Emergency Pod: Breaking Down the Clippers' Punishment!

Lipton Rosen and Cats report is out and boy is it damning, at least in the NBA's view

“and frankly in mind and some other people was upon reading it.”

But the bottom line is this, the NBA has thrown the book at the Clippers.

My first round picks gone $30 million fine, Steve Bomber, Microsoft's Steve Bomber, suspended from all league activities for a year. Multiple Clippers executives, including Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations, suspended for prolonged periods of time without pay. There's all sorts of stuff to get in on in terms of what their report found, why the

findings merited such a gigantic punishment, really a deathnell for the Clippers for the foreseeable future. We've got Michael McCann, a legal expert in Kirkwood, Barry, of the ringer, of course, to talk about Pablo Torres being right all along to how the penalty superseded everything that we expected or anticipated it could be and why and what's in that report.

All things, Clippers, Raptors, Collis, going there apparently, we talk about that just woo. The moment that has been in the making for a year is here and then after that we talk about baseball, John Fantasy and I are talking about the Metz as we wind down a depressing season with Pete Alonso coming back to city field in a couple of years that'll be fun.

So that's all coming up on the Zack low show. Welcome to an emergency edition of the Zack low show. The verdict is in. The NBA has thrown the hammer down at the Los Angeles Clippers in the Kawai Leonard Cap sir convention scandal broken by Pablo Tory almost a year ago.

The penalties are the biggest in the history of the NBA and among the biggest in the history of sports to help us sort out the whole thing, including the 36 page report summarizing Wachtell, Lippton, Rosen and Katz's extensive investigation. I've read it highlighted the whole thing.

“We have Kirkwood, Barry, our guy from the ringer, how you doing, buddy?”

I'm doing well great to see you again, Zack low. We have a legal scholar. He writes for Sportico he teaches at the University of New Hampshire among other places. Michael McCann, Sportsville, expert, how you doing? I'm doing great, Zack.

Thanks for having me on. So I'm going to go through a couple of quick headlines. You guys chipping whenever you want. I think by the time people listen to this, they will know the extent of the penalties but just in case the clippers having been found guilty by the NBA of Capser Convention have

been stripped of five first round picks, one in each of the drafts from 2029 to 2023, 2033.

They have been fined $30 million.

Steve Bommer, their owner has been suspended from all league activities for one year. Diane Zucker, their president of business operations, suspended without pay one year. Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations, suspended without pay six months. They're going to be monitored more extensively. Kawai Leonard is required to pay a fine of $700,000 and Dennis Robinson, his uncle is

banned from conducting business in the NBA. Five first round picks. So headline number one is the clippers are somewhere beyond fucked. I mean, this is like as harsh of a penalty as you could have imagined, as they could have imagined and they have released two separate statements today indicating that they

are going to fight this somehow saying that the NBA changed its tune, late in the game, saying that really all they are guilty of is introducing sponsors, took a while Leonard and that they were under the impression that that was fine and even more sort of dire from

the NBA's perspective, a little statement within the statement saying, if you spent $50 million

investigating every team in the league, I bet you find similar things.

“We'll see because I think the report is much more damning than that, but let's so headline”

number one is for an organization that has struggled for relevancy, basically it's entire existence. This is pretty close to a death now for a decade, a half decade, we don't even know. They're already rebuilding. The QY Leonard trade will presumably go through now, so they'll have Brandon Ingram and Brady Dick and picks from the Raptors and the Raptors get loaded up with quieting, they're

going to be really good, but I mean, as recently as yesterday, a front office executive from another team, not the clippers, not the Denver Nuggets who are about to come up, say, hey, the clippers are kind of quietly positioned in themselves in case Yokech actually wants to leave

No, the superstars ain't going here when they're out five first round picks and they can't put

together real trades and all that. And obviously Kirk, you and I have been talking about this this summer of 2019 for eight years now, it was a failure of some magnitude once the era kind of Petered out with playoff losses and Paul George leaving in Oklahoma City winning a championship with Shake-Gilgis Alexander. And despite the fact that the clippers made the only conference finals in the history of their franchise, not nothing, it now goes down the signing of QY Leonard

and the double sort of blow of the Paul George trade as one of the greatest catastrophic failures

“in the history of sports. I mean, what an opening. I think I speak for Michael when I applaud you”

on the opening. But yeah, my first headline I have five takeaways from this thing, my first thing

is what you laid out. This is all about the clippers and the biggest punishment ever levied on an NBA team from the league office in the 80 year history of the league in terms of team building, just a massive day in NBA history from that perspective. And it also brings us to the Adam Silver point of it all where look, I was pretty cynical all summer long as we're many people I talked to. Oh, Adam's not going to do something that's severe to Steve Bomber no way. Well,

throw that out the window. I was shocked when the thing came in because I had sort of prepared that glow for a much more minor punishment on the team building side here. I did not expect

five freaking first round picks to be stripped away. So all that smoke going back to August 17th

on the ESPN article where a place that you and I worked for a long time together, they had an article August 17th, hey, they haven't found anything. There's not going to be much here. Well, how is that age that glow? Not great. And to your point, if there were ever going to be a deterrent to the other 2019s that not only do you not do the stuff that's outlined in this report that we're going to get to, you better have your situation

so buttoned up that we can't even find like a dereliction of duty and NCAA style lack of institutional control because we are going to come down hard when we find anything. Before I go on to my other takeaways, Michael McCann, I want to enlist you for this. The clippers have said they're going to fight in any way possible against this decision to reverse it, to get picks back whatever it is. You do have been writing about the NBA Constitution, what it allows, what team sign on to when they

sign into the NBA, how the commissioners' word is kind of binding, down at the footnote of the NBA's press releases, that the players union has also signed off on this because they are coi-linters advocate and they basically accepted that punishment and moved on.

“What can the clippers actually do? Can they sue the NBA? What are their actual remedies here?”

Yeah, so the player's association piece, it's going to get overlooked and I'm glad you mentioned it's act, that's huge because it is saying the other member of this collective bargaining agreement is okay with us, that they're not contesting it and there's no question that although it's $700,000 fine is obviously a lot of money, quite Leonard comes out of this not looking nearly as bad as everyone else on the clippers because he's not suspended as contract isn't avoided. He's going to

go on and play for the Raptors. He had an issue of press release where he basically blamed others, but I think he's not a winner, but he's clearly not the loser that the clippers are in this situation. In terms of the clippers' ability to contest this, good luck because this is a private association. This is fundamentally sports leagues, post sports leagues, or like country clubs. They administer their own rules, they're given difference by courts and also by virtue of buying

or franchise owners' relinquished contractually of relinquished certain rights in terms of the ability to sue. So they can issue statements saying this was unfair, this was procedurally invalid, this will lead to negative ramifications, but actually this is the big problem,

“getting a forum, getting a court to actually hear any of this. And I think that's going to be the”

hard part for the clippers that they can challenge it internally to the NBA, they can say it's not valid, and maybe at some point the NBA could reconsider the NBA with the temperwolves if you recall, they docked them five first round picks, but ended up being three. So there was some reduction, mitigation, if you will, that occurred there. Maybe we see something like that with the clippers. I don't know, but going to the legal system, unfortunately for the clippers,

is going to be extremely difficult to do because they are in a club. At the end of this, this is really just a club. And as long as clubs administer rules that not in an arbitrarier

I'm going to read part of it now. Integrity and respect for the game are fundamental to who I am.

“I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle”

and regret the distraction as situation is caused to fans and my family. I answered into my contract with the clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations, and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone's part to circumvent the salary cap. You know, I find some some of that at the very least, a little bit hard to believe. Presumably, I understand extremely wealthy people have people

managing their money and are monitoring their bank accounts. I'm monitoring my bank account, but there's a lot of money flowing in and out of Kaly's account. It's some point you figure, like, how did this get here? What am I supposed to do for this? And like, it is a little bit of your responsibility, or as a human to know what your representatives are doing to some degree, at least. So I, yes, he's he's getting off without, you know, a real punishment at all.

The union surely fought for that. I don't think he comes off looking particularly good. I think he comes off looking pretty bad, but be that as it may. Adline number two from this is I was dead wrong, like you Kirk about what I thought was going

to happen here. Yeah. I predicted when this first broke and kind of mostly kind of stuck with it

that it would, it would be a slap on the wrist that they wouldn't find a quote unquote smoking

“gun. I remember I think with you Michael a year ago, I talked about maybe a few second-round picks”

at a fine or one first-round pick and a fine. Obviously, I was dead wrong. And Pablo Torrey is the big winner here. His reporting was assiduous and thorough all along. And none of it was refuted by anybody at this point at all in even a minute detail. But I do think one of the reasons why the slap on the wrist prediction and the one first-round pick or multiple seconds or whatever was wrong is there was all to talk about the smoking gun.

And there wouldn't be a smoking gun. There wouldn't be a paper trail. And that's why it would all just

be circumstantial evidence. We poured over the three of us the clause in the CBA about circumstantial

evidence and what that could, what that could allow the league on its own to do. circumstantial evidence is not even mentioned in this 36-page report that we all read today because they didn't need it. If there's not a technical smoking gun in here, I don't really know what qualifies this smoking gun. There is so much damning direct evidence that they didn't need any circumstantial evidence. And this is when I want to go to you, Michael, you're the legal

professor. There's interviews, emails, texts. This is something of a magnitude and there's stuff that predates the aspiration scandal which is the entry point for Pablo's podcast and all of this. I don't know if there's, there's used to be a lot of smoking guns or things similar to a smoking gun. There's stuff in here that if the recounting of the interviews and the conversations is correct and accurate, that is just damning. I mean, I don't know of any way around it,

but maybe I'm being over dramatic. You tell me. No, you're not being over dramatic because I've seen reports like this and this is maybe the most damning report I've seen in pro sports of a team. Particularly, as you said, Zack in terms of direct evidence. Okay, this is represented as whether it all would prove true in court. We don't know, but we're going by what we're reading. I would also say that you mentioned you and Kirk thought it would be a modest penalty. I was

there with you. And also ESPN was there with you. Based on that article in red last month, it certainly would be clearly that the leaks and that story were not from the NBA, based on what we just read today in this report. So it wasn't as if the world was expecting

“five first round picks. I think the NBA community, the sports law community, if I may speak”

for it, nobody was expecting this. So this was stunning. And that report, it's by walk tell, which is a top law firm that's going to get its ducks and ducks in order before it releases the report. Why did it take so long? Because they made sure there's a report like this. That's really hard to refute. Maybe some of the things in that aren't true. We don't have access to that information, but this was an extremely damning report. Obviously, the clippers say it's untrue

and they're going to argue that. I don't know if there's a forum for them to argue that other than the public forum. But this was a pretty, I don't want to say impressive, but it's impressive in the sense that it was so comprehensive. Let's just dive into it then because when we talk about stronger evidence than we were previously aware of, I think people who aren't going to sit down and read it should know a little bit about what's in there. So even before aspiration, the trees, all of

Dactronics, which Pablo is talked about, Blingo, the wireless company we all signed on to at airports,

“and an insurance company called Lockdown, not the Lockdown podcast network, just Lockdown,”

that I had never heard of before. This is in June 2020. And one of the common themes that Gillian

Zucker is the headliner here in terms of the front line person who's committing the against the NBA rules conduct. We'll talk later about what bomber knew what he didn't know, what the report actually says directly about Steve Bomber, who's suspended a year. But one of the commonalities with these three companies and with aspiration is Gillian Zucker writes emails, introducing Dennis Robertson and or some coi representative to representatives of those

companies who are interested perhaps in paying coi for some sponsorship deal. And in all the emails, she words the emails as if all of those companies have previously asked her, "Hey, we would love to get in touch with coi Leonard, can you do that?" And the league, the investigators

“find no evidence of any prior contact to that nature of those companies reaching out, saying”

we'd love to partner with coi. In other words, the league has concluded that Gillian Zucker was retroactively writing these emails after introductions had already been made, often by the clippers to make it look as if she were simply responding to those inquiries that had already come in for those companies. And the NBA says or the investigation by Wachtell says no documentary evidence supports those statements. They can't find any prior contact. And in fact, in fact,

what they find in a lot of cases is that the clippers have already kind of started the ball rolling. But that's that's step one. Like the absence of those proactive emails is like a big a big feather in the investigation here. I was just going to add like when the report starts to really get going, Zach, there's this also, we have to go back to March in April of 2020. And I thought

the Wachtell report didn't incredible job of contextualizing three or four of these deals unfolding

at a time where America is in crisis, nobody's doing any business. And the report site, the three of these deals that the clippers had sort of set up for coi happened in the heart of the pandemic that goes so far as to say nobody's doing any other endorsements in post sports at that time. There's no, the deals move very quickly, unusually so. And there was no expectation of any return

“of work in any of the paperwork they found. So I think that was another part of that saga,”

Zach, that I just thought was really interesting that they did pinpointed this in 2020 and much of Pablo stuff was later than that. Well, let, let me just be even simpler. What's, what's outlined here is basically a cool pro quo. These companies pay coi Leonard for an endorsement deal for what she does nothing. And none of them have any, it's a real history of having celebrity endorsers in any kind or athlete. Right. And in return, right as those deals are signed,

the clippers pay these three companies consulting fees. Consulting fees for consulting. In a couple of cases, they get the entire consulting fee up front in multiple payments of $10

million each according to the report. Despite the fact that these companies have no, no history

in the consulting business that the services contemplated by the consulting agreements are not worth with the clippers were paying for them. And one person from one of these companies says at, at some point here it is. Accredible witness with direct knowledge told investigators that the consulting agreement, one company, sound with the clippers was in fact a ruse designed and intended to be a vehicle for the team to provide the company with funds to be paid to Mr. Leonard. In other words,

just a simple sort of exchange. You endorse Quay Leonard. We do some business with you. And the most plaring example is Dactronics, which is a scoreboard thing. And I don't want to get too far into the nitty gritty, but Dactronics was bidding for work on the Inuit tombs, inuit tombs scoreboard, right Michael and Kirk. And the clippers say, hey, you know, it would be great is we think you're good. We'd like to hire you. And I'm going to read from the report. The team wanted to agree on

a spend-back arrangement whereby Dactronics would provide business back to the clippers, Mr. Zucker suggested to a Dactronics senior executive that this spend-back could be accomplished through an endorsement agreement between Dactronics and Leonard. Dactronics believe that failing to enter a new commercial relationship with Leonard could jeopardize its ability to win the bid for the Inuit tombs. So they do, in fact, strike an endorsement

Dactronics, a senior clippers executive specified the precise financial terms that the clippers

expected Dactronics to provide to Mr. Leonard in the endorsement agreement. $3 million per year

for two years. And then a little bit later in February 2021, the clippers executive told Dactronics that because the team had decided to increase the amount it would spend on the scoreboard, Dactronics should correspondingly increase the amount of money it would pay to Mr. Leonard. That's just in fancy terms, right? Michael, that's like good pro quo.

“Is what's being alleged there, right? Yeah. And I think the key part here is that the clippers”

doesn't do not appear to have had a rebuttal for this. I mean, if I'm the clippers, I'm going to argue this is not unusual. Other teams arrange or play a facilitating role in star players getting

endorsement deals with sponsorships. It's not as if Leonard is the only player to have an endorsement

deal with the team sponsor. It happens in soccer. It happens in major league baseball. So the opportunity I think was there for the clippers to say, okay, what you're saying sounds suspicious, but in fact, this is how business is conducting. And from what we read in that report, it doesn't seem like the clippers provided that or at least it's not from what I can tell stated in the report. That would be a really contextual evidence that this is not unusual, that this is standard practice.

And we don't see that. We actually see it said that this is highly suspicious, highly unusual,

“a typical other NBA teams don't do this. And I think that's hard for the clippers. Well,”

they said that's that's their statement, right? Is that like we're just simply introducing Kawai Leonard to sponsors and helping facilitate everybody that does that all 30 teams do that. The NBA knows that even name check Rick Buchan in the NBA's general counsel saying Rick Buchan knows this. But the report, when you have an executive telling electronics that because, hey, we're spending more on the scoreboard, you got to spend more on Kawai. That's well beyond the conduct

outline there is well beyond introduction and facilitation. And there doesn't appear to be another example. I think that's the most that's the most damning thing for the clippers is that they can't say, oh, yeah, the Celtics do that, the rockets do that. And if they had that, that would be

very powerful evidence. And it doesn't appear based on what we know they do.

Kirk, you wanted to say something? I just want to add, like, don't forget, like, if a lot of us who would work with Kawai and Toronto or San Antonio had to pick which NBA player might get caught up in something like this at the end of last decade, a lot of us would have picked Kawai Leonard because of Uncle Dennis, you know, coming out of the Toronto free agency period, there was a lot of smoke reported and otherwise about what Uncle Dennis was asking for from Toronto. There was reports that

he would ask for inappropriate things from the Los Angeles Lakers in that same free agency period. He wanted to stake in the Maple Leafs man, like, if they're asking for crazy stuff, everybody knows that it's been written about publicly for years. I just think it's vital context here, especially to Michael's point that, oh, you can't really make the everybody does this. When we have, like, a seven-year run of this intonuation that Uncle Dennis is the one doing this

at the highest level in the NBA. Like, this is the guy who was at the center of it in 2019 and appears throughout the early 2020s act. Michael, did you have a chance to read the section that we'll turn to the on aspiration specifically and how that deal was arranged according to the

“reports. I scared to before I went on this. So yeah. Did anything stick out to you from there?”

I mean, I can go through it myself, but if, like, I don't, again, I don't want to get to into the weeds, but there's an email. I think dated November 5th, 2021, which is one of these emails I'm talking about. We're Gillian Zucker writes to Joe Sandberg, whoever it is, aspiration saying, hey, you asked for an introduction to Goliath. People here it is. But then the NBA goes back a week or 10 days before that. And there's all this dialogue involving Gillian Zucker and a, quote, business agent

retained under retainer from the Clippers who serves as a middleman with aspiration about how much the company should be paying Goliath Leonard. And then that email is sent. But the wheels are already in motion by then. Am I reading that, right? Yeah. And I think this is the part where the Clippers lose the argument that everybody's doing it. That there's a middleman, right, negotiating endorsement income for a player. It sounds like in the college sports context, sort of pay for play,

right? And I, L, being used as a way of funneling additional money. It reads like that. It also we don't know of other examples of that. But this is, I don't know of any other team that does

had another example that they could provide it. One of the reasons why I think this took so long

“this investigation is that there was so much stuff to go through. And they know that any arrow would”

be amplified by the Clippers. And if it turns out there are factual errors in this, the Clippers will certainly run with it. But I don't see an avenue legally for them to go too far. I mean,

just, here's what the report says. Based on the foregoing evidence, investigators find these statements

to be inaccurate at best with respect to Mr. Ballman. And they're talking about the statement Steve Ballman made to Ramona Schelburn on national TV. And clearly false with respect to Ms. Zucker, the Clippers suggested to aspiration that they enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard as the business agent to help structure the agreement conveyed proposed deal terms to that agent. I.e. how much money provided input on the proposed deal and on and on like that.

And then the quid pro quo comes with this what they call the forum agreement in the report, which is the Clippers pay aspiration, some amount of money to do sustainability stuff with the forum.

And there's all kinds of text messages and emails in here making it clear that at least in the

minds of aspiration, these two deals are connected to the point that when the forum deal is not being signed as quickly as the aspiration people would like. Mr. Sandberg from aspiration texts the business agent acting as an intermediary for the Clippers quote, if the form agreement isn't fixed, I will tear up the Clippers contract. We will do nothing with Kauai and we will go to litigation. Should I call Dennis and Kauai and tell them that the deal is off because we got fucked,

that's a direct quote. If this isn't signed here's another one. If this isn't signed by tomorrow, there'll be no choice but to do that. The quiet deal is not happening without this forum deal. That's another text from Joe Sandberg. And then they have Clippers executives by name Scott Sandberg, Clippers chief commercial officer in a March 2022 text messages with Eric Chan,

then the Clippers CFO. I never wanted this forum deal always knew it was super shady.

Another text from the same guy. I cannot begin to tell you all the red flags with this with this deal just doing what I'm told. I mean, that's not great. Can I say one thing? Yes. And not I'm not taking the Clippers side by any means, but if you recall, the NFL had a very damning document of the Patriots during deflaking, a long report with exhibits, with statements, with emails and the Patriots fought back. They released their own report, the Wells report

in context. I'm not saying it's going to happen here, but Steve Balmer has a lot of money. And it wouldn't surprise me if we see a rebuttal document released maybe this week, maybe not long after that. That tries to attack and how will they attack? They will say, you have that email, but why didn't you include that other email? You have that text, but why don't you include the whole sequence of messages in that text? That's a common device

used to at least create a cloud over the allegations. Because right now, the Clippers,

“they're going to lose five first round picks. It's really tough to change that. But I think”

they have professional reputations. Steve Balmer's legacy, right? He has to be thinking about he can't now say I did it. That's gone because he was already said he didn't. So I think he's kind of boxed in where he has to fight back. I do think I would be very surprised. I mean, the Clippers have said we're fighting this. Whatever form that takes, I don't know. Look, I can tell you like no one from the Clippers has been willing to speak on the record about this

since it happened other than at orchestrated press conferences where Lawrence Frank at the beginning of the season has to answer questions about it, et cetera. Kirk, I'm sure you can get tested as two. On other bases, this is not news. They've been adamant that they did nothing wrong. I've had relationships sort of sour if not splinter entirely. Simply by asking questions, they were so offended that anyone would even impune them with questions. And I was like, okay,

“I mean, I guess that's how it's going to be. They've been adamant, adamant, adamant,”

and this report is, you know, maybe some of them didn't know all these texty emails were in here, but like that adamant, if that's even a word, I would expect something from them, but I mean, I said last week, they are going to have, if they want to be really sort of exonerated or even nearly exonerated from this and now the opposite is happening, they have to find some explanation for why this money is flowing in this direction when no one else is funding this company,

You have to actually show us why. And that's not happened. And this is the why seems to be outlined here.

Yeah. And you know, the statement they released today was very vitriolic. It used the term podcaster, really sort of been a derogatory man, multiple times, sort of the meaning Pablo and his report, in which I didn't think was the right, most professional tone to strike. If you are going to come out to Michael's point and try to credibly, you know, refute the material here. And I sent the walk-tell report to some corporate lawyers. I know here in Austin, Texas,

who are really sort of fancy lawyers. And like this thing is legit. Like this is a legit report. They spent a lot of money on it. In fact, we learned that the clippers supported some of that

“investigation fund. But I think they're boxed in. And in that statement, though, they also”

reference what Michael was saying. Like this is Steve Balmer's legacy. Like when we talk about Steve Balmer in 20 years, that low. And where are these old-white-haired guys talking on podcasts? This is his legacy in the world of sports. This is just a huge moment for one of the richest men in America. And what happened today in my estimation with this report is the National Basketball Association pretty much called him a big old cheater to his face and said, here are the receipts.

And that's a humiliating thing for anybody, let alone somebody is proud and as powerful as Steve

Balmer. Hey, Kirk, I thought, I mean, you pointed out going after Pablo, what's the point of that? And if you're the clippers, that's not the target right now. Going after Pablo Tory, he made his case, the NBA said, it's true. And in fact, the NBA said, it's actually much worse. Yes. Pablo Tory said, so going after him, it's a waste of time for the clippers. They should focus on is there other evidence that's not in that report that somehow disproves or at least clouds

what's alleged, because if they don't have that, I don't know what their tactic is. I want to go back to the aspiration paying coli and the clippers then striking this forum deal, sustainability deal

with aspiration, money flowing both directions. And then the impatience at aspiration when that

sustainability deal was like a slow to be funded or whatever. This is a text from Eric Chan who is the CFO of the clippers at the time. And read into this what you want, right? This is one of the things that if the clippers wanted to sort of say, well, this actually should be interpreted this way, they'll do that. This is the text, quote, Steve Balmer knows that when this deal blows up, Joe is calling

“Kawai and telling him his $12 million deal is no longer because of the clippers management, right?”

I think so, but just double checking. And then the Wachtel report continues, Mr. Balmer told investigators that he was aware of Mr. Sandberg's threat not to move forward with the Leonard aspiration endorsement agreement if the clippers did not timely execute the forum agreement. So unless I'm reading that wrong, Michael, that says in plain English, he told Wachtel, yeah, I knew he was threatening to blow up the Kawai deal if we didn't move forward with the

forum deal with him. That I don't really know what that is, but it's knowledge at the very least, right? It's showing their acting together. I mean, if I'm the NBM, I'm going to say this is all one big business arrangement with different pieces. One piece is between aspiration and the clippers, the others with Leonard and they're all moving together. They're all in unison. They're not

“separate entities. And that message seems to support that. It's pretty blunt too. As you said,”

Zach, I mean, it's not like there was a lot of room for wiggle room there or a statement like that. And it doesn't seem like they had, I mean, this is the thing. If they had a response to that, the report would have it because the report, the NBA knows Balmer is going to come after the report in every way possible. So they're going to try to preempt any potential arguments. And the fact that we don't see that there to me is a very notable omission. Let's take a very quick break and then

wrap it up with some sort of conclusions about what who knew what and when. Michael, to your point about Balmer's reputation and Kirk, your point about Balmer's reputation, I mean, the interesting thing is to actually sit through the support we're going to have more time to do in the coming days and say, what does it actually say that not Gillian Zucker, not Lawrence Frank, not Dennis Robertson, Joe Samberg, what exactly did Steve Balmer know? There are a couple of things that are indisputable

according to the report. Number one, the report says, look, man, he lost control of his operation

it says explicitly, he was aware that Dennis Robertson was asking for stuff that ran a foul of the

“CBA. And the NBA bylaws say, you must report those asks to the league office and Steve Balmer”

did not do that. Other people didn't do it, but Steve Balmer also didn't do it. I mentioned that his TV interview with Ramona Schouper and was deemed inaccurate at best, meaning the best possible interpretation Wachtel can make is he was dispensing inaccurate information perhaps unknowingly, but that's at the best means, maybe worse. And then there's this other thing of Steve knows this deal blows up, he was aware of Mr. Samberg's threat to blow up the collide deal of the forum deal blows up.

That's like, that's the bomb or part of it. And even beyond that, Kirk, I mean, like, you know, we kind of joked at the beginning of this, like, of course it's the clippers. Like, and if this is like, if they're hammered, I remember saying something like, if they're hammered,

multiple first round picks, finds, whatever, it might be time to just move on as a friend, just move

the franchise somewhere else, whatever, like, it's just absolutely cursed. Nothing good is come of it. And like, I mean, that's the legacy of the clippers is, unless this is fought or overturned successfully, whatever is Donald Sterling. And this, with like some good basketball here and there in between, and then a whole shit ton of losing an elgin bailer on the lottery day. I mean,

“I don't know what else to say. I don't know what else to say. Well, yeah, I think Adam Silver's,”

you know, 11-year career as Commissioner 12 year is now bookended by two terrible scandals in the clippers organization, very different scandals. But I think he's handled them both pretty well. But yeah, dude, this is another black mark on the LA clippers. You brought up who knew what and why and one thing we haven't talked about. And my biggest takeaway right when the punishment came out, guys was, man, the NBA just levied the biggest penalty on a team. It's ever done.

Five first round picks, $3 million dollars, all this other stuff's actually outlined.

Coi Leonard, not suspended. Coi Leonard, five seven hundred thousand dollars, according to the walk tell reports, some of these relationships gave him, um, easily eight figures of added revenue for for no show work is as Pablo is outlined. You know, we live in a world Zacklow in this story. I know is close to your heart. Jackson Hayes got suspended. One game for pushing a mascot in

“February of 2026. The player at the heart of this. I think it was G-Wiz. Let's let's name”

who it was. It was G-Wiz. Okay. Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to trigger G-Wiz with that awful memory of Jackson just sort of it was more of a check than a shove. But I'm just saying Jackson Hayes got suspended more than Coi Leonard in that in that context. So I wanted to ask you Zack, were you just to surprise at Coi Leonard not getting any kind of suspension here? No, um, uh, cynically know because the focus is going to be the team and the representation.

But like I said before, like I just find it hard to believe that he knew nothing and was like completely ignorant of this. Um, but like it does have me thinking like, first of all, we've already talked particularly Bill and I about. Is this the weirdest career in the history of the NBA? Like two time finals in BAP. Uh, and legit MVP candidate like I voted in for MVP in 2017. Um, at the peak of his powers, one of the three to four best players in the league for a prolonged period of time.

When he was healthy, but never healthy all the time. He's got 16,000 career points.

Uh, that's sort of a middling amount for someone of his stature. And now there's this. And I tried to put myself into shoes of a Raptor's fan. I'm like, I sweet. I, the trade goes through like awesome. I think but now this guy's just like on our team and we're going to pay him and yeah, Uncle Dennis is gone. And I guess we, I guess this is what like if it, I guess is what you do as a fan use room for the team, but it wouldn't feel a little bit a little bit weird for me and Coi's entire career feels

just completely bizarre from start to finish, including the mystery injury thing in San Antonio, where apparently he was upset at how they handled the injury and what the second and third opinions were and all that. Um, it is, it is strange. And it would leave me if I were a Raptor's fan a little bit like, all right, I guess God, I like put this in my side of my brain that I don't really activate for a while and just cheer for the mid-rangers. Well, just one more point on that.

There's people in San Antonio that I know very well that saw this coming. Dennis

Uh, Wednesday's opportunity is stuck his foot under Coi Leonard in the western finals in

the game. I was attending, uh, and very disappointed to lose. Uh, that was the day. A lot of people who were very familiar with this situation say the thing started to go sideways in San Antonio.

“Dennis started to become a main character. So you map out Coi's career. I think the”

demise really starts in 2017. There's obviously a big pinnacle in 2019 where he wins the title in Toronto. Uh, and then Dennis takes him into free agency and they're asking for all sorts of stuff. But I think like, unfortunately for Coi Leonard who was my favorite basketball player on the planet for a number of yearsack, he, his inner circle to use his words in the statement, uh, really let

him down in the prime of his career and really let some damage add it to some damage that might

not otherwise have been there. Uh, and it's really a sad story, honestly, when you talk about the the strangeness of Coi's career, but, but this is a blemish to your point. I think it's a blemish, but this could have been so much worse for him. I mean, this report eviscerated, steep off. Yeah. So in very personal ways goes after Clippers executives as being unprofessional, unethical cheating with Leonard, $700,000 fine. As you said, Kirk, it's less than what some players

are who make a lot less have had to pay out for for other things. But wonder how they arrived at that number, right? Like there's certainly been some some backdoor negotiating with the union. And in a way, this is a story about the union, that this is the union fighting for a high-profile

“member in a way that proved effective. I think Leonard walks away, he goes in place for the raptors.”

It's bad for him, I'm not saying he's cleared, but of the people mentioned this report, he seems like he received the least amount of scorn when it's hard to believe that he didn't know what was going on. I would say so, the other thing, when we were thinking about this scandal, I focused on Joe Sandberg being somebody who was a criminal had off to prison and not a reliable figure to base an investigation on that the NBA had interviewed him, but they had all these other

people that they talked to. I mean, that's the striking thing is that the scope of sources of information for the NBA was much more extensive than I think anyone was expecting. And that goes to the fact that it took so long, but they took their time and it paid off. Well, Pablo's tourist thing from the beginning has been, use your brain, everybody, like money is going from here to from point A to point B and then back to point C. Use common sense, what else could their puzzle be? And then

gradually he found a whistleblower, completely found other things to back that up. But at base, he would

“say, what does logic tell you what was going on here? And the caution, I think, was, well,”

I'm not sure that like logic is going to be enough for the hammer hammer. It would be enough for something, but not the hammer hammer. And what what the NBA has in this report is more than logic about in in what tells you and the investigators view about how and why that money was going from point A to point B to point C. They have emails and texts and data emails a certain way and back to the emails a certain way and all that outline that sort of buffer or bolster rather the logic

that Pablo was positive in the whole time. That's the way I basically read the report is his argument all along was, why is this money moving this way? Why else would it be? And the NBA said, well, here's some stuff, here's some emails sort of back in that up. And here we are. Like you said, Michael, maybe this this may not end. I mean, I guess the clippers will do. I just don't know, like there's no arbitration procedure for them, right? No, this is an internal matter for the lead. They can

always sue. So you began to show by saying, could they sue? Sure. And they have plenty of money.

You could always file a lawsuit, but it's suing and then having it dismissed because they agreed to arbitrate would would allow people to ridicule them further to say, look, they did it. I mean, the Patriots were totally opposed to deflateate, but they never sued because they knew it would go nowhere. They knew they play in a club. This is just like a club of various people. People mentioned this sort of doomsday scenario for the league and another entities were, but do you see in corporate

scandals? A lot of like, well, if you sue, well, then that's just compel all this documentary evidence that nobody wants out. That's not the case here you're saying. There's no way they can compel documents from like this team and that team and on and on. Is that requires getting past

basis of they have contractually agreed to the NBA having final authority on this. There is no

“forum for them to bring their claim. The only forum would be within the confines of the NBA”

and it's really hard to get around that argument. So what you're referring to is pre-shadowed discovery, that's only going to happen if it gets past emotion to dismiss. And I see that being really hard. Now look, Baltimore, if you hire five huge law firms and pay them a gazillion dollars, they'll come up with something. But he's very telling that the patrons didn't sue and that other teams don't say. And there's, by the way, I just not for nothing. There's other, there's other,

like the clippers have extra first round picks in some of these years from trades that they made including, I guess, the straight that's going to go through with the raptors. I just got a text from someone saying, hey, the Celtics are a big winner today and I'm looking back at the picks that the Celtics own. And they have this sort of best of pick from the clippers for the sixors in 2028. And we're going to have to get a full accounting of, like, which picks, the clippers are

being stripped of. I reported earlier today that one of them is the Pacers pick in 2029 and an unprotected pacers pick that they got in the Vezizubats. You know, that pick just vanishes in the thin air now. The Pacers don't get it back. But there are other teams that have shorted the clippers, basically, and could benefit from that. And I'm going to have to go through all of that. Whoop! Anything else we haven't gotten to the interview guys wanted to hit on this

pick, picture, small picture, it might go legalese that we should be paying attention to anything we missed? You know, one thing was the fear that if the clippers are punished, it will chill the market for players to get endorsement deals with team sponsors. And that is something that I could see that the clippers could argue that this is actually detrimental to players. But I say that knowing that the union has agreed to this. So that undermines that argument that this is somehow

going to make it harder for players to get as lucrative as endorsement deals. The fact that the union signed on to me is a huge part of this. Yeah, and the flip side of that, exact to your earlier point of everybody does this. And sort of the flip side of what Michael just said is, man, I talked to people all year about this saga. And you know, you ask executives around the league, does everybody do this? Most of them say, hell no, we're too scared to do it. If they had done the slap on the

risack, though, if they had just done, hey, two second round picks and whatever, suddenly Carl Anthony towns could take a lot less in New York and get extended and get a big sponsor with this fear

“in Las Vegas or something like that. I think this now will scare a lot of teams in the future”

from trying to get cute and paying max players more free agents more with the circumvention techniques. I think Adam Silver gets a win this week with this because I think it will generally scare

other teams from trying to cheat like this. Well, again, like I never the team sponsor player

sponsor thing. Again, we can find a number of NBA players who have individual deals with teams with with the company's who sponsor signage at the arena, whatever. I just never thought we would get a report that said we actually, we can say that Wachtel can just declare this in a report that a clippers executive specified the precise financial terms that the clippers expected that electronics to provide to Mr. Leonard, $3 million for two years. That's the report saying,

no, no, we have evidence. But this law firm, reputable, the argues in front of the Supreme Court law firm, has evidence that a clippers executive told a company how much the pay coi Leonard and that same clippers executive told electronics, hey, we're spending more on the

scoreboard than anticipated. You better up your deal with coi. I just never thought

however it got on to the record, whether through interviews or in some cases emails that we would see a trail like that. I mean, that is like, okay, good luck explaining that one.

“This is why you do those things in phone calls. Not in messages, and it's just right, right?”

This is exactly why you don't leave an electronic trail. It's kind of a lack of sophistication that happened. I mean, to not leave wiggle room, I think is also, well, some of it is kind. I mean, they interview like, I can't remember how many people. It's like 270 something. There's either 200 interviews or 200 something, but some of it is in emails and texts and some that appears to be from interviews or people cooperated anonymous executives,

apparently, one of them, the clippers cooperated. So that how that each bit of information gets to the law firm is you'd have to do so work to trace it all. But they have, they have like, hey,

this is our evidence. This stands up, and this is where we go from here. And like, I never

holds or even if it's just chipped away a little bit. And it is a deathnell for the clippers for the foreseeable future. It not that they had any great, I mean, I guess they have key in wag or that's cool. But I don't know. Well, learn more about this as as more stuff happens, as reaction comes out as the clippers do what they do. Kurt Goldsbury and Michael McCand, you guys have been helping me out from the very beginning of this. You are very busy, Michael,

particularly, you've got other like, you've got NIL stuff going. There's like a lot of stuff happening in the sports law slash business world right now. So I appreciate you taking the time and

Kirk, I always appreciate you taking the time. And I have a feeling we have not heard the last of this.

But thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. All right. It's time to talk about everyone's favorite national league baseball team, the New York Metropolitans. It's Met's quarter. Sean Fantasy, it's been a while. It's been a month. I went on vacation for a lot of that month. The Met suddenly got hot. They are now 19 and 15 in their last 34 games. We're recording this on Wednesday after a very irritating loss to Freddy

Peralta and the Tampa Bay raised a loss I caused by talking shit on my podcast Monday about how much I was enjoying Freddy Peralta's continued failure. And then, of course, are you just through that one right in my face? Now, that brings us to, since the house the on days when the Met's were 45 and 24 to start last season, we are now 132 in our last 230 two games. We have the fifth worst record in Major League Baseball this year. I had to

only the A's, the Angels, the Giants and the Rockies. And we got Peralta and about 10 days. And so I guess I would start with 19 and 15. But it felt for a while like the Met's word legitimately kind of hot. That's not that great. Are we, did we all get a little too happy about what was going on in this

little mini stretch within a longer season and a half stretch of misery? I never tricked myself into

“thinking that we were actually turning things around. So I think it's okay. There was a moment”

that was roughly 10 to 12 days long after the trade deadline where the team was legitimately very fun to watch. And I will cherish that 10 to 12 day stretch when I look back on this season. As I look back on many failed seasons and say, well, there were glimmers of excitement. There was, there's, and there is a lot of positivity that we can talk about with the team. Some things are actually going well and there is a case for optimism for next year to range, though that might sound and

who knows if believe and have baseball. But I feel even at 19 and 15, being decent to close the season does have some value. Now, should anyone feel good at all about the way that things transpired over the last? What did you say? 232 games? 232 games? I 100 and 132. I mean, that's putrid. So I'm 43 winning percentage, 4 to 4 30. It's not good. Yeah. I mean, just think of the,

“how many, how much did each win cost during that period with pro-rated salary cap?”

That's got to be some of the lowest value you're ever going to get out of a salary in the history of Major League Baseball, right? Yeah. You know, who is among the lowest bang for the buck players in my brief reconnection to Major League Baseball? Jorge Polaco. And you know what I've been thinking Sean, when I think of 62 and 77 in 19 and 15. I think of two things. I think of the 12 game losing streak from early in the season we went from seven and four to seven and 16. I just think

we could just go on five and seven instead of just falling flat on our faces and staying down for three straight weeks. We kind of had to, would have a normal season. Not only that, Peter Lanzo has returned on September 14, 12 days from now. I bought two really good seats for that game. I think I'm bringing my daughter. We're having a kind of a family conference where the phrase it's a school night has been uttered a couple of times and my daughter doesn't really care.

He is going to get such a hero's welcome because all that dude does his hit. He just hits and hits and hits and hits and David Stearns and his equations or whatever feet along so one said when you're

“doing your equations, I'll be up for the fall of fame. I think it's formulas. This is what he was”

formulas. The formula, the formula I decided that he wasn't good enough to continue playing

first space. The delta between Peter Lanzo's current season and what the Met Scott from Jorge Polanco

has got to be like one of the biggest delta's player left player sign to theoretically replace that player in the history of the baseball. If we had just had Peter Lanzo playing first base,

young has been it's been pretty solid and I think one of the what is a nice story of the team,

“but he's going to get a hero as well. I'm very interested to see what the atmosphere is going to”

be like. It's obviously going to be great for him, but it's going to be kind of a fun night at city field. I'm going. We're going. Yeah. It's that unique scenario where someone left because they were offered a better deal, but we don't hold it against them emotionally because we have a big relationship to Pete and the strategy that the front office, which does not have a lot of supporters right now, saw it was at least in the short term clearly not the correct one. Now I wouldn't say

I'm surprised by the season that Pete is having. He's 31. He's a powerhitter who was ostensibly at the end of his like in the kind of the final two to three years of his prime. He's been such a consistent player over the years. He's had maybe one and a half dramatically down seasons, but otherwise he's kind of metronomic. 30 and 100 hit somewhere between 245 and 265 gets him based just enough strikes out 180 times and he's just having a Pete Alonzo season. He's going to have

“an 868 70. OPS. He is one of the three or four best powerhitters of his generation. And that's”

it. Now maybe we can feel a little bit better about it when he's 33 or 34 and is dramatically declining and striking out 200 times and not walking at the rate that he's walking at this year. But that's two to three years from now. That's not right now. Right now we want to win and we want to win with Francisco and Indoor and we want to win with Juan Soto and we want to win with the thrilling psychopaths and Nolan McLean and Christian Scott and he would have fit really

nicely in this team. So it's really painful to know. Now just very quickly though. Even if we had his four or five wins, we'd still be seven games back in the wild card lead. I get it. It has to go on great. I would just like to have those four or five wins and just maybe a couple other things break, right? And we're around 500 and these games feel like they matter instead of like, well, you know, I kind of don't mind losing to the race because it's

screws the Yankees and I kind of don't mind losing to the Orioles because I want Pete to make the playoffs and the Orioles are making this like late, probable surge toward one of the last wild cards but but here we are. It's going to be fun. I can't wait to hear the game. It's going to be a

lot of a lot of a long ovation. So keep my love. You know, he'll always be in my heart. You know what

really also what else is really hurting me on a daily basis. I'm going to have to, I put Jeff Passen on my tweet alerts for the trade deadline because we made a lot of trades. We didn't. I might have to take him off because like three of his last four tweets are about Pete Crowe Armstrong doing historically amazing things and I'm like, I don't need this shit in my life. I'm aware that it's going on that he should be a met and one of my best friends is a cubs fan

and every time I share one of these tweets with our baseball text right, which is a few of us, he tweets back in a moj. He's made an animal a self emoji. Like, it looks like him, curly hair and glasses just shrugging or smiling and I'm like, I hate this. Jeff Passen, I'm going to have to unfollow you. Stop tweeting about it. Zach, it's such a tough one. And we, I don't know if we've really had a deep and meaningful Pete Crowe Armstrong conversation,

but this season at least, he looks like Mickey Mantle and I don't think that into the met. It really could only happen to me. I really don't think that's overstating things. Like, I think from a tools perspective, he's going to work in the pay. I know. I know. It's very, very difficult. I mean, this is five years ago now that that trade transpired and we kind of brush it aside because he seemed to have like kind of an up and down rise through the minor leagues.

“When he was traded, you have to remember, he had played, I think maybe 15 professional games total”

and was injured. So even though he was a first round pick in a big time prospect,

it was very, very early on in his professional career, but over the course of the last, the first half of last season, and the entirety of this season, he just looks like a generational superstar. He looks like a hall of fame style player. And that's insanely difficult to accept because how perfectly would he fit in a universe with Carson Benge and AJ Ewing and we can move one photo to either first base or DH long term. And then is that not one of the most

exciting young lineups in baseball. And you know, we got 68 games of hobby bias and Trevor Williams and hobby bias actually played incredibly well after he was acquired by the met. In fact, maybe his best stretch of his career was in that 68 games, but it also led to the Francisco Indoor thumbs down moment and a team that failed to make the playoffs and the general manager who made that trade was let go because of a DUI incident. And it is, it is why we have walnuts.

It is, it is, it is, now you're, isn't there also like a, a assistant GM or GM sexting incident or like, you know, appropriate text messages incident? That was, yeah, that was Jared Porter.

dark times. You were not, you were not yet in right when that was happening. That was right. But I remember where the scandals break through the media barrier. Okay. Enough belly aching. Sorry. I am, I am very excited for this peak game because we have good seats. And also,

“if you remember the low moment of the season was probably the game. I think it's all the same”

game where they make six infield errors. They trade David Peterson during the game or before the game. And the crowd is chanting Pete Longzo because they have no other way to express their

discontent. Well, that was going to be in this stadium for the first time during a hit-a-home

run. He's the all-time meds home run leader. We decided who cares about that. Okay. Let's be positive. I'm going to list some good things legit good things that if you care about the meds going for these things have happened during this last couple months. Are you ready? I'm ready. chime in whenever you want. Number one, Nolan McClain legit number one or worst number two starter. I think the last six starts have proved that he has genuine top 10 ace potential.

Number two, Carson Bench completely legit optimism within the organization that the power up tick is coming for him just looks like he's going to be an awesome two-way player for a very long time. The game where he had two assists in one inning from the outfield was just absolutely delightful. He is a gold glove caliber fielder and I want you to weigh in on this. You think he should be right there for rookie of the year. This guy weatherhold on St. Louis is the odds on favorite

now. But McClain is also technically rich. I forgot that baseball does this thing where

in the NBA, if you play a second one season, you are no longer a rookie. McClain is still a rookie.

Yes, McClain didn't qualify. He only started eight games last season.

“To me actually, I think McClain has now surpassed Bench because Bench has not had a quiet five”

days and this sort of stuff changes very quickly and is very volatile. Weatherhold was the odds on favorite for a long period of time because they got off to a hot start and is like a historically skilled second basement. So his defensive metrics are through the roof and so his value is really high because they're not a lot of good second basement in baseball. So you might look at his counting stats and his power and his batting average and it might not seem very impressive relative to

some of the other competitors. The other guy who's in the race is South Stewart who's the first basement for the reds who is who kind of looks like Peter Lanzo. He's already hit 30 home runs. He's going to have a hundred RBI. He's like the more of a traditional rookie of the year winners circa 1995 in terms of what we were looking for in superstar sluggers. So you've got those two guys and then you got Bench and McClain and Bench is a five tool right fielder who has an outside

chance. Maybe not even an outside chance to go 2020 in his rookie year and has an elite elite elite arm. And obviously that potter's game that you're referencing when he had the two assists

in the first inning was my that might have been the highlight of the season for me for the season.

“I think McClain what McClain is doing now though is even more impressive because”

he's had a really bizarre defensive lineup behind him all season. He's had a very very unsupported offense behind him and he's also struggled with command throughout this season. He has this weird thing where you can kind of tell him the first two innings whether he's got it. I think he's near the top of the league and hits pit batsman and yet when he struggles he's still is able to kind of persists through some of those things to give you six or seven innings and seven or eight strikeouts

and you know I think he's given up like one run in the last 30 innings or something. I mean he's he's in a really really really special place right now. So the fact that both of those guys are in the conversation both is great for us long-term. Bench though just has a charisma that you love as a fan. He might be a he might be leading the pack right now for Zach finally buys his new meds jersey player might he might be Carson Bench. I think he's the best candidate at the moment.

Not quite there. Okay other good things to do happen. Francesco Lendor is all the way back offensively. Defensively where you just continues to be a complete mysterious disaster. He's made two horrible errors. One of which was somehow not scored an error on a on a sure thing double play where they'd got none of the outs on a double play a couple of games going and then botched the ground or last night. Do really know what's going on there. This is by far his worst defensive season ever

looking at any metric errors advance metrics all of it. But offensively he's all the way back from the hand injury from the the other injuries that he missed time with and that that's fantastic. And by the way my highlight of the season was his diving catch to save the brewers game the other day. We're of course again in something that could only happen to the meds. The broadcast went soprano style out black right at the moment where Lendor was about to make the catch and left everyone wondering,

oh this is probably the meds. I'm sure he hit off his glove and everybody scored for the brewers. No, he actually caught the ball. He's all the way back. Make an interesting one thing about that. Yes. The only thing that was disappointing about that was in the immediate following in

I feel like I'm like third bad pick off the meds and you ing it's had a couple of bad pickups too.

It's like what are we like this is the fundamental stuff of just like you don't move there on or over. You don't score the runner from third with less than two ounces. The stuff that's been and I don't know like I don't know why that seems to be a team-wide affliction and I don't know like how you coach those things as a baseball manager and hitting

“coach but like we just don't do any of those things. You got to remember we lost our”

extremely successful first base coach Anton Richardson in the off season due to some sort of like inability to give him the benefits that he desired in a contract negotiation and then he went to go to the braves who are now like 35 games over 500 and we didn't have a lot of pickoff issues last season and one soda was still like 35 bags. So yeah so it's sort of have a steel this entire season after suddenly going 40-30 last year not very many yeah I mean in general

they're taking the big step back. Ewing has a ton of speed and so he's aggressive and so he makes mistakes sometimes but yeah the pickoff was madening because that catcher still electrifying. Ewing isn't a major slump but I'm not worried about him. He's legit and a lot of his outs in this major slump have been very loud. It's hard hit outs including a line drive that I thought was going to kill dusty made the brewer's particular day that just hit him right in the back.

“Boba Shett looks pretty Boba Shetty. I know you just can't forgive him. You're all the way out”

on Boba Shett. He's been pretty Boba Shetty since like June 1st. It sounds like he's going to opt into his deal for next year. I'm all right with that. I like that you have you just don't like he's going to have to hit 450 for like three months for you to forgive Boba Shett. I like that he's your irrational blind spot. He is the big villain of the season for me and it's I'm sure he's a good guy. He's played every game. He's kept his head up through this extremely disappointing

season. So I don't want to attack him but when they went through that 12 game losing streak one soda was injured and it was on him. It was really up to him to step up and fill a gap and he didn't play well at all during that period and he didn't play well at all in April, May and June and he ticked up and excuse me maybe he had a hot June and a quiet July and then he had a hot August. But the one thing that I'm looking at with him that does worry me given that he has a $42 million

salary is that his extra base hits this year are way down, way down, career low sort of percentages in terms of his slugging. And so even though he has had, he had a really good August. He still has a 700 OPS which is just not good and for someone of his caliber of player at his salary and if he is actually entering a phase where he's just more of a singles hitter and a very skilled single hitter, but a singles hitter, then that's problematic for next season because there's already

an absence of power in terms of Piedalons. You made the note about how Planko was signed in an effort to fill the Alonzo power vacuum. But so is Bo, you know like that that was part of the idea and

Bo was never going to be a 35 home run hitter but he could be a 25 or at least a 20 home run hitter

and he could hit 45 doubles in the season and he's not having that kind of year and I do think that between the super shaky starting pitching of relying on guys who've been in the rotation for the last few years who we know were not built for it, Peterson, Manaya, Sangha, those guys who just they weren't going to be long-term solutions and guys like Bo just not playing at the back of

“their baseball card, that's what put the team in this situation this year. Yes, Bo has 23 doubles,”

44 last year doubles are sexy, man. I love doubles. Bro and loves the triple over fetishizes the triple they're so rare. I love a good double. Sangha maybe he can be a productive reliever and salvageable he's been fine and we'll get to the starting pitching and we'll need to start pitching to the side for a second and the minor league system seems to be restocked after the trade deadline although clay homes has been unbelievable for the clubs. I'd like to

resign clay homes so that we can get Jefferson, Rojas and clay homes and just steal everything. That was nice. I'm looking at Billy Amick stats in triple A's hitting home runs there, this guy, Petrie, I kind of like Kim, Rojas is off the charts, bitch, void is hitting well. And Jonah Tong has allowed two or fewer earned runs and seven of his last date starts and maybe called up by the time this podcast comes out on Thursday. Those are all very nice things and

there are other God. I'm like checking stuff for a I'm like looking up his stats Gary Gill Hill. I'm there I haven't rooted for someone based on how fun their name is to say in quite a long time. I would love for Gary Gill Hill to be a part of my life so I can go around just saying you can Gary Gill Hill last night and he takes the hill. There's bad jokes built in. All great. Okay. I am I am also feeling very good about that. I can't help but just look at the

Matt's Marized Twitter highlights of guys who may never make the major leagues hit bombs.

But he also he's I think he struck out like 190 times. So you know, the thing okay,

let's like let's do glass half empty glass half full with this stuff because it's kind of interesting. If you go back to the most recent sell-off, what I guess was 23, they acquired a ton of prospects. Everybody felt pretty good about that dismantling the Mac sure's are in just in Berlin in their situation. You know, moving on from David Robertson a number of other pieces. And Billy Eftler made a lot of those deals and picked up Louis San Helakunia, Ryan Clifford,

you know, a whole host of guys who at the time were like top 10 prospects in the systems of the teams that we were trading with. And we felt like these are pretty good gifts for guys who were not going to be a long-term part of the system. And none of those guys really paned out as major

“leaders. Some of them were used in deals to make other acquisitions. I think it's possible that”

Jefferson Rojas is the long-term second-day spent or third-basement of the New York mats. He seems

like a legitimately like A to your prospect. He's a top 100 prospect. Every other guy that we've acquired as cool as they seem right now is probably just a lottery ticket. And I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are used to acquire a couple of big ticket names in this offseason. That's just where my heads out with most of those guys. So I'm not going to try not to get to attach to them. Well, Acunia was used to acquire Louis Robert Jr., who as soon as he got hot and started

actually playing the meds just the way he didn't want to go away. And so someone else had to pay him. That was fun. I enjoyed the Louis Robert Jr. era. Now he's Mallory Rubin's centerfielder whenever he's going to be. I hope he helps them. One thing he can do is hit 425 foot home runs. That's something that he clearly can still everything else is kind of upper debate.

“OK, let's go on to things that are bad. The meds are 26th in OPS, 27th in runs, 29th in doubles,”

and 30th last in on-base percentage. They do not get on base. Marcus Simian does not get on base. He stinks. Brett Bady does not get on base. He stinks. Francisco Alvarez, I'm nearing the end of my rope, man. I'm nearing the end of my rope. Are you just not good? Is this just what it is? He has 110 strikeouts in 316 at bats. He's grounded into 16 double plays. He cannot resist a high fastball to save his life and swings and misses it all. And I'm getting antsy. You know, I've been

an Alv guy. Catchers with pop are just like, you know, one of my white whales. I can't give up. I'm about ready for Louis Torrance to just be our catcher. Because that guy is rock solid behind the plate. It doesn't drop balls. No one tries to seal bases on him. He's actually not a bad hitter. Those guys don't get on base very much. In addition to the other guys who don't get on base, Marc Viento does not get on base. He's about are you ready for this? Like, oh, he's

sitting at home runs in the miners. He came up. He hit a home run immediately. He, I'm just prepping you right now. He's going to hit eight home runs in the next 25 games and trick us again into thinking that that guy from 2024 is just around the corner. He doesn't get on base. I sound like freaking Billy Bean and money ball. Give me people who get on base. We are 30th and on base percentage. And we're just terrible at it. Manaya has gone back into a slump after looking pretty promising. He's

been victimized by some bloopers and ground balls that just get through the hole in some airs. But he's also given up a lot of home runs. And I just still don't know. And this is where I need you to weigh in. I don't know how much I can really trust Christian Scott and Zach with no H Thornton as like rock solid three four level starting pitchers in next year's rotation. Christian Scott has been actually pretty good statistically. Thornton there's this interesting debate

about the luck adjusted pitching, right? Like his his fielding independent pitching ERA, whatever the number is, is higher than his actual ERA to a degree that is unusual. What are your anti-green was asked about this before one of his recent starts? I don't really know what to make of it. I don't know. I'm getting a look like Pete this happened with Peterson where it's like,

oh he induces a million double plays that's great. And as soon as that stops happening, he's

traded to another team and he's not good. Okay. I will address that very quickly on Terren's versus Alvarez. Luis Terren's currently has is 0.006 behind Francisco Alvarez in OPS right now 0.006. That's astonishing given the Luis Terren's has no reputation as an offensive player and Francisco Alvarez was once the number one prospect in all of baseball because of his ability to hit. And weirdly Terren says like crazy opposite field power like all of his home runs or the opposite

field there's something's happening with him. I hope it's an evolution and might just be a blip it's hard to say. As far as Thorne and Scott go, the thing with Thorne is he's a soft tossing low profile lefty. So that's okay. If he's your number five starter and if we pick up a big time

“ace in the off season and we bump him down in the rotation, that's not a problem and I think he's a”

great change of pace in the rotation. Christian Scott on the other hand, he looks like the kind of

mental fortitude that it seems like Thornton has where when he gets into trouble, he kind of let's go with a rope in the fifth inning and kind of get lead games get out of his hands. So I guess we'll have to wait and see. I'd love it if they were penciled in at four and five and Nolan claimed it was at two and they picked up a one and a three but picking up on a one and a three is not easy. You know, it's going to require a lot of cleverness in terms of acquisitions.

Sean Maniah, I like the guy he's 36 years old. He's entering the final season of a deal that he

probably wasn't worthy of in the first place. He seems like a great teammate but I never believed

his like little mini streak of quality pitching that he showed us in August. It's going to be a really interesting end of season for Tom because there's no reason not to call him up now that he's really steady to triple a boy would it be nice if he showed us five starts of like all right, this guy could be in the rotation next year because here's zooming out like given the payroll and given the guys at the top of the org chart. Lindor, Soto, throw in Besheat if you want McClain now.

The pedigree those guys have or are establishing. It would be nice to build a team that had I'm not talking like expectation they expected win totals but that had legit like if things go right 90% of things go pretty right. Steam could win 90 games like that shouldn't be so high above but the Steve won 83 games last year and they fell on their face even trying to get to 83. They're going to win in the 70s this year and it just feels like yes some of these nice things are

all happening at the same time. Presently if all those nice things continue happening I could see the team winning like 84 games next year like the team should be better than that and I hope whatever is happening right now does not make ownership, turns, complacent about like if there's a season next season knockout would there's still a lot of work to do to get this team to a point where it's like oh yeah I could see this team being like a pretty solid playoff team would you would your mind be

changed if they went out and sign-tarks Google and re-sign Clayhomes and traded for Yandee Diaz

“and added another bat and would you immediately start feeling like this is a 95-win team again?”

Yeah because those are like four awesome players. I know but they're coming they're coming off of like a historically disappointing two-year period for the franchise given the expectations and turns is it basically going into his lame duck period you know like if he doesn't make it happen it's over and we're starting a new administration so like stuff's going to have to change like they can't sell the fans on well you had a lot of bad luck and they did have a lot of bad luck

we well we had only 105 games from Soto and 105 games from Lendor and you know Bob Shet took a while to get adjusted and we took a chance on Lubeov and we took a chance on Pelonco and they didn't work out and oh you know we were really hoping to take a turn it around and we're really hoping Peterson in a contract here would make it happen and you know all of this kind of calculated risk that went into the philosophy of team building for the squad this year

“almost across the board failed and so there has to be I think almost like a”

like a public pivot from the way that the team was built the previous two seasons to show the fan

base. Now I'm not necessarily sure I'm in favor of giving tarx schoolable $800 million. I don't

really think that's a good idea but I do know that they have to do something to get us to be like okay fine and I'll I'll bring up my season tickets and I will spend countless nights in the dead of summer devoting my emotional well being to this this team so I I expect dramatic changes but I also don't know like being too dramatic often doesn't work in the meds favor so it feels like a paradox as well. I mean schoolable is pretty awesome yes he's the best

you know and he's managed about the turn 30 you know all those contracts are bad ideas at some point you just have to embrace the bad idea long contracts to get a good and by oh by the way after you build the entire bullpen even though they've somehow continued to be

really good after they traded the entire bullpen my guy Nate Lavender I always said Sean I

“always said I believe in Nate Lavender is there a way to get Lavender in love lady in the same bullpen”

that seems like a tag team that should happen in a goofy bullpen but like Nate Lavender is you give it up or run yet I don't think he's going up one run that honestly sounds like a 1970s porno lavender in love lady Diki who's got Diki love lady now somebody has a mepid I saw him pitch recently yeah was he was he on the Yankees or the nationals or who picked him up I don't remember like one thing we can all agree on is let's just not having Yankees Dodgers World Series let's have somebody else

get involved can I can I can I can I can I get any thoughts from you on the Dodgers situation like well what where do you want to go with it obviously I'm very familiar because of the Lakers sale but like are you are you are you are you Astorixing their two world series titles

spend to keep guys like schoolable like where where are you at I guess my question for you as somebody who's pretty sophisticated and understanding how some of these things work is do you feel that this will auger a dramatic change for the future of that franchise which then

“I think kind of really shifts the access of power across all the baseball it can't help”

then again there are insistent that they're not sewing the Dodgers and the team just prints money to such a degree that an including the little wrinkle that they Jeff has and talked about this week who I have to unfollow on unlike a superfollow on Twitter about how their TV money is not included in revenue sharing the way it normally would be so it feels like they have a pretty big cushion there obviously can have another long playoff run this year either they feel kind of insulated

but the tentacles of this are are still spreading it certainly like we can hope like and we can all hope and dream that maybe someone shakes loose from there from the team by the way also kind of nice

that we didn't get Kyle Tucker in the end although I say that he's probably going to hit like a critical

grand slam and game two of the world series this year I mean to say nothing of your boy at when D.S. I mean has a house in the sport right now it makes me sad I like when D.S. I do too but I don't know if I wouldn't get it that one is bad as it could possibly I guess we got to give certain credit for that like he he steered away from that to some degree like they made a pretty commensurate offer the Dodgers beat it by some amount I don't remember what it was so they didn't

totally steer away from it so maybe he gets no credit I don't know but yeah that's um but

“relievers are so weird maybe he'll have a great you know fall and great next season but if you want to”

be kind to turns about this season in addition to some moves that didn't you know he didn't make he built a hell of a bullpen and he he had been historically renowned for being very good at that and this was a year where he did spend a lot of money you know he spent these are like 10 million plus players in mentor and weaver and Williams and you know high profile relievers but they pitched well and I I'm hopeful that he can do the same thing next year

it just I never I I got sentimental about Alonzo really fast which is why I'm going out of my way

to go to this game because his home run is really what brought me back into being a fan the excitement of that game in Milwaukee that dramatic home run and I know I knew who he was I knew about the 53 home run season whatever it was like I knew about him but the coincide the coincidental timing of me getting laid off from the worldwide leader the meds being in the playoff run at that home run happening in that circumstance that got me back in and so I got sentimental about him fast but like

it just isn't surprising that a 31 year old absolute measure at first base is going to be an absolute measure for like three more seasons and yeah his fielding is not going to be great he's the first base when the whole point of him is to hit a bunch of home runs at a bunch of doubles and it's not surprising that he's going to do that like he's he's having a better year this year anywhere about the same year this year as he did last year which was better than the year before that

which got everyone concerned I don't know that one I just can't I can't get by

what is the plan at first base if not that what was the plan we talked about it last year like

“the guy was so important to our offense all last year if we don't bring him back what's the”

plan well this is the plan you're 62 and 77 yes so those are Linda or got hurt they did their injuries you know they they missed a lot of time together and separately okay great you know what that makes you a bad team and like for the payroll for this market for this fan base we deserve a roster going into next year that again it's not like hey if this cute little frisky bunch of guys all clicks they could be 85 and what at 77 or whatever the math is like we

deserve an actual real team and there's a lot of work to be done pre each brother I'm you know I couldn't set up better myself all right maybe I'll get my bench my bench road gray at least we have him he's a beautiful boy we got him he really is good yeah he might be the year my planner the two leading candidates all right Sean fantasy the big people what do we got coming up on the big picture I'm flying to tell you ride Colorado in 12 hours and I'll be at

the film festival there and I'll be reporting back from it on Tuesday so I'm looking forward to that at what's today when so like five days and tell you ride four days yeah how many how many movies and five days the plan is 20 oh my god wow if I can get to 18 I feel good about it because I'm trying to I try to make the most of the film festivals otherwise why go I'm not going a party I'm going to see the movies we'll do we'll do who what what ends up being higher

fantasies tell you ride movie counter Carson Benj's final home run account for this season dog fantasy thank you buddy well whatever you can be on meds corner soon I'll report back from the pedolonso game and it is a school night but I don't care I can't finish everybody thanks thanks Zach all right that's it for tonight's edition of the Zach low show thanks

came out thanks to Sean fantasy for jumping on earlier today to talk about the New York

“Metropolitan thanks to Mike Billy and Jonathan as always on production thanks to you all”

for listening to and/or watching the Zach low show at this point we'll probably back next

early next week Monday or Tuesday with the new episode of what's going on in the MBA looking ahead

“to the next season thanks to all for tuning in and enjoy the Zach low show”

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