Speaker 1: All right, let's get a drive time Monday afternoon, twelve
Speaker 1: minutes past the hour of two o'clock. It is a
Speaker 1: very aggressively April day outside. It's about fifty eight sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: We had a little rain this morning, cloudy with a
Speaker 1: little bit of sunshine this afternoon here in downtown Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City, Utah. And as it is every single day,
Speaker 1: it's going to have you along for the ride.
Speaker 2: Spence Check. It's back behind the mic.
Speaker 1: After a little Friday off, a little John to San
Speaker 1: Diego with our little local soccer club over the weekend,
Speaker 1: RSL get to win. We'll get into a little soccer
Speaker 1: on the show today. But there's a lot to do
Speaker 1: the Monday after the NFL Draft. We kind of lean
Speaker 1: heavy into that, so we'll talk NFL Draft from a
Speaker 1: local standpoint. Kind of a quiet year. We've talked about
Speaker 1: it for a few months now. Was not expecting Jalen
Speaker 1: Royals and Caleb Loner to be the only two names
Speaker 1: that we heard called throughout the course of the NFL Draft,
Speaker 1: but that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: We'll update you on.
Speaker 1: The local college football players that we're able to sign,
Speaker 1: some unrestricted free agent or I should say undrafted free
Speaker 1: agent deals some mini camp invites too. Of course, the
Speaker 1: big story today is shoud Or Sanders sliding all the
Speaker 1: way to the fifth round of the draft after a
Speaker 1: lot of mid season college football projections had him both
Speaker 1: as a finalist for the Heisman Trophy and the favorite
Speaker 1: in Vegas at one point to be the number one
Speaker 1: overall pick that of course ended up being cam Ward.
Speaker 2: So we'll do some NFL today, We'll do some NFL
Speaker 2: draft today.
Speaker 1: We'll do some college football today on the program as well.
Speaker 1: The latest with the NCAA transfer portals, Zach Williams is
Speaker 1: on his way to USC. What will the University of
Speaker 1: Utah do at that wide receiver position? As the transfer
Speaker 1: portal has come and gone now there will be more
Speaker 1: opportunities to have talent prior to the start of the
Speaker 1: season at fall, so we will get to that. NBA
Speaker 1: playoffs have been awesome. They have just been so much fun,
Speaker 1: and they continue tonight with well, one good game tonight.
Speaker 1: I don't think Miami has a pulse. I think they
Speaker 1: are cooked. Of course, down three to zero, you know
Speaker 1: the math on that's never happened in pro basketball before.
Speaker 2: Donovan's been really.
Speaker 1: Good Man, Donvin Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers will march on,
Speaker 1: I think tonight to the second round. We'll see if
Speaker 1: Miami can get one in their arena and then series
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are tuned into with the
Speaker 1: Houston Rockets and the Golden State Warriors. Reports are that
Speaker 1: Jimmy Butler went through shoot around this morning and may
Speaker 1: give it a go tonight after he sat. In Game three,
Speaker 1: we had a vintage Stephan Curry performance. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about this NBA Playoffs is a lot of
Speaker 1: the old guard has shown that they're still doing their thing,
Speaker 1: even at advanced stages like Steph.
Speaker 2: But an old guard that might be done.
Speaker 1: It's not his fault. Lebron James and the LA Lakers
Speaker 1: are in trouble. I don't know if JJ Reddick was
Speaker 1: trying to send a point to Rob Polinka and the
Speaker 1: LA Laker front office staff by not sitting any of
Speaker 1: his starters in the second half. He played the same
Speaker 1: five man unit. Timberrel's are deep. You can't do that
Speaker 1: against Minnesota. Lebron ran out of gas, Luca got tired.
Speaker 1: Even Dorian Finney Smith had a wide open dunk and
Speaker 1: he short armed it.
Speaker 2: So the Lakers on the brink elimination.
Speaker 1: Boston Celtics no issues with the Orlando Magic some competitive games,
Speaker 1: so that one's over.
Speaker 2: The Knicks have a three to one series lead against Detroit.
Speaker 1: That's been kind of an unexpected fun testing back and forth.
Speaker 1: After splitting at the Garden, New York goes to Detroit
Speaker 1: and they get two. And the Indiana Pacers have been
Speaker 1: a really good team since the All Star break, so
Speaker 1: this series is not surprising me. But unfortunately, the storyline
Speaker 1: coming out of Indianapolis against Milwaukee is that our local legend,
Speaker 1: Damian Lillard might be done. I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but the news became official about two hours ago after
Speaker 1: an MRI. It is official that Dame has torn his
Speaker 1: left achilles tendon. Dame turns thirty five this offseason, and
Speaker 1: even if you're twenty one twenty two, that is an
Speaker 1: injury that's really difficult to come back from. He is
Speaker 1: on the books for a cool, wait for it, sixty
Speaker 1: million dollars next year. I don't know what Milwaukee does.
Speaker 1: They're cooked a lot of conversation about maybe they.
Speaker 2: Look to move on from Giannis.
Speaker 1: Let me just say this into this microphone the Utah
Speaker 1: Jazz will not be making the deal for your honest
Speaker 1: because that's not realistic. So if we could stop sending
Speaker 1: out silly tweets and such, that would be great. But
Speaker 1: speaking to Utah Jazz, we are high speed ahead to
Speaker 1: the next date of intrigu which is May the twelve,
Speaker 1: when the Jazz will find out their lottery luck and
Speaker 1: fingers crossed knocking on wood. Hopefully it's the number one pick.
Speaker 1: And hopefully we have Cooper Flag playing basketball in our
Speaker 1: city coming up next year.
Speaker 2: Be awesome. So a lot to do.
Speaker 1: Jam pack show, busy show, Happy Monday to you. Hope
Speaker 1: you had a great, great weekend, full of a bunch
Speaker 1: of NBA hoops, full of some RSL soccer, some NFL drafts,
Speaker 1: maybe a little golf, maybe got outside a little bit too.
Speaker 2: The weather is very spring like. We've not had a
Speaker 2: very sunny, warm spring.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the consistent sunshine is on its way all right.
Speaker 1: Our first guest today, excited for this Matt Brown, who
Speaker 1: writes the newsletter Extra Points. It's kind of a north
Speaker 1: star for me. Utilize it to prep for the show.
Speaker 1: With the business of college football, we'll talk to Matt
Speaker 1: about house first NCAA settlement kind of where we're at
Speaker 1: with that structure and when we can see something final
Speaker 1: and what it means for the world of collegiate athletics,
Speaker 1: namely college football.
Speaker 2: Richard Smith will do.
Speaker 1: A little jazz basketball, little offseasonal NBA draft, little playoff
Speaker 1: basketball with Smitty today live in the studio. Thorn Nystrom
Speaker 1: stops by. Decided to catch up with Thor. His name
Speaker 1: is Thor, so you can guess that he's a football guy.
Speaker 1: We'll do some NFL draft with Thor on the program today,
Speaker 1: and then we'll welcome in a special guest. I've never
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to interview Sam Junkqua before. Sam scored
Speaker 1: a great goal for RSL over the weekend. Diego had
Speaker 1: embrace Diego continues to see that star of his shine
Speaker 1: and rise, but Sam had the goal to kind of
Speaker 1: put the cap on his RSL got a three to
Speaker 1: one win against San Diego over the weekend. So Matt Brown,
Speaker 1: Richard Smith, thorn Eystrom, Sam Junqua, me Spence check its Hello.
Speaker 2: How are you happy Monday?
Speaker 1: All of you the great listeners, and that guy Porter
Speaker 1: Larson who held the fort down on Friday with Andy
Speaker 1: Larson had the Friday show.
Speaker 3: I thought it went pretty good.
Speaker 2: It's not what I heard.
Speaker 3: It went fun, went well.
Speaker 2: Not what I heard.
Speaker 4: It was Andy and I notable fun fun. Uh, guys
Speaker 4: who love fun things right and optimistic the ultimate tie.
Speaker 2: The opposites that you are curmudgeons.
Speaker 3: That's kind of what I was saying.
Speaker 2: But but it went okay, you guys had a good time.
Speaker 4: It did go It did go well, I thought, so.
Speaker 4: I even got Andy to talk some NFL Draft. Obviously
Speaker 4: the bulk of the show was NFL Draft NBA playoffs,
Speaker 4: but we had plenty to talk about on a on
Speaker 4: a Friday that that had live action. We talked about
Speaker 4: the the coverage of the NFL Draft and the live
Speaker 4: stuff there and and had plenty of NBA playoffs to
Speaker 4: talk about. So it was fun with Andy. Always good
Speaker 4: to catch up with him, uh, talking rs L and
Speaker 4: and whatnot.
Speaker 3: And we'll do the same today.
Speaker 1: Before we get into it, you're a football guy big time.
Speaker 1: What do you think happened for real? What do you
Speaker 1: think happened with should or why do you think you
Speaker 1: shoulid all the way to the fifth round?
Speaker 4: First off? And not to like hot take, you know,
Speaker 4: not a huge surprise. It was a slide. It was
Speaker 4: a surprise to see him taking in the fifth round,
Speaker 4: But the one hundred and forty fourth pick in the
Speaker 4: NFL Draft is kind of relative to being like a
Speaker 4: top one hundred and fifty college football player. He was
Speaker 4: thirteen and eleven at Colorado. Yes, he's really talented, but
Speaker 4: when you're talking about the next level spence from the
Speaker 4: NFL draft standpoint, you're talking about pocket presence, You're talking
Speaker 4: about your ability to talk through a playbook with guys
Speaker 4: in an NFL room, You're talking about a whole different
Speaker 4: class of things. And you know, we can talk about
Speaker 4: the entitlement stuff, the stuff with Dion, but ultimately it
Speaker 4: doesn't sound like they really handled the process that well.
Speaker 4: They actually told almost half the teams in the league
Speaker 4: to not draft the shador Deon and shadoor or told
Speaker 4: them not to draft him. That is a specific request
Speaker 4: that has been kind of confirmed through multiple sources. And
Speaker 4: then they they publicly put out like which teams they
Speaker 4: were okay with. So number one, you're you're doing it
Speaker 4: a service there, and then when you start to slide spends,
Speaker 4: it's not just about the one the one guy.
Speaker 3: Quinn Ewers.
Speaker 4: A bunch of quarterbacks slid in this draft because it
Speaker 4: was a heavy offensive line, defensive back, defensive back, defensive
Speaker 4: tackle in the middle of the draft. But when when
Speaker 4: no one else is picking quarterbacks, you don't make that pick.
Speaker 4: So it wasn't as surprising as I think the the
Speaker 4: firestorm led out to be, because that's how everything with Dion,
Speaker 4: with the Sanders, with Shador is and that's fine, but
Speaker 4: that's just kind of the reality of it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, one hundred and forty fourth pick.
Speaker 4: Hell, that's some guy's dream, that's most people's dream, and
Speaker 4: I think it's it's it's okay to say that out loud.
Speaker 3: Awesome human feet and achievement one hundred and forty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: Of course, the hot takes have been flying all day.
Speaker 1: Some of the same media members that were very confident
Speaker 1: in their intel on Wednesday of last week that Shador
Speaker 1: would be a top ten pick or a first round
Speaker 1: pick or now talking about how confident they are in
Speaker 1: their intel about why they got it wrong. I always
Speaker 1: find the kind of the autopsy that certain media members
Speaker 1: do about the draft pretty funny. After the fact, but
Speaker 1: our first guest today will be Matt Brown. But before
Speaker 1: we get to Matt, on this lovely Monday afternoon, courtesy
Speaker 1: of our good friends at Prize Picks, it is time
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Speaker 5: Welcome to the Drive with Spence check its on Utah's
Speaker 5: number one Sports talk now into the studios of ESPN
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Speaker 1: guys can play long, all right. So, of course, the
Speaker 1: big story over the weekend was shoud Or Sanders sliding
Speaker 1: into the fifth round of the NFL Draft after a
Speaker 1: lot of people believe that he could even maybe be
Speaker 1: a top three pick to the New York Giants. The
Speaker 1: New York Giants, by the way, traded back into the
Speaker 1: first round to take our local product, Jackson Dart, who
Speaker 1: will sit beyond Russell Wilson and maybe Jamis Winston for
Speaker 1: a year or two. So very happy for Jackson Dart
Speaker 1: his family. Of course local people. Some of the other
Speaker 1: local high school kids were drafted, but as far as
Speaker 1: the local college kid, and by high school kids, I
Speaker 1: mean the Jeffrey Bossa kid from Oregon, Jackson Hawes, the
Speaker 1: former Highland High Tide end. But on Wednesday of last week,
Speaker 1: I did not anticipate sitting here on Monday of this
Speaker 1: week to talk about Caleb Loner and Jalen Royals as
Speaker 1: the only two local players having been drafted. Caleb's going
Speaker 1: to go to Denver, as is Karente read. By the way,
Speaker 1: Denver's kind of like the Utah NFL team out this
Speaker 1: way Buffalo kind of the team out backy.
Speaker 2: So happy for certainly Caleb Bloher.
Speaker 1: We heard Sean Payton talk a lot about his athleticism
Speaker 1: after the draft process. So some of the other players
Speaker 1: that have found deals. Junior Tifuna will be a Texan
Speaker 1: undrafted deal. I mentioned Karna Reid's going to Denver. Connor
Speaker 1: O'Toole got himself almost three hundred grand as far as
Speaker 1: the undrafted contract he signed with Seattle's am I A.
Speaker 1: Vaughn will be in Minnesota and McKay Bernard I believe
Speaker 1: will be with the Browns or the Bills. McKay got
Speaker 1: a deal. Tyler Baddy's going to Minnesota. Kayler Btn will
Speaker 1: be at Bengal and then Jacob Robinson will be a
Speaker 1: forty nine or so no BYU players drafted and only
Speaker 1: Caleb blon Aer drafted from the U. Jalen Royal is
Speaker 1: the speedy wide receiver has himself a new home.
Speaker 2: So mckay'son Tennessee. Thank you porter.
Speaker 1: So Mkai got an undrafted deal Tennessee. So Jalen Royals
Speaker 1: will be catching passes from Patrick.
Speaker 2: Mahomes and playing for Andy Reid.
Speaker 1: But real quick, I couldn't help but think about this,
Speaker 1: says the Chador Sanders storyline played out, and yes, mel
Speaker 1: kiper ESPN, they're going to force feed all of us
Speaker 1: these stories that maybe isn't as interesting for some as
Speaker 1: it is for others. But as he was sliding and
Speaker 1: all of the videos were kind of surfacing online of
Speaker 1: people with hot takes about him, sandbagging interviews and how
Speaker 1: you Famously, his father, Dion Sanders, admitted throughout his career
Speaker 1: that he sandbag interviews because he didn't want to go
Speaker 1: certain places. The problem is, Chador is not you. Dion
Speaker 1: Dion still to this day by many is considered the
Speaker 1: greatest cornerback that ever played pro football and also an
Speaker 1: incredibly electric punt and kick returner. Like, if you're that good,
Speaker 1: you can sandbag and get away with it. But if
Speaker 1: you're kind of borderline with trades that people debate about
Speaker 1: whether or not you're actually a legitimate NFL prospect, you
Speaker 1: better handle every intangible the.
Speaker 2: Best possible way you can.
Speaker 1: Like, if you're Lebron James, you can show up for
Speaker 1: a free agency meeting, you can down a bottle of
Speaker 1: wine and pontificate on random, weird stuff, and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You're Lebron James, We're gonna sign you no matter what.
Speaker 1: But if you're a mid tier free agent and you
Speaker 1: have to knock an interview out of the park in
Speaker 1: order to get a deal better, you better act right, man.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to.
Speaker 1: All of these interviews that apparently as Porter was outlining, Shador,
Speaker 1: some of them he just refused to show up in person.
Speaker 2: He would do it on zoom.
Speaker 1: I guess there was a comment that he said, if
Speaker 1: you don't want to change your culture, then don't get
Speaker 1: me or whatever. And he's just not good enough to
Speaker 1: not act right with the things that have to be
Speaker 1: dialed in for a prospect that has a lot of
Speaker 1: questions for a lot of people. But last year Big
Speaker 1: twelve Media Day, we're in Vegas for our first foray
Speaker 1: into Big twelve media experience because it's the first year
Speaker 1: that Utah was in the conference. We're sitting there on
Speaker 1: radio row and you know, we're doing our best to
Speaker 1: get all these interviews with coaches and players, and you know,
Speaker 1: in the background there's the dais and the podium where
Speaker 1: coaches would address the entire group, and suddenly, out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: the double doors opened with the entrance, and you know,
Speaker 1: the Big twelve did a really great job. They had
Speaker 1: these vegas like show girls at the entrance. They had
Speaker 1: these vegas like slot machine feel, and you didn't really
Speaker 1: pay much attention to who was walking in and walking
Speaker 1: out until the double doors open, and like six cameras
Speaker 1: are following Deon Sanders, Shaudor Sanders, and Shiloh, Deon's other son,
Speaker 1: and they make their way throughout the course of kind
Speaker 1: of the setup, and every school had like a helmet
Speaker 1: set up on one of these kind of situations where
Speaker 1: they were introducing everybody to each other. There was a
Speaker 1: setup I think they were doing it with a video
Speaker 1: game where they had all the uniforms on like dummies,
Speaker 1: and so you could walk through that and Shaudor and
Speaker 1: Shiloh every you know, three to five minutes or whatever,
Speaker 1: they would stop, look at their cameras and they do
Speaker 1: one of these dopey TikTok dances that all the kids
Speaker 1: do to post and you know, get engagement and get videos.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to sound like the old guy
Speaker 1: that you yelling about what the young kids do with
Speaker 1: this social media stuff where it's all about engagement instead
Speaker 1: of anything entertaining or anything of truth or of substance.
Speaker 1: It's all about eyeballs and it's all about entertainment or
Speaker 1: excuse me, it's all about engagement.
Speaker 2: That's all it's about.
Speaker 1: That's why you see people like the Paul Brothers doing
Speaker 1: ridiculously dumb things in order to get attention. And yes,
Speaker 1: all these people are making a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: good for you, go get your bag. I'm not a
Speaker 1: hater that way, but it was a circus at Big
Speaker 1: twelve Media Day, just to watch Dion and his two
Speaker 1: kids walk into the facility, let alone what they're doing
Speaker 1: throughout the course of the season or what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Throughout the course of the draft process.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't speak for any NFL general manager
Speaker 1: about how they feel about having to deal with a
Speaker 1: circus with a prospect that isn't considered to be a
Speaker 1: home run. Like That's what I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are missing. Even a lot of the analysts that
Speaker 1: thought Shador should be a first round pick or even
Speaker 1: higher than that, maybe a top ten pick, all talked
Speaker 1: about maybe the lack of size, or he's only played
Speaker 1: for his dad his entire career, or are there entitlement
Speaker 1: attitude issues. This was not Peyton Manning come out of Tennessee.
Speaker 1: This was not Andrew Luck coming out of Stanford. This
Speaker 1: was not a can't miss prospect. Should or had a
Speaker 1: lot of questions that a lot of very smart football
Speaker 1: people brought up. And because of that, if you add
Speaker 1: the circus to the questions, I'm not really surprised that
Speaker 1: we saw him slide. I'm surprised that we saw him
Speaker 1: slide to the fifth round. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people figured Cleveland with that first pick in the second
Speaker 1: round was sitting pretty or Pittsburgh who badly needs quarterback
Speaker 1: help throughout the course of their mid round picks. But
Speaker 1: to slide all the way down to the fifth round
Speaker 1: just has to indicate that it's not just the questions
Speaker 1: about who he is as a player. You do not
Speaker 1: want to back up quarterback who's also part of the circus.
Speaker 1: I mean, as a Jets fan and Tim Tebow and
Speaker 1: should are much different people and much different players. But
Speaker 1: as a Jets fan with Tebow was in New York,
Speaker 1: it was wild because Tim Tebow had this thing where
Speaker 1: he was the celebrity. He was the main act, even
Speaker 1: though he was not a good NFL quarterback. But he
Speaker 1: goes to Denver and actually they've got a nasty defense,
Speaker 1: a good run game.
Speaker 2: They were able to win some games to go to
Speaker 2: the playoffs.
Speaker 1: So all the Tebow supporters were like, se told you
Speaker 1: Jesus lives and all the tee bou haters are like, okay,
Speaker 1: just wait, it's not gonna work because he's not very
Speaker 1: good at it. Like it didn't change anybody's mind about
Speaker 1: who Tim Tebow was but from an organizational standpoint, that
Speaker 1: has to bring a lot of headaches. Johnny Manzel after
Speaker 1: he lost his starting job and became the celebrity backup,
Speaker 1: only caused issues. So when you do the math here
Speaker 1: a little bit, I don't think it's that much of
Speaker 1: a surprise that he did slide. I think it is
Speaker 1: a surprise that he's slid all the way to the
Speaker 1: fifth round. And now we'll see if he uses this
Speaker 1: as juice and motivation and fuel to prove a lot
Speaker 1: of people wrong. But from a local standpoint, a quiet
Speaker 1: NFL draft cycle, hopefully that is not anything that last consistently.
Speaker 2: Ila got Smitty Live in.
Speaker 1: Studio, Richard Smith, who spent forty years with Utah Jazz.
Speaker 1: We'll do some jazz basketball, some lottery, some playoffs. You're
Speaker 1: gonna do some NFL draft later on, do some RSL
Speaker 1: with Sam Junkwall, who scored a goal over the weekend.
Speaker 1: But one of our favorite spats lead off on this
Speaker 1: Monday afternoon, Matt Brown writes the college football, well college athletics,
Speaker 1: but football heavy newsletter extra points that we use on
Speaker 1: the show quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Matt, Happy money man.
Speaker 6: How you doing, Hey, I'm doing great. It's sunny, it's
Speaker 6: eighty degrees here in Chicago. There's no way I could
Speaker 6: possibly be upset, even if it means that I'm going
Speaker 6: to be writing a lot this week about legal stuff.
Speaker 2: I know you will, and we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: I've got to give you my hot Chicago take, though
Speaker 1: it's my favorite summer city in America, and then on
Speaker 1: either side of summer, I'm like, I gotta get out,
Speaker 1: i gotta do something else.
Speaker 6: I mean, I've lived here for post for a decade now,
Speaker 6: I don't think that's a hot take. Most people who
Speaker 6: live here think the same thing. From May until September.
Speaker 6: I think it's the best place in the entire country,
Speaker 6: and it's good enough that I still want to live here.
Speaker 6: But in January, and I've lived most of my life
Speaker 6: in the Midwest, I still want to walk in front
Speaker 6: of a truck by the inch. And it's not just
Speaker 6: because it's like six degrees, because it's it's less of
Speaker 6: that now, just you don't see the sun right. Even
Speaker 6: even every time I land in Utah step outside the plane,
Speaker 6: it's like, oh yeah, it turns out my body does
Speaker 6: need vitamin D to like not want to die. I
Speaker 6: understand why people are happier here. That's that's part of it.
Speaker 2: Now for sure.
Speaker 1: When the weather warms up, you're like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not depressed. I'm just cold, so now bad? I feel
Speaker 1: better now, I feel better now? All right, Matt, I'm
Speaker 1: just stealed thirty thousand foot viewpoint here.
Speaker 2: Like, where are we at with House.
Speaker 1: B NCAA, Like, what's the timeline and what's the latest?
Speaker 2: What should we know as of today, on this Monday,
Speaker 2: Well as.
Speaker 7: Of today, there's been a little bit of a wrinkle,
Speaker 7: right Like, over the last honestly six plus months, almost
Speaker 7: everybody in at the highest levels of college athletics and
Speaker 7: in the power conferences and conference offices have been operating
Speaker 7: on the assumption that.
Speaker 6: This is going to get approved essentially as is in
Speaker 6: early April, And all the revenue sharing and IL deals
Speaker 6: that have gone out to athletes in the last recruiting class,
Speaker 6: and a lot of like vendor hires, you know, have
Speaker 6: been pretty explicit like this, all of this is contingent
Speaker 6: upon the settlement being approved Evan. Last week, Judge Wilkins says,
Speaker 6: if you guys don't fix this roster limit issue that
Speaker 6: I've pointed out now multiple times, I'm going to blow
Speaker 6: up the settlement. So what we have now is that theifs,
Speaker 6: the plaintiffs Council, and the NCUBA and the power conference
Speaker 6: folks have to get together and have to make a decision.
Speaker 6: Do we want to blow up this settlement and take
Speaker 6: this thing to trial where if we lose, the liability
Speaker 6: for the NC DOUBLEA and major conferences is twelve billion dollars,
Speaker 6: which I believe would essentially liquidate the NC double A
Speaker 6: if you want to roll the dice on court, or
Speaker 6: do we want to grandfather in roster limits and figure
Speaker 6: out some sort of way to make restitution to the
Speaker 6: athletes that have been harmed by our refusal to grandfather
Speaker 6: in roster limit clauses. And on the surface, you would think, well,
Speaker 6: that's that's an easy decision. Of course, you should grandfather
Speaker 6: in the roster limits. Why are we gonna let the
Speaker 6: thirty first person on a track roster blow this whole
Speaker 6: thing up? But as we wrote today, it actually gets
Speaker 6: pretty messy because a lot of athletes got cut last year,
Speaker 6: and you might have some people that are on other
Speaker 6: schools now entirely or maybe out of the game, And
Speaker 6: do you let them back in do you allow a
Speaker 6: waiver to let some Olympic sport athletes potentially compete for
Speaker 6: two schools in one calendar year? You might have to
Speaker 6: if you're gonna want to comply with this ruling. We're
Speaker 6: gonna find out in a little over a week what
Speaker 6: they decide.
Speaker 2: To do a little over a week.
Speaker 1: So is that can we finally say we actually have
Speaker 1: like a hard deadline, like a drop dead date?
Speaker 2: Is that what we're expecting?
Speaker 6: Now I'm gonna have to go double check on my
Speaker 6: computer fit exact date. But when Wilkins letter last week
Speaker 6: was you got fourteen days figure this out? Yeah, we
Speaker 6: can finally you know, crap or get off the pot.
Speaker 6: I would, I would. I would still be pretty surprised
Speaker 6: if this settlement is not approved. But given the way
Speaker 6: the NCAA and Power Conference attorneys have kind of acted
Speaker 6: over the last couple of months, I can't say at
Speaker 6: zero percent.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's why I followed up, because you know every day,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're one of my first stops because we
Speaker 1: utilized a lot of the stuff you ride for the show.
Speaker 1: And then I try to see if Ross has anything
Speaker 1: the usual suspects, and it seems like all you guys
Speaker 1: that are plugged in are doing the best you can
Speaker 1: to nail down a date, but it seems to be fluid.
Speaker 1: Are you Is there any part of you that's surprised
Speaker 1: that we are sitting here now looking May right in
Speaker 1: the face in the next few days and we are
Speaker 1: still dealing with all this ambiguity.
Speaker 6: I'm a little surprised, and I probably shouldn't be. You know,
Speaker 6: one thing that was just reiterated to me by so
Speaker 6: many athletic directors oh for February and March, whether they
Speaker 6: were at big schools or small schools, was we don't
Speaker 6: know what's going on right. We are intellect actually aware
Speaker 6: of this settlement. Charlie Baker sent him out a couple
Speaker 6: of messages, But honestly, we hear about it from you
Speaker 6: or from Ross or from the Coleus often before we
Speaker 6: do anybody in Indianapolis. And that's just because all of
Speaker 6: this is being done by a handful of of attorneys,
Speaker 6: some of who moved you are outside council, and I
Speaker 6: think it was pretty clear that the folks that were
Speaker 6: doing the negotiating over the house settlement were not plugged
Speaker 6: in and didn't really care all that much about softball
Speaker 6: players or soccer players or how any of this stuff
Speaker 6: might affect Utah Valley University. And it turns out the
Speaker 6: judge has held a little bit differently about that. So
Speaker 6: if you were going to limit your decision making and
Speaker 6: your inputs to this very small group of people and
Speaker 6: this very small class of athletes, yeah, there are a
Speaker 6: lot of problems here that I think could have been
Speaker 6: addressed a couple of months ago and are not. That's
Speaker 6: sort of the story of the NCAA though.
Speaker 1: For college football fans college but I mean fans of
Speaker 1: collegian athletics, but mainly you knowllege football fans. Uh in
Speaker 1: college basketball too, both of the revenue generators have been
Speaker 1: adversely affected. What would you say as far as what's
Speaker 1: realistic to hope and expect once this is across the line,
Speaker 1: Like on the scale of there will still be a
Speaker 1: ton of chaos on one end of the spectrum, and
Speaker 1: this will finally bring guidelines and guardrails on the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum that will clean this stuff up.
Speaker 1: What's realistic to expect pretty quickly after this is across
Speaker 1: the line?
Speaker 6: I think I think if and when this is this
Speaker 6: is settled. What I would tell for what I would
Speaker 6: tell fans is now you can have some measure of
Speaker 6: structure for the next academic year. And honestly, that's about
Speaker 6: all I would say. The folks from at Indianapolis and
Speaker 6: at the Power Conferences are really hoping that this settlement
Speaker 6: would create something of a de facto CBA that would
Speaker 6: provide cost certainty and structure over the next over the
Speaker 6: next decade, and protection from additional litigation. At this point,
Speaker 6: I think there's no chance of that happening. As soon
Speaker 6: as this is done and dusted, there there will be
Speaker 6: three other lawsuits ready to go to challenge this on
Speaker 6: titleline consideration to challenge this from the athletes that opted
Speaker 6: out and still want another another crack at the antitrust tonata,
Speaker 6: and the second that Deloitte or whoever ends up kind
Speaker 6: of functioning as this intermediary clearing house tries to invalidate
Speaker 6: a Bagman deal, They're going to be in federal court
Speaker 6: two weeks later, so that going there's gonna be some stability,
Speaker 6: just because you know, millions of dollars of contracts have
Speaker 6: been sent out that are contingent upon this thing happening.
Speaker 6: In July. But I can't tell you what's going to
Speaker 6: happen in twenty twenty seven. Your athletic director and your
Speaker 6: football coach can't tell you. And I think anybody that
Speaker 6: says they absolutely can is selling you something.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's move over here because I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Matt, maybe you've been coming on the
Speaker 1: show for four or five years. And after nil and
Speaker 1: transferport will became a reality, and it was clear that
Speaker 1: administrators and leaders had failed everybody because they're there wasn't
Speaker 1: anything that was prepared as far as okay, now, now
Speaker 1: we know that this is the reality, but here's how
Speaker 1: it's going to work. Here are the mechanisms, okay, And
Speaker 1: none of that was in place, which has led to
Speaker 1: a ton of chaos and sports that we all love.
Speaker 1: And I've asked you at different stops whether or not
Speaker 1: we are at some point going to move into a
Speaker 1: reality of college athletics looking very much like professional athletics,
Speaker 1: and the players will be able to unionize and they
Speaker 1: will be able to collectively bargain with whatever the governing
Speaker 1: body looks like.
Speaker 2: And where will there be a commissioner?
Speaker 1: Will college football look like the NFL will college basketball
Speaker 1: look like the NBA? And you know, a smart guy
Speaker 1: like you has been able to help us understand based
Speaker 1: off of you know, the Trump administration and changes they're
Speaker 1: going to make. How you know things have changed in
Speaker 1: that direction. Where where are we at now as far
Speaker 1: as your belief of what I know? You just said
Speaker 1: you don't know what twenty twenty seven is going to
Speaker 1: look like. But my opinion, Matt, is the only thing
Speaker 1: that will settle most of the the issues that are
Speaker 1: causing the chaos is a pro model. I still believe
Speaker 1: that to be true. Do you think at some point
Speaker 1: we are going to see that?
Speaker 2: Whenever?
Speaker 6: That is what my opinion on this I think is
Speaker 6: pretty different from most of my national reporter colleagues, and
Speaker 6: they may very well be right. Maybe this is me
Speaker 6: being you know, too much of a chicken little or something,
Speaker 6: but I legitimately think there is a better than fifty
Speaker 6: percent chance that this Congress passes some sort of college
Speaker 6: sports bill. Now that bill may be something that every
Speaker 6: single economist and agent and lawyer on Twitter absolutely hates.
Speaker 6: It might be a bill that I really don't like,
Speaker 6: but I think I think there is more momentum and
Speaker 6: a political coalition that's that's more equipped to make that
Speaker 6: happen than there has been over the past couple of years.
Speaker 6: And my professional opinion, like the dry Little Secret, is
Speaker 6: no matter whether you want a clusive bargaining agreement and
Speaker 6: and and athletes as employees and a union and that
Speaker 6: kind of structure, or whether you want to try to
Speaker 6: roll this thing back to nineteen ninety seven and give
Speaker 6: the schools a lot more empowerment to enforce amateurism rules,
Speaker 6: either of those solutions is going to require Congress, because
Speaker 6: right now the NC double A is not empowered to
Speaker 6: make or enforce virtually any kind of rule without the
Speaker 6: forts system ruling and shipping away at it. So I
Speaker 6: don't look at that and necessarily think that was lack
Speaker 6: of administrator leadership. The lack of administrator leadership was probably
Speaker 6: more in two thousand and seven than in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: But you could come up with the best plan in
Speaker 6: the world. I can sit out here and I can
Speaker 6: write a three thousand word compromise that a lot of
Speaker 6: people would agree with tomorrow, and a second it's enforced,
Speaker 6: it's going to get smacked down on anti trust grounds.
Speaker 6: I personally think that there are there are sixty votes
Speaker 6: in the US Senate to pass something that says, Okay,
Speaker 6: we're going to give the nc DOUBLEA a limited and
Speaker 6: conditional antitrust exemption to enforce or some of these rules,
Speaker 6: and we're gonna say that college football players cannot be employees,
Speaker 6: and that designation only is true if the NCAA commits
Speaker 6: to X, Y Z, and we can reassess it every
Speaker 6: two or three years. And it's gonna make it's gonna
Speaker 6: make a lot of trial lawyers pretty angry. But that
Speaker 6: might be the most reasonable, the easiest path here, because
Speaker 6: I mean, you know this even better than I do locally, Right,
Speaker 6: there's a lot of states that don't allow or don't
Speaker 6: want collective bargaining for public employees. And if you're in
Speaker 6: a place where you're not gonna let the firefighters and
Speaker 6: the cops and the teachers do it, you're not gonna
Speaker 6: let middle linebackers do it either.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's operate off the hypothetical that what you
Speaker 1: just outlined will be the direction. Do you agree with
Speaker 1: the direction? Is that what you would like to see
Speaker 1: happen for the sport? Do you think that's the right move?
Speaker 1: Because I maintain mad that I and I will stay
Speaker 1: on the hill where I do think the right move
Speaker 1: is the pro model. I mean, if players sign contract
Speaker 1: actually at least they're on campus for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: if there is a salary cap, and I'm using professional terms,
Speaker 1: then maybe it does even the playing.
Speaker 2: Field a little bit.
Speaker 1: And of course there's always money paid into various ways,
Speaker 1: but that's not new.
Speaker 2: That's been going on forever.
Speaker 1: So if if there is a salary structure, a salary cap,
Speaker 1: and contracts where players are on campus for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, I believe that to be the right route.
Speaker 1: If the congressional bill that you're talking about is the route,
Speaker 1: do you think that will go a long way to
Speaker 1: alleviate some of the issues that we always talk about.
Speaker 6: I think the bill that's coming is something that's going
Speaker 6: to be written by Ted Cruz, and I admit I
Speaker 6: am generally not the kind of person who's going to
Speaker 6: go and say with my full chest, I love this
Speaker 6: bill that Ted Cruz wrote, or that that Senator Lee
Speaker 6: is also going to support that. I'm sure we agree
Speaker 6: on something. It's a it's probably a smaller list and
Speaker 6: my understanding because I've heard about drafts of this of
Speaker 6: this bill is kind of circulated around and is not.
Speaker 6: It's not really a secret anymore. It wouldn't look like
Speaker 6: that very much like it wouldn't move to that professional
Speaker 6: model like now in my opinion, which I know makes
Speaker 6: for lousy sports radio. Is I think it depends on
Speaker 6: the kind of athlete you're talking about. Like, do I
Speaker 6: think that professionalization and employment status and contracts of track
Speaker 6: athletes and Division one college athletics makes sense? I'd say
Speaker 6: probably not. It's very rare that I run into somebody
Speaker 6: who wants that, and and that model will probably lead
Speaker 6: to worse outcomes than what we have right now. Do
Speaker 6: I think that Big twelve football players and Big twelve
Speaker 6: basketball players should be employees and have a union and
Speaker 6: head collectively bargain. I do, But I also am am,
Speaker 6: I can't. I don't say that with like deep authoritative absolutely,
Speaker 6: because I it's one thing to say we want collective
Speaker 6: bargaining when a union doesn't exist. It's another thing to
Speaker 6: have somebody on the other side of that table to
Speaker 6: do that negotiating. And that doesn't exist right now, and
Speaker 6: if it's created by management by Congress. By Jim Cabay,
Speaker 6: at athletes dot Org out of kind of siat. I
Speaker 6: think it's going to get its butt kicked for the
Speaker 6: first several years, which is often what happened to athlete unions.
Speaker 6: So then it's like, Okay, do I well this do
Speaker 6: I want something that will make my life easier as
Speaker 6: a reporter, my life easier as a fan, and will
Speaker 6: probably benefit my personal fandom. I went to Ohio State.
Speaker 6: I root for the bluest of the blue blood football
Speaker 6: programs like it would probably benefit me, and hope that
Speaker 6: it would benefit athletes in twelve years, even if it
Speaker 6: sucks for people in the short term that's harder. I
Speaker 6: as not a cop out, honest to God, Like, I
Speaker 6: don't think there's a I just don't think there's an
Speaker 6: easy answer out there. If there is, we probably would
Speaker 6: have done it by now.
Speaker 1: So for college football and college basketball fans that cannot
Speaker 1: stand the fact that we no longer get to know
Speaker 1: these kids, we no longer get to you know, the
Speaker 1: great Rick mcjari's teams always had the Keith van Horns
Speaker 1: and the Andre Millers and the Britton Johnson's that stayed
Speaker 1: until they were juniors and seniors. And you and I
Speaker 1: have talked about the dynamic of the best Utah football
Speaker 1: teams were comprised of kids a coach with recruited that
Speaker 1: maybe weren't all that highly thought of and then developed
Speaker 1: into juniors and seniors and NFL players and those who
Speaker 1: have been the best Utah football and basketball rosters. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty much the same thing with Breagham young.
Speaker 1: So fans that cannot stand the fact that they're losing
Speaker 1: their favorite players every year, would you just say that
Speaker 1: you better get used to it, because that's how it's
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 6: Probably unless the Byus and Utah's of the world begin
Speaker 6: to recruit a very different kind of person and begin
Speaker 6: to really go out of their way to offer value
Speaker 6: independent of just money. And a lot of programs like
Speaker 6: to talk about, hey we want to be transformational, we
Speaker 6: don't want to be transactional like and I believe in
Speaker 6: their heart they mean that, but it's hard to get
Speaker 6: a twenty year old to buy into it when you
Speaker 6: don't under a twenty years Like if we legal back
Speaker 6: at time and talk to our twenty year old selves
Speaker 6: and look at various schools, I mean like, hey, well
Speaker 6: if you going to this school, look how much money
Speaker 6: their forty year old alumni make and look how this
Speaker 6: is connected to US world and news report and look
Speaker 6: at it. All these things that will pay off in
Speaker 6: your thirties. We wouldn't care. We would care about the
Speaker 6: amount of money that's available right now, playing time, maybe
Speaker 6: availability of cute girls, and maybe proximity to mom and dad, right.
Speaker 6: And I know that schools try to do this. I
Speaker 6: know that both BYU and Utah don't recruit every single
Speaker 6: five star guy because you need somebody who's going to
Speaker 6: be comfortable in Utah, somebody who's going to be successful
Speaker 6: in this kind of environment. Probably not somebody who wants
Speaker 6: to be on every single commercial. But I think it
Speaker 6: will be very difficult in the foreseeable future to keep
Speaker 6: eighty five percent of the kids that you sign as
Speaker 6: high schoolers, or eighty percent of them on your team
Speaker 6: moving forward. It's it's difficult to look somebody in the
Speaker 6: eye and say, no, you shouldn't go accept that eight
Speaker 6: hundred thousand dollars check at Arkansas.
Speaker 1: That's hard, Yeah, for sure. And you know one more
Speaker 1: thing here than I do. I would by you questioned,
Speaker 1: because we were talking about this earlier in the show,
Speaker 1: Like the dynamic of NIL. I don't think is a
Speaker 1: bad I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't
Speaker 1: think in theory. I think it's a positive thing. NIL itself,
Speaker 1: to me, isn't the problem, right, It's the way it's administered.
Speaker 2: It's the lack of guidelines and guardrails.
Speaker 1: So you know, ultimately to your point, I would never
Speaker 1: have the nerve to tell anybody to turn out a
Speaker 1: bag like we're all trying to make our way through
Speaker 1: the world. And if you could parlay your newsletter into
Speaker 1: ten times what you're making right now, then go do it.
Speaker 2: Whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1: If I had a different offer to do the show
Speaker 1: in a different market for five times my salary, I
Speaker 1: want to go be able to do that. So I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily begrudge any young athlete for going to get
Speaker 1: their money at all. But is there any sort of
Speaker 1: way that we haven't necessarily discussed to make sure that
Speaker 1: those decisions.
Speaker 2: And I know they've tried to close the portal.
Speaker 1: Here and and and the calendar is not as wide
Speaker 1: open as it used to be, But outside of signing
Speaker 1: a contract, I just don't see any other way of
Speaker 1: keeping these kids on campus if they can I mean,
Speaker 1: we've had a couple of transfer portal losses for the
Speaker 1: Utes just over the past couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: You know, Zach William's going to US seed and there's.
Speaker 1: All this debate online about you know, there's the incestuous
Speaker 1: nature between the Utah and BYU coaching staff.
Speaker 2: Right, and so are you poaching on Twitter?
Speaker 6: Right? Right?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're poaching our player and like you can't
Speaker 1: call it poaching because it's allowed.
Speaker 2: It's not against the rules. Like nobody is doing anything
Speaker 2: to fari us here.
Speaker 1: So is there a way, uh to you know, because
Speaker 1: again to your point, go get your back.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I'm not saying don't.
Speaker 1: But is there a way to at least keep these
Speaker 1: kids on campus for a couple of years. That's a
Speaker 1: good situation for them and the institution.
Speaker 6: So I think there's there's a couple of things. If
Speaker 6: I can wave a magic wand right, because we actually
Speaker 6: we do have contracts, right, Like I in addition to
Speaker 6: running a newsletter, I have a software product that that
Speaker 6: collects coach and administrator and vendor contracts and I sell
Speaker 6: that to newsrooms and agencies and other people. And there
Speaker 6: are contracts between schools and athletes that are in there.
Speaker 6: And we're seeing this right now with Arkansas about Arkansas's
Speaker 6: ability to recoup some of that buyout money from you know,
Speaker 6: from from Nico's little brother, and and there's there's a
Speaker 6: good legal case to be had that those those posits
Speaker 6: are not enforceable. So then even a contract doesn't necessarily help,
Speaker 6: Like it kind of depends on what some judges and
Speaker 6: lawyers end up saying. One policy that does not get
Speaker 6: discussed very much federally that I think would meaningfully help,
Speaker 6: and this is something that I think lawmakers could do,
Speaker 6: even in Utah, is to have actual, aggressive and meaningful
Speaker 6: agent licensing metrics and a law enforcement body or some
Speaker 6: kind of enforcement body, maybe it's the Utah State Bar
Speaker 6: maybe it's the FTC maybe I don't know, and anybody
Speaker 6: short of the Highway Police that basically requires you, if
Speaker 6: you're going to represent an athlete in these kind of deals,
Speaker 6: to pass some kind of baseline competence and ethics exam,
Speaker 6: just like we do for lawyers. If I want to
Speaker 6: practice law on the state of Utah, I have to
Speaker 6: be barred in this in the state. I'm on a
Speaker 6: registry and if I act on ethically, I can lose
Speaker 6: my license and not continue to practice law. There's and
Speaker 6: and and for professional athletes in the NBA, in the
Speaker 6: NFL and NHL, their agencies have created these kind of benchmarks.
Speaker 6: To the extent that state laws or federal laws exist
Speaker 6: governing sports agents, they're almost uniformly not enforced. And I
Speaker 6: think a lot of the problems legitimately in college athletics
Speaker 6: roster management come from unqualified, unscrupulous and and you know,
Speaker 6: agent with with poor ethics. And if there were meaningful
Speaker 6: professional consequences to the guys that are trying to you know,
Speaker 6: push people into the portal who aren't in there right
Speaker 6: now so they could collect twenty percent, I think that's
Speaker 6: going to drop some of this stuff down, because it's
Speaker 6: not the people at CAA and Rock Nation and Wassermen
Speaker 6: that are escalating what we're seeing so much, particularly in
Speaker 6: college basketball.
Speaker 1: All Right, before I say you lose, you know, there's
Speaker 1: continues to be I think it's a fascinating story. You know,
Speaker 1: for years and years and years, as soon as the
Speaker 1: ability to pay players became a reality and we kind
Speaker 1: of understood what NIL was, I did a show the
Speaker 1: next ask said This is great news for BYU.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: If they want to get in the game, if they
Speaker 1: want to get involved, if they want to start really
Speaker 1: opening up their checkbooks. And I've got to be careful
Speaker 1: here because people get mad. I'm not saying the church.
Speaker 1: I'm saying a lot of the alums that have gone
Speaker 1: on to start MLMs, whether they're.
Speaker 2: Legal or not, they make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And you know these CEOs of companies, Silicon Slopes and such,
Speaker 1: and the number I've been told Matt is BYU currently
Speaker 1: has nine seven figure donors. And the irony is a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of the a lot of the money spent,
Speaker 1: a lot of the resources spent is being spent on
Speaker 1: the basketball program. And I wonder how this lands with Collatate.
Speaker 1: But since you and I last spoke, the reports are
Speaker 1: aj the bans is being paid seven million dollars for
Speaker 1: five months in basketball.
Speaker 2: You reference that we do have contracts.
Speaker 1: Well, according to Jeff Goodman, Robert Wright, the Baylor freshman,
Speaker 1: signed a contract with Baylor for a million. BYU offered
Speaker 1: three and he said, okay, I'm gone. Richie Saunders is
Speaker 1: coming back. Reported seven figure deal for Richie. When you
Speaker 1: do the math based off the reporting BYU Basketball has
Speaker 1: a roster that's going to cost whoever's writing checks for
Speaker 1: the Royal Blue Collective about thirteen to fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: I wonder what you make of you know, Travis Hanson
Speaker 1: who played at BYU and others. Here's what Travis had
Speaker 1: to say said, quote, there's this narrative that we outbid people.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 1: We outlove them, We outdeveloped them, and we outpurposed them.
Speaker 1: And it just makes me want to throw up in
Speaker 1: my mouth because don't tell me I'm not seeing what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing. I just wonder why they can't, because look,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should run from it like you
Speaker 1: should be doing victory laps. That you have enough donors
Speaker 1: and you have enough economic power to attract players and
Speaker 1: give Kevin Young a roster the most people believe is
Speaker 1: a top five roster in college basketball next year. Why
Speaker 1: don't they just say the thing that's actually happening.
Speaker 6: You know, boy, that is a really good question. And
Speaker 6: I would love to have that conversation, even if it
Speaker 6: has to be off the record with some folks that
Speaker 6: have BYU dot edu email addresses. And I say this
Speaker 6: not to point a finger at BYU. I think some
Speaker 6: of that approach is almost universal everywhere in college athletics.
Speaker 6: I remember when I was at the National Championship game
Speaker 6: in football and Ohio State one and the castetti had fallen,
Speaker 6: and I'm standing next to Ross new York, who's Ohio
Speaker 6: State's athletic director, and I wrote a story about this.
Speaker 6: One of the first things he told me was we
Speaker 6: did not have the highest pay role in college football,
Speaker 6: which I actually believe, and I would as I would
Speaker 6: talk to agents on the football side, they would say, like,
Speaker 6: Ohio State was very competitive, but they're usually not the
Speaker 6: highest bidder. And I don't know anybody that says, hell, yeah,
Speaker 6: we're the highest bidder. Absolutely, we're going to go drop
Speaker 6: the most money other than Texas, A and M, and
Speaker 6: we kind of know they kind of know how that happens.
Speaker 6: I think personally part of the issue. And when I'm
Speaker 6: about to say here is not me being critical. This
Speaker 6: is just my what what I have perceived and seen through,
Speaker 6: you know, having lived most of my life as a
Speaker 6: latter day saying the BYU and the church as an
Speaker 6: extension of that, do not really drop the bag on anybody.
Speaker 7: If you're going to go.
Speaker 9: If you're being a professor, if you're going to be
Speaker 9: a professor of YU or a software developer or somebody else,
Speaker 9: you're usually not paid top of market. And part of
Speaker 9: that is because like, well, don't you want to come
Speaker 9: work here and be in provo and then be in
Speaker 9: the heart of everything. And for some people, they absolutely do,
Speaker 9: and that drops you know, that that's drops the labor price.
Speaker 6: Down a little bit. The you know, we all know
Speaker 6: that the folks that are doing a ton of work
Speaker 6: at an ecclesiastical level are unpaid. Like there is a
Speaker 6: a huge culture of I'm not doing this for the money,
Speaker 6: I think anywhere at a church affiliated institution, And I
Speaker 6: am not criticizing that. In many ways, I think that's
Speaker 6: very noble. But if that is true, and you're anybody
Speaker 6: working within an LDS enterprise, and then you look out
Speaker 6: and then you see a donor, you know, not an
Speaker 6: LDS employee, but you know a donor you suddenly paying
Speaker 6: top dollar for basketball I and and that, and that's
Speaker 6: kind of what's going out there in the marketplace. I
Speaker 6: can see how that might revi you the wrong way.
Speaker 6: I again, not a criticism, but I feel like I
Speaker 6: get mixed messages from listening to people at CEES or
Speaker 6: or are really close to the program about like, we
Speaker 6: don't want to be the high bidder. We want to
Speaker 6: be a value centered program. We want to do X,
Speaker 6: Y or Z versus the numbers that can get reports
Speaker 6: bi secular basketball media. And I don't know if there
Speaker 6: is a way you can square the circle with we
Speaker 6: want to do things the BYU way, however you define that,
Speaker 6: and on what's happening now. I don't blame anybody for going.
Speaker 6: I don't know if this makes sense, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting time out this way, and that's a
Speaker 1: good team.
Speaker 2: Kevin has done a good job.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, yeah, Like I said, I have
Speaker 1: no yeah, for sure, and I have no issues with
Speaker 1: you doing what you have to do within the landscape
Speaker 1: of what's allowed to acquire talent. Just don't tell me
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing what I'm seeing. It's very flood the zone,
Speaker 1: muddy the water, Steve Bannon like. But anyway, I've kept
Speaker 1: you too long, Matt. Where can people go get the work?
Speaker 6: You bet you can find my work which covers off
Speaker 6: the field stories in the college athletics industry at extra
Speaker 6: Points MB dot com. Working on some other original reporting
Speaker 6: and some stuff related to video games, which I know
Speaker 6: is the most consumers would rather hear you talk about
Speaker 6: than antitrust law. So you can find all of that
Speaker 6: at extra Points MB.
Speaker 2: Enjoy that, Chicago Sunshine Man, thanks for the time.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, yeah, thank you. I appreciate you all right.
Speaker 1: Matt Brown stops by today courtesy of our good friends
Speaker 1: at IFA Country Stores. As the weather gets warmer, you
Speaker 1: might want to start looking and thinking about your lawn
Speaker 1: care and he drive to the basket begins with the
Speaker 1: first step on the court.
Speaker 2: That's the ultimate power move.
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Speaker 2: The neighbors will be green with envy.
Speaker 1: You can shop IFA online at IFA dot co Oper
Speaker 1: stop by one of their neighborhood stores today.
Speaker 5: He's the Pride of Norwich, Connecticut and an adopted son
Speaker 5: of Salt Lake City. After forty years with the Utah Jazz,
Speaker 5: there's no one better to talk some hoops. Richard Smitty
Speaker 5: Smith is back on the drive on ESPN seven hundred.
Speaker 1: Get back to some NFL draft takeaways. Good stuff with
Speaker 1: Matt Brown today. Always a challenging interview or guy that
Speaker 1: is that bright and talks that fast, So so many
Speaker 1: interesting storylines around the world of college athletics right now.
Speaker 1: Matt does a great job writing Extra Points, a newsletter
Speaker 1: that is a daily stop for me. But live in
Speaker 1: studio our guy who's getting ready to take a trip
Speaker 1: that is making me very, very jealous. He's heading down south.
Speaker 1: He spent some time with their friends at Black Desert.
Speaker 1: Richard Smitty Smith's SMITTI Happy Monday, sir, How are.
Speaker 8: You, Spence? Were doing great?
Speaker 10: I'm excited to h to be going down to Ivans
Speaker 10: or Saint George and see the Black Desert and first
Speaker 10: time ever I'll be in an LPGA tournament, So to
Speaker 10: see the best women golfers in the world tear it
Speaker 10: up in person and see how precise they are. You know,
Speaker 10: when I watch them on TV, they just they're always
Speaker 10: in control, They got everything lined up their hands and
Speaker 10: show they you know, they're just so good at that,
Speaker 10: you know, and so excited to see that in person
Speaker 10: and see what it looks like.
Speaker 1: Good field too, right, I was seaking that they have
Speaker 1: like seven of the top ten golfers on the Lpgah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I think the I think the tournament if
Speaker 10: I understand it correctly, and and I don't know this
Speaker 10: for sure, but my understanding is that they've they've arranged
Speaker 10: with whoever they could get from the UH from the
Speaker 10: first major of the year last week in Texas UH
Speaker 10: to come up to this tournament and are flying them
Speaker 10: all up in private jets and said, hey, you come
Speaker 10: to the tournament.
Speaker 8: We got you covered. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 10: You know, we'll get you from A to B and
Speaker 10: make sure you're all situated at the at the resort,
Speaker 10: and and and and for professional golfers at any level,
Speaker 10: you know, anything you can do to to entice them,
Speaker 10: you know, to be part of your thing is you know,
Speaker 10: is a big deal. And so that's UH, that's exciting
Speaker 10: for the for the organizers.
Speaker 1: We had Patrick mannon on last week and I kindly
Speaker 1: offered UH to allow the plane. No, I kindly offered
Speaker 1: to allow me to be picked up by a private
Speaker 1: jet to go play at Black Desert, and he plightly declined,
Speaker 1: well really, yeah, I was surprised.
Speaker 10: Well, he probably declined because he thought, well, Spence is
Speaker 10: just pulling my leg. He's got his own private plane.
Speaker 10: He's just trying to say.
Speaker 1: Time, let alone a private plane at this port, Smittie.
Speaker 1: But I'm jealous, man. You'll have a good time, all right.
Speaker 1: I want to start with a non NBA story. Shador
Speaker 1: Sanders slides to the fifth round of the NFL Draft.
Speaker 1: And you're a guy that for forty years, throughout the
Speaker 1: course of your time with the Jazz, you were in
Speaker 1: a lot of war rooms. He worked with Franken Scott
Speaker 1: and then Kevin O'Connor and Dennis Lindsay, what is the
Speaker 1: process like? Because clearly, and look who knows we were
Speaker 1: talking about this during the break. The NFL draft media
Speaker 1: cover just full of grifters. It's full of people that
Speaker 1: claim to know what they're talking about, and the same grifters.
Speaker 1: So on Wednesday, I'm listening to all these draft experts
Speaker 1: and it's Shador is three to the Giants.
Speaker 2: It's twenty one of the Steelers.
Speaker 1: But he's not fallen out of the first round, and
Speaker 1: if he does, the Browns are right there in the second.
Speaker 2: Nobody said fifth round.
Speaker 1: And the same grifters today are saying, well, my intel
Speaker 1: over the weekend said well, this is why he slid this,
Speaker 1: that would I don't know what to believe exactly, but
Speaker 1: throughout the course of analyzing these young prospects the interview process,
Speaker 1: what what what's your take when you see this precipitous
Speaker 1: slide for a player that a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Thought would go very early on.
Speaker 10: Well, that's the thing that that that's really fascinating to
Speaker 10: me about the whole Shoodo Sanders thing. And I'm just
Speaker 10: a casual NFL fan. I follow it, you know, like
Speaker 10: anybody else sitting up in row forty five, you know,
Speaker 10: on the on the end zone, you know, at games,
Speaker 10: but they you know, all the stuff leading up to it,
Speaker 10: right was was him going in the top ten, you know,
Speaker 10: maybe he gets to the mid first round or something,
Speaker 10: but he's one of the top quarterback prospects. And then
Speaker 10: to fall that far from what everybody was saying, especially
Speaker 10: your guy mel Kiper, you know, was one of the
Speaker 10: loudest voices in the room about it. And that was
Speaker 10: a very interesting exchange they had towards the end of
Speaker 10: the get with the panel that he was with trying
Speaker 10: to defend himself and and and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 10: And that's what happens when you stick your neck out
Speaker 10: like that, you know, and make predictions that that you
Speaker 10: you know, you really don't quite know what's going to happen.
Speaker 10: But but for a guy like Sanders to slide all
Speaker 10: the way to the fifth, fifth round from what he
Speaker 10: did in college and also what everybody was saying ahead
Speaker 10: of the draft was going to happen regarding him, it's
Speaker 10: fascinating to me because that says to me, Spence, having
Speaker 10: having worked in these kind of environments over the years,
Speaker 10: there's other things behind the scenes that no one's talking about,
Speaker 10: whether they know them or they're not aware of what
Speaker 10: they are, and they can't talk about them simply because
Speaker 10: of lack of information or knowledge. But other things, whether
Speaker 10: it's you know this thing about you know that that
Speaker 10: he called half the teams ahead of time and said,
Speaker 10: don't don't select me. He did the the Eli Manning
Speaker 10: thing that everybody forgets about, you know, way back when
Speaker 10: when Eli Manning and his dad said, hey, we know
Speaker 10: we're not going to go to San Diego, so don't
Speaker 10: you know or you got to trade them or something,
Speaker 10: you know, now, how it all fell out or the
Speaker 10: John Elway thing and all that kind of stuff way
Speaker 10: back in the day. That's not unprecedented, that happening. But
Speaker 10: if you do that, then the front offices you're talking to,
Speaker 10: the organizations you're talking to, you know, they're sitting in
Speaker 10: their rooms and they're going, Hey, the guy called us
Speaker 10: and he doesn't want to play here. Do we like
Speaker 10: him enough that you know, we don't care about that,
Speaker 10: because this is the process and we're responsible for our
Speaker 10: own organization and to make it better or is it
Speaker 10: a borderline thing where it's just not worth it and
Speaker 10: we just go to Plan B whatever. And that's why
Speaker 10: he kept sliding, sliding, sliding, And then you have the
Speaker 10: issue with you know, position in football. Obviously, there's so
Speaker 10: many different positions. We get to our pick in the
Speaker 10: third round. Yeah, we like shud or Sanders, but we
Speaker 10: really need a middle linebacker, and the kid from Ohio
Speaker 10: State still there, we got to take him. And so
Speaker 10: if you went over everybody's boards and draftless, you'd probably
Speaker 10: see teams that would say, oh, yeah, we like standers,
Speaker 10: but we had four other positions that we had to
Speaker 10: you know, take care of first before we got to
Speaker 10: that point. And so there's a lot of those those
Speaker 10: kind of a moving parts that are involved, but something
Speaker 10: as precipitous is supposed to be in the first half
Speaker 10: of the first round to the fifth round is really
Speaker 10: saying something about people don't like his act off the court,
Speaker 10: they don't off the field, they don't like, you know,
Speaker 10: all the social media stuff. They don't like the circus
Speaker 10: that surrounds him. He's not really that good to have
Speaker 10: to deal with that stuff. I don't know. It's just
Speaker 10: there's something in that regard that I think is fascinating
Speaker 10: because at some point it'll start leaking out where teams
Speaker 10: will say, yeah, well, you know, I talked to the
Speaker 10: other four of my colleagues around the league, and we
Speaker 10: all said, why are dealing with that thing? You know,
Speaker 10: because that's not worth it, you know, you know, whatever
Speaker 10: it is. And so that that, to me is the
Speaker 10: fascinating part. Now, the flip of it to me was
Speaker 10: when they showed him being selected by the Browns, and
Speaker 10: you know, you would have thought he just was the
Speaker 10: first first pick of the draft the way he reacted right,
Speaker 10: the dancing and doing the stuff, and they didn't show
Speaker 10: any any kind of you know, sulking or head down
Speaker 10: or any of that kind of stuff. So you know,
Speaker 10: if if that's the real reaction or if that's just
Speaker 10: for for you know, made for TV, as we say,
Speaker 10: or or what have you. But they were smart and
Speaker 10: you know and saying, hey, when this happens, dude, whenever
Speaker 10: it is, you know, you can't be looking like that
Speaker 10: guy over in the corner who just broke up with
Speaker 10: his girlfriend.
Speaker 8: You gotta you gotta make it look good. Yeah, I
Speaker 8: got it. I got it.
Speaker 10: And it seems like he's probably savvy enough to understand
Speaker 10: that and handle it that way.
Speaker 1: You referenced the reports that Shador and his reps, whether
Speaker 1: it was Dion or what have you, contacting certain teams
Speaker 1: and saying don't draft him, We're not gonna come. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want to play for you. Over the years that
Speaker 1: you spent with the Utah Jazz. You know, we were
Speaker 1: talking off air a little bit. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of public reports that people know about the Derek Harper's
Speaker 1: of the world, the Ronnie Seycheles of the world. Your
Speaker 1: former boss, Dennis Lindsay went on a podcast last year
Speaker 1: and actually talked to Dennis about this because I heard it,
Speaker 1: and he said during the height of the Mitchell Gobert
Speaker 1: Conley group, he had an opportunity to make a trade
Speaker 1: for what he characterized as a star player, and the
Speaker 1: agent called Dennis and said, don't do it.
Speaker 2: He's not coming.
Speaker 1: So you know, whether it was through the draft or
Speaker 1: whether it was via free agency or trades over the years,
Speaker 1: whether it was Scotty and Frank or Kevin O'Connor or
Speaker 1: Dennis lindsay, when you guys received intel that my guy's
Speaker 1: not coming, doesn't want to play. If you don't draft him,
Speaker 1: don't trade for him, don't sign him, how'd you handle it?
Speaker 10: Well, it's always a difficult thing because, first of all,
Speaker 10: your responsibility, first and foremost is to the organization, to
Speaker 10: your ownership group, and obviously to your fans to do
Speaker 10: the best you can to put the best product out
Speaker 10: on the floor. And so you have to balance. You know,
Speaker 10: what you think is going to make sense for your group,
Speaker 10: and you know what the attitude approach, the the overall
Speaker 10: mindset of the individual is who you're going to try
Speaker 10: and add to the group. You know, nobody wants to
Speaker 10: deal with a male content. Nobody wants to deal with
Speaker 10: somebody who you have to talk them into you know,
Speaker 10: playing nice with the other kids in the room, like
Speaker 10: it's you know, nobody wants to have to do that.
Speaker 10: Sometimes you have to do that. And I always call
Speaker 10: that the uh the Iverson effect, meaning like how good
Speaker 10: is the player and how much does he bring to
Speaker 10: your group to offset what the headaches and and all
Speaker 10: the other issues are you know, off the basketball court,
Speaker 10: and so how do those balance each other? And and
Speaker 10: and you call it the Irison effect because Allen Iverson
Speaker 10: in his career was such a good player and so
Speaker 10: impactful and so dynamic on the floor that the people
Speaker 10: I know for a fact who had to work with
Speaker 10: him all during his career said, yeah, it was a
Speaker 10: lot of heavy lifting and there was a lot of
Speaker 10: pain on our part, but we just had to figure
Speaker 10: it out from day to day because he's so good.
Speaker 10: So how much of that is in the equation? And
Speaker 10: so you know, when when agents call you and they say, hey, look,
Speaker 10: my guy doesn't really want to come to the Salt Lake.
Speaker 10: He doesn't want to do this, you know, it's always
Speaker 10: a long discussion because because you're trying to sell yourself,
Speaker 10: but at the same time you have to realize, you
Speaker 10: know what, how is this going to impact our overall group?
Speaker 10: We're trying to add in that regard to the group.
Speaker 10: We're trying to improve our situation as it currently stands.
Speaker 10: If we bring in a guy who doesn't want to
Speaker 10: be here and a guy who says ahead of time, Hey,
Speaker 10: I don't want to come, but if I have to come,
Speaker 10: I'm not going to be happy about it, then you
Speaker 10: have to deal with that. So how does that going
Speaker 10: to impact the rest of the group. So there's a
Speaker 10: fine balancing line there, Spence, because because you have to
Speaker 10: do your business to to what you feel is going
Speaker 10: to help your group, but at the same time, what
Speaker 10: the business you do, do you think then it's going
Speaker 10: to be some kind of detriment to your group because
Speaker 10: of the attitude that's that's coming with it. So it's
Speaker 10: always a fine a fine balancing act that that's that's
Speaker 10: never there's no blueprint for every single one in that
Speaker 10: regard is its own entity and comes with its own
Speaker 10: set of challenges.
Speaker 1: And it's tough because you know, look, Ronnie Seychlee wasn't
Speaker 1: a chem olaju on, but he would have. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that team would have looked like. But that's
Speaker 1: exactly what you needed. And the player Dennis was talking
Speaker 1: about to make the trade to kind of supplement the
Speaker 1: growth that Rudy and Donovan he told me off the record,
Speaker 1: and it would have been a great addition.
Speaker 2: That's what you needed.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you balance that where it's like, look,
Speaker 1: I know you don't want to come here, but then
Speaker 1: on the other side, you're like, but if you do,
Speaker 1: we got a shot to win the thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you have a conversation with a player or is
Speaker 1: it is it back and white? If they're gonna be
Speaker 1: a malecontend and they're not an Iverson type talent, you say, okay.
Speaker 2: Go kick go kick rocks.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well it's again, every single one is handled differently, and
Speaker 10: you have to take in all all facets of what uh,
Speaker 10: the the situation is, all the different areas that you're
Speaker 10: that you're involved in there in terms of skill ability, talent, attitude, uh, work, ethic,
Speaker 10: all those kinds of things, uh, and then figure.
Speaker 8: In you you have to know what your group is about.
Speaker 10: So then you have to figure out, well, if we
Speaker 10: if we can do something like this, maybe the guys
Speaker 10: in our group that are here can win that person
Speaker 10: over okay, But it's really a sticky situation when when
Speaker 10: it comes up, and it's not always uh, it's never
Speaker 10: the most comfortable because you always feel like we're trying
Speaker 10: to do what's best for our group. You know, this
Speaker 10: guy we think can help us, this guy says he
Speaker 10: doesn't want to be here.
Speaker 8: Whatever it is.
Speaker 10: Now we have to balance that, like, well, do we
Speaker 10: still want them? Do we still try and make that
Speaker 10: work because that's our job and the responsibility we have
Speaker 10: to the organization to try and do these things if
Speaker 10: and when they become available. Or do we just say, oh,
Speaker 10: it's too much work, forget it, We're going to plan
Speaker 10: B and we move on, which is it may not
Speaker 10: be in the best interest of the organization. So then
Speaker 10: you feel like, well, I'm not doing the job I'm
Speaker 10: supposed to do for our group.
Speaker 8: So it's always it's always a balance.
Speaker 10: It's always juggling and trying to figure out what really
Speaker 10: makes sense. Is the addition going to be better than
Speaker 10: the subtraction of not doing it at the end of
Speaker 10: the day. That's always the balance and the juggling act
Speaker 10: you have.
Speaker 1: I can remember the year Paul Pierce was coming out
Speaker 1: of Kansas and I was doing some work with the
Speaker 1: Knicks during their draft prep and process, and the Knicks
Speaker 1: had Paul Pierce as their number one ranked player that year,
Speaker 1: famously fell to tend to Boston and had a Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame career and won a championship with the Celtics.
Speaker 1: The most famous Jazz draft story of a player who
Speaker 1: slid that benefited you, guys, I think is Carl right.
Speaker 1: Whenever I look at that eighty five draft, that was
Speaker 1: a stack draft. Ewing went and one, of course, but
Speaker 1: players like Xavier McDaniel, Chris Molin, Debt of Shrimp, Charles Oakley,
Speaker 1: even a player like Waymon Tisdale, you know John Conkak.
Speaker 1: That was a good draft. But Carl slides, you guys
Speaker 1: at thirteen and I've heard Frank tell the story a
Speaker 1: million times, which is a great story. And then of
Speaker 1: course I was a kid, but I remember him getting
Speaker 1: up to the podium and saying, we're drafted a mailman.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk us through what that
Speaker 1: was like to watch Carl slide when you guys had
Speaker 1: him analyze as one of the top I don't know
Speaker 1: two or three players. Any other stories as well come
Speaker 1: to mind about players that slid to you guys that
Speaker 1: you benefited.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, well, Carl, you know, it is obviously the
Speaker 10: biggest one there.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 10: He was projected during that draft to go so between
Speaker 10: four and seven, and everybody believed that he would be
Speaker 10: going no later than seven to Dallas because he was
Speaker 10: from that area and it was going to be a
Speaker 10: regional type pick, and and the people in that area
Speaker 10: that part of the country knew him well from Louisiana Tech.
Speaker 10: And and then when when Dallas took I think it
Speaker 10: was Bill Garnett, Is that who was Delas shremp Was
Speaker 10: it Dellas Trump?
Speaker 1: Dallas traded with Cleveland according to the draft have up.
Speaker 1: So Mullen went seven in Golden State, Deallas, Shrimp went eight,
Speaker 1: Oakley went nine.
Speaker 10: Okay, yeah, that was and then and so he started sliding.
Speaker 10: And part of the slide, as we understood at that time,
Speaker 10: and I think it's still the case, is that, you know,
Speaker 10: looking back on it was just that there were teams
Speaker 10: that are a little bit scared off because his his
Speaker 10: college coach wasn't his best advocate in that regard. He
Speaker 10: had some some things that he wasn't quite sure about,
Speaker 10: you know, uh, how Carl worked and and and what
Speaker 10: he was bring to a group, and so he didn't.
Speaker 10: He didn't do the best selling job for his player
Speaker 10: in that regard. So that scared off some teams and
Speaker 10: he started sliding. And then I know Kenny Green from
Speaker 10: Wake Forest was taking number twelve by by Washington just
Speaker 10: before the Jazz and and I remember Scott saying, Scott
Speaker 10: Layton saying to his dad at that moment in time
Speaker 10: on the draft stage, hey we got we got to
Speaker 10: take the kid from Louisiana Tech. And and Frank said, well,
Speaker 10: what's the matter with him? I thought he's supposed to
Speaker 10: go like top five, six and now he's at thirteen.
Speaker 10: Something's wrong. And Scott said, not that I know of.
Speaker 10: I haven't heard. I haven't heard anything.
Speaker 8: I'm not we don't have any intel in that regard.
Speaker 10: And Frank was like, are you sure that he doesn't
Speaker 10: have a bum knee or he didn't have some kind
Speaker 10: of legal problem we're not aware of or something, because
Speaker 10: something's going on, And Scott said, no, I don't. I
Speaker 10: don't know if there's anything. We don't have anything. He said,
Speaker 10: but he is good enough, he's talented enough that we
Speaker 10: just have to take him, and then we have to
Speaker 10: figure it out. And Frank said, okay, I hope, I
Speaker 10: hope you're right, and that was and that was the deal,
Speaker 10: and then we go and then Frank makes the call
Speaker 10: and then and then I do remember the subsequent press
Speaker 10: conference talking about it, and someone asked him about you,
Speaker 10: you know, think he's going to come in and help
Speaker 10: you with your scoring and and Frank said, well, we
Speaker 10: don't have a promise scoring. We have we have Adrian Dantley,
Speaker 10: and we have John Drew, and we have Darryl Griffith,
Speaker 10: and we have Ricky Green, who's kind of a scoring
Speaker 10: point guard sort of, he said, and then you know,
Speaker 10: we have them developing Mark Eaton, and we have a
Speaker 10: young thorough Bailey. He goes, but we are third, third
Speaker 10: to the last in the NBA and rebounding, so we
Speaker 10: hope that he can this guy from Louisiana Tech, Carl Malone,
Speaker 10: can come in and help us with our rebounding and
Speaker 10: some of our defense and stuff. And then if he
Speaker 10: scores eight or ten points a game, that'll be a
Speaker 10: bonus for us, and you know, thirty five thousand points
Speaker 10: later or whatever, or you know, so that's you know,
Speaker 10: and Spence, you have a million stories like that where
Speaker 10: where you can take a guy or work with a
Speaker 10: guy and think, well, we can put him in this
Speaker 10: hole and we think he can do such and such here,
Speaker 10: and then the guy ends up doing something else. It's
Speaker 10: far beyond that that you're going, well, I didn't know
Speaker 10: he could do that, you know, and then you look
Speaker 10: like the smart guy in the room. As Frank would
Speaker 10: always readily say when people said, oh, John Stockton, how'd
Speaker 10: you know he's gonna be such a one of the
Speaker 10: best point gauds of all time? And Frank would always say, well,
Speaker 10: first of all, if we knew he was gonna be that,
Speaker 10: we would have tried to trade up and get him
Speaker 10: in the top three or whatever, you know, which we didn't.
Speaker 10: And you know, that's just you know, there's a million
Speaker 10: of those draft day stories. You know, probably the biggest
Speaker 10: one about guys not wanting to come or whatever. It
Speaker 10: happened even before that with the Jazz in eighty three
Speaker 10: with Dominique Wilkins and the Jazz had the third pick
Speaker 10: and they took him, and he was he would have
Speaker 10: been a main cog in the Jazz group at that
Speaker 10: time and he simply said, I'm not I'm not moving
Speaker 10: to the Salt Lake City. I don't want to come.
Speaker 10: So you got to figure something out. And that's when
Speaker 10: the jazz said, well, then we will figure out some
Speaker 10: other thing. And they ended up making the trade that
Speaker 10: brought them John Drew and and and and Freeman and
Speaker 10: and some other stuff. But it was but that was
Speaker 10: a big deal because you're you're talking about a talented
Speaker 10: guy who went on to obviously an All Star and
Speaker 10: in the Hall of Fame career, and Dominique Wilkins and
Speaker 10: and uh so those are the things you have to
Speaker 10: deal with if if somebody's gonna stand their ground. Now see,
Speaker 10: domic Wilkins had a little bit of, uh, you know,
Speaker 10: leverage in that regard because he, even though it's not
Speaker 10: as prevalent as it is today, he was standing on
Speaker 10: the idea that hey, I'm not gonna come if if
Speaker 10: if you're not gonna move, make a move for me.
Speaker 10: I'll just go play in Italy or I'll go play
Speaker 10: in Spain. I'll make a living somehow doing that. Well
Speaker 10: that's that's that, that was the information we had. But
Speaker 10: but at the same time, but then you somebody like
Speaker 10: a Shador Sanders. We bring it back to there. Shador
Speaker 10: Sanders doesn't have anywhere else to go. He's not going
Speaker 10: to play football in China or playing football in Europe
Speaker 10: or whatever. So he wants to be a quarterback at
Speaker 10: the professional level. He's got one place to do it,
Speaker 10: and that's the NFL. So that's what's intriguing to me
Speaker 10: if some of the stories are accurate that they were
Speaker 10: calling teams saying, don't draft me, because I don't know
Speaker 10: why you would want to cut out anybody who may
Speaker 10: help you to get to where you want to be professionally.
Speaker 1: That eighty four draft, De la Juan won, of course,
Speaker 1: Jordan famously. Three after Portland goes Bowie Barkley at five,
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley at five, Alvin Robertson, Otis Thorp, Kevin Willis,
Speaker 1: and John john Stock and Michael Cage too, a great rebounder.
Speaker 2: That was a great draft.
Speaker 1: YEP, before we catch break, one more draft question, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to catch you off guard here, but
Speaker 1: is there a memory of a player that you guys
Speaker 1: passed on, that slid passed you and past some other
Speaker 1: teams that was drafted later on and you look back,
Speaker 1: and you say, oh, I think Tony.
Speaker 2: Parker Ral Lopez.
Speaker 1: I mean, was there was there a player that comes
Speaker 1: to mind that you guys wanted passed on went on
Speaker 1: to play really well.
Speaker 10: I mean, you know, you big up a good one
Speaker 10: with with Raoul Lopez and and Tony Parker.
Speaker 8: Those are the two guys we were zoing and on
Speaker 8: at the time.
Speaker 10: And and uh, you know, Raoul had an unfortunate knee
Speaker 10: injury right after we drafted him, uh, playing in the
Speaker 10: world what's now known as the World Couple World Basketball
Speaker 10: Championships and in Indianapolis, And he had never been hurt
Speaker 10: up until then. In fact, he had been a real
Speaker 10: durable young player and was really good. And the question
Speaker 10: at the time was we didn't know if Tony Parker
Speaker 10: was really a true point guard or if he was
Speaker 10: more of a combo guard that that maybe wouldn't be
Speaker 10: what you what you wanted at the time. And of
Speaker 10: course we're we're coming off at the end of of
Speaker 10: one of the greatest point guards of all time with
Speaker 10: John Stockton, so we're looking for a guy who we
Speaker 10: think fits that mold of a past, first, past, second guy,
Speaker 10: and Raoul Lopez was was all of that, and we
Speaker 10: had a lot of calls about Raoul right after the draft,
Speaker 10: about teams going, hey, you're gonna keep the Lopez kid
Speaker 10: because we're interested if if you're gonna stash him or
Speaker 10: do something else or whatever. And you know, so that
Speaker 10: was one that that still hurts today because you know,
Speaker 10: I think I think Raoul was all set up to be,
Speaker 10: you know, a really top level point guard at the
Speaker 10: NBA level and would have helped the Jazz a lot
Speaker 10: in that transition period.
Speaker 8: And and but.
Speaker 10: Then again, if we have Raoul Lopez and he's healthy
Speaker 10: and he's doing what he did early in his career
Speaker 10: in in in Spain and in Europe, then we might
Speaker 10: not have had Darren Williams because we might have said, oh,
Speaker 10: we got Raoul Lopez.
Speaker 8: We don't we don't need to pick it on Derek.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 10: So all the all those things that domino type effects
Speaker 10: that are sometimes fascinating to look back and I go, oh,
Speaker 10: what if if this happened?
Speaker 8: Then what about that? You know, the old sliding doors theory.
Speaker 1: Sure, it's always so easy because every NBA front office
Speaker 1: has a lot of misses, a lot of misses. It's
Speaker 1: always so easy to say, oh, I think it was
Speaker 1: Alec Burks instead of Kawhi or Clay or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like it's easy to do that, you know, you swing
Speaker 1: and miss, and then if you're going to be critical
Speaker 1: of that, you have to say, well, Donovan late lottery,
Speaker 1: go Bear late first. The crazy thing, Smitty, before you
Speaker 1: catch a break, is the majority of the best players
Speaker 1: that you guys drafted, they weren't your highest picks, right.
Speaker 2: It was the.
Speaker 1: Karl in the late lottery, and John and the later
Speaker 1: first and Donovan late lottery and go Beart and Carolinko
Speaker 1: in the second round and mill Set right, like a
Speaker 1: lot of the best players we've had here have been
Speaker 1: great value picks later on.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, it's it's all to do with your scouting
Speaker 10: and the way you evaluate personnel. Andre A Lanco at
Speaker 10: twenty five, but he was also the third. We had
Speaker 10: three first round picks that year. Yeah, weirs, and we
Speaker 10: were trying to get we were trying to move Scott
Speaker 10: Laden was trying to move you know, at least one,
Speaker 10: if not two, of those picks, and we couldn't move
Speaker 10: them because other teams knew, you know that, well, they're
Speaker 10: not gonna take three first round guys, which we ended
Speaker 10: up doing just because you know, well they were offering
Speaker 10: us pennies on the dollar in trade scenarios.
Speaker 8: They said, well, am I gonna do that? We'll just
Speaker 8: say so.
Speaker 10: So it was actually Dave Friedman, you know in our
Speaker 10: in our group, who you know, said, you know, propose
Speaker 10: the idea of what if we take the carolinco kid
Speaker 10: and we just leave him in uh in Russia because
Speaker 10: he's under contract for another couple of years. And that really,
Speaker 10: in my opinion, you know, started Alwa was part of
Speaker 10: that wave of drafting guys who you knew were under
Speaker 10: contract overseas and just leaving them there for a year
Speaker 10: or two or three while their contracts ran out and
Speaker 10: let them develop over there where you didn't have to
Speaker 10: pay them and start that that clock on on on
Speaker 10: a contract. But guys like Paul Millsap who's drafted forty six,
Speaker 10: Well Williams has drafted forty six, uh, Jeff horniseac forty seven,
Speaker 10: you know, Mono Jenobili fifty two, all these guys, you know,
Speaker 10: guys that you you can find good players anywhere in
Speaker 10: the draft. Uh, but you just have to you have
Speaker 10: to do the homework. You have to you have to
Speaker 10: dig into the soil and really get your hands dirty,
Speaker 10: and then and then have the conviction of what you're seeing, uh,
Speaker 10: that that you think makes sense for your group. And
Speaker 10: so sometimes sometimes you get you get guys like that
Speaker 10: who can play, and they're they're undervalued and uh and
Speaker 10: you just have to say, well, we should have taken
Speaker 10: him one of the with our first round pick instead
Speaker 10: of our second round pick.
Speaker 1: The ninety nine draft wasn't great. Elton Brand was the
Speaker 1: number one overall pick. Steve Francis at two had a
Speaker 1: good career, Baron Davis at three.
Speaker 2: Lamar owed him at four.
Speaker 1: You know, Gordy talks about how can equally talented Lamar
Speaker 1: was coming out of college while he's Irbiak Hamilton, Sean
Speaker 1: Marry and Andre Miller, Trajan Langdon Corry mcghetty, Frederick Weiss,
Speaker 1: Ye New York Nick Fans root our test Ak at
Speaker 1: twenty four was probably the best value pick of the
Speaker 1: entire draft, to be honest with.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and he and uh, even at that time, I
Speaker 10: think most people would have most NBA people would have said, well,
Speaker 10: he's one of the more talented guys in the draft.
Speaker 10: But again, the teams that are drafting, usually especially Spence.
Speaker 10: When you're drafting early, that usually means it's because you
Speaker 10: haven't had a good season. Yeah, And if you haven't
Speaker 10: had a good season, you're looking for some kind of
Speaker 10: immediate help. And Andre Andre was smart because it was
Speaker 10: actually Andre and his agent both both thought hey, even
Speaker 10: though he was nineteen at the time. He said, no,
Speaker 10: I want to uh and this is this is this
Speaker 10: is very unique and interesting.
Speaker 8: He had said to his agent.
Speaker 10: His agent, well, you might not get drafted until later
Speaker 10: in the first round if you stay in the draft,
Speaker 10: but if you if you wait a year or two
Speaker 10: and you develop and play more in Russia, then we
Speaker 10: might get you higher and the draft. And Andre said
Speaker 10: to him, well, if I go now and I get
Speaker 10: drafted by a team later in the first round, that
Speaker 10: means more than likely I'm being drafted to a better team,
Speaker 10: and so I would rather have the opportunity to play
Speaker 10: with a better team when I go to the NBA,
Speaker 10: and I'm happy to play out my contract, which is
Speaker 10: another two years in Russia, which is what he did.
Speaker 10: So the Jazz drafted him, left him in Moscow for
Speaker 10: two more years, playing for Chesca and then when he
Speaker 10: was twenty one, he came over and he was ready
Speaker 10: to go, you know, compete at the NBA level. But
Speaker 10: a lot of guys, a lot of teams aren't going
Speaker 10: to take Andre you know, at eight or ten or
Speaker 10: twelve in that scenario because it's like, well he's not
Speaker 10: coming for two years, right, Well, we need help now
Speaker 10: because if we don't get help now, I'm out of
Speaker 10: a job next year if we lose again, right, I
Speaker 10: mean that's all yeah, that's all the the way the
Speaker 10: thinking goes. So so that was kind of a unique
Speaker 10: situation with Carolinko and the Jazz.
Speaker 1: All Right, it's made me some rough news and you
Speaker 1: just feel so bad because so much hope. When the
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Bucks traded for Damian Lillard to pare him next
Speaker 1: to Giannis, and you know, I was watching it live
Speaker 1: and when it was a non contact injury, as we
Speaker 1: were discussing off air, and when I saw the look
Speaker 1: on Dame's face, I said, he knows that he just
Speaker 1: just did something. And I hate to be the sports
Speaker 1: soccer radio guy that pretends he's a doctor, right, so
Speaker 1: I always wait until the actual diagnosis. MRI this morning
Speaker 1: tour and left Achilles tendon and Dame turns thirty five
Speaker 1: this offseason. I hate to say it might be it,
Speaker 1: but it might be it. So what do you make
Speaker 1: of the news.
Speaker 10: Well, that's such a tough injury for him, and because
Speaker 10: we all know how hard Damian Lillard works to get
Speaker 10: himself in the best shape possible and to be the
Speaker 10: ultimate competitor.
Speaker 8: He's always been that.
Speaker 10: That's how he's gotten to this stage of his career,
Speaker 10: Spencer being an All NBA Player, All Star, part of
Speaker 10: the seventy fifth anniversary team. It's all out of his
Speaker 10: hard work and determination. And then when you watch that
Speaker 10: sequence and you see how how silly it was the
Speaker 10: movie made to what happened to him, you just feel
Speaker 10: for him.
Speaker 8: The issue going forward, not just for him in his career.
Speaker 10: But also for the Milwaukee Bucks organization is if they
Speaker 10: get end up, say they get knocked out in this
Speaker 10: this first round of the playoffs, you know they still
Speaker 10: have Damian Lillard under contract for two more years at
Speaker 10: like in the.
Speaker 8: Mid fifties, six.
Speaker 10: Sixty, and then you got Giannis as well, who's making
Speaker 10: a similar type money for the next three years, and
Speaker 10: so you're you're really strapped as an organization without having,
Speaker 10: you know, one of your best players on the court
Speaker 10: and having to pay that kind of money. But it's
Speaker 10: not just the money paying to him, it's the fact
Speaker 10: that it keeps you from adding other guys to replace him.
Speaker 10: And so so that really is is such a u
Speaker 10: such a heartren during a thing for him individually and
Speaker 10: also for their organization, because that's a that's a big,
Speaker 10: big pill to swallow right now, and in terms of
Speaker 10: what they're trying to get done.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about where we stand with this
Speaker 1: Lakers Timberwolves series. You know, I don't know if JJ
Speaker 1: was trying to send a message to the front office,
Speaker 1: like I have no depth on this team, but I
Speaker 1: found it an ear to be a very irresponsible coaching
Speaker 1: move to play all five of those guys every minute
Speaker 1: in the second half, because what we saw Smitdi is
Speaker 1: the Timberwolves are now three to one and on the
Speaker 1: precipice of eliminating the Lakers. We'll see if they can
Speaker 1: get back into it. But in the fourth quarter, Lebron
Speaker 1: didn't score. In the fourth quarter, Luca's legs went Dorian
Speaker 1: Finney Smith had an open dunk and he short armed
Speaker 1: it because he was tired. Now look Jared Vanderbilt, who
Speaker 1: we had here, gave Vincent Jordan, Jordan Goodwin.
Speaker 2: It's not a deep team.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it is, but a Minnesota's got depth,
Speaker 1: and I think that depth ultimately proved to be the
Speaker 1: nail on the coffin.
Speaker 2: An ant was great.
Speaker 1: But what do you make of the way JJ elected
Speaker 1: to go about that coaching decision to play all of
Speaker 1: those five guys every minute in the second half.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, you know what that is for me, Spence,
Speaker 10: that that is a rookie coach who hasn't coached before
Speaker 10: at all, even as an assistant coach, comes in. You know, Okay,
Speaker 10: he played in the league. Okay, he's a smart guy.
Speaker 10: Okay he knows his team. All those things are are true.
Speaker 10: But when you get in the heat of the moment
Speaker 10: and you're in a you're down two to one, you're
Speaker 10: on the road, you're competing, you're in the game, you've
Speaker 10: got a lead, you you lose the lead, you come back,
Speaker 10: grab the lead, back and forth game, one of those
Speaker 10: pivotal games in a series. You know that that is
Speaker 10: a that is a to me, it is a rookie
Speaker 10: move where the guy where he was not comfortable subbing
Speaker 10: out the guys who were on the floor, who were
Speaker 10: keeping the team in the game for fear that the
Speaker 10: game is gonna quickly slip away in some ten to
Speaker 10: two run by the other team. And so I just
Speaker 10: got to keep my guys out there, and I got
Speaker 10: to try and use my timeouts where I can to
Speaker 10: get them blows. But that's you know, that to me,
Speaker 10: is is someone who's not used to making those decisions
Speaker 10: and they're they're not really comfortable with the guys they've got, which,
Speaker 10: by the way, is probably true. He's probably right in
Speaker 10: the fact that I don't know if I can count
Speaker 10: on the guys who I would put in to be
Speaker 10: able to hold this in on the road in such
Speaker 10: a pivotal game against a tough team that's got all
Speaker 10: their their weapons out there. And so that's that's a
Speaker 10: tough deal for him. And look, it came down to
Speaker 10: a player too, right, So none of nobody would be
Speaker 10: talking about this if Lebron makes a three, if Luca
Speaker 10: makes some game saving play at the end, and they go,
Speaker 10: how great was that that those guys pulled it out
Speaker 10: And now they're back in the series, going home and
Speaker 10: all those those kind of things. So so that's one
Speaker 10: of those things you make your roll with what your
Speaker 10: gut tells you, and his gut told them, I think
Speaker 10: we can get to the finish line with our guys
Speaker 10: playing the way they are, and and it just didn't
Speaker 10: work out, and the other the other guy, you know,
Speaker 10: in the horse race, beat you by a nose at
Speaker 10: the at the finish line.
Speaker 1: Teams that are up three to one win ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the time in pro basketball.
Speaker 2: So it's it's a tough ask.
Speaker 1: I suppose if there's a team that can do it,
Speaker 1: it's a team that has Lebron James and Luka Doncis
Speaker 1: for three to one Minnesota. Do you think it's You
Speaker 1: think it's Curtains, You think that cup?
Speaker 10: No, No, because look, Lebron's been here before. In fact,
Speaker 10: he's been here, you know, on on the the in
Speaker 10: a different circumstance where he was down three to one
Speaker 10: and had to go on the road for Game five
Speaker 10: and one Game five, went home in won Game six,
Speaker 10: came back in one Game seven on the road, and
Speaker 10: the famous Kyrie irving a three pointer at the end
Speaker 10: of Game seven to win the championship for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Speaker 8: So so anytime.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I've always said this, Spence, I'm a big
Speaker 10: Lebron James fan. You can say whatever you want about
Speaker 10: how he, you know, manipulates things and how he's got
Speaker 10: He's put himself in a position where if he's healthy
Speaker 10: and now, if Doncic is healthy, and if they can
Speaker 10: play the way they played yesterday and they can get
Speaker 10: any kind of help, then I don't put it past
Speaker 10: them to be able to do it. Because they're playing
Speaker 10: game five at home, right then they just have to
Speaker 10: go back and scrap out a game six somehow, and
Speaker 10: you never know how how that's gonna go.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 10: Each each game is really its own series. If you
Speaker 10: look at games, you know, an individual game chopped into
Speaker 10: quarters or even chopped into segments from time out to
Speaker 10: time out, if you can get in a flow. And
Speaker 10: you know, they get into game six in Minnesota and
Speaker 10: Anthony Edwards picks up early foul trouble, and and you
Speaker 10: know Rudy Gobert, you know, you know, tweaks his ankle
Speaker 10: or something.
Speaker 8: You know, blah blah blah. Anything can happen.
Speaker 10: So I don't anything any team that has James and
Speaker 10: Doncic healthy and playing the way that capable of play.
Speaker 8: And I don't put anything, but I never bet against
Speaker 8: those guys.
Speaker 2: Before we get to tonight.
Speaker 1: And then I'll set you loose because I know you
Speaker 1: got to hit the road so you can go down
Speaker 1: to the golf tournament. And those those of us that
Speaker 1: are humble, working men of the people will continue to
Speaker 1: be in day to day.
Speaker 2: But you do your thing. I don't know that I've
Speaker 2: ever asked you.
Speaker 1: There was always this narrative, sojj jj Reddick and most
Speaker 1: teams that play against a Rudy Gobert led team like
Speaker 1: to go small, and you know, they're trying to isolate
Speaker 1: Luca on Rudy every time they can, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to make Rudy guard on the perimeter.
Speaker 2: And we saw that happen here with Quinn.
Speaker 1: And you know that Clippers series where Terrence Man has
Speaker 1: a career night, Maxi Kleba hits a bunch of threes
Speaker 1: for Dallas. And there's always been this debate about what's
Speaker 1: fair to say of you know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the criticisms of Rudy in a playoff series, when a
Speaker 1: team goes small, does the coach have to sit him.
Speaker 2: Now, Minnesota ask now is Reed who's been awesome?
Speaker 1: And I think at times Quinn just elected to be
Speaker 1: stubborn and play Rudy no matter what, no matter what
Speaker 1: the other team was gonna do, because Rudy was so
Speaker 1: important to what you guys did defensively, what's fair to
Speaker 1: say in that conversation, the space of this team goes small?
Speaker 2: What do we do with Gobert?
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, I'm probably the wrong guy to ask that
Speaker 10: question to you because I'm in the I'm in the
Speaker 10: Rudy Gobert camp. As far as how he affects the game,
Speaker 10: what he brings to Yeah, you want to you want
Speaker 10: to isolate him out on a wing against a guy
Speaker 10: He's gonna get beat. You know, it doesn't matter who
Speaker 10: the ball handler is. That's not the way to play it.
Speaker 10: You know, taking him out late in games, you take
Speaker 10: away a lot of stuff that he does. You know
Speaker 10: that isn't in the so called public eye or the
Speaker 10: glare of the spotlight at that moment, like when you
Speaker 10: do a switch and he gets isolated out. Okay, that's
Speaker 10: that's not That's not the way to play it. That's
Speaker 10: not the way if you're smart to do it if
Speaker 10: your team. But okay, teams have done it. But you know,
Speaker 10: he's too valuable player to me to take off the
Speaker 10: floor because he does a lot of other things, not
Speaker 10: not just within the scheme of the thing of what's
Speaker 10: going on at the moment, but just in terms of
Speaker 10: his approach and attitude and what he wants to do
Speaker 10: for the group. He's not out there, you know, being
Speaker 10: Anthony Edwards trying to say, hey, everybody, look at me.
Speaker 10: Watch me put it between my legs ten times and
Speaker 10: spin and do this and make some you know, wild
Speaker 10: fall away you know, you know, jump shot or something,
Speaker 10: you know, some hero play. He's out there to try
Speaker 10: and help you as a group, to try and have
Speaker 10: success and win the game in whatever way he can.
Speaker 10: So you know, I'm I'm the wrong guy because you
Speaker 10: know those things. I think it amplified, especially a playoff time.
Speaker 10: There's a reason you won you know, sixty plus games
Speaker 10: during season with him in the starting lineup and him
Speaker 10: doing stuff and okay, you get in a playoff series,
Speaker 10: there's other adjustments you can make that that that don't
Speaker 10: put him in that kind of a space that that
Speaker 10: that's that's not advantageous for him and therefore not advantageous
Speaker 10: for your group. And that's up to coaches in terms
Speaker 10: of how they game plan that and how they adjust
Speaker 10: to that.
Speaker 1: All right, final thing, let's get a thought on tonight.
Speaker 1: We'll leave calvs. Heat to the side, because well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's three to zero. But Golden State Houston, Jimmy Butler
Speaker 1: went through shoot around this morning. He is officially a
Speaker 1: game time decision. Steph had a classic Steph game to
Speaker 1: get them Game three. It's still so fun to watch
Speaker 1: Steph when he's doing stuph things, even at this age.
Speaker 2: Houston a fun story.
Speaker 1: And I actually thought, because of their athleticism, their strength,
Speaker 1: and their length on the perimeter, that Golden State was
Speaker 1: gonna have an issue.
Speaker 2: Now they still might. It's only two one.
Speaker 1: But before I set you loose so you can get
Speaker 1: down to Saint George, what are your thoughts on this series?
Speaker 11: Is?
Speaker 2: What do you think happens tonight?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 10: I think that Golden State will play play the same way.
Speaker 10: You know, I don't know if I don't know what
Speaker 10: Butler's situation is health wise, Obviously they're better off with
Speaker 10: him on the floor than without him. If he doesn't play,
Speaker 10: then that just means Curry has to have another type
Speaker 10: of game, which he's capable of doing at home, especially,
Speaker 10: you know, to be able to to keep them in
Speaker 10: the lead in that series. But you know, Houston's a young, scrappy,
Speaker 10: tough nosed, hard nosed defensive team, and so you're gonna
Speaker 10: see them getting added because obviously.
Speaker 8: They don't they don't want it.
Speaker 10: They're gonna have the specter of falling behind three games
Speaker 10: to one. If they can't figure out a way to
Speaker 10: win the games. You're gonna see them scrapping and clawing.
Speaker 10: And and maybe that means that Steph Curry spends a
Speaker 10: lot of time on the free throw line, which would
Speaker 10: be advantageous for Golden State because because he's almost automatic there.
Speaker 10: But but I expect it to be a tough game,
Speaker 10: another tough game, and I expected to, you know, come
Speaker 10: down the last two minutes and and who may to play,
Speaker 10: who misses a shot, who steps in and takes a charge,
Speaker 10: you know, whatever it is. Let's just hope we don't
Speaker 10: have an ending like we had in the Detroit Nicks
Speaker 10: game yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, foul, wasn't it?
Speaker 8: It was?
Speaker 10: It was a foul, But the NBA is wrong in
Speaker 10: not having an ability to be able to look at
Speaker 10: something like that at the end of the game, that rule.
Speaker 10: I'm sure they'll discuss it this some of There's got
Speaker 10: to be some way of dealing with the situation like that,
Speaker 10: especially when it when it's such the stakes, the way
Speaker 10: they are right at that moment, and you're saying, well,
Speaker 10: the whistle wasn't blown, there wasn't a call made, so
Speaker 10: therefore we have nothing to review and we have nothing
Speaker 10: to discuss that that that just isn't right.
Speaker 8: Something something's got to change in that.
Speaker 2: But I'm just glad that the next one there you go.
Speaker 10: I know, I know you and your boy Tony Jones,
Speaker 10: I know you're you're all behind well, Porter some kind
Speaker 10: of you.
Speaker 8: Know it's Porter from Oakley.
Speaker 1: In God's Country, because would you like to order yourself young?
Speaker 4: He has People have fair points when they bring up
Speaker 4: my the randomness of my my sports agency.
Speaker 2: It's not just random.
Speaker 1: You also made horrible choices, like you were a free agent.
Speaker 1: You went Mets, Nicks and Cowboys.
Speaker 3: I know it's a lot of losing lately.
Speaker 8: See he's a bandwagon guy.
Speaker 1: I could tell no, no, he's He's say he should
Speaker 1: be more of a bit like it's just a broken
Speaker 1: bandwagon Mets Cowboys, Knicks. I mean that is decades of
Speaker 1: just suffering. Yeah, all right, my friend, I know you
Speaker 1: got to get going. Have have a good time down there.
Speaker 1: Send some pics, enjoy, It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 8: It'd be great. Have a good time. Yeah, we'll miss you.
Speaker 1: Everybody will see you next. We all right, we'll catch
Speaker 1: a quick point. Quite excuse me, we will catch a
Speaker 1: quick break. More coming up on the other side. Don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. The Monday after the NFL Draft is completed.
Speaker 1: I always give poor to the same marching orders. I
Speaker 1: want a grinder of tape on the show. I want
Speaker 1: somebody who settles in. He puts in the work, he
Speaker 1: reviews film, and he comes away with some hot Monday takes.
Speaker 1: So we're bringing in JP today, John Paul Chonga the
Speaker 1: Monday after the NFL Draft. Is it depression that it's over?
Speaker 1: Is it gratitude that it happened? How does that land
Speaker 1: with you?
Speaker 11: I'm just glad I was there to watch it all,
Speaker 11: all of the rounds, sitting down imagining the fits, imagining
Speaker 11: the way these players will be in the schemes. It's
Speaker 11: it's revelatory to watch the draft and I'm glad to
Speaker 11: be on the program today.
Speaker 2: What is your favorite fit of player in scheme?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 11: I mean, come on, where can I get started? Jalen
Speaker 11: Royles with Patrick Mahomes. Wow, I love the fit. That's
Speaker 11: a good match of player and scheme. Caleb Loner getting
Speaker 11: draft hoot? How about the basket college basketball guys that
Speaker 11: end up being NFL stars? You know, people forget Donovan McNabb,
Speaker 11: former Syracuse walk on the basketball team. He played pretty
Speaker 11: well as a quarterback.
Speaker 2: He did, he did. That's that's good knowledge.
Speaker 1: How much NBA draft tape are you currently grinding right now?
Speaker 11: So I had to take off obviously the last four
Speaker 11: days because NFL Draft consumed me. That's that much is clear,
Speaker 11: but plenty. I absolutely love this time of year when
Speaker 11: it comes to the NBA Draft. You're just watching all
Speaker 11: these players. You know you do the same thing? Is
Speaker 11: the other thing? You you've been watching college basketball in
Speaker 11: the entire year and looking and projecting how these guys
Speaker 11: will fit on NBA teams.
Speaker 1: Oh of course, I mean that's why we're kindred spirits,
Speaker 1: knower of ball, knowers of hoop and grinders of tape
Speaker 1: Jazz postseason media availability. Of course I was there on
Speaker 1: time and stayed late, because that's how it is when
Speaker 1: you grind day to day. One thing really stood out.
Speaker 1: A couple of things stood out, but Will. When Will
Speaker 1: Hardy was asked about Isaiah Collier, Keante George and Bryce Sensibah,
Speaker 1: he said some various things about all of them, but
Speaker 1: the one common thread was their conditioning. John Paul, that
Speaker 1: stood out to me. It wasn't anything I was expecting.
Speaker 1: So what did that say to you about what this
Speaker 1: very important offseason is. My good friend Jay Z pointed
Speaker 1: out during his postseason media availability, how important is this
Speaker 1: offseason for these youngsters for the Jazz?
Speaker 12: What's big?
Speaker 11: I think you look at Taylor Hendricks, who is hopefully
Speaker 11: going to have a good year up until you know,
Speaker 11: game three of the regular season, how much he transformed
Speaker 11: his body, how he really went into the summer and
Speaker 11: accepted challenges. You could even look at Walker Kessler in
Speaker 11: the big year that he had in the year three
Speaker 11: in playing in Summer League and taking feedback from Will
Speaker 11: and the entire coaching staff and realizing he has to
Speaker 11: get to a level where the peaking is coming around now,
Speaker 11: because this is when the playoffs happens. This is when
Speaker 11: in a second half you might play the entire final
Speaker 11: twenty four minutes of a game and not get subbed out.
Speaker 11: You have to be in the best condition of your life.
Speaker 11: And for those players who were first year guys who
Speaker 11: probably hit the rookie wall in January, he still realized, oh,
Speaker 11: there's a couple more months left. And I even think
Speaker 11: about how Cody Williams was playing two schedules in the
Speaker 11: G League form as well, like he had to adjust
Speaker 11: to being available not only for the NBA team but
Speaker 11: for the G League squad. And there's no reason that
Speaker 11: these guys next year should be surprised by the ridge
Speaker 11: of an NBA schedule because of how long eighty two
Speaker 11: games is. And if you're going to be on one
Speaker 11: of those good teams with those APEX predits, with the
Speaker 11: top players in the entire league, you're going to be
Speaker 11: playing even more than ay two games. And hopefully for
Speaker 11: many of these players, you're on national teams like Larry
Speaker 11: market is with EuroBasket, so you're adding even more wear
Speaker 11: and tear on the body. So as they focus and
Speaker 11: look forward, to their future NBA careers. They've got to
Speaker 11: definitely be cognizant of realizing that they've got to be
Speaker 11: in the absolute best shape.
Speaker 12: Of their life.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you know.
Speaker 1: The complicated part when it comes to analyzing the team
Speaker 1: that isn't winning at a high level and is developing
Speaker 1: young players and is giving high usage to young players
Speaker 1: is figuring out what is real about some of the
Speaker 1: good numbers that the young players put up and will
Speaker 1: these players be able to put up similar numbers for
Speaker 1: a team that.
Speaker 2: Is trying to win.
Speaker 1: You know, Kyle phil Powski down the stretch, I mean
Speaker 1: that game against Portland he had like thirty eighteen and five.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of these guys put up some pretty
Speaker 1: audacious stat lines, but in losing endeavors for a team
Speaker 1: that wasn't winning a high level. And you can talk
Speaker 1: about whichever young player. You can go Kiante, you can
Speaker 1: go Bryce, you can go Walker, you can go Philipowski.
Speaker 2: I call him Flip. It's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: You can go Isaiah, like of the young players that
Speaker 1: had games where you look at the box score and
Speaker 1: you go, wow, he did what what sort of skill
Speaker 1: set or production do you believe can be translatable when
Speaker 1: the team is winning again at a high level.
Speaker 11: I look at Zay because, as you know, I call
Speaker 11: Isadiyah Collier's day. I like it, and I think about
Speaker 11: the passing that can definitely translate to when this team
Speaker 11: is ready to contend and ready to win at a
Speaker 11: serious clip. But being able to run an offense knowing
Speaker 11: exactly where everybody on the floor needs to be, and
Speaker 11: as the point guard, as the league guard, as whatever
Speaker 11: kind of guard you want to call him, he has
Speaker 11: to make sure that he has all the chess pieces
Speaker 11: in the right place. Defensively, I look at Walker Kessler.
Speaker 11: I was courtside in Memphis, and these seats are right
Speaker 11: next to the to the court. You can hear exactly
Speaker 11: what everybody is talking about. And when joh doesn't have
Speaker 11: a defense figured out, I'm able to hear Walker Kessler
Speaker 11: calling out every single Memphis set. His communication, his style
Speaker 11: of knowing where everything goes defensively is something that you
Speaker 11: want to see Isaiah translate offensively and for him, I
Speaker 11: mean it's clear that they're pretty invested in making him
Speaker 11: the best he can become at that position, because it
Speaker 11: when you're tasked is leading a club in a league
Speaker 11: with so many elite guards, you're going to go through
Speaker 11: so many growing pains, and that's tight of the factor
Speaker 11: on whether you're going to win in the league. Remember
Speaker 11: a couple of years ago they had Mike Conley and
Speaker 11: they go off to the ten and two start. There's
Speaker 11: a difference between veteran leadership at the guard position and
Speaker 11: young guys trying to figure it out. And Isaiah Collier
Speaker 11: certainly has a long way to go, but learning from
Speaker 11: a Walker tester what he communicates defensively that need to
Speaker 11: translate for Isaiah Callier offensively for them.
Speaker 1: Got to ask you about Cody who is still very young,
Speaker 1: and you know we had Smittian studio. It's a really
Speaker 1: interesting dynamic with Jazz basketball historically speaking, where the majority
Speaker 1: of the better players we've had here, I say we
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: A family on.
Speaker 1: Three have either been mid first round picks, late first
Speaker 1: round picks, some of the second round, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the early picks that the Jazz have made, some hit,
Speaker 1: some didn't. That's part of analyzing NBA basketball. But I
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say that if you're going to
Speaker 1: be a pick, you just want to show more than
Speaker 1: what he showed. And I'm not ready to annoint or dismiss,
Speaker 1: nor should anybody else be. But what's the hope over
Speaker 1: there on the organization of what this offseason brings us
Speaker 1: off For Cody.
Speaker 11: It is that transformation of the body. Everybody knew that
Speaker 11: he had to transform his body from just being a
Speaker 11: nineteen year old in the NBA. He was always going
Speaker 11: to be a long term investment because at his position
Speaker 11: where he's drafted, you can look at the projection of
Speaker 11: starter NBA skill what they are at each pick slot.
Speaker 11: That's why they wanted to put themselves in every position
Speaker 11: to get into the high draft. But Cody Williams is
Speaker 11: so early on in his development journey. I had to
Speaker 11: look this up earlier on this year about how many
Speaker 11: minutes that he played in college, and it was around
Speaker 11: the six hundred range, and in the NBA he got
Speaker 11: a thousand minutes. We're talking about somebody who at high
Speaker 11: level basketball has played sixteen hundred minutes. I don't know
Speaker 11: if you can make broad brushes in future tails on
Speaker 11: his future career early on in the development part, because
Speaker 11: you even look at the fact that he comes from
Speaker 11: NBA stock with his brother and Jalen came out very
Speaker 11: much seasoned at the college level, having gone to Santa
Speaker 11: Clair for a couple of years, so very different spots
Speaker 11: for them. But knowing that he has an NBA player
Speaker 11: on a pretty good team, he knows exactly what it
Speaker 11: takes to get to the level where he needs to
Speaker 11: be to start contributing to an NBA roster. But it's
Speaker 11: definitely early and he has a huge way to go
Speaker 11: before he's probably satisfied with the way his NBA career
Speaker 11: is going.
Speaker 2: Tell me what you're hearing about Taylor.
Speaker 1: You brought out Taylor earlier, and as you know, Bullish
Speaker 1: over here remain hasn't changed his health, his conditioning, his mentals.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine what That's a lonely thing, man.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not the radio host that is analogous
Speaker 1: with injuries that regular Joe's haveing players. But I've had
Speaker 1: a broken leg, as you know, I had knee surgery
Speaker 1: last year. It's a lonely thing when you're recovering and
Speaker 1: you're not mobile and you've got to deal with what
Speaker 1: it's like being isolated. But what's the buzz around around
Speaker 1: the organization with Taylor, how's he doing and what do
Speaker 1: we expect in the summer.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was good for Taylor to be around the
Speaker 11: team for as much as he could be because it
Speaker 11: can be very lonely. But he was still in the facility,
Speaker 11: being around the guys, showing up to every single practice,
Speaker 11: watching the games, making sure that he was being available there,
Speaker 11: but even going on the road and seeing what it
Speaker 11: takes alongside the season because it's still early on in
Speaker 11: his NBA future. He was only a couple years removed
Speaker 11: from being at UCF where I don't know if that's
Speaker 11: necessarily an NBA factory, but he had to have really
Speaker 11: widened his eyes once he got to the NBA and
Speaker 11: he's playing against Kevin Durant in his very first game.
Speaker 11: The good thing was that he was able to make
Speaker 11: those road trips. He's getting up shots.
Speaker 12: Now now it's.
Speaker 11: Adding those big movements and making sure that he's going
Speaker 11: to be able to get to contact. The idea is
Speaker 11: still for him to be available after Summer League, But
Speaker 11: as far as the connectivity of staying with the team
Speaker 11: and still feeling like he's a part of it, I
Speaker 11: think that the staff and he himself he's done a
Speaker 11: really good job at being very open. And heck even
Speaker 11: saw him in that dumb hat that he was wearing
Speaker 11: on the bench towards the end of the season that
Speaker 11: I think we can all agree he looked like Bobby.
Speaker 2: BACALAA nice No, you're not wrong, You're not wrong.
Speaker 1: I just it's very rare to hear you knock on
Speaker 1: somebody for taking a fashion risk because you were very
Speaker 1: fashion conscious.
Speaker 8: JP.
Speaker 2: Let's be clear, I am very oh.
Speaker 11: No, fashion conscious. But he didn't even get the reference
Speaker 11: when I said Bobby Bacala, like, he's not watching the Sopranos,
Speaker 11: He's just wearing a hat because he thought it was
Speaker 11: something that was cool to wear.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm stunned that he didn't get your Bobby reference.
Speaker 1: That's that's shocking.
Speaker 11: Don't appreciate the soprano.
Speaker 1: No, they don't, and they should rewatch it if you've
Speaker 1: already watched it. If you haven't watched it, you should.
Speaker 1: You should run to watch it as soon as you can.
Speaker 1: So you brought up the ten and two start with
Speaker 1: team forty nine, that's what I called him. But whatever,
Speaker 1: A little inside and I want to get into a
Speaker 1: conversation with market In for a second, because that team, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you reference Mike Conley. They also had Chris Dunn,
Speaker 1: who's starting for the Clippers in the playoffs. They had
Speaker 1: Kelly Olnok I call him the clinic.
Speaker 2: No big deal. There were veteran pieces.
Speaker 1: I mean your guy Thht, you know, like, there were
Speaker 1: veteran pieces on that team that.
Speaker 2: Knew how to play basketball.
Speaker 1: And I always bring it up because market in that
Speaker 1: year obviously All Star here in Utah, he was twenty
Speaker 1: five point six points. He was basically nine boards. He
Speaker 1: was close to fifty forty ninety. And I don't know
Speaker 1: really what's fair to say about anything critical of Lowry,
Speaker 1: even though the numbers have dropped since then, because he
Speaker 1: is a veteran playing with children. And I think it
Speaker 1: was the Laker game when the Jazz beat the Lakers
Speaker 1: here in saw Lake and Lowry had thirty two. He
Speaker 1: was six of ten from three, and it was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. He is still awesome on the scale of
Speaker 1: marketing team forty nine All Star and marketing playing with kids.
Speaker 1: Numbers completely fallen over the past couple of years.
Speaker 2: Where do you land on who he is?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think there's definitely nuance in Lowry's game because
Speaker 11: he's so dependent.
Speaker 12: On what's going around him, the.
Speaker 11: Surroundings within an offense, and he saw it earlier on
Speaker 11: in his career when he was in Cleveland Chicago, but
Speaker 11: really blossoming once he came on that Team forty nine
Speaker 11: with Mike Conley. He needs confidence at to guard positioned
Speaker 11: it get him the ball.
Speaker 6: He needs the.
Speaker 11: Ability to have spacing on the floor, and for a
Speaker 11: team that really didn't have necessary shooters alongside Lowry, it
Speaker 11: was very difficult for him to be.
Speaker 12: The number one guy on a scout and report.
Speaker 11: It's very different from being concerned about Mike Conley shooting,
Speaker 11: Malik Beaveley shooting. Jared Vanderbilt even could stretch on that
Speaker 11: Team forty nine squad, then looking at a team that
Speaker 11: has Walker Tesler taking threes at the end of the season,
Speaker 11: that's not necessarily the same spacing that Lowry market is
Speaker 11: going to be getting. So he lands we're in the middle.
Speaker 11: But that's still a really elite player, and those flashes
Speaker 11: that you saw in that Laker game are exactly what
Speaker 11: you want to see on a day and day out basis.
Speaker 11: Once this team is more built out and has better
Speaker 11: compliments around him.
Speaker 1: May twelfth, NBA Draft Lottery. What's the John Paul routine?
Speaker 1: What sort of lucky charms will we be exercising that
Speaker 1: day as we're all hoping that the number one pick
Speaker 1: is their reward for this painful couple of years.
Speaker 11: It's a big day. It is a big deal, is
Speaker 11: a big day in the franchise. And then look, I
Speaker 11: look this up of all the teams in the lottery.
Speaker 11: Do you want to guess how many teams have not
Speaker 11: had the number one pick?
Speaker 2: I hope it's more than one. Is it more than one?
Speaker 2: Because one is certainly the Utah Jazz.
Speaker 11: It is only one. Wow, one team in the law
Speaker 11: this year has never had the number one.
Speaker 6: Overall pick, and so Utah Jazz.
Speaker 11: And I even went further, I was like, what about
Speaker 11: top five? How many of these teams have had top fives?
Speaker 11: Only one team in the lottery has had fewer top
Speaker 11: fives than Jazz. In the history of the Utah Jazz,
Speaker 11: they've only had it five times. New Orleans has had
Speaker 11: it three times, but they've gotten two number one all picks.
Speaker 11: So when I look at just who should morally get
Speaker 11: the number one overall pick, I am confident in saying
Speaker 11: that it's the Utah Jazz. So I don't have to
Speaker 11: do anything. I don't have to find the four leaf clover.
Speaker 11: I don't have to get the lucky horseshoe. I don't
Speaker 11: have to go swing a couple golf balls at the
Speaker 11: range at Eaglewood. I will be fine just knowing wherever
Speaker 11: it lands is where it will land, and it's fine.
Speaker 11: You know, the Lakers, they got that pick from Magic
Speaker 11: Johnson on a coin flip because they had that pick
Speaker 11: from the New Orleans Jazz because they on Gail Goodrich.
Speaker 11: Luck happens in a weird way, and it would be
Speaker 11: very weird for the Utah Jazz to jump in the lottery,
Speaker 11: but hey, weirder things have happened in this league. Just
Speaker 11: look at the playoffs.
Speaker 8: How is that.
Speaker 2: Golf game, young man? How are we doing? We improving still?
Speaker 11: I played a couple weeks ago and I did all right,
Speaker 11: but it was only nine holes. I think that's the
Speaker 11: only capacity that I have for golf right now.
Speaker 1: That makes me so sad. I cannot express how sad
Speaker 1: that is. I was with our guy travel over the
Speaker 1: weekend and we were promoting the fact that we can't
Speaker 1: get you out anymore.
Speaker 2: But here's where I want to go next.
Speaker 1: You had a front row seat to watching the new
Speaker 1: Utah men's basketball coach develop some young bigs, namely Rudy Gobert.
Speaker 1: In one year with Walker Kessler, the MAVs lose to
Speaker 1: the grizz and the play in. So Alex Jensen has
Speaker 1: now allocated his full time and energy to his new job.
Speaker 1: What would you say to you fans about your experience
Speaker 1: watching him coach when he was with the Jazz before
Speaker 1: you went down to Dallas.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Alex is tremendous as a coach, tactician and being
Speaker 11: able to bring all the experience that he has not
Speaker 11: only from his playing days but.
Speaker 12: To what he had in the NBA.
Speaker 11: I think it was good for him to see an
Speaker 11: organization beyond Utah. Talked to Will about how advantageous that
Speaker 11: was just to leave San Antonio and go to Boston
Speaker 11: to see how somebody else does it, to see how
Speaker 11: an organization outside of your comfort zone he's able to operate.
Speaker 11: And I'm sure the same thing applies for Alex in
Speaker 11: going to Dallas and learning how Jason Kidd runs a program.
Speaker 11: But his expertise in cutting through things and telling a
Speaker 11: George and Yang, if you shoot forty percent from this
Speaker 11: spot and you defend capably, you're going to be a
Speaker 11: tens of millionaire in this league. And boy, to get
Speaker 11: down to just that, be a capable defender. Shoot the
Speaker 11: three at forty percent, you'll be fine. And George does that,
Speaker 11: still is in the NBA and has one of the
Speaker 11: best winning records of any player out there. I think
Speaker 11: it's him and Royce O'Neil because of the fact that
Speaker 11: they're on good teams. Not so much for Royce this year,
Speaker 11: but still you get the point. Alex being able to
Speaker 11: get it to that specific point helps players along and
Speaker 11: I think that will help in the future for the
Speaker 11: Utah men's basketball program when you're thinking about do we
Speaker 11: want to produce pros? Are we going to get these
Speaker 11: guys in there? They got to commit things on the
Speaker 11: Nile front. But you've got a good one in Alex Jensen.
Speaker 2: All Right, I hope that you are standing on your
Speaker 2: feet and you're shouting it out. Real will end with
Speaker 2: a little.
Speaker 11: I told you, I gave up.
Speaker 12: I'm done.
Speaker 2: No, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that.
Speaker 1: We have listeners, namely one little birdie source of mind
Speaker 1: that will have his heartbroken if you continue just to
Speaker 1: stay out. You've been an RSL fan since day one,
Speaker 1: meet the team day pictures with our guy Jason Christ
Speaker 1: so I understand the sentiment. But we got big Willie
Speaker 1: Goles coming in, we got Johnny Russell coming in. We've
Speaker 1: got a three to one victory over San Diego, so
Speaker 1: the vibes are high, John Paul, are you inching closer
Speaker 1: and closer to getting back in with our local soccer club?
Speaker 11: So all right, I am out, But admittedly the Johnny
Speaker 11: Russell signing got me a little moved because my fiance's
Speaker 11: father is from Scotland, so he'll he'll be able to
Speaker 11: rally behind Johnny Russell and the beard is spectacular, so
Speaker 11: I'm in on that aspect. But I didn't see him play,
Speaker 11: and I want to hear from you because I asked
Speaker 11: ahead of the game. Over the weekend at San Diego,
Speaker 11: you were boots on the ground.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 11: Dumbshoe reporting. So how much longer am I going to
Speaker 11: have to wait for Johnny Russell to get his debut
Speaker 11: in the Clarendon Coco.
Speaker 2: He should be available coming.
Speaker 11: Up sometimes the grid City Yeah.
Speaker 1: Indeed, well said he should be available coming up this weekend.
Speaker 1: He hasn't been with a club in almost seven months.
Speaker 1: He needs to get into shape. But big Willy Goles,
Speaker 1: my guy was on the ground and you know we
Speaker 1: saw him for a little bit, so but we should
Speaker 1: we should see Johnny as early as this weekend.
Speaker 11: How many goals has Willy scored this year?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that number is close to zero. If
Speaker 1: it's not zero, so how is he Willy Golds? He
Speaker 1: scored ten last year.
Speaker 11: But this year it's Willy no goals.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying to look at this optimistically. Remember we
Speaker 1: were all encouraged to call it Johnny Menendez Johnny Goles
Speaker 1: too when he only scored one, so he became Johnny
Speaker 1: one goal. But I'm just trying to look at this
Speaker 1: through rose colored glasses because, as you know, I'm both
Speaker 1: an mpath and an optimist.
Speaker 11: Okay, I and I get I understand the names on
Speaker 11: the beam. There's a connection there that will never be broken.
Speaker 11: But I still need to be one over and it
Speaker 11: needs to start by seeing Johnny Russell on the on
Speaker 11: the field for r SOL. I also love how delicious
Speaker 11: it is that he was on SKC which clear RSL rival.
Speaker 1: So the one way that we can get you back
Speaker 1: is Johnny Russell healthy fit in the lineup and performs,
Speaker 1: and then maybe we can get John Paul back.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and then maybe he makes an appearance on Foothill,
Speaker 11: you know, at the former mccool's.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll be in. I like it all right before
Speaker 2: I set you loose.
Speaker 1: What's got I know you're you got three jobs, So
Speaker 1: what's got most of your energy right now?
Speaker 11: That's true.
Speaker 12: I do have three jobs right now.
Speaker 11: Listen to Roundball round up Utah Jazz Podcast Network. I
Speaker 11: spoke to Kyle Mann about the top guys at the draft,
Speaker 11: not to get anybody anticipating one lean either, but info
Speaker 11: on Cooper flag As Bailey, Dylan Harper, vj edgecome kon
Speaker 11: Kak Nippa, all those guys at the top of the draft.
Speaker 11: Just search the Utah Jazz Podcast Network in your podcast feed.
Speaker 11: And then, of course, the NWSL got a game this Saturday,
Speaker 11: Utah Royals against the North Carolina Courage. Ali Sentnor, the
Speaker 11: number nine, best number nine in the entire state, taking
Speaker 11: on NC and Jaden Shaw, who's also a really bright
Speaker 11: young player for the US and wins. The national team
Speaker 11: playing to look forward to on the Utah Royals front
Speaker 11: as they are only six games in with twenty more
Speaker 11: to go.
Speaker 2: Thank you, young man.
Speaker 1: I want you to give Corey just a big hug
Speaker 1: and tell her from me, Okay.
Speaker 11: We'll do get Johnny Russell on the field.
Speaker 2: We will, we will. That's the deal, all right, JP.
Speaker 1: John Paul check out the round Ball Roundup podcast. He's
Speaker 1: also the voice of the Stars and the Utah Royals,
Speaker 1: and of course, probably the pinnacle and peak of his
Speaker 1: career in life is the producer of this radio show
Speaker 1: a number of years ago. JP stops by today courtesy
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Speaker 1: NFL draft takeaways in the five o'clock hour, and then
Speaker 1: of course we'll get you ready for some NBA playoffs.
Speaker 2: But RSA with a result over the weekend.
Speaker 1: Sam Junk is going to join us coming up next
Speaker 1: right here on ESPN seven hundred. All right, show rolling
Speaker 1: along today, my friend Melissa from Sound Sleep Medical joins
Speaker 1: us live in studio once again.
Speaker 2: Melissa, how are you doing great?
Speaker 8: All right?
Speaker 1: Oral appliance therapy to treat sleep apnea. It is not
Speaker 1: a seapap let's underscore it, So what exactly is it?
Speaker 8: Melissa?
Speaker 13: It's just like a custom made mouthguard that you wear
Speaker 13: on your teeth during the night. So maybe you your
Speaker 13: a partner is snoring. That's an easy red flag. Snoring
Speaker 13: is much more than annoying noise. It actually shows us
Speaker 13: that you're probably not getting enough oxygen during the night,
Speaker 13: which is essentially sleep ATNA And if you don't fix
Speaker 13: it with the oral appliance, you're gonna end up with
Speaker 13: serious health issues down the road, like high blood pressure,
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Speaker 13: and dementia down the road as you age.
Speaker 1: So I've had some friends that have tried the seapap
Speaker 1: and it's extremely uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: It's not very convenient.
Speaker 1: You can travel with this oral appliance, and it's very
Speaker 1: convenient to take around.
Speaker 13: Yes, for sure, it's so small and slim you could
Speaker 13: throw it in your pocket. I have business travelers that
Speaker 13: don't want to snore on the plane, so they'll bring
Speaker 13: it on the plane with them. And this is a studied,
Speaker 13: proven device. This is not some gimmick. I mean, it's
Speaker 13: FDA approved. Your health insurance actually will likely pay for it.
Speaker 13: It even qualifies for stuff like HSA flux spending. We
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Speaker 8: Who need it.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the special offer, tell us some
Speaker 1: of the pieces of feedback you've received people that have
Speaker 1: gone through your program and started to sleep better. What
Speaker 1: sort of improved quality of life have the experienced.
Speaker 13: Well, they're so glad they're not wrestling with their seapap anymore,
Speaker 13: and it's just great to wake up and actually feel rested.
Speaker 13: You know a lot of people out there, Spence, they've forgotten.
Speaker 13: It's been so long they don't even remember what it
Speaker 13: feels like to feel good during the day and not
Speaker 13: feel like you're gonna fall asleep every time you sit down.
Speaker 2: And what's that special offer? Unless you have for our listeners,
Speaker 2: will call you today, Okay, call now.
Speaker 13: The number is eight oh one three three five nine,
Speaker 13: eight two four. You can also find us at soundsleepmedical
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Speaker 1: All right, call today, It's eight oh one, three three
Speaker 1: five nine eight two four RSL went to San Diego
Speaker 1: over the weekend and got a result three to one
Speaker 1: over the expansion side. You came here earlier this year
Speaker 1: and actually beat ral saw Lake. Our next guest scored
Speaker 1: a wonder goal, a great, great strike. Sam Junk joins
Speaker 1: the show on a Monday afternoon.
Speaker 8: Sam.
Speaker 2: How you doing, buddy, I'm doing great.
Speaker 12: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the time. So we got to talk about
Speaker 1: the goal. Did you know that you so? I always
Speaker 1: find it fascinating to talk to soccer players that scored
Speaker 1: goals the way that you did over the weekend. When
Speaker 1: you struck it, did you know that you had put
Speaker 1: it on frame? Did you feel that good about it?
Speaker 1: Right instantly after you struck the ball.
Speaker 12: I felt like I got good contact on it. The
Speaker 12: difficulty with shots like that is there's a lot of
Speaker 12: people in and around the box and a lot of
Speaker 12: times get blocked when it's on frame. This time it
Speaker 12: didn't happen, and so fortunately went into the side netting.
Speaker 2: How much of a relief was that result.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll get to some of the other storylines,
Speaker 1: but the start has been rough.
Speaker 2: It's been up and down.
Speaker 1: So How good did that feel, Sam, to go to
Speaker 1: San Diego and get that three points?
Speaker 12: It felt really good. We've been in need of a
Speaker 12: win and it's never easy to win away, and to
Speaker 12: be the first team to win the same San Diego
Speaker 12: was special.
Speaker 1: So tell us about yourself a little bit. First time
Speaker 1: we've been able to have you on the show. You're
Speaker 1: one of the new players. You were acquired from you
Speaker 1: were required from Dallas and the Anderson Julio deal.
Speaker 2: Tell us about yourself grown up?
Speaker 1: When did you first start playing soccer and how do
Speaker 1: you feel about, you know, landing here with RSL.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I started playing maybe around six years old, just recreationally,
Speaker 12: and got more serious as time went on. I really
Speaker 12: excited to be here in Salt Lake, and I feel
Speaker 12: like me and my fiance are settling in here and
Speaker 12: calling it home now.
Speaker 1: So instantly, of course, it was probably a little bit jarring.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the interesting thing when you're a pro athlete,
Speaker 1: you don't really have control over where you live. Did
Speaker 1: you know much about our market or is most of
Speaker 1: the dynamics about Utah pretty new to you and your fiance?
Speaker 12: Most of it's pretty new. I had a little bit
Speaker 12: of an idea of what it might be like, because
Speaker 12: I actually thought when I was leaving Houston that I
Speaker 12: might end up in RSL, But you know, I ended
Speaker 12: up in Dallas and that was that. And now two
Speaker 12: years later contunity came up again and it happened this time,
Speaker 12: and so we've gotten more familiar with the valley and
Speaker 12: you know all that you has to offer.
Speaker 1: This time around, you are competing with Alex for that spot.
Speaker 8: What's it?
Speaker 1: What's it been like to h and look when it
Speaker 1: comes to healthy competition, of course, that's something Pablo wants,
Speaker 1: and the season is so long, you want multiple options
Speaker 1: at each each position. But tell me about that kind
Speaker 1: of positional battle that you and Alex are kind of
Speaker 1: fighting for.
Speaker 6: I think it's been good.
Speaker 12: I feel like the left back position has been a
Speaker 12: strong one for us this season, and the competition is good.
Speaker 12: Alex is a great player, and I think that we've
Speaker 12: both pushed each other to be at our best, and
Speaker 12: you know, I think that's helping the team this season.
Speaker 1: Tell me what specifically Pablo is asked for from you
Speaker 1: when it comes to that positional battle and the other
Speaker 1: things you're expected to do for the.
Speaker 12: Club, So specifically, for that position. They want us to
Speaker 12: not just be defenders, but to provide some help in
Speaker 12: the attack and to get forward. And it's a physically
Speaker 12: demanding position. They want us to provide a pretty high output,
Speaker 12: usually the highest of the team in terms of distance
Speaker 12: covered and running back and forth. And you know, it's
Speaker 12: a position where we do a little bit of everything,
Speaker 12: and you know, we play on both sides of the ball.
Speaker 1: So far through the season, throughout the start of the season,
Speaker 1: you know, it has been a little bit up and down.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you feel like, you guys excel at
Speaker 1: when you're getting points.
Speaker 2: What are you doing well.
Speaker 12: I think that we're a team that brings energy and grit,
Speaker 12: and I think we showed that in this past game
Speaker 12: because the first half wasn't easy. They had a lot
Speaker 12: of the ball and we were kind of weathering the
Speaker 12: storm for a lot of the first half. But we
Speaker 12: were the team that struck first and then we carried
Speaker 12: that into the second half where we kind of grew
Speaker 12: into the game and put the game away.
Speaker 1: We saw another brace from Diego Luna Sam and that
Speaker 1: young man star continues to shine and continues to rise.
Speaker 1: What's it like training with him? What's it been like
Speaker 1: to be his teammate and tell us maybe your thoughts
Speaker 1: on how he continues to evolve and really rise up
Speaker 1: the ranks as a genuine legit superstar in Major League Soccer.
Speaker 12: It's been great. You know, you always want to play
Speaker 12: with great players on your team, and he's been somebody
Speaker 12: that's been doing a great job for us this season.
Speaker 12: Funny story is he actually played with my little brother
Speaker 12: growing up when they were both playing for the center
Speaker 12: of the Earthquakes, and so I knew about him a
Speaker 12: little bit. It's kind of funny to be playing with,
Speaker 12: you know, people that my little brother has played with
Speaker 12: or against now in the league. But yeah, he's been
Speaker 12: somebody that I think has shown that he can produce
Speaker 12: at the club level and now on the national team level.
Speaker 12: So it's really exciting to see kind of where his
Speaker 12: career takes him.
Speaker 1: Just one brother, what's the family dynamic? Like, you grew
Speaker 1: up where you're a southern California kid, right, So is
Speaker 1: your family still there?
Speaker 2: Is it just you and your one brother?
Speaker 12: No, I'm the middle of three boys. So I've got
Speaker 12: my little brother, the one that has played with Diego,
Speaker 12: and I've got an older brother nobody actually lives in
Speaker 12: California anymore. My parents and my little brother, they currently
Speaker 12: reside in nearby Cordelaine, Idaho up north Sure, and my
Speaker 12: big brother is actually going to be returning to California
Speaker 12: to be nearby UC Davis, but currently he's in Beaverton, Oregon.
Speaker 1: Very does who put a soccer ball at your feet?
Speaker 2: First? Was it Dad? Was it Mom? Was it your brothers?
Speaker 2: How'd you get involved in the game?
Speaker 12: I had to think that I saw my big brother playing.
Speaker 12: He played all sorts of sports, soccer being one of them,
Speaker 12: and I saw him playing, and so I got involved
Speaker 12: when I saw that.
Speaker 1: Did you play any other sports? I mean, you're legitimately
Speaker 1: six feet tall. Some of these soccer guys are like
Speaker 1: five to five and they only played soccer.
Speaker 2: Did you play any other sports?
Speaker 12: I played a little bit of basketball. I did a
Speaker 12: little bit of swimming growing up, but otherwise it was
Speaker 12: intramural you know, baseball, football, those kinds of things, but
Speaker 12: primarily soccer basketball.
Speaker 1: Did you have a soccer hero growing up that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be in, a favorite club that you liked
Speaker 1: to watch growing up?
Speaker 12: I think the one that inspired me the most was
Speaker 12: probably Ronaldinho. The things that he did on the field
Speaker 12: and with the ball were just, you know, they looked magical,
Speaker 12: and I always liked to watch his YouTube videos and
Speaker 12: try to recreate them, and I think that's what really
Speaker 12: inspired me.
Speaker 2: When did you know that you were really good at this?
Speaker 1: When did you know that if you put in the
Speaker 1: work and had some health luck and did the things
Speaker 1: that you could potentially be a professional player.
Speaker 12: I would say sometime when I was a teenager. I
Speaker 12: started to, you know, believe that I had, you know,
Speaker 12: the ability and the opportunity to maybe make it. But
Speaker 12: you know, it's always hard to say because there are
Speaker 12: players that you grew up with that you think are
Speaker 12: going to make it for sure, and they don't, right,
Speaker 12: And so I think what I started to realize was
Speaker 12: that it wasn't just about the talent, and that there
Speaker 12: were other factors and other you know, non controllables control
Speaker 12: goles that went into it. And I really tried to
Speaker 12: focus on everything I could control and and just you know,
Speaker 12: figure out the paths from there. Because I didn't really
Speaker 12: have anybody for my family that's with this path, so
Speaker 12: I was kind of winging it and trying to figure
Speaker 12: it out as I went.
Speaker 1: Tell me what it's like playing for Pablo here a
Speaker 1: new coach juxtaposed other coaches you played for, or what
Speaker 1: makes Pablo Pablo?
Speaker 2: What's it like playing for him?
Speaker 12: It's been awesome. I really enjoyed it when I was
Speaker 12: in Houston. I'm enjoying it again being here at ourself.
Speaker 12: You know, the teams that he coaches, they show a
Speaker 12: lot of grid, a lot of fight, you know, and.
Speaker 8: Not just.
Speaker 12: A strong tactical sense. So I think that there's a
Speaker 12: good balance there. I like that he's a good man manager.
Speaker 12: He you know, is the players coach who and knows
Speaker 12: what it's like to be in our shoes, and so
Speaker 12: I think all that experience allows it to be the
Speaker 12: coach that he is.
Speaker 1: So tell me your thoughts on where you guys find
Speaker 1: yourselves and the kind of the conversation at that locker room.
Speaker 1: With the win against San Diego, you're now four to six,
Speaker 1: and oh, I think you're the only team in all
Speaker 1: of Major League Soccer that has not tied the game.
Speaker 2: And so you know, Sam, you know the deal. You're
Speaker 2: a vet.
Speaker 1: I think he played in one hundred and forty four
Speaker 1: games and ultimately some of the best teams we've ever
Speaker 1: had here have been off to really bad starts, and
Speaker 1: some of the worst teams got off the great starts.
Speaker 1: I get is such a marathon long season. But through
Speaker 1: through ten games, where do you guys feel like you're
Speaker 1: at right now? What do you have to do to
Speaker 1: maybe get more results coming your way.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think that, you know, we feel a sense
Speaker 12: of urgency knowing that we're, you know, getting close to
Speaker 12: being a third of the way through the season. At
Speaker 12: the same time, we know that it's a long season,
Speaker 12: and you know, you win a couple of games in
Speaker 12: a row and suddenly you shoot up towards the top
Speaker 12: of the table. And so I think, you know, in
Speaker 12: the past couple of games, we've gotten back to playing
Speaker 12: a little bit more the way we want to and
Speaker 12: playing more complete games. And I think, you know, the
Speaker 12: things that we've been doing in training and going into
Speaker 12: these games, we have to keep doing that and just
Speaker 12: be continue to be better in our defensive end and
Speaker 12: in our offensive end in the boxes, and that's the
Speaker 12: focus that we've been talking about. And I think that
Speaker 12: everything in between has been quite good. It's just being better,
Speaker 12: you know, not letting goals in and scoring our chances,
Speaker 12: and I think we'll be just fine.
Speaker 1: Primary transfer window comes and goes, two editions are made,
Speaker 1: both from SKC, ironically enough, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: rival of RSLs.
Speaker 2: It battled for the Cup back in the day.
Speaker 1: So tell me what sort of what sort of kind
Speaker 1: of access or what sort of experience you've had so
Speaker 1: far communicated with Willy and Johnny And what are you
Speaker 1: guys hoping that those two acquisitions do for your team.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I think it gives us a big boost offensively getting
Speaker 12: Willy and Johnny into the team. I think that this
Speaker 12: past game Willly showed a little bit of his ability
Speaker 12: and I think that it's very promising what he brings
Speaker 12: for the team. Johnny's still kind of getting going. He
Speaker 12: hasn't been training with the team. He's been a free agent,
Speaker 12: and so he might need a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 12: he's been producing in the league for the past seven
Speaker 12: years or so, and he's a well known name around
Speaker 12: the league, and so that experience that he brings to
Speaker 12: the team, and you know what he'll have to attack,
Speaker 12: I think will be really valuable. Going forwards. We have
Speaker 12: had a little bit of difficulty producing as much as
Speaker 12: we'd like offensively, and so I think that these guys
Speaker 12: will be really helpful in that category.
Speaker 2: What do you like to do, Sam when you're not
Speaker 2: playing soccer?
Speaker 1: I've read that you and your fiance like to foster
Speaker 1: animals and at one point, am I reading correctly that
Speaker 1: you had twelve cats in twenty twenty.
Speaker 12: Yeah, something crazy like that, just because we had I
Speaker 12: think a litter of kidden that was in the process
Speaker 12: of being adopted out, and then there was another kiddens
Speaker 12: that we were asked to foster or else they were
Speaker 12: going to get put down, and you know, it was
Speaker 12: either we take them in or they were going to
Speaker 12: get put down that day. So we took them in
Speaker 12: and there was a little bit of an overlap, and
Speaker 12: but yeah, it's something that we're very passionate about. We
Speaker 12: love animals, not just cats and dogs, but we we
Speaker 12: tend to foster or work with with those animals. And
Speaker 12: otherwise we both my fiance and I both really like nature.
Speaker 12: I like, uh, you know, walking around Ochre Lake with
Speaker 12: my dog. I helped to visit the National Parks sometime
Speaker 12: soon when we get some days off in a row.
Speaker 12: And otherwise I've enjoyed cooking some nice meals at home,
Speaker 12: cooking dinners with my fiance. We live right by Harmon
Speaker 12: and so being walking distance to a grocery or it's
Speaker 12: made it much easier to go grab some things for dinner.
Speaker 12: And it's been a lot for all.
Speaker 1: Of our listeners. RSL listeners. Do you do the social
Speaker 1: media thing? Do you do the Instagram thing? I think
Speaker 1: the kids love the TikTok? Sam, is there any anywhere
Speaker 1: that our listeners can go find your stuff?
Speaker 12: Yeah, they can find me on Instagram. Att Junka, All.
Speaker 1: Right, buddy, Well, congrats on that goal. It was quite
Speaker 1: a strike. And keep up the good work and most
Speaker 1: importantly stay healthy.
Speaker 12: Okay, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Sam Junker Rsel left back. He and Alex catron Is
Speaker 1: kind of battling for that position. Had a pretty stunning goal.
Speaker 1: I didn't know Sam had that in him. It was
Speaker 1: from I don't know, twenty five twenty six yards out
Speaker 1: beat the keeper lower right hand side and was able
Speaker 1: to get that goal to help RSL get that three
Speaker 1: one victory against San Diego. The road continues for RSL.
Speaker 1: They have been on the road for a while. Three
Speaker 1: of the next four on the road. They're going to
Speaker 1: take on Vancouver, who's the best side in the West
Speaker 1: right now. Then they'll be in Dallas at Toyota Stadium,
Speaker 1: a quick trip back to Salt Lake. I guess I
Speaker 1: should say Sandy to take on Portland, and then there'll
Speaker 1: be a Dick Sporting Goods Park to take on Colorado.
Speaker 2: So three the next four on the road for real
Speaker 2: salt Lake.
Speaker 1: Kimmy Butler expected to play for the Golden State Warriors
Speaker 1: tonight as the Warriors are trying to take a three
Speaker 1: to one lead over the Houston Rockets. Unfortunately, Damian Lillard
Speaker 1: it was confirmed earlier today that he has torn his
Speaker 1: left achilles tendon in the Bucks lost to the Pacers
Speaker 1: over the weekend. So we got some NBA playoffs tonight,
Speaker 1: some Stanley Cup playoff action as well. Of course, the
Speaker 1: Utah Hockey Club high speedhead their offseason. Hopefully Bill Armstrong
Speaker 1: can make a couple of additions to the team to
Speaker 1: take the right step in the right direction. I think
Speaker 1: they've got about eight million dollars to play with, fifth
Speaker 1: most cap space in the NHL. They got the fourteenth
Speaker 1: pick in the first round of the NHL Draft. Then
Speaker 1: they're on second, third, and fourth round pick. So there
Speaker 1: you go, all right, porter, right football guy. Of all
Speaker 1: the utes that did not get drafted, which one surprised
Speaker 1: you the most?
Speaker 3: Hmm, that's a good question. I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I was entirely surprised with a whole lot of them,
Speaker 4: except Junior Tafuna. I thought that Junior would be a
Speaker 4: mid round or laid round draft pick. I thought there
Speaker 4: was little doubt about that. I thought there was even
Speaker 4: littler doubt about that when he showed well at senior Day's,
Speaker 4: senior camps, stuff like that. But this was a really,
Speaker 4: really good class when it comes to a lot of
Speaker 4: the interior defensive linemen, a lot of the interior offensive linemen.
Speaker 4: So these teams that were building up, they're insides.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: There was a long list of both defensive tackles and
Speaker 4: guards and centers on the offensive side. So that was
Speaker 4: kind of the story. It was Junior Tafuna, a guy
Speaker 4: that would have been drafted in spence, I would say
Speaker 4: eighty percent of the year's eighty percent of NFL draft classes.
Speaker 4: He's gonna go late round and maybe even earlier. But
Speaker 4: this was one of the outliers there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and oftentimes.
Speaker 1: You know, as we've talked about, I always go back
Speaker 1: to that anecdote, the anecdotal story I share. When Trevor
Speaker 1: Riley was drafted, and I think it was the seventh
Speaker 1: round by my Jets, I sent him this text. I'm like, dude, congrats,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, and he sent me an expletive leaden text
Speaker 1: and return about how pissed.
Speaker 2: He was because he wanted to choose his landing spot.
Speaker 1: If you're going to go in the sixth or the
Speaker 1: seventh round, you might, like Conrad o' toole got a
Speaker 1: nice guaranteed deal to go play for Seattle, you might
Speaker 1: have the preference of choosing where you play instead of
Speaker 1: being told where you live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little inside there. I was in the know
Speaker 4: when it comes to Britain Covey's situation during that process,
Speaker 4: and it was just kind of the same situation where
Speaker 4: at the end of the draft we were actually sitting
Speaker 4: in a room hoping he didn't get drafted, which is
Speaker 4: kind of a weird feeling, because he had a prompts
Speaker 4: at that point for a couple of different teams that
Speaker 4: he felt really comfortable with the situations, one of those
Speaker 4: being the Philadelphia Eagles ended up okay for the guy.
Speaker 4: So that's a that's a pretty common situation in some
Speaker 4: draft situations. And yeah, it happens more than you think.
Speaker 1: We should uh, we should get Britain Covey on on
Speaker 1: the radio show.
Speaker 3: I know, right, apparently busy guy.
Speaker 1: Do I need to book that because he claims that
Speaker 1: he's down, I know, is he lying to me?
Speaker 4: He Britain and listen, it's my guy, it's our guy.
Speaker 4: Of course he is and would love to do it.
Speaker 4: I'm sure he's just sometimes a little a little tough
Speaker 4: to nail down, all right, But we'll we'll get him
Speaker 4: on the show. He has promised, he's promised you, he's
Speaker 4: promised me, and he has a golf tournament.
Speaker 3: He wants to to push.
Speaker 4: So we'll, uh, we'll make that happen. The real hold
Speaker 4: up is I've been trying to get it in the
Speaker 4: studio fair enough. Well, we'll make it work.
Speaker 1: Don mcchenry is your newest member of the Utah men's
Speaker 1: basketball program. The news was announced ab two hours ago.
Speaker 1: Seventeen points three boards to assist for Western Kentucky. Dorian
Speaker 1: Singer has signed an undrafted deal with the Las Vegas Raiders,
Speaker 1: So little little bit of breaking news as we sign
Speaker 1: off for this Monday, All right, Porter, what comes our way?
Speaker 1: On a busy Tuesday edition of the show.
Speaker 4: On a Tuesday show, Tim mcban stops by for the
Speaker 4: NBA Daily Assist, of course, talking NBA playoffs and the
Speaker 4: latest in the association. Kaylin Jones our old friend, a
Speaker 4: bunch of different stops Kaylen's had, but currently right now
Speaker 4: doing untold with Netflix. On the sports side, Dave Fox
Speaker 4: stops by as he does each and every other Tuesday,
Speaker 4: and then we'll hit some NFL Draft topics. Apparently those
Speaker 4: guys are pretty busy these last forty eight hours, so
Speaker 4: we'll hopefully talk with either Thorne Eystrom or potentially Field
Speaker 4: Yates tomorrow. Nice working on some times with those guys,
Speaker 4: so we'll continue the draft coverage.
Speaker 1: Field Yates the human boat shoe boat shoe, Yeah right,
Speaker 1: like like the Sperry's a lot of aggressive vineyard vines
Speaker 1: for our guy, Field Gates.
Speaker 3: Yes, you knew a lot of Field Yates.
Speaker 1: Coroda, Oh I did, surrounded by them, yes, no doubt?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Greg, And does a really good job be great.
Speaker 1: I've never interviewed Field that'd be fun. All right, will
Speaker 1: Sega and I special thank you today to Matt Brown,
Speaker 1: to Richard Smith, to Sam Junka, as well as the
Speaker 1: legend himself, John Paul JP Chunga for to the sound
Speaker 1: you may miss from the program today. The website ESPN
Speaker 1: seven hundred sports dot com, download our mobile app and
Speaker 1: take us on the go. The ESPN seven hundred app
Speaker 1: is available for free in the App Store in the
Speaker 1: Google play Store. Then, finally, for what we do in
Speaker 1: our space for four hours every afternoon, check out our
Speaker 1: podcast page which is called wait for it, the Drive
Speaker 1: with Spence. Check it's available wherever you get your show. Subscribe, rate, review,
Speaker 1: and say nice things in the comments. Give us all
Speaker 1: the stars. It does help for porter. I'm spencing tonight,
Speaker 1: Joyce some good playoff basketball tonight. We'll talk to you
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday Drive. As always, you know where to
Speaker 1: find that. It's right here on ESPN seven hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety two and FM. We are proud to be part
Speaker 1: of utah Z ESPN Radio Network