90 miles, you've got 250,000 college kids that most

come out here, want to stay here. And so you, you always want to bet on you. If you take

Stanford and Caltech out of Silicon Valley, you kind of don't have Silicon Valley. Right. What makes Boston special and kind of rejuvenating all the time

youth coming in and then what they do. The key is is, and I feel like it's unique that we, my wife

“and I in our group, we're in a position to kind of take a little bit of the announcement or the”

the baton of city building and community building. So right before I came here, it just announced a new health partnership for both of our teams. We're building this, we bought a mall. So 110 acre mall right in South Salt Lake. And we just put our Utah mammoth, hockey team is two years old, the practice facility there. We've got a corporate offices there and then we're just announced a new practice facility that will be done in September of next year for hoops all together with their

own separate worlds. So we just announced within a mountain a 6,000 square foot health care facility

that services both that's like super innovative and like this is part of like our responsibility now with these teams and we're actually doing the same thing downtown. We're creating this arena district right in front. We've got a live nation venue, got a major hotel going in, that's five start. Like we're looking at this to be like, okay, what's everyone's experience when they do want to go to urban living? Because I know the experiences when they come out is awesome. You know,

it's absolutely awesome. I mean, you got guys like Jordan Clark some was here, love living down South and kind of out having a house right now. Like, and then you're 20 minutes from 25 minutes from seven ski resorts. We got the Olympics coming back. I mean, you know, so it's where I choose to raise my kids. It's fun. But, you know, there's a couple of things we can authentically own and it's like come have the best years here career and come have the healthiest mentally here because wellness

“is real and go ahead. How many people own an NBA and an NHL team in the same city?”

Within the same ownership group together, just do that. No, um, yeah, you've got been stolen and then you've got Toronto, which is kind of corporate owner, however that is. Yeah. And then you've got Leon Chus and and what's going on in Washington. Right. And we're all set up different, you know, but you are a maniac competitor. So now after you've these two winter sports. So you have NHL and NBA happening simultaneously.

Like, what happens to you at night? We show I prefer to have it. Like, if you're going to give me the heat, like, let's just do what all it wants, right? Yeah. So I would just go every other night and I've told my kids, like, you know, dad works tonight shift. Like, it's what it's what

we do a little. And so like we, I don't think anyone in our organization was acclimated the first year

of, like, we all knew hockey was coming. Yeah. But I don't think we knew hockey was coming. What's the crossover with the organization? Because some people will have, you know, basically somebody who's

“in control of everything, people will split it up both ways. How did you decide to attack it?”

So I think we looked around at all the different models and we're like, okay, none of this is for us. I believe when it comes to organizational structure, you build around people and you you, you know, it's just got to fill, right? Yeah. You know, I feel like a little bit, I kind of, you know, operating in tech, like no one's evaluated or I would say, innovate it around, organizational structure as much as tech has, like, you know, some people have one direct report.

Some people have 20, the span of control, no titles, titles, open floor, like, like, like, however you're, you're just controlling, you can't control how people think these days. It's much more around the environment. And so it took us to that back and said, okay, how do we want this environment to work? And clearly, I didn't know a whole lot about hockey. So we were fortunate that we had great GM and Bill Armstrong, the K-Molver. And then Chris Armstrong, it was actually a great

friend, Tony Fena was actually golf age and working with an agency, but it was a hockey guy. Yeah. And represent a lot of hockey guys. And, you know, he was a big part of the idea. So, so those two kind of work together on the hockey side. And Chris is a president, Bill's a GM. And, you know, they run that and report up to me. And then on the hook side, which we can get into, you know, I've got Austin now as our president of all basketball. And then you still have two.

Can I tell you again? You've three now. Yeah, can I tell that story?

“Yeah. I think it's important. So when Danny came over, you know, he didn't really want to be”

the president of basketball because he'd already done that a long time. And, you know, I was more like, hey, what do you want to do? It's me, DA. Like, he was actually super helpful in getting a team. And then it just worked out. But we were like, going backwards though, your friends are them a long time. You've been playing with them forever. Even when he stepped down from the Celtics,

my shit detector was blinking hard. I was like, I don't think he's giving up second of all

that's his buddy that just got the chance. I'm suspicious. But there was like a six month process and we're together, we're actually the hero. We're Tiger Woods golf tournament. We're there with Tony Finau. And he's not working for anybody at the time. And he won't tell me he's going to come help me.

“Because I don't think I didn't think it's wife and Michelle and they're found he was going to move to”

Utah. But he just hadn't been talking about this. He did at a hard attack. I don't think. Yeah. For sure. And he didn't want to go from being the president of basketball to being the president of basketball over here. He wasn't doing that. Yeah. He wanted to kind of shift gears a little bit.

But in one week, I watched him in December, like watched like six different games and I, I'm like,

dude, you just watched like 30 basketball games from college or everything. And you don't have a job. Like who's paying you to do this? He's got the iPad, the laptop and the TV up. And I'm like, who? You just do this for fun now? I was like, he might as well get paid for it. Like help over and help. And then that started a process. And, you know, he really wanted, it came out of what do you want to do? He wanted to help scout. He wanted help with coaching and help manage

the players and didn't really want to deal with much more than that. Um, so he helped me. We came over. We started this process. We got into it. And, you know, I just love working with Danny, but, you know, I was driving last year with my wife. And me and Danny were going somewhere. And she said, hey, what happens if something happens to you and Dan? And I was like, well, that's kind of weird thing. Well, what do I do? I do it to team. I was like, well, let me tell you what you do.

You call Austin age. And you tell him to come out. You're going to run it. Because Austin's

an absolute star. Yeah. And I'd never had that conversation with him ever. He would never

push anything. He's like, he just didn't ever have. And then she was like, well, does Austin know that? Because I just saw he was interviewing for this president job or something on a lot. Like,

“are you? Do you think you should tell him? Yeah. And I was like, it's actually a good idea. So I call”

Austin that day. It was right after the transaction. I said, hey, Austin, um, like, I, I don't know if you know this, but let me just explain the conversation I had with my wife. You're my designated survivor. I need to tell you. This is, this is, this is how I feel. We've never had this conversation or anything like this. But this is how I feel. And so you need to know that. And if you're interviewing, because I heard a couple other rumblings that someone was going to grab them. And I knew that if they

sat down with them, it was going to be very close. They were going to do it. Yeah. Because you love that he's got the age background, but he's also was hung out. Like, in, I said, you, you need to know that you come knock on my door. We called me back and he's like, um, hey, if I'm going to go, I want to go now. Hmm. And I was like, what? Okay. And by five o'clock that day, I had hired Austin as our president of basketball ops. But you didn't tell Danny yet? No, I didn't tell Danny.

It had to work this way. Yeah. I was like, there's no way I could talk to Danny. No way, too weird. And it's just, it's just, like, he would, he would like hammer me that, are you doing this because of me or this? Like, he's just that way. Like, he's the hard math teacher. Yeah. That's just the way. It's competitive as he is himself. He's, he's that competitive with his kids to go out a little bit and do this. I mean, Austin coached in the G league. And yeah.

But Austin, I, I knew Austin from BYU. He was a real, I wouldn't say he was on athletic, but he was a really smart point guard. Like, I knew his basketball makeup. I had watched his career go. And I was like, there's something different, but he's also, you know, he's also got that,

It's almost, you know, East Coast educated type vibe, like, with the age background, which is, like, a pretty cool combo. And, and so then I was like, oh, no, I've got to call Danny. And so I can't get a hold of Danny. So I'm like, someone told him. Like, he was bad at you. You thought he was like, I can't, you know, I thought he was because I, I normally get a hold of him. But it was like a three hour period where I couldn't get a hold of him.

So I finally get a hold of him. I was like, D.A., like, we've known each other for like 15 years.

“Like, we built incredible trust together. And I think it's either going to be really good”

after this call or you're going to be really mad at me. I just hired Austin as a president of basketball officer. And you got to go figure out how to work for him. And it was, it was quiet for a second, but there was no one more happy than D.A. And it's just been awesome. And so Austin's in charge, he's running the whole thing. But, you know, part of this is like, for me, watching him and others and Austin go to work and, you know, knowing where to point D.A., you know, I'm sitting in that,

I'm sitting in that draft interview room and I'm looking over and there's, there's will with championships and the pop pedigree today. Austin's got to ring, every Bradley's in there. He's got to ring. And I see D.A. with three rings and pretty much built the fourth. Like, I'm like, all right, this is, this is a championship. I, like, I'm not going to know more than these people. And I, you know, and I just need to, you know, make a couple of hard decisions a year or be a

tiebreaker here. Well, the other thing with Dani is, he's basically, he's such an anomaly with the draft.

First of all, you never know, I just know from all the Celtic stuff, nobody knows what he thinks

“until like the last week. That's why if there's any stories that come about, you thought, like,”

this guy, you thought, like, Zach had something. I promise, they're not true. Note, Dani's done. Yeah, they don't really work, they don't just say that I just wrote back with him on the entire plane trying to debrief. Just trying to figure out what he thinks he won't tell you. Yeah, I've been through there three times. He does not want to influence Dani's a true secret. He really is. He doesn't lie. I'm sure he loves you. Like, you call him. You're like, Danny, what do you think?

He tells the truth. Like, in a weird way, you know, or he won't say anything. Like, he's not going to lead something weird. But like, Danny's point of view is going to be something that, and I believe him on this. I believe that he did not know, you know, he was drafting one and that, you know, in that famous Jason Tatum where he goes back to three and then

“Jalen going back to three. I honestly believe he did not know who he was going to go take and tell”

right up to it. And the reason why is because I kind of got to read the day before the draft with Keante and then got a different read 10 minutes before the draft. Hmm. And so what I'm really excited for

is that Austin can turn to his left and have that that as well. And Austin's Austin's incredible

incredible talent about you later. Like, you know, sitting next to that guy your entire life, like you learn, you learn that side of it plus, you know, but he thinks for himself. And so that's what you want. And then, you know, with Will being able to have these guys talk to Will and Will's a unique coach, just awesome. And, you know, young and I'm excited to see what you can do. The whole ladder reform thing where you, are you involved in any committees yet? Have you jumped

on anything? Were you involved in the reform? I'm on the committee, I'm on the planning committee, and I'm on the show suggestive committee as well. And, you know, I think they've, they've actually done a really good job of regardless of the committee here of just like, they had a bunch of GM calls, they basically set up the hotline. You call us with your ideas. And, you know, our group is talk to the league and other people on the league, you know, four or five times. Just to say,

hey, and the answer is always like, yeah, happy to schedule a call. I'd love to listen. Well,

if you thought about this, you thought about that. So, you know, and in some ways, it's a little bit like us naming the mammoth, like we're putting it out to the fan vote, which brings a lot of input in, but it's within a tighter group. And that's hard to decipher, but I think the league is looking at it all and saying, hey, we're all partners in this. We want to get it right. Let's make sure we understand every view. I'm empathetic to the rebuilding. But I think everyone's

to be perfect. And by the way, right, a wrong, like, luck's going to play a piece of this. And then what happens when you get the teams, the humans, and the agents, and all of that involved? Like, it's all, it's all great until you get the people involved, right? And like, you see that with every CBA, like, there's unintended consequences, and this happens, and, you know, you know, certain things

“trigger, but, um, deep, I don't know. The only thing I really care about is that I don't think”

team should, like, what happened to spurs? I think they have to figure out three top four picks

in a row. Like, little wrinkles like that. So you can't just basically, I know that odds are going

to be stacked a little differently anyway, but, um, it just feels like having that much luck three years in a row, they can kind of litigate a little bit. Yeah. And so I think we'll come way more. I mean, there's stuff that's being reported on the side. There's stuff that's being reported on the other side of how to do this. But no, I think there's something like, is it, is it, I'll just speak for myself? Like, I'd be okay now that we're the second pick. Like, okay, great. You can't come

in the top five next year. Right. So there's a lot of problems. Yeah. All right. The next thing is like, hey, if you just unrestrict the picks that are restricted one through eight or one through seven,

“that also solves a lot of problems. I agree. Okay. And so I think, I think that that's fair,”

and it's like, okay, then draft well. But when, when you're a team, I'm also super empathetic

to the teams that can't get out because we are such a star driven league. And hockey, it's a little different. You're grabbing guys. You're developing them. You're putting them down in the miners, the reward for one ball or one spot in this sport is so high. Right. Well, in hockey there's so much volatility even with the stars. Like you see the Taylor Hall right now, Carolina, where all the, like the Bruinsad him, he was good. Like, he's guys can do this.

We're an ambassador. You have these fixed guys that year after year. You don't have the same volatility or the young guys. It's very rare for a young guy in hockey to come in and make such immediate impact. Like, there's like a set up. Yeah. Once every eight years. And then, you know, you look this year and you got VJ playing in the playoff. You've got, I mean, that's it's pretty impressive. Don't harbor stuff. Yeah. Don't harbor like it's, it's pretty impressive. Do you feel like

you're part of a new, because I remember we've had these generations with NBA owners. And in the mid 2000s, that all of a sudden you had Cuban comes in with gross back in the Celtics. And they're like these younger guys that came in and they were, you know, younger, they were more from the tech side. They were not trying to blow the week up a little bit, but maybe push the league in a different direction. Now it feels like we're heading that way again with some of the guys from

your generation. Like, you know, like the Charlotte owners and yeah, for a chisms coming in with the Celtics. Like, it feels like something generationally is shifting and I don't know what. But a hundred percent, it's really clear. I mean, you've, you've seen the, the asset class of sports become something that's super desirable. You're seeing also, you know, the groups of people coming in, shift from family owned to more, like, you know, kind of towers that have been stacked together.

Like the language. Yeah. Yeah. Ownership groups that come in. And, um, you know, I also think the days of no one's, like, let's just be honest, like, in no other world would you acquire a business for the size of the price of what, you know, Portland did and turn it over to somebody. That would

never happen anywhere in business. Right. You never be like, okay, I'm, I'm paying this for this luxury

brand. Okay. Yeah. Someone out, like, I'll come see it next December. That, that's unheard of. And so now with, you know, I don't know what's cause or effect. But like, as you look at,

“the, the risk people are taking to get in here. I think long gone are the days where”

the, the principle or the main principle is not heavily involved. But we're not going to see a day where a board's running in a family office is just running it on the side. Those days are gone. They're gone in football. They're gone in everything else just because of what it is. And actually, if someone's stretching this far to, to acquire one of these, they, they also really understand the community aspect of it as well. Yeah. Because they, they care about that as well. And so

I think that we're just in a new world. And you've seen it, like in our world, it's, it's Patrick Tumon. It's it's, it's obviously, you know, gave and, and everyone up in Charlotte with Rick

you look at the involvement, not only just with their, or what's done that's on in Carolina, and now, like, like, like, in a round and what they're building out. Like, it's a decision to say, hey, I'm actually, can probably do what I want. This is what I want to go do. And like, I want to be involved. Now, that's a tough balance as well. Because I know enough, I'm, look, I'm a hooper. I play all the time. Like, I watch basketball. I'm a junkie. I watch every game. But like in this draft, for example,

I, I'm going to say this. Like, our families shouldn't want me draft in this person.

“Like, when you've got the team with Austin and Danny and group, like, you should feel a lot more”

comfortable than with me. Right. Now, I want to all pine and, and like, have a thing, but like, how, how involved you get is like, you got to be a little careful. Because you need to be involved enough to give the team air cover, right, because everything's not going to go well. And you need to understand the body of work that people are putting in. But at the same time, that's what gives them air cover to be able to have a long tenure. I often find that when people are too far out of it,

or they don't live in market, they become really reactive with coaches and GMs and stuff like that. When you're in it every day, you know that, all right, I know you're doing all the right things. We just need a break. Right. And I, I learned this, it qualtrix, just leading out. You know, when we opened up in Europe, like, I was in every single detail in Europe. And like, going through and I remember my board coming to me going, you know what,

let's pull the plug on Europe. It's going too slow. It's not working. I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on. It's here. It's here. And then four quarters later, the thing pops. Or when we started shifting our model and it's like, hey, you know, this isn't working. It's super expensive. No, no,

no, hold on. Everything's always taken longer like that. And if you weren't as heavily involved,

you, you might have been overrun by the board. Yeah. And so it's, it's, you got, you got to have pull our opposite emotions to be able to manage it. You got to be able to manage it. I got to be over involved, but also let the team work. But like, when they come to you with the Jaren Jackson trade, ultimately, you're, you're stamping that one way or the, like, if you didn't want to do that, the trade's not happening. Yeah, for sure. If I don't want to do it, it's not happening. Yeah,

because you're taking on a big salary, you're giving up draft picks. Like, you're not going to

“be like, okay, I hate this, but I trust you guys. You, at some point, you have to be a little onboarding.”

No, and they want to read me, but in our organization, the way we're lined up, they want to call me and talk about it. Yeah. But they also know that if we'll Danny and Austin or we'll Austin and Danny are lined, I'm going to have a hard time saying, honestly, I'm going to have a hard time really saying, like, no, we shouldn't do that. And because I know that they've wrestled this thing down and thought through everything, because they attack it differently. No one's going to have fired

for, for the way they're thinking about this. And, you know, they know they can speak their mind. They know they can speak their mind with each other. And, you know, and then when we do something, I've got to be able to be like, all right, guys, like, put your hand in the middle or right in the dime with this thing. I'm cool. Like, the one thing I hate is like, you know, just this revisionist history and it's sports. It's all the time, should it on this? We should

it out. No, you were in the decision room. Yeah. Like, if we're, if we're doing this, no one's going to say that. No one's going to say we should have or I didn't say that. Like, if you, if you

want to say it, speak up right now. But this, because the second we pulled the trigger,

it was your idea as much as it was anyone else is. Is it done? Is it daunting to be in the west and watch these playoffs when you see San Antonio and okay, see in your conference loaded with these guys thinking like, Jesus, we don't just have one mountain. It's like two mountains next to each

“other that we have to climb here. Yeah, I think I don't think it's ever, you know, I don't,”

I definitely don't think it's more daunting than going up against 23 and 19 or in 1997. Right. I think I think that, you know, they're both in a pretty good spot. They are mountains to climb. I, I would argue that, you know, there's people out there that say we'll write behind it

with where we sit and everything that's going on with the lottery. I think you're probably third

with assets right down the west. So I agree with that. But I don't think any, like, it just shows how competitive this is and like what you're shooting for. Like, you know, it is, it is what it is.

and just talking to him and like knowing that history of what it's like and what you had to do

and really asking about the grind, like it's pretty crazy to be able to turn to Danny and D-Wade and be like, walk me through like what you thought and, you know, march of this year when you guys won. And it was like, this was stressful. We didn't think this, this is who we were up against.

“We thought there was no way they had smoked us that. Then you get into the moment. Then what happened?”

You know, it's like this change and this change or this how it is and, you know, that's kind of works out. Those are two similar teams, right? The O6E that weighed one the title with and then the O8 Celtics that Danny won the title with, where in two years there was the move and then there was

the move after the move and then all of a sudden they're in the mix. It's like, whoa, we're here.

Let's go. Like that. Oh, it's an even change in nine months. Yeah. And then even, you know, the battle within the series. Yeah. There's that too. I'll be interested to say how you handle that. We haven't even seen that side of you. Yeah. But you're like a conference final losing your mind on the sidelines. Wait, I had another question for you about expansion, which it seems like it got floated out there.

Adam has the two cities. He seems to want to have be interested to see if they could get the money for those two teams. But then everybody has to vote on it. And you go from 30 to 32 teams, which is adding two teams to the lead that you now have to be. You're losing media share. Yeah. Do we have the right amount of teams? Like, where do you stand on this or even allow to talk about it? I mean, and there's nothing I would say that I probably

wouldn't say publicly or privately or whatever it is. I kind of, I'm a guy. I kind of have one story.

“This is it. Hey. And so, um, you know, I think you need to zoom out because, look,”

part of me is like, Vegas is extremely close. Right. It's extremely close to us. Yeah. Very close. I mean, you might have seen the jersey exchange. We did with the Vegas Knights. Everyone's like, oh, you were just throwing the Knights in the playoffs where you put out that you know, exchange of jersey, Vegas Knights jersey to a mammoth jersey. And people are lined up around the block. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. The world doesn't understand that like, you know, Southern

Utah is 90 minutes from Vegas. Like, when we opened up with a mammoth, like, the Knights were the hot key to it. Yeah. And so, on the selfish side, it's a little bit like, hey, that impacts our market a little more than probably most. And, you know, as you look in the West, you've already got some

“hills to climb, you know, to great markets, which I think they are that are being floated. Like,”

I want to have to get to our ultimate goal. We don't want to make a harder. But so, I think there's a lot of people that could easily see or take that view of it or take, hey, how much money are you going to get or that's the view? But if you look at everything that Adams doing, holistically, and if you look at where sports is, why I'm so bullish on the MBA? We're probably the only league that can have the reach in the impact globally that this sport

provides. So, you look at that MBA logo. My sister lost from Africa. She's from Zambio, who married my brother, and right along with people think about MBA Africa. Brands go over to Africa, and it's really hard. It's really hard to translate over time to end up into something different. But, you know, just being in draft interviews and seeing these kids have come over. Like, that MBA logo means something over there, and it is the logo of basketball.

And you go, you're looking at Europe. We focus on the teams or this or that. But if you fast forward 20 years, and you say, okay, MBA, you're up. You know, there's a league with a chance to actually

have a view of all of sports with that MBA logo. It's pretty amazing. And if

Seattle and Vegas are part of that bigger picture, like, I'll do it. Like, I'm a partner. Like, I think that's a great, or we'll have that discussion. But I look at it more holistically, is not a seller of the MBA. It's more of like, holy cow. Like, we have a sport with a ball that has a great mobile viewing experience. Like, one of the best, I can watch MBA games from my phone,

Like, that's how I look at it globally and say, hey, how many users are we going to have

you always hear those stats that, oh, Manchester City or man you as 1.2 million fans? Like,

if you look at the MBA in that way, I'm grateful that we're making the investment now for Europe. Someone already made the investment in the W. Someone already made the investment in Africa.

“Because we truly have a world who wants that product. And I think that's how I look at it.”

And that's a weird way that's not a can. So I think I don't look at it just those two teams. I look at it. It's like global MBA brand like where it can go. And you can see being a part of Vegas, and it works. Yeah, because like financially, you'd be getting like, let's say it's 15 billion for both teams. You're getting a 500 million dollar check to give up a small percentage of your media rights.

Yeah, I don't, I don't really, that's how you look at it. Yeah, not as the whole that's like,

I get it. Yeah. Like, it's, it's holistic. And, you know, there's not many sports that could be doing with the NBA. Yeah. Well, you can see the NFL. They just announced their schedule. They have nine international games. They're literally very, they're super aggressive. Yeah. Super aggressive. They're like, hey, I want Christmas day. I want this. I want that. Like, like, all these leagues. I mean, we're all, like, you look at what's going on. And I think that, yeah, we truly, I think Adams visions a lot bigger. And I think they're doing a really good job with it.

Last question. Talk, walk me into that room of 30, really rich, successful people. It's the board of governors. You guys have to talk about stuff and argue about stuff. And you're just at this big giant table in some room. And you're all, we're successful people

“of you're still getting your own way. The entire time. Yeah. And now you have to hash it out.”

What is that room like? What was it like the first time you went in there? Um, I mean, it's, it's hard. It's a daunting task. I mean, you know, if I, if I take a step back and if I'm the league, it's like, okay, how do you have a room of 30 people who all have opinions, who are all going through something that are all trying to kill each other, that have to come in together and life? What do I do? Do I just, and there's a couple of camps that

differently. Unfortunately, I'm fortunate to be a part of a different couple of different leagues

and having, like, do you just say, hey, here's the memo. Here's what we're discussing. Or do we actually

care and open it up for debate and let everyone speak their peace? And then try to make the most humane decision knowing that it's almost impossible. Yeah. And you have people at different, you have the small market teams. You have the, I don't want to pay the luxury tax teams. You have the, I have a lot of money. I want to win the title. I don't care what that cost team, you have the people that generate a bunch of revenue. They don't want to share it with everybody.

So there's agenda, is everyone. Now, nothing's like one little quadrant. Yeah. There's like vectors, like every issue is like seven flashbacks. Yeah. Right. There's never anything that's like one

“quadrant. And so it's really, it's really, so on that front, like I think going into these things,”

it's, it's, it's, in anything. If that was your board or anything, I'll tell you, it's not, you know, probably the most productive way to have a meeting, but housing, we're trying to kind of happen. Yeah. There's no way else to do it. And I think what our current set of is, I don't think there's anyone in that room that doesn't feel like they can go and give input and they're at least listen to. And that's, that's pretty hard to do. Right. And so I would argue that, you know,

whether it's Tom Dunnan or whether it's, you know, even Jim Dollen or someone out, like, I feel like, you know, whether it's Mickey or like, they're able to, to do it in the capacity and the ability to add them to, to hear and maybe even feel that I see you is, it's again. And so I think that, you know, and look, I've been on someone that, there's beyond it. I've been on the opposite side, maybe even my point of view at the time, a couple different ways. I've been fine. I've been known that,

like, in, like, I'm cool with how, I'm really cool with how we're, we're going and I'm even more bullish than ever on the NBA. And, and I'm excited to be doing this for a really, really long time. What's your fine, what's your fine total right now? You're down 500? I'm down more than that. But hey, what are you in seven figures yet? No, no. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a human or a dream on level.

No, it's, it's part of it. I mean, there's a process and I get it in, you know, it's just, it's just the tax.

“Congrats on everything. I think it's been cool to watch from afar. Now, I mean, you're,”

you're from there and all of a sudden you own these two teams and they become even better assets and staples of the community than they used to be. And you have this whole thing going. Now,

hopefully you'll get some luck in the lottery. But that's the thing you never know.

Do you have these four guys at the top? And it's like, pick seven might be the best guy in this draft at the NBA. It is, it is such a, you know, in the, in the funny thing is, it's like, like, I, I remember Will the first day a couple of years ago. He's like, okay, great. Everyone come. I don't care where you're drafted. I don't want school. You want to, I don't care anything like your life starts tonight. Right. Like, like once the season is starting, knowing,

“knowing tears internally, like, where you were drafted, how it was, like, you got veterans that”

have come in and in the second round. And, you know, you look at the Rudy Go Bears, you look at the

joke. It's like, it really has to do with, like, who, who we're going to invest in and taking a 10-year view on this. And I just feel really fortunate with the group that has chosen to do this with us, you know, starting with Austin and then Will and in D.A. obviously, like, what a blessing to have that doing around, you know, you know. I remember being at the 22 finals and they invited Danny to sit, court side with the South Ex owners for one of their games. And Will Hardy was really

just involved. Maybe it was 23. It was 23. When did you hire Will Hardy? Was it 23?

Yeah. I think it was 23. Maybe it was the 23 pass, but I could see Danny looking at Will Hardy

and watching how involved he was. And I said to my dad, oh, no, Danny's studying Will Hardy, this is bad. Because we knew Will Hardy, everybody loved Will Hardy, but I was like, so not surprised when you hired Will Hardy. Well, people would ask and be like, he's like, I don't know. I like what that. I like what Boston, but why was he on this coach in the league at

“the time? He was great. We hired him and he's been, I'm glad you should go for wins now.”

He's an awesome partner. Like, and it's, it's, you know, it's funny. Like Danny Austin and I all golf, it was Will, you know, we're all golfers. And, you know, it's, it's fun. Like we can, I'll just go play and then the time, the end of the round is we have nothing else to talk about. So it's good. All right. Yeah. And like a lot of times are managing me. I think it's like, hey, look, okay, who's job is it to go manage right in a little bit? And, you know, it's been good. We're super

fortunate. All right. I'm happy for you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you for all the time. Look forward to seeing you. I want to come to Salt Lake for a game at some points. So you should. I'll change your luck. I'll let you know. Hang out with the angels. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. Let's go. All right. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Brian Curtis, and Ryan Smith, and my dad and Gahown and Wardo. Again, we don't know the schedule for Sunday yet.

So check out on social media. We're definitely going live on Netflix at some point. We'll be after it game seven. We'll be after two game sevens. We'll be after just one game one. We don't know. We'll find out tomorrow night. And you have a whole week and watch more app because that's going to be the next rewatchable's on Monday. Enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday or Sunday. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino

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