Speaker 1: It is a Friday, and I'm going to warn you
Speaker 1: right out of the gates, we're about.
Speaker 2: To get very weird.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be a weird Friday afternoon, all.
Speaker 1: Right, right out of the gates, just gonna let you
Speaker 1: know that. Happy Friday to you. Congratulations you made it.
Speaker 1: It is weekend time, beautiful day, little windy, but warm.
Speaker 1: We reached eighty degrees for the first time this year
Speaker 1: here in Salt Lake City, Utah. And as it is
Speaker 1: every single day, it is good to have you along
Speaker 1: for the ride.
Speaker 3: My name is Fence Jackets.
Speaker 1: I host this radio show that's called The Drive with
Speaker 1: Fence Jackets, and you've got to tuned into ESPN seven.
Speaker 3: Hundred ninety two one AFM.
Speaker 1: We are proud to be part of Utah's ESPN Radio network.
Speaker 1: We are out and about in the middle of a
Speaker 1: parking lot selling meat.
Speaker 3: YEP, that's happenings down on a Friday.
Speaker 1: We're with our friends at Homestead Steaks. They're offering you
Speaker 1: twenty Ribbi steaks for forty dollars.
Speaker 3: It's their weekend meat sale.
Speaker 1: And we're at Fashion Place Mall. They also have this
Speaker 1: sale going on Provo Town Mall. So Fashion Place Mall
Speaker 1: in Murray, the shops at Southtown and Sandy and Provo
Speaker 1: Town Center Mall. They're open until eight o'clock tonight, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna open up at ten am tomorrow and go
Speaker 1: until eight o'clock tomorrow as well. Then Sunday it's eleven
Speaker 1: to six. So here's what you do, and I will
Speaker 1: wish you the.
Speaker 3: Best of luck on your quest.
Speaker 1: Put this address in your GPS one oh four five
Speaker 1: zero South State Street and then follow that by number
Speaker 1: two three two zero. There's literally a truck set up
Speaker 1: with meat and then we're right next to it.
Speaker 3: But the best way to find.
Speaker 1: It is to put this in your GPS at one
Speaker 1: O four five zero South State Street, number two three
Speaker 1: two zero, and then follow that out.
Speaker 3: You'll see a meat truck.
Speaker 1: You'll see the ESPN seven hundred van, and we're hanging
Speaker 1: out twenty ribbys for forty dollars. Twenty ribbys for only
Speaker 1: forty dollars. Pretty insane sale. So we apologize for the noise.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of wind, and then the truck is
Speaker 1: also they've got to refrigerate the meat, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: hear that all. After due, you've got half priced bolk
Speaker 1: deals on steak, chicken, pork chops and seafood, all payments accepted, cash, credit, debity, ebt,
Speaker 1: you name it.
Speaker 3: So it's Homestead.
Speaker 1: Steaks twenty Ribby's for forty dollars is their main talking point.
Speaker 1: But they've got half price on bulk deal sets as
Speaker 1: well for steak, chicken.
Speaker 3: Pork chops and seafood.
Speaker 1: Come on buy and say what's up, really nice people,
Speaker 1: and it is an insane deal where you get twenty
Speaker 1: ribby steaks for only forty bucks two dollars per steak
Speaker 1: out here at Homestead Steaks one oh four five zero,
Speaker 1: South State Street, number two three two zero. Put that
Speaker 1: in your GPS and then come on by and say
Speaker 1: I keep following the GPS or just trust it all right?
Speaker 1: A lot to do on a Friday Masters Round two
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy man, what an amazing round two after that
Speaker 1: difficult finish to his round one yesterday. Justin Rose just
Speaker 1: hung in there and he still is your leader through
Speaker 1: two rounds. He's eight under parr and all the players
Speaker 1: are in the clubhouse as of now, well most of them,
Speaker 1: i should say, at the top of the leader board.
Speaker 1: So get you a quick Rundown. Justin Rose eight hunder
Speaker 1: par is your leader Bryson de Schambeau Carter to sixty
Speaker 1: eight today and he's one back of Rose at seven
Speaker 1: hunderd par Rory McElroy's at reference date Dynamite sixty six
Speaker 1: after seventy two yesterday. He's at six hundred par as
Speaker 1: Is Terrell, Hatton, Scotty Scheffler. Scotty is two hundred through nine.
Speaker 1: Terrell's three hundred through nine. So there are still golfers
Speaker 1: out on the course, but most of the golfers at.
Speaker 3: The top of the leader board are in the club.
Speaker 1: Ause Matt McCarty and Shane Lowry five hundred part, Corey Connors.
Speaker 3: And Jason Day.
Speaker 1: We'll give you an update on the Masters throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the show today, but we've got a lot
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: The Utah Jazz play.
Speaker 1: Their final home game of the season tonight in Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Speaker 3: We'll do some Jazz back basketball on the program today.
Speaker 1: Alex Jensen has made another higher for the Utah men's
Speaker 1: basketball program.
Speaker 3: We'll tell you who the new coach is. We'll get
Speaker 3: to know him a little bit. We are high speed
Speaker 3: ahead of the NFL Draft.
Speaker 1: Right around the corner NFL teams getting ready to make
Speaker 1: their selections. And don't forget, we're your home of the
Speaker 1: NFL Draft here in saut Lake City at the market
Speaker 1: in the market, so we'll keep you up to date
Speaker 1: on all of our coverage and we'll give you some
Speaker 1: rumors today the latest on the NFL Draft buzz as
Speaker 1: we get prepared for Round one, which is April the
Speaker 1: twenty fourth at six o'clock Mountain time, and then of
Speaker 1: course going throughout the twenty fifth and the twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: So not a ton of local interests, but some will
Speaker 1: Junior Tafooni be drafted, Karne reed Brand, Keithy, Tyler, Baddie
Speaker 1: and the like. BYU basketball locks in another commit, and
Speaker 1: there's a rumor that another big time commit is on
Speaker 1: the way. We'll tell you who these players are and
Speaker 1: we'll give you up to date suation with Kevin Young's
Speaker 1: not rebuild, but I suppose pivot and hoping to improve
Speaker 1: on a really good year last year for Brigham.
Speaker 3: Young still a waiting word.
Speaker 1: On more of the players for the Utah basketball side
Speaker 1: of things, but the coaching staff is starting to get
Speaker 1: filled out, So one step at a time, one step
Speaker 1: at a time. Utah Hockey Club is getting ready to
Speaker 1: finish their final or i should say, their first season
Speaker 1: here on our market. They're going to take on Dallas
Speaker 1: coming up tomorrow at six o'clock.
Speaker 3: That is a road game.
Speaker 1: Utah played their final home game against Nashville, so we'll
Speaker 1: do some hockey on the program today. RSL left today
Speaker 1: to hit the road. They are taking on Nashville as well.
Speaker 1: Hockey Club took on Nashville last night. RSL against Nashville
Speaker 1: coming up tomorrow. That is a six thirty first kick
Speaker 1: and that is on MLS Season.
Speaker 3: Pass on Apple TV.
Speaker 1: So a lot to do. Happy Friday to you. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: you made it weekend time. Take a big, old deep breath.
Speaker 1: We are live today.
Speaker 3: Even know where to tell you where we're at.
Speaker 1: Outside of the address one O four five zero South
Speaker 1: State Street, number two three two zero.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna keep repeating that because it's the only way
Speaker 3: to find us. One O four five zero, South State Street,
Speaker 3: number two three two zero.
Speaker 1: We are literally in the middle of a parking lot
Speaker 1: between J. C. Penny and Ethan Allen and we are
Speaker 1: selling meat. It's home set stakes twenty Ribby's for forty dollars.
Speaker 3: Is their weekend meat set. Come on buy and say hi.
Speaker 1: They've got a bunch of other deals on folk as
Speaker 1: far as steak, chicken, pork chops, and seafood. All payments accepted.
Speaker 1: Come on buy and say what's up. One O four
Speaker 1: five zero, South State Street number two three two zero.
Speaker 3: First guest, right out of the gates.
Speaker 1: One of our favorites from the golf channel, Rex Haggard's
Speaker 1: gonna stop by two talk Masters Golf two Roundswell, one
Speaker 1: round in the books, Round two going on right now.
Speaker 3: And we'll get with Rex today about.
Speaker 1: All the storylines from Augusta where little rain overnight softened
Speaker 1: up the course, so conditions pretty.
Speaker 3: Pretty good today.
Speaker 1: And then Howard Beck stops by NBA Daily Assist style,
Speaker 1: Christopher cam Rodnie Friday, State Ble Ofvars typically on site.
Speaker 1: But we're not getting c K out south I can
Speaker 1: tell you that much. But Richard Smith is a soldier,
Speaker 1: he is a hero. He will drive out and join
Speaker 1: us if he can find us at one O four
Speaker 1: five zero South State Street number two three two zero.
Speaker 1: And then Paul Pugmyer live at Augusta. I believe Paul's
Speaker 1: at Augusta. He was there for the drive, chip and
Speaker 1: putt to kind of give us a recap of the
Speaker 1: first two rounds.
Speaker 3: By the time Paul hops on, the majority of.
Speaker 1: The golfers will be in the clubhouse, so we'll have
Speaker 1: an idea of what the weekend.
Speaker 3: Is going to look like.
Speaker 1: Cuttline as of now is two over par, two over par.
Speaker 1: That could change, and we'll kind of give you an
Speaker 1: update on the players that will be playing over the
Speaker 1: weekend and the players that are going.
Speaker 3: To be going home.
Speaker 1: Tony Fenow, one under through eight, is currently at two
Speaker 1: over par. He is literally the last golfer along with
Speaker 1: Keigan Bradley, Oksha Bata as well. Uh Okha is in
Speaker 1: the clubhouse, as is Denny McCarthy, so they will make
Speaker 1: the cut.
Speaker 3: But Tony's got work to do.
Speaker 1: Tony is the last golfer above the cut line to
Speaker 1: play over the weekend. So we'll keep you up to
Speaker 1: dan on our local boy Tony fen Ou today, Rex Hoggard,
Speaker 1: Howard Beck, Chris Comaraddie, Richard Smith, Paul Pugmyer, Me Spence Check,
Speaker 1: Its all of you the great listeners. Come on out
Speaker 1: and see US at one O four five zero South
Speaker 1: State Street, number two three two zero.
Speaker 3: That's the best way to find us.
Speaker 1: And then about thirty minutes, I would say, let's see
Speaker 1: northwest of us. That's where we find the producer of
Speaker 1: this program, Porter Larson, who likes himself a rid by
Speaker 1: from time to time.
Speaker 3: Do I have that understood correctly, young man?
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, twenty for forty. Uh, that'll get
Speaker 4: That'll get me down there. If they're still open after
Speaker 4: the show, I'll be I'll be head of your way.
Speaker 3: You won't be able to find it. I don't trust
Speaker 3: your inner compass. You would. You would never be able
Speaker 3: to find where we're at.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: If I get a whiff of those stakes, I'll be there.
Speaker 5: I'll be there at the time.
Speaker 3: It is a great deal.
Speaker 1: Danny, one of the guys who's running the thing, really
Speaker 1: nice guy.
Speaker 3: He brought me over to show me the cuts.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are not like frozen meats that you
Speaker 1: get from like Trump International or whatever.
Speaker 3: These are high quality pieces of meat.
Speaker 1: So twenty ribbis for only forty dollars, that's right, two
Speaker 1: dollars per steak. It is their weekend meat set out
Speaker 1: here at one oh four five zero, South State Street
Speaker 1: number two three two zero. All right, our first guest
Speaker 1: right out of the gates, Rex hockerd from the Golf
Speaker 1: Channel Butt before we get to Rex. Courtesy of our
Speaker 1: good friends at Prize Picks, it is time now for
Speaker 1: your opening tip.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the Drive with Spence. Check its on Utah's
Speaker 6: number one Sports Talk. Now into the studios of ESPN
Speaker 6: seven hundred to set the scene for the show. The
Speaker 6: opening tip of the Drive is brought to you by
Speaker 6: Prize Picks. Use the code ESPN seven hundred and run
Speaker 6: your game with Prize Picks.
Speaker 1: Special deal with Prize Picks today, It's a Flex Friday.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things about Prize is every single
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Speaker 1: All right, Some news out of the University of Utah
Speaker 1: today on the men's basketball side of things. Martin Schiller
Speaker 1: has been added to Alex Jensen's staff.
Speaker 3: Martin Shiller is.
Speaker 1: A well known name in the world of both college
Speaker 1: and pro basketball. And Richard Smith is going to join
Speaker 1: us coming up in a little bit, and Smittye, I'm
Speaker 1: sure will provide some insight on who Martin Schiller is.
Speaker 1: So Schiller comes to Utah with a bunch of different
Speaker 1: types of experience, head coach, assistant coach internationally in the NBA.
Speaker 1: He was an assistant coach for the German national team
Speaker 1: from twenty fifteen to twenty nineteen. And Alex and Martin
Speaker 1: Schiller I've known each other for basically a decade, so
Speaker 1: this is an interesting addition, because one of the ways
Speaker 1: to kind of even the playing field if you're not
Speaker 1: necessarily in the same nil stratosphere. Some of the highest
Speaker 1: spenders in college basketball, namely the school that plays about
Speaker 1: forty miles down south, is to tap into some international prospects,
Speaker 1: and Utah Basketball.
Speaker 3: Has done that for a number of years.
Speaker 1: Hano Mettel and Andrew Boget and others.
Speaker 3: I could keep going.
Speaker 1: And Martin has a tremendous amount of connections and experience
Speaker 1: overseas Germany twenties Phoeba European Championship, and you know, I
Speaker 1: could keep going. He coached the Salt Lake City Stars
Speaker 1: for three years from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: he won Coach of the Year in twenty twenty after
Speaker 1: leading the Stars to the Western Conference regular season title.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 1: During his time with the German national team, he worked
Speaker 1: with players like Derk Noviitsky, Dennis Shrewda, Daniel Tice. He
Speaker 1: could get you know, other players internationally. So this guy,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who has been a head coach
Speaker 1: in the G League.
Speaker 3: He has been an assistant coach.
Speaker 1: Internationally and with a ton of experience when it comes
Speaker 1: to both domestic.
Speaker 3: And international players.
Speaker 1: And like I was saying, I mean, there are certainly
Speaker 1: certainly programs right now that have deep pockets and nil
Speaker 1: you know, nil funds at their disposal when they're able
Speaker 1: to go out and simply by players, which is what
Speaker 1: BYU is doing right now. We found the news out
Speaker 1: yesterday from Jeff Goodman that Rob Wright, a point guard
Speaker 1: from Baylor who had signed a one million dollar contract
Speaker 1: to stay at Baylor, decided to leave and not honor
Speaker 1: that deal because BYU offered him triple that three million
Speaker 1: dollars for Rob Wright. So Kevin Young has his point guard,
Speaker 1: and according to multiple sources, Darien Williams, who played at
Speaker 1: Texas Tech last year and.
Speaker 3: Had a really really good year, is leaning.
Speaker 1: Towards signing with BYU as well, and according to reports,
Speaker 1: it is another seven figure player. They're looking to bring
Speaker 1: Richie Saunders back at a seven figure salary. AJ debantsa
Speaker 1: seven million for five months of basketball, Rob Wright three
Speaker 1: million dollars, Richie Sonders seven figures, reportedly Darien Williams seven
Speaker 1: figures as well. I don't know what BYU's total NIL
Speaker 1: spend will be during this offseason, but it's already inching
Speaker 1: closer and closer and closer to twelve thirteen million dollars,
Speaker 1: and that's for four or five players. So we are
Speaker 1: moving a little bit closer to the house. First NCAA settlement,
Speaker 1: and once we have that, we'll have a little bit
Speaker 1: more structure and a little more clear guidelines and some guardrails.
Speaker 1: We talked to Morgan Scalley about this yesterday. So by
Speaker 1: you adding more players VI the transfer portal, Alex Jensen
Speaker 1: making more additions to the staff. And about an hour
Speaker 1: ago news broke that Rico Sylvester has been hired as
Speaker 1: the director of Operations and player Personnel for.
Speaker 3: The Utah men's basketball program.
Speaker 1: So now we are learning what this coaching staff is
Speaker 1: going to look like. Now we are seeing the coaching
Speaker 1: staff rounded out. Now we got to get some players. Okay,
Speaker 1: we know the Keana daz is coming back, Terrence Brown
Speaker 1: the transfer from FDU, but that's only.
Speaker 3: Two players from for a roster that has to fill out.
Speaker 1: So Rico Sylvester, Junior is your director of Operations and
Speaker 1: player of Personnel for the Utes.
Speaker 3: Wes Wilcox is your general manager.
Speaker 1: Raphael chilias Eric Daniels, and now Martin Schiller are three
Speaker 1: coaches that will be sitting alongside Alex Jensen. Now will
Speaker 1: there'll be additional hires on the coaching staff. Only time
Speaker 1: will tell, but Alex has referenced on a couple of occasions,
Speaker 1: including with our very own Sean O'Connell this week, that
Speaker 1: he is looking to keep this staff a little bit
Speaker 1: smaller than most of the college basketball staffs around the country,
Speaker 1: which I like, to be honest with you, I'm old
Speaker 1: enough to remember when Jerry Sloan had Phil Johnson and
Speaker 1: Gordy Chasa, or rickman Jeris had Jeff Judkins and Dick
Speaker 1: Hunt Saker and like Donnie Daniels, I mean, two or
Speaker 1: three assistant coaches used to be.
Speaker 3: The norm in basketball.
Speaker 1: And now you see three or four coaches on the
Speaker 1: front row, four or five coaches on the second row,
Speaker 1: and even sometimes third row coaches.
Speaker 3: And I'm never fully short what all these people do.
Speaker 1: But we are seeing Alex Jensen fill out his staff now,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing by you add more players via the
Speaker 1: transfer portal.
Speaker 3: Utah Jazz.
Speaker 1: With our final home game of this season tonight, they
Speaker 1: are going to take on the best team in the
Speaker 1: Western Conference, maybe the best team in the NBA is
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City is in town to take on the Jazz
Speaker 1: Big Night in the NBA last night.
Speaker 3: We'll go over some of the storylines Big.
Speaker 1: Night in the NBA tonight, But we are live today
Speaker 1: at one oh four five zero South State Street, number
Speaker 1: two three two zero, And all I can tell you
Speaker 1: is that we're selling meat.
Speaker 3: That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 1: So put that address in your GPS and come on
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 3: Keep following your GPS. Just trust it.
Speaker 1: You'll see the ESPN seven hundred van and you'll see
Speaker 1: the van with the meat with our friends at Homestead
Speaker 1: Steaks where they're selling twenty ribbys for forty dollars. That's right,
Speaker 1: two dollars a piece for these great ribbs. They're open
Speaker 1: until eight o'clock tonight, then they're going to reopen tomorrow
Speaker 1: at ten am and go and tell eight pm. Then
Speaker 1: on Sunday it's eleven am to six pm. With our
Speaker 1: good friends out here at Homestead Steaks. They're selling twenty
Speaker 1: rivis for forty dollars. That's really all you need to know.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you I walked over and checked
Speaker 1: out the cuts. These are high quality pieces. It is
Speaker 1: their weekend meet sale for twenty revis for only forty dollars.
Speaker 1: A little complicated to fine. We're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a park. We're in the middle of a parking lot.
Speaker 1: It's one o four five zero South State Street number
Speaker 1: two three two zero. One oh four five zero south
Speaker 1: State Street number two three two zero.
Speaker 3: Just put that in your GPS and then trust it.
Speaker 3: Keep going.
Speaker 1: You're gonna think that you're not there yet, but you'll
Speaker 1: you'll get there. ESPN seven hundred and is your touch point.
Speaker 1: And the noise in the background will continue until six
Speaker 1: o'clock tonight. Nothing we can do about it. Little windy
Speaker 1: today in Salt Lake City. I wonder how the conditions
Speaker 1: are at Augusta, Georgia, Paul Pugmyer, Happy Friday, sir.
Speaker 3: Are you still there? Are you still at the tournament?
Speaker 3: I am not.
Speaker 7: I'm back home and playing here today. But yeah, the
Speaker 7: flags are standing up at Augusta. They got little breeze.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Paul, Well, let's get into a couple
Speaker 1: of different storylines, and let's not bury the lead, because
Speaker 1: the man in the lead deserves our attention. As Justin
Speaker 1: Rose had himself a day yesterday. Now Justin has led
Speaker 1: this tournament, has been tied or has led I think
Speaker 1: nine times is what I read.
Speaker 3: And it's not the first time.
Speaker 1: He had a dynamite round one and he was fine today.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of hung in there and he has.
Speaker 3: The lead so far.
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of golfers out on the course,
Speaker 1: including Scotti Scheffler. We'll get the Scotty in a moment.
Speaker 1: But what do you make of Justin Rose? Eight under
Speaker 1: park through two rounds.
Speaker 7: Justin's a big game hunter. He's forty four years old
Speaker 7: and he is on the downhill side of his career.
Speaker 7: But his record speaks for itself, and to see him
Speaker 7: in the lead in any major championship is not a surprise.
Speaker 7: Doubly sort, Augusta, because like you correctly pointed out, he
Speaker 7: has been in the lead. This is the ninth time
Speaker 7: he's Today would be the tenth time nine times he's
Speaker 7: been in the lead. That's a conclusion of a round, Augusta.
Speaker 7: In the Masters, he has a great record here. He's
Speaker 7: finished second, he was in the playoff with defeated by
Speaker 7: Sergio Garcia in twenty seventeen. No big surprise to see
Speaker 7: Justin Rose play well in this event at.
Speaker 1: All, how would you handicap his chances as we move
Speaker 1: and we'll get to the cut line and we'll see
Speaker 1: if Tony's going to hang in there, but he is
Speaker 1: your leader through too in moving day tomorrow, how do
Speaker 1: you handicap Justin's chances to hang in there and make
Speaker 1: Sunday interesting.
Speaker 7: Well, look at the leaderboard right now, let's got the
Speaker 7: top five. It is a major champion, major champion, major champion,
Speaker 7: major champion, major champion. Augusta brings the cream to the top.
Speaker 7: And that is exactly what's happening right now today, and
Speaker 7: the wind is a part of that. But what's going
Speaker 7: on with Justin is that he is now this is
Speaker 7: becoming a Ryder Cup scenario with the best of the
Speaker 7: best of the best our playing on the best course
Speaker 7: in the best tournament. That's exactly what you want to see.
Speaker 7: And so he very definitely he's got the juice to
Speaker 7: make this happen. But he's going to have to go
Speaker 7: through several of the very best in the world.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about the very best in the world
Speaker 1: that joined Justin Rose on a very crowded and exciting
Speaker 1: leader board to picture what Saturday and Sunday could look
Speaker 1: like And I know I'm supposed to be here for
Speaker 1: the Bryce and d Shambeau resurrection and the personality turnaround
Speaker 1: and everybody suddenly loves him.
Speaker 3: I can't do it. He is so corny. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: but he's so good.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like I will admit that he's good, but he's
Speaker 1: just one of those guys.
Speaker 3: Want to hear him interviewed.
Speaker 1: I don't believe he's authentic at all, but that's just me.
Speaker 1: Will take the personal side out of it. He cards
Speaker 1: a sixty eight today after sixty nine yesterday.
Speaker 3: I think I read that his the average off the
Speaker 3: tee was like three p forty, which is so dumb.
Speaker 1: But he's at seven undred seven hunderd par, one stroke
Speaker 1: behind Justin Rose. Do you make of the defending US
Speaker 1: Open champs first two rounds of Augusta?
Speaker 7: Again, no big surprise. He has done well here before
Speaker 7: he as you note, he is defending US Open champ.
Speaker 7: He's been that twice. He is the low amateur back
Speaker 7: in his college days at Augusta, so he has had
Speaker 7: some success in this tournament on this golf course. He
Speaker 7: has what I think is a self induced handicap to
Speaker 7: overcome to win at Augusta. Augusta requires a combination of deft,
Speaker 7: artistry and visualization in the short game, in the chipping,
Speaker 7: in the greenside game, because nobody is going to hit
Speaker 7: all the greens. Nobody's going to hit more than thirteen greens.
Speaker 7: It just doesn't happen to that golf course. And the
Speaker 7: reality is when you look at the greatest short game
Speaker 7: players in the history of the game, they are all
Speaker 7: people who gripped down on the club, crowded the ball,
Speaker 7: got their hands in their body as close to the
Speaker 7: ball as possible, and used the artistry in their eyes
Speaker 7: and in their hands. Dave Chambeau self selects out of
Speaker 7: that with his skiff and single length clubs, and so
Speaker 7: I have immense respect for his game. I have immense
Speaker 7: respect for the way he approaches the game. I totally
Speaker 7: understand folks like you who say you don't you're not
Speaker 7: on board of his personality. Fine doesn't matter, but his
Speaker 7: game is absolutely one of the best in the world.
Speaker 7: The hole in his game is exactly one of the
Speaker 7: things that Augusta demands, and that is creativity and artistry
Speaker 7: in the short game. If he is able to get
Speaker 7: over the top at Augusta. He will be doing it
Speaker 7: going against a self imposed limit.
Speaker 3: You know, Paul, Here's what it is.
Speaker 1: You know, growing up, you're in high school, college or whatever,
Speaker 1: and the guys that try really hard to be cool,
Speaker 1: like way too hard to be cool are.
Speaker 3: The ones that are never cool. That's what it is
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 1: I think he just tries so hard because he was
Speaker 1: so hated for so long, and you could tell that
Speaker 1: that bothered him, and I just think he's gone over
Speaker 1: the top the other direction to try to convince people
Speaker 1: that he's this authentic dude, and I just don't buy it.
Speaker 3: That's all it is.
Speaker 7: No, it's totally fair. But I've got a question for you.
Speaker 7: After seeing his over the house thing, did you want
Speaker 7: to go try to hit a shot over some house
Speaker 7: and see if you could hit it onto something.
Speaker 3: No, because Bryson did it. If Rory did, it would
Speaker 3: have been different.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, God, look I'm being too are so that
Speaker 1: was really cool. And by the way, I'm here for
Speaker 1: people are redeemable. I'm here for reclamation stories. And you know,
Speaker 1: let me ask you one more thing.
Speaker 3: How do you think it affected him personally?
Speaker 1: Where you know, kind of the origin of it was
Speaker 1: the kepka back and forth when Brooks was on camera
Speaker 1: rolling his eyes at him, and then some other players
Speaker 1: around tour kind of scoffed at his whole like approach
Speaker 1: where it just felt like he was trying to sound
Speaker 1: like the smartest guy in there in the room all
Speaker 1: the time. Do you how do you think that affected him,
Speaker 1: because he clearly has gone about this intentionally to try
Speaker 1: to help people understand that he's not this weird dude
Speaker 1: that thinks he's smarter than everybody else.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think he. I think he heard what people
Speaker 7: were saying, saw what people were doing, and made adjustments
Speaker 7: and and changed his approach to a few different things.
Speaker 7: And I admire that. I admire I admire the guy
Speaker 7: for trying different things, and then I admire him more
Speaker 7: for saying, Okay, that didn't work, I'm gonna do something different.
Speaker 7: He is a polarizing figure. I totally understand that, and
Speaker 7: I understand why. But ultimately, ultimately, for me, it's all
Speaker 7: I saw him in person several years ago before he
Speaker 7: both up, but he was lacing five irons that were
Speaker 7: occupying shot after shot the exact same airspace one after another.
Speaker 7: It was amazing to see and I've been a fan
Speaker 7: of his since then.
Speaker 3: He's obviously a remarkable talent. There's no denying that.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move let's move on. We'll just kind
Speaker 1: of keep talking about some of the notables. And you know,
Speaker 1: watching Rory yesterday where look he was, he was dialed in,
Speaker 1: he was playing incredible golf yesterday. It was just two
Speaker 1: chip shots that got away from him and I felt
Speaker 1: bad man, a couple of doubles down the stretch. But
Speaker 1: how about a sixty six that as of now is
Speaker 1: the low round of the clubhouse. There's some other golfers
Speaker 1: out of the course. But what do you make of
Speaker 1: both the way Rory kind of fell apart once again
Speaker 1: down the stretch in round one and his ability to
Speaker 1: stay the course and get himself right back in it
Speaker 1: with his sixty six today, Paul.
Speaker 7: His sixty six is so impressive for a number of reasons.
Speaker 7: The biggest one is exactly what you say, because he's
Speaker 7: coming off in his first round on seventeen when he
Speaker 7: double bogied seventeen. That was his second double of the day,
Speaker 7: is second of the tournament, and he knows that nobody
Speaker 7: has ever won the Masters with two double bogies on
Speaker 7: their card. He knows that in the last twenty years
Speaker 7: that there's only been three winners with a double bogie
Speaker 7: on their card over seventy two holes, and one of
Speaker 7: those was when Scotty Scheff were four putted eighteen on
Speaker 7: Sunday when he had a five shot leading, it didn't matter,
Speaker 7: and yeah, yeah, and so so Rory knows this stuff.
Speaker 7: And for him to keep his act together and go
Speaker 7: back out and shoot sixty six, which in this wind,
Speaker 7: if it's not the low round of the day, somebody's
Speaker 7: going to do something really special. That is impressive that
Speaker 7: he's come back, but he still has two double bogies
Speaker 7: to overcome. Now, if he wins with two double bogies
Speaker 7: and seventy two holes, it means that he makes history.
Speaker 7: But who among us is more capable of making history
Speaker 7: than Rory McElroy. It's a pretty short list.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt like, excuse me, felt like most people that
Speaker 1: were kind of breaking down the tournament. I would watch
Speaker 1: a little golf Golf Channel coverage, then the ESPN stuff
Speaker 1: with Van Pelt. Believed this was going to be the
Speaker 1: Rory Scotti Show and let's move over now to Scotty Scheffler,
Speaker 1: who today is only one under, but card it is
Speaker 1: sixty eight.
Speaker 3: And it was just so rock solid.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: ESPN plus has this channel where you can excuse me,
Speaker 1: the wind is now blowing allergies right into my face.
Speaker 1: ESPN Plus has this channel where you can watch specific players,
Speaker 1: and I tuned into the Scheffler channel and it's just
Speaker 1: so solid. It's just so like robotic almost but not
Speaker 1: a great round so far today, but it is Scotty Scheffler.
Speaker 1: So he is five under, which is t six one
Speaker 1: under through today. What do you make of the first
Speaker 1: kind of round and half of Scotty?
Speaker 7: He's right where he needs to be. First of all,
Speaker 7: nobody has four great rounds in the Masters. There's only
Speaker 7: been one time, only one time that anybody has had
Speaker 7: four rounds in the sixties, and that was Cam Smith
Speaker 7: in twenty twenty and he didn't even win. Just nobody
Speaker 7: has four great rounds at Augusta. And so if Scotty's
Speaker 7: off round, if you will, is today, and he shoots
Speaker 7: seventy one or seventy, then he's in great shape. And
Speaker 7: the thing to watch on Scotty is where he hits
Speaker 7: the ball relative to the pins and relative to the
Speaker 7: to the to the middle of the green. In other words,
Speaker 7: he very seldom takes on pins. He's hitting to the
Speaker 7: middle of the green or to the middle side of
Speaker 7: the green, which is just what Jack Nicholas did and
Speaker 7: just what Tiger Woods did. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 7: those are the two greatest players ever. And so what
Speaker 7: Shefferd does is where a course out by making sure
Speaker 7: that he doesn't make a mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just, uh, you know, when you see all
Speaker 1: these other players get so loose, I mean, even the
Speaker 1: two mistakes Rory made yesterday, Paul, like Scotty just doesn't
Speaker 1: do that right, Like, it's so rare to see Scotty
Speaker 1: Scheffler make a gaff that that, you know, he actually
Speaker 1: just as I say that, he's just bogied.
Speaker 3: So now he's born in her park.
Speaker 1: But like the catastrophic mistakes that other golfers make, Paul,
Speaker 1: Scotty just doesn't seem to make those.
Speaker 7: No, No, and that's exactly it. And look the aphorism,
Speaker 7: and it holds itself true time and time again. Birdies
Speaker 7: don't win tournaments. Pars do anybody playing at this level
Speaker 7: can make birdies, and they all do. It's the guys
Speaker 7: who don't give them back that are there at the
Speaker 7: end of the at the end of the tournament and
Speaker 7: looking at a trophy. Scheffler that is his magic power
Speaker 7: is not giving things back. And yesterday on fifteen and
Speaker 7: McElroy hit that chip, he went into it too quickly,
Speaker 7: and while it's unfolding, I'm watching this and I'm thinking, uh, Rory,
Speaker 7: take take your time here, dude, this will run away
Speaker 7: from you. You gotta be a little more deliberate about
Speaker 7: this and find a soft landing spot. And he didn't,
Speaker 7: and the ball did run away from him and it
Speaker 7: went through the green and in the water on the
Speaker 7: far side. I think that was the kind of shot
Speaker 7: that just needed more consideration. And I can tell you
Speaker 7: Rory's not going to do that twice.
Speaker 1: Let me let me follow up there, because I was
Speaker 1: watching last night excuse me, goodness, gracious, it may not
Speaker 1: be windy and Augusta that it is out here in Sandy.
Speaker 1: I was watching the golf coverage after the round, the
Speaker 1: post coverage on Golf Channel, and I didn't realize it
Speaker 1: realized this in real time because I was watching a
Speaker 1: bunch of other groups. But apparently, I guess Akha Battilla
Speaker 1: hit it in the water and then took a lot
Speaker 1: of time to try to determine where he was going
Speaker 1: to drop it, and then took a lot of time.
Speaker 3: To hit his shot.
Speaker 1: So they were saying Rory was standing over that ship
Speaker 1: for five minutes.
Speaker 3: So do you think it.
Speaker 1: Was a case where maybe he was in his head
Speaker 1: too much, because to your point, when he stepped in it,
Speaker 1: it did look like he rushed the actual shot. But
Speaker 1: according to the Golf Channel guys, he was standing over
Speaker 1: the chip for five minutes, and Rory is a notorious,
Speaker 1: notoriously fast player.
Speaker 3: Do you think that messed with his head a little bit?
Speaker 7: You get very well, Mike Heavin. I appreciate you telling
Speaker 7: me that. I just at the time I was I
Speaker 7: was working to all my colleagues who were wondering, but
Speaker 7: I had the sound off on the TV and so
Speaker 7: I didn't hear the commentary, and so I didn't know
Speaker 7: that about Auk Shay. But that does make really good sense.
Speaker 7: But to me, when I just saw him step into
Speaker 7: that shot a little abruptly, I thought at the time,
Speaker 7: and then he just plane carried it too far into
Speaker 7: the fifteenth green. Now we have the advantage of having
Speaker 7: seen a couple of players hit that shot when Rory
Speaker 7: was playing other holes we're watching on TV. But you know,
Speaker 7: I've had the privilege of being being there standing on
Speaker 7: that green. It is so severe, and I know Rory
Speaker 7: knows this good land that it that shot just playing
Speaker 7: got away from him and I don't think he gave
Speaker 7: it the respect it needed.
Speaker 3: Is that the is that the green where Tiger Vern?
Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, the tiger moment is that the green
Speaker 1: with the tiger chipped in that everybody has seen the
Speaker 1: highlight highlights up.
Speaker 7: Oh that was on sixteen from from over the back.
Speaker 7: And then what what Vern said was in your life
Speaker 7: of me or anything like that, which was a great call.
Speaker 7: But the answer was yes, actually three years prior, Davis
Speaker 7: Love did it from about the same spot.
Speaker 1: So, oh, do not do not shatter our dreams that
Speaker 1: you know, all of us that have watched the Vern
Speaker 1: call and believe that has never happened, for it will
Speaker 1: never happened to happen again.
Speaker 7: Well, the Verden call is really spectacular and it does
Speaker 7: set it apart. And look, it was one of the
Speaker 7: greatest shots in the history of the game. And it
Speaker 7: mattered because it was Sunday and because Tiger was in
Speaker 7: the mix. And when love get it, it was neither Sunday
Speaker 7: nor was he in the mix. And so all those
Speaker 7: things make Tigers the greatest, seriously, seriously, one of the
Speaker 7: greatest shots ever struck in the history of the game.
Speaker 3: Okay, we've got a little live.
Speaker 7: So I got seen it anyway.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, fair enough, fair enough, Yeah, fair enough, Okay,
Speaker 1: We've got some bad news.
Speaker 3: Tony just bogied.
Speaker 1: So he's even through ten after carding a seventy five yesterday,
Speaker 1: which means as of now, with eight holes to play,
Speaker 1: Tony is three over par and the projected cut line
Speaker 1: is two over par, so he's one stroke behind the
Speaker 1: projected cut line. Canada's own Mike Weir, who lives in
Speaker 1: draper Fine, is coming home. He will not be playing
Speaker 1: over the weekend. But what do you make of where
Speaker 1: we're at right now? With Tony eight holes left, he's
Speaker 1: got to find at least one birdie if you want
Speaker 1: some play over the weekend.
Speaker 7: There are birdies out there, no question. On both thirteen
Speaker 7: and fifteen. Now, as we darn well know, and I
Speaker 7: have discussed here just over the last few minutes. Those
Speaker 7: holes also have double bogies waiting on them. Yeah, but
Speaker 7: those holes are get Those holes are gettable twelve with
Speaker 7: the front left pinplacement on twelve. Today it is gettable eleven.
Speaker 7: We better pay real respect to eleven. Same same to fourteen. Sixteen, always, always, always.
Speaker 7: Sixteen is hard. That green is so difficult to pet,
Speaker 7: and eighteen eighteen does not get enough credit for being
Speaker 7: a great hole and a hard hole, and especially a
Speaker 7: finishing hole as good as it is. Eighteen is like
Speaker 7: going straight up a wall. It's so steep and it
Speaker 7: doesn't show up on t but you can't see the
Speaker 7: green from the fairway. Eighteen is always so tough. Tony
Speaker 7: can get himself back inside the cut line, absolutely, but
Speaker 7: there's a lot of monsters waiting out there.
Speaker 1: So in order to be fair, I will point out
Speaker 1: that Arrell Hadden is six hunder par and he's three
Speaker 1: hundred through ten. Okay, let's see there's some other names
Speaker 1: here as well. Of course, Bryson. Bryson's a live guy.
Speaker 1: Terrell Hadden's a live guy. So we do have a
Speaker 1: couple of live guys that are showing pretty well. Patrick
Speaker 1: Reid is a two hundred par Bubba Watson's a one
Speaker 1: hunderd par as well.
Speaker 3: But when you look at so John Ram two over, Okay,
Speaker 3: he's going to play over the weekend.
Speaker 1: He's gonna make the cut, but a seventy five, seventy one.
Speaker 1: And I swear, Paul, when you and I first really
Speaker 1: started doing radio consistently, every time you'd hop on, I'd
Speaker 1: ask you, like, what the hell happened to John Ram?
Speaker 3: Why is he suddenly the best player in the world.
Speaker 1: Why is he suddenly the guy that everybody is scared of,
Speaker 1: including at the time, Scottie Scheffler. Then you have Dustin Johnson,
Speaker 1: who will miss the cut because he's in the clubhouse.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have any chances to get back over the
Speaker 1: cut line. You have Cameron Smith, once upon a time
Speaker 1: thought to be the you know, one of the rising
Speaker 1: young stars on the PGA Tour. You have five time
Speaker 1: major Champ Brooks Kepka, who will not be playing over
Speaker 1: the weekend. Phil Micholson, you know, looks like a lot
Speaker 1: of the live guys aren't gonna.
Speaker 3: Make the cut. Let's see where did I see? Phil?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Now? Phil actually will play over the weekend, he rallied.
Speaker 1: Well, he's still on the course anyway, John Ram, Dustin,
Speaker 1: Johnson Brooks, Kepka as well as Cam Smith. Like those
Speaker 1: four guys at one point were four of the best players.
Speaker 3: In the world.
Speaker 1: What is fair to say about what Live has done
Speaker 1: to any or all of them?
Speaker 7: It is that is such a good question, and I
Speaker 7: think there are layers and layers and depths to really
Speaker 7: fully understand it. But let me skim a stone across
Speaker 7: a few of them. Number one, fifty four holes is
Speaker 7: not a complete test. It just is not, And don't
Speaker 7: ever let anybody tell you it is. Number two. When
Speaker 7: you don't have a cut, When you don't when you're
Speaker 7: not faced with the possibility of not making the weekend
Speaker 7: and not making a check, when you have to beat
Speaker 7: half the field in order to even make it to
Speaker 7: complete the event, it changes the dynamic. It's a very
Speaker 7: very different mental game. In quick digression, I think the
Speaker 7: PJ Tour is making a mistake taking the cut away
Speaker 7: from the elevated events there. The third thing about Live
Speaker 7: is that the shotgun start means a shotgun finish, which
Speaker 7: means that somebody who makes up ground on the field
Speaker 7: the last day of the tournament, does not finish the
Speaker 7: same holes in the same sequence of this in the
Speaker 7: same way that everybody else does, and it's a different dynamic.
Speaker 7: It changes the game. You add all of that together
Speaker 7: with the fact that nobody watches this stuff, the numbers
Speaker 7: are just next to zero. Live is virtually invisible in
Speaker 7: the in the media sphere. It these guys don't have
Speaker 7: the white hot light on them. And when you don't
Speaker 7: have the white hot light on you, you don't it
Speaker 7: doesn't steal you and temper you. And they're they're losing
Speaker 7: it a little bit. DJ he's on the he's on
Speaker 7: the down side of his career, just as getting to
Speaker 7: that age. That's fine, he has nothing to prove and
Speaker 7: nothing to apologize for. But Kopka Rom Dave Chambeau, Smith joking,
Speaker 7: Neeman Terrell Hatton, these guys are doing themselves a disservice
Speaker 7: to not always be in the white hot light. And
Speaker 7: I think it shows up in places like this week.
Speaker 1: Paul, before I set you loose, you're always good to
Speaker 1: put some perspective on who you think can actually win
Speaker 1: the thing over the weekend. And I believe I don't
Speaker 1: know if this was a Brandal Shambley fact from last night.
Speaker 1: Most I'll just say from my recollection, most of the
Speaker 1: winners come from the top five after the first in
Speaker 1: the second round, So if we stick in that space.
Speaker 1: So if we stick in that space, we're we'll call
Speaker 1: the cut at four under. And if we no, Oh,
Speaker 1: Scotty just made a birdie, so he's five under. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna include Farder because Scotty's there, but he's
Speaker 1: at five under. So justin Rowse Bryson, Deshamba, Rory McIlroy,
Speaker 1: Cord Connor's, Terrell Hatton, Matt McCarty, Shane Lowry, Jason Dave,
Speaker 1: Scotty Scheffler, and I'm gonna throw Victor Hovlin in there
Speaker 1: because I've seen him do amazing things. That's the list
Speaker 1: of the players that are in the top five and
Speaker 1: maybe just right outside looking in.
Speaker 3: Does the winner come from that group? Who do you
Speaker 3: think it is?
Speaker 1: Is there anybody from the outside, maybe Oberg who's at
Speaker 1: three under that you think can make it interesting?
Speaker 7: Yes, the winner comes from that group, which eliminate those
Speaker 7: who have not in a major championship with a leader
Speaker 7: board like this that is dominated by people who are
Speaker 7: already proven they can win a major championship. It'll be
Speaker 7: somebody doing it again, not somebody doing it for the
Speaker 7: first time. And so then it's got to come down
Speaker 7: to is Rory mclory going to make history and become
Speaker 7: the first player to win this thing with two double
Speaker 7: bodies on his card after what he did today in
Speaker 7: the wind, combined with what he's been doing, the way
Speaker 7: he's been playing and winning on great golf courses this year.
Speaker 7: He's on at Pebble Beach and he's won at TPC Sawgrass,
Speaker 7: and he brings technically a different tool, a different weapon
Speaker 7: to the game this year than he's ever had, and
Speaker 7: that is a three quarter swing short iron that comes
Speaker 7: in with less spin and so it's easier to control
Speaker 7: where it stops. I'm going to add all that and
Speaker 7: I'm sticking with Rory McElroy.
Speaker 3: Love it, Paul, Thank you sir.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the weekend and we'll get you back on soon.
Speaker 1: Oh wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, before you go,
Speaker 1: what's wait before you go?
Speaker 3: What's coming up on the show tomorrow? My bad?
Speaker 7: Oh, no, no problem at all. We're gonna be doing
Speaker 7: some things with the Glen Moore Am. That's where I am.
Speaker 7: The Senior am has played today and then the regular
Speaker 7: am is tomorrow. We're going to be celebrating and putting
Speaker 7: a cap on the drive chip and putt. Hey the
Speaker 7: three kids from Utah who were in the drive chip
Speaker 7: and putt National finals last weekend, all of them, all
Speaker 7: three got second place. It was a huge showing for
Speaker 7: the Utah kids. We're going to be celebrating that. And
Speaker 7: one of the great golf journalists of our time is
Speaker 7: Wesley Rouff. His fortieth anniversary was this last week. We're
Speaker 7: going to talk with Wesley about forty years and covering
Speaker 7: golf in Utah.
Speaker 3: How did Johnny Miller's grandson, who's named after Jack.
Speaker 1: Nicholas played this poor kid who has been this weight
Speaker 1: of the world put on this young man's shoulder.
Speaker 3: How did our guy do?
Speaker 7: He did remarkably well. He was he was one of
Speaker 7: the three who finished second place, and he was he
Speaker 7: was a little unhappy about that as we were talking afterwards,
Speaker 7: but I said, you know, you didn't lose, you got
Speaker 7: beat And those are different the kid who beat him.
Speaker 7: You know, they do the petting portion on the eighteenth
Speaker 7: green at I guess the National and you get a
Speaker 7: thirty foot putt and a fifteen foot putt, and the
Speaker 7: kid who beat him jarred both of them. He went
Speaker 7: draino on both the thirty footer and the fifteen footer
Speaker 7: and went out and stole it from Nicholas Miller. And
Speaker 7: so even though Nick was was a little disappointed, he realized,
Speaker 7: oh wait, yeah, I just I got beat by a
Speaker 7: great performance. So he did really well.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just not nickname him Tiger Lynn Nicholas Miller.
Speaker 1: You know we did nick name him Tiger. I just
Speaker 1: want to get the kid a hug, Paul, Thank you
Speaker 1: for the time, sir. I have a great weekend.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Stance.
Speaker 3: We've got Chris Camraddi from the Athletic joining US.
Speaker 1: Utah football is almost done with their spring portion of
Speaker 1: the calendar. We've got it forever. Twenty two game coming
Speaker 1: up next Saturday. You tell you dot com is where.
Speaker 3: You go for tickets. Richard Smith forty years with Utah Jazz.
Speaker 1: He's gonna roll by live on side today and then
Speaker 1: we'll get you back out to Augusta for an update
Speaker 1: on the Masters.
Speaker 3: But the hippist NBA.
Speaker 1: Rider around on a Friday afternoon joins us. Howard Beck,
Speaker 1: Happy Friday, sir.
Speaker 7: How are you.
Speaker 8: I'm doing well, spent, how are you? Thank you for
Speaker 8: bringing me into Aria.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it now, you got it.
Speaker 1: I figured that would put you in the right head
Speaker 1: space and that's what we need from you today. And Howard,
Speaker 1: you know I'm old enough to remember when you were
Speaker 1: good at your job, you typically kept it didn't help
Speaker 1: Michael Malone since you and I last spoke. Denver gets
Speaker 1: rid of the most successful coach that that organization has
Speaker 1: ever had. Two years after he wins a championship, and
Speaker 1: we're learning more about it as this kind of story unfolds.
Speaker 1: But what was your reaction in the moment and where
Speaker 1: are you at with it right now?
Speaker 8: I mean, I was absolutely stunned in the moment, just
Speaker 8: like everybody across the league, Because yes, the whole league
Speaker 8: knew there were tensions between Michael Malone and Calvin Booth.
Speaker 8: The whole league was on alert that something might happen
Speaker 8: in that organization, whether it was Malone going, Booth going,
Speaker 8: or as we saw both going. What I think shocked
Speaker 8: everybody is that this happened with three games left in
Speaker 8: the regular season, and like this is coming just a
Speaker 8: week and a half or so after, the Memphis Grizzlies
Speaker 8: shocked and saw by firing their very successful coach, Taylor Jenkins,
Speaker 8: with just nine games left in the regular season. And
Speaker 8: it's at that time the first thing we all said was, well,
Speaker 8: this is unheard of. It's you know, coaches get fired
Speaker 8: late in the season sometimes, but usually from bad teams,
Speaker 8: not playoff bound teams, or in the Nuggets case, a
Speaker 8: team still has a plausible shot at making a run
Speaker 8: to the finals, and with the best player on hurt
Speaker 8: as their franchise face. And so what shocking is not
Speaker 8: that they might have decided it was time to and
Speaker 8: it's just that they did it at the date that
Speaker 8: they did it. And yes, Michael Malone, great coach, obviously
Speaker 8: the best coach in the Nuggets history, most successful coach
Speaker 8: in Nuggets history by record, by championship, ring their first
Speaker 8: and you know, there are circumstances we can get into
Speaker 8: the wise of what they did.
Speaker 3: How would you there?
Speaker 8: I am here, can you hear me?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I got you. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I just don't fully undwll
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that don't fully understand
Speaker 1: about it. But with the Celtics just sold for six
Speaker 1: billion plus with NBA valuations as high as they are,
Speaker 1: if you're an owner of an NBA team and you
Speaker 1: don't feel like spending money on your team.
Speaker 3: There are other owners who will. Now.
Speaker 1: Certainly, no matter how rich you are, you don't want
Speaker 1: to lose money. I mean, that's certainly one thing I
Speaker 1: know about rich people that don't.
Speaker 3: Like losing money.
Speaker 1: But what's fair to say about the way the Krokeys
Speaker 1: are operating this organization and the way that they're supporting
Speaker 1: or not supporting the greatest player, in my opinion, in
Speaker 1: the world in his prime.
Speaker 3: They're not gonna have Yokic forever.
Speaker 8: No, they won't. And I will just say, like, if
Speaker 8: they thought there was any reason that Jokis would be
Speaker 8: unhappy with this move, I don't think they would have
Speaker 8: made it right. Like this is not to say that
Speaker 8: Jokic had a hand in it at all, But every
Speaker 8: NBA team these days is going to operate in a
Speaker 8: manner where you think what your any major decisions are
Speaker 8: going to be at least met with approval or at
Speaker 8: least not disapproval by your franchise star. This has generally
Speaker 8: been a cheap organization. I have heard. I cannot confirm this,
Speaker 8: but I'll just pass this along as scuttle. But I
Speaker 8: have heard that Calvin Booth was by far the lowest
Speaker 8: paid GM in the NBA. Michael Malone was being paid
Speaker 8: pretty well, especially after the championship, and they're now gonna
Speaker 8: have to pay him him, you know, after firing him.
Speaker 8: So you know, teams that are super cheap don't want
Speaker 8: to pay fire coaches. But yeah, look, they didn't want
Speaker 8: to pay the luxury tax or they didn't want to
Speaker 8: increase their luxury tax bill by keeping contagious called wop hope,
Speaker 8: they let them walk. That's actually turned out okay for them,
Speaker 8: Like CACP has not exactly had a phenomenal season in Orlando,
Speaker 8: and Christian Brown has actually been pretty good as his replacement.
Speaker 8: But no, they haven't made the moves aggressively that I
Speaker 8: think you need to continue to build around Jokic. They
Speaker 8: have eroded in the couple of years since the Championships.
Speaker 8: There's no question there. I don't think all of that
Speaker 8: is financial. I think some of that is just they
Speaker 8: have not been real creative as a front office, and
Speaker 8: somebody else is going to get the chance to try
Speaker 8: to steer it a different direction now.
Speaker 1: So Josh Cronky gave an interview to one of their
Speaker 1: house media propagandist, which is what NBA teams do now.
Speaker 1: They all have their own in house media, so you
Speaker 1: don't really ever get the real stuff. You just get
Speaker 1: what the team wants to, you know, propagate out into
Speaker 1: the community. And I guess that's media in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: But he said he wanted to see his team play
Speaker 1: with joy again and the eye roll, I cannot explain
Speaker 1: the ie.
Speaker 3: Roll that you know that I had.
Speaker 1: And look, maybe this is a scenario where I'm just
Speaker 1: too old and the approach of somebody like Michael.
Speaker 3: Malone might be outdated.
Speaker 1: Because look, Michael Malone his father, Brennan, of course, assistant
Speaker 1: coach in New York, and Michael was in New York
Speaker 1: as well, and so we got to know him a
Speaker 1: little bit. And he's not a warm and fuzzy guy.
Speaker 1: But most coaches, at least in my experience, are not.
Speaker 1: Or is it a new day? Does that approach no
Speaker 1: longer work? Howard in today's day and age of pro basketball?
Speaker 8: I mean, I will say you knew Michael Malone when
Speaker 8: you were in New York. I met Michael Malone when
Speaker 8: I first got to New York in two thousand and four,
Speaker 8: and he was an assistant coach for the Knicks. And
Speaker 8: on a personal level, he's a perfectly warm and fuzzy guy.
Speaker 8: Maybe not the warmest and fuzziest, but he's very personable.
Speaker 8: He's a great guy. I like him a lot, but
Speaker 8: he is old school. He is a hard ass. He
Speaker 8: is a hard driver, and he is a guy who's
Speaker 8: going to call out his players behind closed doors and
Speaker 8: sometimes in press conferences, as we've seen multiple times over
Speaker 8: the last year, and including within the last week, where
Speaker 8: it was clear he had kind of lost patience with
Speaker 8: them and he was not shy about it. And I
Speaker 8: don't you know. I'll just tell you I've had plenty
Speaker 8: of conversations this week with people around the league, including
Speaker 8: some folks who have direct ties with players in that
Speaker 8: locker room, who made it pretty clear to me they
Speaker 8: were worn out. They were just worn out, and look,
Speaker 8: it happens. And you know, you could say that, well,
Speaker 8: this is just not the era of the NBA for
Speaker 8: an old school which, like Michael Malone, we re see
Speaker 8: fewer and fewer coaches with his kind of approach, that style,
Speaker 8: that tone, and there's a reason for it, but it
Speaker 8: could work for a while. He was there for ten
Speaker 8: years that the current group might have worn out of
Speaker 8: that and was ready for a new voice. I don't
Speaker 8: think it's too shocking, but I will say that it
Speaker 8: is absolutely the case that, you know, whether you want
Speaker 8: to say lost the locker room, or whether you want
Speaker 8: to say players were tuning him out or he wasn't
Speaker 8: connecting anymore, whichever phrasing you want to use, it was
Speaker 8: the case. It wasn't just that Michael Malone and the
Speaker 8: front officer hired the GM. You could have just gotten
Speaker 8: rid of Calvin Booth and resolved that tension, especially at
Speaker 8: this time of year where you're past the trade deadline,
Speaker 8: you're past the date to make any kind of moves
Speaker 8: for a while. You could have done that. So if
Speaker 8: the only issue were coach versus GM, you could have
Speaker 8: thrown overboard the GM. It's because there was problems in
Speaker 8: multiple directions that they also had to get rid of
Speaker 8: Malone at.
Speaker 3: The stage last thing here.
Speaker 1: You know, throughout the course of the season, once Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: you know, established themselves as the dominant team in the
Speaker 1: West and quite frankly historic in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: with the net, the differential and their win rate. The
Speaker 1: conversation on the show with you and others has been
Speaker 1: who keeps Mark Dagnalled.
Speaker 3: Up at night?
Speaker 1: And the answer, oftentimes with you and others has been
Speaker 1: the Denver Nuggets has the coaching chaos and switch with
Speaker 1: coach Adelman now just getting the opportunity to do this
Speaker 1: with only a handful of games left to have you
Speaker 1: changed your calculus and what you think Denver can do
Speaker 1: this year in the postseason.
Speaker 8: I'm kind of two minds on this spence. One is
Speaker 8: that I think the very you know, removal of a
Speaker 8: coach at this late stage of a season, if you're
Speaker 8: a championship have you a championship aspirations? I feel like
Speaker 8: it's really destabilizing just by definition. It feels destabilized to
Speaker 8: me to change the leadership at this moment with days
Speaker 8: to go in the regular season. But obviously the Nuggets
Speaker 8: don't feel that way. Obviously they feel like David Adelman
Speaker 8: as a new voice who's been around for a while,
Speaker 8: like he's been with the Nuggets for you know whatever,
Speaker 8: seven eight years, Like He's a known quantity there. It's
Speaker 8: different being the head coach versus an assistant. True, but
Speaker 8: I think their feeling is and I'm just deducing this
Speaker 8: that if you, you know, if they still think they
Speaker 8: have a chance to make a run to the finals
Speaker 8: and have a shot against the Thunder, it'll be with
Speaker 8: a different voice. So they would probably argue, no, we've
Speaker 8: increased our chances of being the team to knock out Oklahoma.
Speaker 8: All that said, I think there's more than a couple
Speaker 8: of teams these days that are probably keeping dagnallt up
Speaker 8: at night. Like, I don't know, if I'm a head coach,
Speaker 8: I don't care how talented my my Thunder team is.
Speaker 8: I don't want to see Lebron and Luca together point
Speaker 8: in the in the postseason. I don't think I want
Speaker 8: to see Stephan Jimmy Butler either, And for that matter,
Speaker 8: as long as the guy stays healthy, I don't want
Speaker 8: to see Kawhi Leonard. So you know, it's a really
Speaker 8: interesting Western Conference race because the Thunder are the clear favorites.
Speaker 8: They've earned that, but there are like six or seven
Speaker 8: teams that have a legit shot to make the conference finals,
Speaker 8: and I think any one of them, you know, has
Speaker 8: a puncher's chance.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're around this stuff and you've worked
Speaker 1: and covered it as long as you have, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I hate to say this, I'm not as old
Speaker 1: as you are.
Speaker 3: But I'm getting there, Howard. I'm ra behind you.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for quite some time to have
Speaker 1: enough skin in the game to really try to fight
Speaker 1: the innate skepticism and cynical nature that tends to seepin.
Speaker 1: But I will admit to being enthralled with the scene
Speaker 1: of Luka Doncic going back to Dallas and the pregame
Speaker 1: introduction where he is in tears, and I could not
Speaker 1: help but of Mavericks fans, because you know, we actually
Speaker 1: have a weird parallel here, Howard, to what happened in Dallas.
Speaker 1: It's different on a lot of levels. But bear with
Speaker 1: me for a moment, because when Dallas traded Luca, you
Speaker 1: heard a lot of people say, how do you trade
Speaker 1: a twenty five year old generational superstar, global superstar.
Speaker 3: In his prime? How do you do that?
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell's not Luka Doncic, but the Jazz traded away
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell. The age of twenty five as he was
Speaker 1: just entering his prime. Much different scenarios. But to see
Speaker 1: Luca in tears, if I'm a Mavericks fan, it makes
Speaker 1: me even more upset at Nico Harrison because that dude
Speaker 1: wanted to stay and would have stayed forever.
Speaker 3: Donovan probably was not going to stay.
Speaker 1: When Donovan came back the first time he had the
Speaker 1: opportunity with the Cavs, there were no tears. You could
Speaker 1: tell that Donovan wanted to get out. So it's they're
Speaker 1: two very different things. But for jazz fans in Salt Lake,
Speaker 1: like if Luca was theirs and he comes back and
Speaker 1: he's crying, it adds even more insult because you know
Speaker 1: that that guy wanted to be here and you him
Speaker 1: jettison in him off, so you have the tears pregame
Speaker 1: and then he just goes out and dominates, And I
Speaker 1: thought it was really cool. I will admit to sitting
Speaker 1: there glued to the television and being like, good for
Speaker 1: Luke amn and gutted for mas fans. How did you
Speaker 1: digest that? That those scenes in Dallas, Howard.
Speaker 8: Spence, It's like nothing we've ever seen before, Like there's
Speaker 8: no precedent for this like, there are plenty of players
Speaker 8: who left the team via trade or free agency and
Speaker 8: came back and it would be emotional, maybe it's negative emotions,
Speaker 8: maybe positive, but it usually was the player's choice to go.
Speaker 8: And we've just never seen a superstar of Lucas caliber
Speaker 8: traded against his will and to his shock in his prime,
Speaker 8: not to mention to a team that, you know, like
Speaker 8: the Lakers are everybody's rival, right, Like everybody hates them.
Speaker 8: If you're not a Laker fan, you probably hate them.
Speaker 8: And so it's so complex and so unprecedented that the
Speaker 8: scene the other night was gonna be surreal regardless. So
Speaker 8: now you have whatever, twenty thousand Mavericks fans in Luca
Speaker 8: T shirts and in Laker jerseys and whatever, and they're
Speaker 8: cheering everything Luca does. This is not Lebron James going
Speaker 8: back to Cleveland as the enemy and being like absolutely
Speaker 8: booed and serenaded with all sorts of awful things. Lucas
Speaker 8: being cheered at every turn, every time he touches the ball,
Speaker 8: every time he hits a shot. It says if Mavericks
Speaker 8: fans were Laker fans that night, like, how awkward did
Speaker 8: that have to be? If you were you know, Daniel
Speaker 8: Gafford and Spencer Dinwiddie and Anthony Davis for that matter.
Speaker 8: Where the entire crowd it sounds like it's a Laker
Speaker 8: home game, but it's in Dallas. Like that's brutal. And
Speaker 8: then when they're not cheering for Luca, they're chanting fire
Speaker 8: Nico and like it's it just there's never been anything
Speaker 8: like this fence. There just has And yes, you can
Speaker 8: be happy for Luca. You can feel gutted for Mavericks
Speaker 8: fans because they are gutted by this. It's just it's
Speaker 8: just a really it's fascinating, but it's it's just it
Speaker 8: was surreal, as I say, And they're not getting over
Speaker 8: this anytime soon, right, Like, Luca's gonna be with the
Speaker 8: Lakers for a long time to come. They're in the
Speaker 8: same conference, so they're gonna be in Dallas twice a
Speaker 8: year and they're gonna have to relive this pain in
Speaker 8: Dallas every single time. And I don't think Nico Harrison
Speaker 8: and Patrick Dumont are ever going to live this down.
Speaker 3: What in the hell do the Phoenix Suns do? You know?
Speaker 3: Matt Ishbia there there.
Speaker 1: Was a clip of his comments at the end of
Speaker 1: last season talking about how bullish he was with the
Speaker 1: talent they have on paper coming into this year. And look,
Speaker 1: I'm not running him down if I had Kevin Durant
Speaker 1: and Devin Booker and Brad Buhle. I mean, we've seen
Speaker 1: all three of those be generationally special at times. They've
Speaker 1: never been generation special together. But what do they do?
Speaker 1: How do they get out of this hole?
Speaker 3: What's next? In Phoenix?
Speaker 1: They have the highest payroll in the league and they're
Speaker 1: missing the playoffs.
Speaker 8: That ownership group and and and just the leadership there
Speaker 8: has been just you know, delusional at every turn. Like
Speaker 8: I think the quote Primissiondia at this time last year
Speaker 8: was something to the effect of, like, oh yeah, twenty
Speaker 8: eight other gms would love to have what we have,
Speaker 8: and like, no, I think you're missing a few details
Speaker 8: here where you've got a Bradley Beal contract that is
Speaker 8: the worst in the league and unmovable in part because
Speaker 8: of the size of it and in part because he's
Speaker 8: a no trade clause, and you know here it is
Speaker 8: most expensive payroll in the league. They couldn't even make
Speaker 8: the play in so everybody believes they're going to trade
Speaker 8: Kevin Durant. That's the obvious part. But here's what I
Speaker 8: would say, because you still can't trade deal, you're stuck
Speaker 8: with him. Does trading Kevin Durant get you anywhere? Because
Speaker 8: which you're going to get back for Kevin Durant is
Speaker 8: not going to be as good as Kevin Durant. It'll
Speaker 8: be some combination of players and picks or whatever, but
Speaker 8: it's not going to move the ball forward. Devin Booker
Speaker 8: plus that whatever you got for Durant plus Beale plus
Speaker 8: you know, Grays and Allen or whatever, is not getting
Speaker 8: you anywhere. You're you're worse off. So the only answer
Speaker 8: to me, the only logical conclusion, is you have to
Speaker 8: trade Devin Booker. Also, you're done like this, this thing
Speaker 8: is is just cooked. And you know, by the time
Speaker 8: you turn this thing around, if you can, Devin Booker
Speaker 8: is going to be thirty five years old. They don't
Speaker 8: have they don't have draft capital because they've traded it
Speaker 8: all away. The only way to replenish your draft capital
Speaker 8: and to make yourself viable again is to trade both
Speaker 8: of them.
Speaker 9: Geez.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I can't argue, I can't debate.
Speaker 1: I think that's the only play. I just wonder if
Speaker 1: a guy like matt Ishbie is willing to eat his
Speaker 1: crow a little bit, because we kind of have a
Speaker 1: similar type of ownership situation here with the change from
Speaker 1: the Millers to Ryan Smith. And you know, Ryan is
Speaker 1: a hyper competitive guy, and I can tell you that
Speaker 1: the way the stuff is gone with the Jazz is
Speaker 1: not so well with him. He's tried to push for
Speaker 1: a Drew Holliday deal here, or Kristapsporzingis deal there, or
Speaker 1: Michael Bridges or whatever it is. He's tried to go
Speaker 1: all in on big name players, but it hasn't worked.
Speaker 1: And so I know he's sad eat a little crow
Speaker 1: as well. Do you think matt Ishbia has that in
Speaker 1: him to understand like this really is the only direction
Speaker 1: if we ever want to get back to where we
Speaker 1: want to be.
Speaker 8: We're about to learn a lot about matt Ishbia and
Speaker 8: whether he can learn from his mistakes, whether he can
Speaker 8: even acknowledge that a mistake was made right. Like the
Speaker 8: first thing we learned about him as an owner was
Speaker 8: he's going to be really aggressive. He's really confident in
Speaker 8: what he does because he took ownership of the team
Speaker 8: and immediately made that trade for Kevin to which cost
Speaker 8: a ton of draft capital plus mckail Bridges and Cam Johnson.
Speaker 8: So you could admire that on some level. Okay, he's bold,
Speaker 8: he's ambitious, he's aggressive, he's not afraid to spend. Like
Speaker 8: those can be positive things unless you do it unwisely.
Speaker 8: And the Beetle trade was the unwise version of that.
Speaker 8: And so the next thing we'll learn is, has Mattasbia
Speaker 8: realize the error. Is he reflective enough and self aware
Speaker 8: enough to realize it's time to pivot? And you know,
Speaker 8: are the people around him giving him the right information?
Speaker 8: Because you know, like all these guys they come in,
Speaker 8: they're great in their other you know, their other careers
Speaker 8: in real estate and finance and whatever. They think they
Speaker 8: know basketball or the NBA, but they don't and they
Speaker 8: have to learn some hard lessons. So has he learned
Speaker 8: his lesson? We'll find out soon.
Speaker 3: All right, Howard, final thing I'll set you loose on this.
Speaker 1: We'll kind of go back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with the West and you referenced, you know, when
Speaker 1: Kawhi is healthy, we're all just reminded of like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's who he is.
Speaker 1: When he's right, and he still is that when he's healthy. Uh,
Speaker 1: Luca Lebron to cerebral, high level computer basketball skilled players.
Speaker 1: Watching them figure out has been fascinating Denver as Jokic
Speaker 1: Golden State has been different with Butler, Minnesota.
Speaker 3: Probably deserves some Flowers as well.
Speaker 1: If I hold you to one answer, the team that
Speaker 1: is keeping Mark Dagnold up at night most is who
Speaker 1: and why.
Speaker 8: Who? Boy? As I mentioned earlier, you can make a
Speaker 8: case for all of them. I guess if I'm gonna
Speaker 8: default to one, and I'm gonna I'm surprising myself as
Speaker 8: I say this. I think it's the Lakers only because
Speaker 8: you know, lucas a top five player, top three player,
Speaker 8: potentially within the finals last season. I'd like the Lakers
Speaker 8: are flawed as a roster, right, like they don't have uh,
Speaker 8: they don't really have you really have a center. They're
Speaker 8: you know, you would you would not make the roster
Speaker 8: this way by choice, And I thought when they made
Speaker 8: the trade for Luca, it's the obvious thing to do,
Speaker 8: but it was for the long term, not to contend
Speaker 8: this season. So there are flaws in the roster. But
Speaker 8: Luca and Lebron together I'll tell you what a coach
Speaker 8: told me a few weeks back when I was saying,
Speaker 8: how are they able to play defense at this level
Speaker 8: when luc and Lebron are generally net negatives there They
Speaker 8: don't have Anthony Davis or another center to man the
Speaker 8: back line, Like, how are they doing this? And the
Speaker 8: coach told me, don't overthink this. They have two of
Speaker 8: the top five players in the NBA. And I said,
Speaker 8: Lebron is top five right now, and the coach said, yeah,
Speaker 8: absolutely he is. So you know, Lebron's got all those
Speaker 8: championship rings, all those playoff wins, all that experience, Luca
Speaker 8: is amazing. Just that one two punch almost no matter
Speaker 8: what else you had around them, would be scary. So
Speaker 8: all default to the Lakers on that answer.
Speaker 1: Howard, thank you, my friend. Have an excellent weekend and
Speaker 1: we will chat soon.
Speaker 8: Thanks betch you too, talk to you next week.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Howard Beck from The Ringer one of my favorite riders
Speaker 1: for a long long time.
Speaker 3: I always appreciate Howard's time. You can get him.
Speaker 1: I think he does most of his posting on Blue
Speaker 1: Sky now, so you can get him over there. The
Speaker 1: link to his Blue Sky is on his Twitter. If
Speaker 1: you want to get weird, it's just at Howard beck
Speaker 1: Is where you find him. So I appreciate Howard's time.
Speaker 1: All right, we are out at about today. You can
Speaker 1: probably tell with the wind and of course the truck
Speaker 1: in the background. But it's a good opportunity for you
Speaker 1: to grab some high quality.
Speaker 3: Stakes for extremely cheap Homestead steaks.
Speaker 1: They're offering twenty ribbis for forty dollars, that's right, and
Speaker 1: these are good quality stakes. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: walked over and checked him out before he hopped on
Speaker 1: air today. So twenty ribbys for forty dollars. It's their
Speaker 1: weekend meat sale. And where we're at today is by
Speaker 1: Fashion Place Mall. So put this address in your GPS,
Speaker 1: follow it and trust it because for a minute you
Speaker 1: probably will not believe you're going in the right direction.
Speaker 3: We are literally in the middle of a parking lot.
Speaker 1: It's one oh four five zero South State Street, number
Speaker 1: two three two zero, one oh four five zero South
Speaker 1: State Street number two three two zero. Forty ribbis for
Speaker 1: forty dollars half priced Bulk deals on steak, chicken, pork, chops,
Speaker 1: and seafood. It's the Bulk Family party pack to fill
Speaker 1: your freezer with New York strips, filets, mega ribbis, gourmet
Speaker 1: smash burgers plus chicken and seafood.
Speaker 3: All payments are accepted cash, credit, debit, and EBT.
Speaker 1: So come on buy and check out our good friends
Speaker 1: out here at Homestead Steaks Add one oh four five zero,
Speaker 1: South State Street number two three two zero, one oh
Speaker 1: four five zero, South Stage Street number two three two zero.
Speaker 3: We're out here with our.
Speaker 1: Friends at Homestead Steaks twenty ribbis for forty dollars.
Speaker 3: It's their weekend meal deal.
Speaker 1: Locations at Fashion Fashion Place Mall shops at Southtown in
Speaker 1: Sandy Provo Town Center Mall as well. We're just forty
Speaker 1: dollars and they've got a bunch of deals on bulk
Speaker 1: for steak, chicken, pork chops and seafood.
Speaker 3: And when I found out we were gonna be out here.
Speaker 1: At Homestead Steaks, I said to Porter book me a
Speaker 1: guest that loves meat more than any other guests that
Speaker 1: we could possibly find, and preveyor of steaks, connoisseur of meats,
Speaker 1: Christopher Cameronnie on a Friday afternoon c K, Happy Friday, sir,
Speaker 1: how are you man?
Speaker 2: You went all waited Sandy and didn't invite me.
Speaker 3: Don't don't you dare, Christopher.
Speaker 1: You know that you're welcome to roll wherever I'm at
Speaker 1: at all times.
Speaker 3: There's no way you were making this drive. It's hard
Speaker 3: enough to get you downtown.
Speaker 10: Yeah, when Porter told me that you were going to
Speaker 10: be on remote and then, you know, I don't know, man,
Speaker 10: I think I think this, Now that the summertime is here,
Speaker 10: we can maybe make a couple of special things happen.
Speaker 10: You know that at the ninth to ninth Smith I'm
Speaker 10: always down, you know. You know, I've made a couple
Speaker 10: appearances there, but it's a little harder to get me
Speaker 10: to go to one hundred and fourth hundred and fifths
Speaker 10: south on State Street.
Speaker 2: But maybe one of these days, I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: maybe one of these days.
Speaker 1: All surprising Well, I just felt like the offer of
Speaker 1: twenty ribbis for forty dollars was going to be enough
Speaker 1: for a neat lover like you to roll out.
Speaker 10: I just think of that scene from the Great Outdoors
Speaker 10: when John Candy has to eat the old ninety six
Speaker 10: er and Dan Akro tells the guy he's done, and
Speaker 10: the chef says he's not done yet, and Dan Akers says,
Speaker 10: there's nothing left on that plate but gristle and fat.
Speaker 2: Poor John.
Speaker 10: But he did it, man, He got all the kids
Speaker 10: the hats, and he got to eat the old ninety
Speaker 10: six er.
Speaker 3: I was picking my moment, you were picking your nose.
Speaker 3: That is an underrated movie.
Speaker 1: That is an underrated classic John Candy movie. You know,
Speaker 1: since every week we've gone from Philip Seymour Hoffman to
Speaker 1: Ben Stiller and then Val Kilmer. Rest In Piece, John Candy,
Speaker 1: Resting Peace. Best John Candy movie is a great out
Speaker 1: doors planes trains and automobiles.
Speaker 10: Probably planes trains, but his character in Planes Trains gives
Speaker 10: me so much anxiety. I think my favorite John Candy
Speaker 10: character of all time is Uncle Buck. Okay, when he
Speaker 10: when he makes the giant pancakes for Macaulay Culkin's birthday.
Speaker 10: When I saw that as a kid, I was like, dude,
Speaker 10: why isn't my uncle like Uncle Buck? Like I wanted
Speaker 10: to go to the bowling alley and you know, hang
Speaker 10: out with guys who smoked cigarettes and drank a really
Speaker 10: cheap beer.
Speaker 2: And bowl like and wear the cool bowling shirts.
Speaker 10: Uncle Buck, by far, to me, is John Candy's best character.
Speaker 2: But best movie is Plane Trains.
Speaker 1: We all show should throw out Spaceballs. While we're talking
Speaker 1: John Candy movies, we probably should throw out Home Alone,
Speaker 1: since he was in Home Alone as well. But I
Speaker 1: do I think I agree with you as far as
Speaker 1: the best one, Planes Trains and Automobiles. And of course
Speaker 1: John can't any phenomenal in that movie. When Steve Martin
Speaker 1: the first time I saw Steve Martin bade the woman
Speaker 1: behind the counter at the rental car shop, I was crying,
Speaker 1: laughing underrated movie, Planes Trains and Automobiles.
Speaker 3: Do you care to Levy guess what year that movie
Speaker 3: was released?
Speaker 2: Eighty seven?
Speaker 3: What is you are? So weirdly smart? How did you
Speaker 3: know that? Did you look it up?
Speaker 2: I did not look it up?
Speaker 10: But fun, and this shouldn't be surprising. Fun Little Trivia.
Speaker 10: The lady behind the counter who Steve undresses, who soon
Speaker 10: reciprocates and then undresses him, is the principal's secretary in
Speaker 10: Ferris Wheeler's Day Off. Yes, she's an iconic eighties side
Speaker 10: character who always delivers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, indeed, oh man, now I'm thinking of great
Speaker 1: John Canny movies. That's why I love interviewing Chris Comraddy
Speaker 1: every single Friday. All right, give me your takeaway so far,
Speaker 1: first two rounds of the Masters, Chris.
Speaker 10: I'm fascinated to see if Rory can keep it up.
Speaker 2: Shooting a sixty six today. I don't know. Scheffler just
Speaker 2: had that chip, you know, a few a few holes ago.
Speaker 3: That's enough.
Speaker 2: He's getting my guy though. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember who I picked, but my guy is.
Speaker 10: He's not he's not wholly in the mix right now,
Speaker 10: but he's currently stalking the pack.
Speaker 3: Who did you pick? Again?
Speaker 1: Remind me, Mark Cowell, that's right, that's right, Colin morcow
Speaker 1: I'm impressed that you could just fake that you knew
Speaker 1: anything about what had happened.
Speaker 3: So far, So well done.
Speaker 1: C K all right, Chris, let me ask you about
Speaker 1: this dynamic So Jeff Goodman, who covers college basketball and
Speaker 1: one of the more plugged in so Jeff Goodman a
Speaker 1: college basketball is kind of like Shams to the NBA
Speaker 1: or kind of like Schefter to the NFL. Now he's
Speaker 1: not at ESPN anymore, but he's one of the more
Speaker 1: plugged in college basketball media members, and he reports yesterday
Speaker 1: that Rob Wright, who is a point guard who played
Speaker 1: at Baylor last year and as a freshman had a
Speaker 1: really good year at a really good game in Provo
Speaker 1: against BYU. Had signed a one million dollar deal to
Speaker 1: stay at Baylor for his sophomore season, but he has
Speaker 1: broke that agreement with Baylor to take what is now
Speaker 1: being reported as three million dollars in nil money from
Speaker 1: Brigham Young. Now the complicated part, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to be fair here, and I want you to help
Speaker 1: us understand this because you're a journalist.
Speaker 3: We don't necessarily have.
Speaker 1: Ironclad data about these contracts.
Speaker 3: BYU is a private institution.
Speaker 1: We can't file public records requests and get information like
Speaker 1: we can with other schools. But the reports that are
Speaker 1: out there by people, the report on college basketball consistently
Speaker 1: in a way that I don't is that aj Demants
Speaker 1: is getting seven million dollars for five months of basketball.
Speaker 1: Rob Wright's getting three million dollars to play at BYU.
Speaker 1: They paid Yegor Devin seven figures last year. They paid
Speaker 1: Ken and Ken seven figures last year. Jegor is going
Speaker 1: to the NBA. Canada is transferring. The reports are they
Speaker 1: want Richie Saunders back for a seven figure deal, and
Speaker 1: there's a there's a transfer and it was reported today
Speaker 1: Darian Williams, who played at Texas Tech last year, is
Speaker 1: really good and one of the top rated transfer forwards,
Speaker 1: and he is a seven figure player that is rumored
Speaker 1: now to be coming to BYU.
Speaker 3: That is not official.
Speaker 1: So the unofficial tally is in the neighborhood of fifteen
Speaker 1: million dollars for the five or six players that I.
Speaker 3: Just named to play for BYU and Kevin Young next year.
Speaker 3: What do you make of that? What's the take?
Speaker 10: Well, As somebody who has spent quite a bit reporting
Speaker 10: on the world of NIL agents and NIL over the
Speaker 10: last couple of years, I will tell you and the
Speaker 10: listeners of the Drive that numbers that are thrown out
Speaker 10: there aren't always accurate or close after it. I don't
Speaker 10: know any thing about this three million dollar deal with
Speaker 10: Rob Bright and BYU, but I've been told by several
Speaker 10: people who would know that valuations that are posted on
Speaker 10: some websites are often nowhere near close to accurate.
Speaker 2: The world of NIL spence is very tenuous.
Speaker 10: It's treacherous. It's treacherous in that unless you get the
Speaker 10: player or the player's agent to show you the breakdown
Speaker 10: of the actual payment of the nil deal. Odds are
Speaker 10: numbers that are floated are going to be bloated more
Speaker 10: often than not. Sure when when it comes to BYU,
Speaker 10: I'm not surprised because we've seen that the support of
Speaker 10: the basketball program is allowing it to reach heights that
Speaker 10: it never has before. Obviously, it starts with ajdbantsa. You're
Speaker 10: you're not going to get the number one recruit in
Speaker 10: the country, regardless of how much he likes Ja Dogs
Speaker 10: and Kevin Young without being able to open the checkbook.
Speaker 10: And frankly, it makes sense that they're going to continue
Speaker 10: to throw money at players that can potentially help BYU
Speaker 10: make a deeper run than the Cougar's ever had before.
Speaker 10: They're going to build around AJ, who I would assume
Speaker 10: and you can correct me if I'm wrong, will likely
Speaker 10: be only eating j Dogs for one year before he
Speaker 10: decides before he decides to pursue his professional career. But yeah,
Speaker 10: I mean to me, the most fascinating part of all
Speaker 10: this is the fact that we have BYU boosters who
Speaker 10: are wholly willing to back the basketball.
Speaker 2: Program while the football program.
Speaker 10: Is making strides but is clearly nowhere near where the
Speaker 10: basketball program is and It makes sense because the roster
Speaker 10: size and college basketball compared to college football. I mean,
Speaker 10: I know, with the House settlement, we're going to potentially
Speaker 10: go from one oh five to eighty five or whatever
Speaker 10: college basketball is fifteen and the reality is you're probably
Speaker 10: not having to pay the last roster spots twelve to
Speaker 10: fifteen anything. But it is a it is a subplot
Speaker 10: that is developing that I find very interesting.
Speaker 1: Some good stuff there and the other thing that we
Speaker 1: probably should mention because this has bred a lot of
Speaker 1: social media online back and forth from BYU fans and
Speaker 1: in BYU. I'll just say I'm using air quotes BYU
Speaker 1: media members. They're really not media members. They're employees of
Speaker 1: Brigham Young that are hired to propagate messaging from the
Speaker 1: actual school. It happens in pro sports now too. You
Speaker 1: know the in house quote unquote media where you don't
Speaker 1: get any truth. You just get the propagated message further
Speaker 1: from the front office to the masses and hope that
Speaker 1: enough people believe your bs. But you know, you get
Speaker 1: this whole thing like BYU doesn't. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be the highest bidder, you know, they want to be competitive,
Speaker 1: and you know these players are not coming to BYU
Speaker 1: for the money. They're coming to BYU because BYU special
Speaker 1: and they want the experience. And you know, five months
Speaker 1: of Jay Dogs and five months of SWIG is not
Speaker 1: going to be enough to get anybody to live in Provo,
Speaker 1: but seven million dollars is.
Speaker 3: And so it is three million dollars.
Speaker 1: But there is a difference between the church and the
Speaker 1: school writing these checks and the boosters, So we probably
Speaker 1: should be clear on that.
Speaker 10: Yes, And until we get a verified, you know, checklist
Speaker 10: breakdown of how things are supposed to operate if there
Speaker 10: eventually is a set of rules in place, we're operating
Speaker 10: now under the assumption that BYU boosters are opening it books.
Speaker 10: It is not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Speaker 10: day Saints, just the same way at Notre Dame. It's
Speaker 10: not the Catholic Church that's helping Notre Dame land a
Speaker 10: bunch of really good football recruits under Marcus Freeman. It's
Speaker 10: just this is the reality.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean it.
Speaker 10: I haven't really waded into that discourse all that much lately,
Speaker 10: to be honest with you, I'm doing my best to
Speaker 10: avoid the the depths of despair that is social media.
Speaker 10: But yes, we are accurate in saying that it is
Speaker 10: support to friends of the program. As my favorite basketball movie,
Speaker 10: Blue Chips once referenced.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed is uh is nil tithed? Do you need
Speaker 3: to pay tithing at ile?
Speaker 2: That's a great question I should ask some people.
Speaker 1: You menast you have sources.
Speaker 3: I need you to uncover this is nil tithed.
Speaker 10: I would assume that if if it is part of
Speaker 10: your income, then yes, I would assume it is.
Speaker 2: But that's a great question I will find out.
Speaker 3: Look at you, I'm going to send a couple guys
Speaker 3: over to your house with a book that will change
Speaker 3: your life.
Speaker 1: All right, you referenced in your your your points are
Speaker 1: very valid and fair about It's not a false equivalency
Speaker 1: to bring in the BYU football portion to this conversation.
Speaker 1: But to your point, simply the size of the rosters
Speaker 1: will change what you get per player. But the Salt
Speaker 1: Lake Tribune our good friends over the trip. Kevin Reynolds
Speaker 1: did write a piece and did some reporting last year.
Speaker 1: The first meeting of BYU season last year that was
Speaker 1: run by a fellow who works for the Royal Blue
Speaker 1: Collective or runs it. His name is Min Kim sounds
Speaker 1: like an MLM bro. I don't know, but he had
Speaker 1: this meeting. And this is according to Isaiah back Bagna
Speaker 1: in addition to Creue Wakely, now you're a Wakely left
Speaker 1: provo with a chip on his shoulder. Our guy has
Speaker 1: come out and used every opportunity to talk about promises
Speaker 1: to him that were not made.
Speaker 3: And you can go to the trip and you can
Speaker 3: read the entire piece.
Speaker 1: But as a result of a rough year one in
Speaker 1: the Big twelve, the Royal Blue Collective elected to cut
Speaker 1: the paychecks to these players. Then the nil checks to
Speaker 1: these players. And I just have to wonder if you're
Speaker 1: a BYU football player, if you're Kilanie, if you're a Rod,
Speaker 1: if you're any of these guys, and they're online, they
Speaker 1: read things and they see that the estimates are BYU
Speaker 1: Basketball is now paying what's believed to be in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of fifteen million dollars for five or six different players.
Speaker 3: I just wonder how that lands with Kilanie.
Speaker 1: And look, they had a great year last year, so
Speaker 1: whatever they're doing obviously is breeding results.
Speaker 3: But what's your take.
Speaker 1: On what I perceive to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different support on the basketball side as opposed to
Speaker 1: the football team.
Speaker 10: Well, in the irony of it all, too is that
Speaker 10: all undoubtedly makes the athletic department and the school way
Speaker 10: more money than basketball. And it's always it's always going
Speaker 10: to be the case for a multitude of reasons, like
Speaker 10: Lebel Edwards Stadium seats I don't know, forty five fifty
Speaker 10: thousand more people than the Marriott Center does. And you know,
Speaker 10: ticket sales, merch, all the stuff, the swigs, all that
Speaker 10: stuff goes into it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I mean it is.
Speaker 10: It is a like I said, it's an interesting subplot
Speaker 10: to a revival of a athletic department that just a
Speaker 10: few years ago is or was nowhere near where it
Speaker 10: is now on the revenue making sports, you know, football
Speaker 10: and men's basketball. I would imagine publicly, Pilani would say
Speaker 10: what I would expect it to, and he would be
Speaker 10: very diplomatic and democratic about it. I don't know how
Speaker 10: he feels behind closed doors, but I know for a
Speaker 10: fact that if you're going to keep up, if you're
Speaker 10: going to keep pace in college football, you're going to
Speaker 10: have to pay.
Speaker 2: The same way you do here in college basketball.
Speaker 10: It's just harder because you're going to have to ask
Speaker 10: more people to pay more money because, simply put, the
Speaker 10: roster size is that much bigger. And I honestly don't
Speaker 10: know if Kilanie has been asked this publicly in a
Speaker 10: in a scrum, you know, kind of atmosphere.
Speaker 2: I wonder how he would. I know he would handle
Speaker 2: it fine, but it would be it would be I
Speaker 2: guess it would. It would be interesting to see how
Speaker 2: he would handle it.
Speaker 1: He actually has been asked this in a public setting
Speaker 1: by the host of The Drive Monday through Friday two
Speaker 1: to six at Big twelve media Days.
Speaker 3: And this was this was this was before the debansa stuff.
Speaker 1: This was when I was told what they were paying
Speaker 1: Kevin Young, And this is when the news came down
Speaker 1: a bit about Yegor Demon and Kennon Catching's being seven
Speaker 1: figure players.
Speaker 3: And I asked Klannie point blank.
Speaker 1: And when I asked him this, he gave me the
Speaker 1: north shore of Wahoo prolly looked like he was going
Speaker 1: to bury me into the ocean. But I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, are you getting the same support the basketball
Speaker 1: team is getting? And he did handle it diplomatically, handled
Speaker 1: it the way Klannie would.
Speaker 3: But I do wonder what he.
Speaker 1: Would say if asked off the record by somebody you know.
Speaker 3: Who could get the actual truth out of him. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine it's sitting well.
Speaker 1: But ultimately the bottom line is they're getting results, So
Speaker 1: I guess that's.
Speaker 3: All that matters.
Speaker 1: On the other side of it, Chris, I just wonder
Speaker 1: how this is landing with the Utah Athletic Department, in
Speaker 1: Utah boosters and powerful people the right checks for the you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was told last year by somebody who
Speaker 1: I'll just say would know that BYU current and this
Speaker 1: was last year. This could have changed, but at this
Speaker 1: point last year, I was told that BYU currently has
Speaker 1: nine seven figure donors and Utah has two. And it's
Speaker 1: not hard to figure out who the two are. Okay,
Speaker 1: their names are all over where you need them to be.
Speaker 1: And if you were if you're Mark Carlin, and if
Speaker 1: you're the Crew collective and you're looking down south and
Speaker 1: you're seeing these projections, what sort of reaction pressure, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, is kind of seeping into your mindset to
Speaker 1: just be able to keep up with your rival that's.
Speaker 3: Not too far away from where you're at geographically.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, I think you have to take solace
Speaker 10: in the fact that you hired the guy that you
Speaker 10: believe can resurrect turn around the program that has been
Speaker 10: dormant for way too long, and you kind of have
Speaker 10: to go from there, and you have to operate under
Speaker 10: the assumption that that guy doesn't take that job if
Speaker 10: he wasn't guaranteed the allocated resources necessary in order to
Speaker 10: keep up with.
Speaker 2: The folks in Provo.
Speaker 10: And I don't know, I would doubt that Utah eventually
Speaker 10: gets to the place where they're able to spend seven
Speaker 10: million dollars for the number one.
Speaker 2: Player in the country.
Speaker 10: I mean, I think I think when when all is
Speaker 10: said and done, I think Debansa will go down as
Speaker 10: a an exception, not the rule. I don't think every
Speaker 10: player will be interested in wanting to come to Provo,
Speaker 10: even though you can play for Kevin Young, who's you
Speaker 10: knows Kevin Durant and we've heard that whole spiel. But
Speaker 10: if you're in Utah, you just have to I don't know, man,
Speaker 10: it sounds very boring, but like you kind of have
Speaker 10: to just interest into Alex Jensen that he knows what
Speaker 10: he's doing and that he's going to be able to
Speaker 10: bring players into Salt Lake and be able to build
Speaker 10: a foundation that can turn the program around fast enough.
Speaker 2: But again, I don't think.
Speaker 10: Alex takes the job without being guaranteed that he has
Speaker 10: at least a significant amount of nil at his disposal,
Speaker 10: because in college basketball, and I mean in any sport
Speaker 10: now it matters, but I feel like in college basketball,
Speaker 10: more than anything, if you invest heavily in a couple
Speaker 10: big hitters, you can get your program turned around fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: I will not ask you another benign, mundane Utah football
Speaker 1: spring football takeaway question, but we did have Morgan Scalley
Speaker 1: on the show this week, and we caught up with
Speaker 1: Morgan about all the kind of spring football happenings and
Speaker 1: storylines and uh, you know, ultimately what they're hoping to accomplish.
Speaker 1: I wonder what you think Morgan's uh current patience level
Speaker 1: is uh and whether or not you think he's chomping
Speaker 1: at the bit to take over as head coach.
Speaker 10: I didn't listen to the interview, so I don't know,
Speaker 10: appreciate he's.
Speaker 3: A good friend, supporting supporting your good friend.
Speaker 2: You're better.
Speaker 10: You're a better journalist than I am, so I would
Speaker 10: assume that you asked him point blank, the same way
Speaker 10: you ask Colona point blank.
Speaker 2: And I'll get to it after this phone call. But
Speaker 2: I don't I would.
Speaker 10: Assume that Morgan understands that it's no just around the corner.
Speaker 10: I I mean, we've been talking about Kyle hanging it
Speaker 10: up now for the past five years, and every year
Speaker 10: he seems to surprise us. Now, a lot of that
Speaker 10: has to do with the success and the apex that
Speaker 10: they reached during the end of the Pac twelve era.
Speaker 10: But I don't know, man, Like, if you're guaranteed a
Speaker 10: head coaching job in a Big twelve, I think that
Speaker 10: especially at a school that you have so much invested
Speaker 10: in and know so well, in a community you're so
Speaker 10: invested in and know so well, I think just having
Speaker 10: to sit and wait and by your time a little
Speaker 10: bit is a lot easier than you know, chasing a
Speaker 10: carrot that might be dangled out in front of you.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 10: I know when you know Lincoln Riley was interested in
Speaker 10: hiring Morgan to be the USC defensive coordinator a couple
Speaker 10: of years ago. Like Morgan, if he would have took
Speaker 10: taken that job, would have been the USC defensive coordinator.
Speaker 2: Here at Utah, he's the Utah defensive.
Speaker 10: Coordinator, and he's the coach in waiting, and the coach
Speaker 10: ahead of him is not forty three years old like
Speaker 10: Lincoln Riley is or whatever.
Speaker 2: He just turned sixty five. So I think, you know,
Speaker 2: Morgan kind.
Speaker 10: Of has the ability to build and mold the defensive
Speaker 10: side of the roster secs fit. I think he's earned
Speaker 10: that right, and he's doing it under a guy that
Speaker 10: he cut his teeth under.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think if you ever wanted to get.
Speaker 10: Into the XES and o's, you know minutiae of at all.
Speaker 10: I mean, Morgan's defense is Fred Whittingham's defense, and he
Speaker 10: would be the first one to tell you that the
Speaker 10: same way File would be the first one to tell
Speaker 10: you that.
Speaker 2: That's how his defense was built too.
Speaker 10: So that's a very long winded way of saying I
Speaker 10: don't think Morgan is probably ansy at this point.
Speaker 3: All right, last thing, and I'll set you lose.
Speaker 1: I was speaking with somebody today and I will tell you.
Speaker 3: Who after our interview's over. I'll leave the name off air.
Speaker 1: And I asked him, I said, you know, I'm told
Speaker 1: that this announcement about the Miller family taking over, and look,
Speaker 1: we still have to wait as far as what the
Speaker 1: details are. What we are anticipating is this means Ryan
Speaker 1: Smith is exiting stage left, and the Blitzer group will
Speaker 1: maintain whatever control they may and Scott Crace, Dave Blitzer's
Speaker 1: ownership rep, will continue to be the director of whatever.
Speaker 1: He is kind of overseeing the entire thing. Is Dave
Speaker 1: Blitzer's kind of eyes and ears here on the ground
Speaker 1: in saw Lake. But asked him, I said, this feels
Speaker 1: like it's good news in a lot of ways for
Speaker 1: people that are over with the club. And this person
Speaker 1: said to me, I don't think this is really going
Speaker 1: to change very much. And it just kind of made
Speaker 1: me think about all the ownership transitions over the years,
Speaker 1: obviously starting with my father to Deloy and then Deloy
Speaker 1: to this current iteration of RSL's ownership and now the
Speaker 1: fourth change in twenty years where the Miller family will
Speaker 1: step in.
Speaker 3: And I just wonder what you anticipate based off.
Speaker 1: Of your knowledge of the way MLS works, the way
Speaker 1: RSL operates, and you know your knowledge of the way
Speaker 1: the Miller family likes to do their business.
Speaker 10: Well, we have to start with the fact that the
Speaker 10: Millers are going to be running and bankrolling a club
Speaker 10: a league that is nothing really close to what the
Speaker 10: Jazz are in the NBA, meaning that like they can
Speaker 10: invest money in they both in RSL and the Royals,
Speaker 10: as they should and as I've been told they plan
Speaker 10: on doing.
Speaker 2: But I've also been.
Speaker 10: Told that the day to day type stuff is not
Speaker 10: going to change at the level it did from you know,
Speaker 10: the last ownership transition.
Speaker 2: And obviously the last ownership transition was.
Speaker 10: Under pretty extreme circumstances, you know, being run by the
Speaker 10: league for I think it was like over a year
Speaker 10: at that point, and you know, it was it was
Speaker 10: pretty it was pretty guyer over there for a while.
Speaker 10: That's not going to be the case once this ownership
Speaker 10: sale takes place. But hey, man, the Millers know what
Speaker 10: they're doing. They they have a lot of money they
Speaker 10: I mean, like they are not lacking in money when
Speaker 10: it comes to you know, the movie theaters, the dealerships
Speaker 10: they've I can't remember what the number was when they
Speaker 10: sold off a lot of their dealerships, but I think
Speaker 10: it ended up starting in the in the with the
Speaker 10: B not the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's like six billion.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so and they're they're riding high off of you know,
Speaker 10: opening this new b stadium at daybreak. And I just
Speaker 10: I think that, as I've been told, they plan on
Speaker 10: investing into the rosters of these teams. And that's at
Speaker 10: the end of the day.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 10: I can't I can't just I mean, I'll just say
Speaker 10: it on the show The Drive Monday through Friday, two
Speaker 10: to six, every single week, like ninety percent of fans
Speaker 10: care about the product on the field they could give,
Speaker 10: you know what about the Jay Dogs and the you know,
Speaker 10: the concessions and the free Wi Fi and all this
Speaker 10: other stuff.
Speaker 2: If you invest in a team that's fun to watch
Speaker 2: and wins games, your fans will come and they will
Speaker 2: come and droves.
Speaker 10: And what I've been told is that the Miller's plan
Speaker 10: on allocating the necessary amount of resources into doing that
Speaker 10: to both of these teams.
Speaker 1: Well, only time We'll tell my friends. You want me
Speaker 1: to grab you some Ribbys before I get out of here?
Speaker 8: Are they got any say that again?
Speaker 3: You broke up Chris. Uh, we lost him, all right?
Speaker 1: Speaking to Ribbys, you guys have a chance to come
Speaker 1: out here and buy twenty Ribbis for only forty dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we are out at one oh four five zero
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Speaker 1: They walked me through everything. They have twenty Ribbys for
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Speaker 3: So come on by.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the best thing to do is to
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Speaker 1: Homestead Steaks is the client today twenty Ribbi steaks.
Speaker 3: For only forty dollars.
Speaker 1: It's their weekend meat sale, Fashion Place Mall and Murray
Speaker 1: South Shops at Southtown Sandy Provo Town Center Mall as well.
Speaker 1: They're opening until eight o'clock tonight and they're going to
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Speaker 1: gourmet smash burgers plus chicken and seafood. All payments accepted, cash, credit, debit,
Speaker 1: and EBT.
Speaker 3: So come on out and say hi.
Speaker 1: It's one oh four to five zero South State Street,
Speaker 1: number two three two zero. We have a celebrity siding
Speaker 1: live on site. Richard Smith Smitty forty years.
Speaker 3: With you, Jah Jazz. Did you have any trouble finding
Speaker 3: this vacance parking spence?
Speaker 5: This is this is the thing we're telling the listeners.
Speaker 9: You come down State Street, you get around one hundred
Speaker 9: and four South, you look for the Ethan Allen building.
Speaker 9: We're right behind that. All right, that's the address. What's
Speaker 9: suite we're in?
Speaker 5: Whatever?
Speaker 9: You know, people are gonna be driving around all over
Speaker 9: the place. I just happen to come behind the Ethan
Speaker 9: Allen building and oh, look, look at you. There's an
Speaker 9: ESPN tent in the middle of nowhere parking lot. I
Speaker 9: wonder what that's doing out there, and I come over
Speaker 9: and here's Spence. Check its out in the natural wind,
Speaker 9: the sun, doing his job for America, next to the
Speaker 9: Thermo king truck with all the two dollars stripped steaks.
Speaker 9: What could be better in this this land of America?
Speaker 3: Well said, I mean, you know me, I'm just a
Speaker 3: hard working, hard.
Speaker 9: Work that's and I did expected nothing less, I said.
Speaker 9: I looked from three miles away and I could see
Speaker 9: this tent and I go, I'll bet dispense is underneath
Speaker 9: that tent, just braving the elements for the listening pleasure
Speaker 9: of the Utah sports fan.
Speaker 3: What a guy, And that's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: The tent is doing us no good because the wind
Speaker 1: is blowing no matter what. The truck is on the
Speaker 1: background because they have to refrigerate the meat. So we're
Speaker 1: dealing with some elements today, Smitty. But nonetheless we traverse
Speaker 1: on great to see my friends.
Speaker 3: A lot to do. We just did.
Speaker 9: What's by the way, I've never met Chris Cameranie.
Speaker 5: It sounds like a great guy.
Speaker 3: Is the best?
Speaker 9: Okay, Yeah, what's his deal with? He can't get in
Speaker 9: the car and come out and see you on a.
Speaker 1: It's a fair question and one that I posted him.
Speaker 1: He does have a two year old son. His wife
Speaker 1: is a school.
Speaker 3: Teacher, okay, and she's the best.
Speaker 1: These are as Salt through the Earth people some of
Speaker 1: my favorite people on the planet. And when she's teaching school,
Speaker 1: Chris has to I got to take care of the
Speaker 1: ki Okay.
Speaker 9: That's fair enough, because it sounded like a scott laden
Speaker 9: type of excuse that I don't go anywhere past twenty
Speaker 9: first South. So if it's past twenty first south, it
Speaker 9: might as well be in Arizona, because I don't know
Speaker 9: where it is.
Speaker 1: I've gotta say Scotty and I have that in common.
Speaker 1: I extended to thirty third because one of my best
Speaker 1: friends lives on thirty third. If I had my druthers,
Speaker 1: I would not go south of thirty third, and certainly
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go north of the Capitol.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, oh look, hey, I'm gonna tell you.
Speaker 9: Right up the street from here, and this is a
Speaker 9: this is a plug that I don't know why, but
Speaker 9: this right up the street here on State Street about
Speaker 9: hundred south is one of my new favorite places to eat.
Speaker 9: Dolly's Salad Salad Bar. It's it's like a version of
Speaker 9: Sweet Tomatoes. If you remember tomatoes, you're in the same
Speaker 9: sweet tomato spot. Great fresh, fresh salad bar, really high
Speaker 9: quality stuff.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 9: My wife and I go there frequently and we live
Speaker 9: we live in town Sugarhouse Park. Yeah, we come out
Speaker 9: here frequently just to go to Dolly's. And anybody who's
Speaker 9: looking for a good salad option for lunch or an
Speaker 9: early dinner, what what a place at is? I give
Speaker 9: them a plug. I get nothing out of it, but
Speaker 9: it's it's just my contribution to this radio program.
Speaker 3: No, we appreciate that.
Speaker 1: How is our guy, Scotty Scotty Scotty Lady, He is
Speaker 1: doing good.
Speaker 9: You know, he's he's he works for the Sacramento Kings.
Speaker 9: He's uh, he's working as their their director of of
Speaker 9: East Coast pro Scouting, so he gets to do a
Speaker 9: lot of the work. He does on the train and
Speaker 9: that you're familiar with Spence going anywhere along the East
Speaker 9: Coast from from Boston all the way down to d C.
Speaker 9: He lives in New York City, so he gets on
Speaker 9: the train, goes to the Philly Games, gets on the train,
Speaker 9: goes to the Cetic games, does his work, usually can
Speaker 9: get home the same night, and he's enjoying it, loves it.
Speaker 9: Just had the other day his third grandchild by his
Speaker 9: oldest daughter, who's so excited.
Speaker 5: Little little baby girl.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 9: And he was he was showing me new pictures of
Speaker 9: her today. And he's a power, proud grandpa.
Speaker 3: Very nice. All right, I've got a bunch of stuff
Speaker 3: I want to get to with you. And since we
Speaker 3: were just you.
Speaker 1: Know, talking about Scott Layden, and of course the Leyden's
Speaker 1: are Utah Royalty, Jazz Royalty.
Speaker 3: There is a new era of.
Speaker 1: Jazz basketball, both on the floor and off the floor.
Speaker 3: And Dan Roberts.
Speaker 1: Forty six years, nearly twenty two hundred games, has been uh,
Speaker 1: well he's retired.
Speaker 3: We'll just leave it. Leave it at that. Jazz honored
Speaker 3: him the other night. His final game will be tonight.
Speaker 3: H And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Who's left, Trav or guy Travis Centerson.
Speaker 3: Of course Big T Bowler's been there forever.
Speaker 1: But Dan feels like one of the final pieces of
Speaker 1: jazz past being ripped away from us. And if you're
Speaker 1: of a certain age and like you or like me,
Speaker 1: I mean Jazz basketball. I really don't have a memory
Speaker 1: of life that doesn't include some form of the NBA
Speaker 1: and the Jazz were part of my life when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and I still to this day badly
Speaker 1: want to see people over there, I like, succeed and
Speaker 1: have them do well.
Speaker 3: But bring him on.
Speaker 1: How about this jazz You know, Dan is one of
Speaker 1: the best to ever do it in the entire history
Speaker 1: of pro basketball.
Speaker 3: And this is it for him. I wonder what your
Speaker 3: takeaways are from now.
Speaker 5: Very very tearful.
Speaker 9: I was at the game the other night when they
Speaker 9: they honored him, and rightfully, so he's just a he's
Speaker 9: a great voice, uh in the arena. He's a great
Speaker 9: recognizable voice for jazz basketball. The fact that he's he's
Speaker 9: leaving leaves just a few a few people and and
Speaker 9: and you know, the guy probably is still at the
Speaker 9: top of the mountain at the moment.
Speaker 5: Is a Ron Boone?
Speaker 9: Yes, you know, Yes, Ron Boone was a player. Yeah,
Speaker 9: that's right, and then came back as a broad tester.
Speaker 9: And you know, Booner, I don't know if you know
Speaker 9: what his situation is going forward after the broadcasts uh
Speaker 9: this weekend, But but he's still there and and Dan
Speaker 9: Roberts you know, had a lot of great video tributes
Speaker 9: by uh former players and they got on camera you
Speaker 9: know to say thanks thanks Dan, and.
Speaker 5: And and uh and rightfully.
Speaker 9: So what he's really a great person, nice family, really
Speaker 9: loves the jazz and uh uh and the fact that
Speaker 9: they honored him was was very nice uh for.
Speaker 5: Them to do in that regard.
Speaker 9: And I know it touched his heart at the same time,
Speaker 9: I know it's it's it's a it's a tough, a
Speaker 9: tough deal for him, feeling like, you know, he's taking
Speaker 9: him himself out of the mix of something that he's
Speaker 9: done for almost spence almost half a century.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's a it's a great.
Speaker 9: Run by and we love Dan and his family and
Speaker 9: we wish him nothing but the best.
Speaker 1: So Alex Jensen made a hire today of a coach
Speaker 1: that you know, and we'll do that in our second segment.
Speaker 1: Since we're talking jazz, let's just stick with little.
Speaker 3: Jazz and a little NBA and we'll get to some
Speaker 3: NBA storylines.
Speaker 5: In a moment.
Speaker 1: This Kyle Philipowski storyline, as Marketing's been sitting and Kessler's
Speaker 1: been sitting and John Collins has been sitting incrementally. You know,
Speaker 1: they've been resting their most of their veteran front core players.
Speaker 5: Are they heard those guys have been hurt? Come on, man,
Speaker 5: come on, they're wrestling them for Come on, man for
Speaker 5: what for?
Speaker 3: Cooper Flag?
Speaker 5: The wrestling for Cooper Flying?
Speaker 3: Right, come on, man, we know the deal. Don't play
Speaker 3: with me. I don't like it either. It is what
Speaker 3: it is. But we know the deal. We know what
Speaker 3: time it is, we know what they're doing. They're not
Speaker 3: fooling anybody.
Speaker 1: Then, no matter what they say, as always say, judge
Speaker 1: people off of actions, not words. But incrementally sitting all
Speaker 1: their veteran front court players has opened up a lot
Speaker 1: of minutes for Kyle. And I always go back and
Speaker 1: forth with this because I've seen so many teams over
Speaker 1: the years that are unserious about winning, and those teams
Speaker 1: that are unseerious about winning still have minutes that need
Speaker 1: to be filled, They still have shots that need to
Speaker 1: be taken, they still have usage.
Speaker 3: So I always go back.
Speaker 1: To like shreef Abdourheim, who for years was like twenty
Speaker 1: two and twelve for Vancouver, and I always wonder like
Speaker 1: is he awesome or are they horrible and they just
Speaker 1: need somebody to score. But some of Kyle's stat lines,
Speaker 1: namely the other night against Portland, are pretty eye popping
Speaker 1: from your vantage point, What have you seen from them
Speaker 1: that you think is real? Do you think the Jazz
Speaker 1: might have something in Kyle Pilapowski.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, what he's shown to me a couple things. Spence.
Speaker 9: One is a versatility that he has. He can go
Speaker 9: in and make plays. He has good footworks so he
Speaker 9: can get around the mid post. He can make some
Speaker 9: plays around the basket. He can also step out and
Speaker 9: shoot or even actually, for a guy his size, put
Speaker 9: it on the floor one or two dribbles and get
Speaker 9: something to get an advance.
Speaker 5: I like the flow he plays with.
Speaker 9: I like some of the the energy that he looks
Speaker 9: like he brings to the floor. The tough part about
Speaker 9: these kinds of games is always the fact that those
Speaker 9: guys who are playing, they know what the deal is
Speaker 9: like in this situation where the Jazz really are aren't
Speaker 9: playing meaningful games to try to try and win, it's
Speaker 9: all under the guys of a player development. Okay, that's
Speaker 9: what you want to roll with. But the tougher part
Speaker 9: of it is that the players know that there are
Speaker 9: very little consequences, very few consequences, I should say, to
Speaker 9: how they play, because they know the team isn't gonna
Speaker 9: be upset, the general manager is not gonna be upset,
Speaker 9: the owner is not gonna be upset if you lose
Speaker 9: the game, and so they're gonna tell him you took
Speaker 9: a bad shot, or you should have made this decision
Speaker 9: with the ball, or you didn't get over the screen
Speaker 9: or whatever it is. But in the middle of playing
Speaker 9: the game, the players really in the back of their minds,
Speaker 9: they know there's really no real consequences to whether I
Speaker 9: play well or play badly, So you know they're not
Speaker 9: playing meaningful games. And when you're not playing games that
Speaker 9: that count towards something, then it's hard sometimes to try
Speaker 9: to engage what that player would actually do if there
Speaker 9: was pressure on the line, and if there were were
Speaker 9: if you were playing for the for the the sixth
Speaker 9: position in the playoffs and you don't want to get
Speaker 9: in the play in, or you're playing for the tenth
Speaker 9: position in the play in and you're trying to get
Speaker 9: in just so you don't miss the playoffs, your pressure
Speaker 9: games that means something that really add to the fabric
Speaker 9: of an individual player's game. So that's the hard part
Speaker 9: is because these games, these are just live scrimmages.
Speaker 5: The game with Portland the other night, I was there.
Speaker 9: I gotta tell you either team cared about being there.
Speaker 9: They were both running up and down throwing up shots.
Speaker 9: You know, it's not an NBA game. I felt badly
Speaker 9: just for people who came and took their time and
Speaker 9: spent their money. For all the things that are involved
Speaker 9: in doing that, right, getting a sitter, if you're bringing
Speaker 9: your family playing, for parking, the price of the tickets,
Speaker 9: you know, getting a hot dog or a drink or
Speaker 9: whatever it is.
Speaker 5: Those things add up.
Speaker 9: And yet they're watching, you know what really amounts to
Speaker 9: a summer summer league scrimmage. And that's too bad. It's
Speaker 9: too bad for the fans. But the players are getting
Speaker 9: playing time.
Speaker 5: Is it meaningful? That's hard to say.
Speaker 9: You're the only way it's meaningful is if they're being
Speaker 9: held accountable behind the scenes by the coaching staff in
Speaker 9: terms of what they do and how they assess the
Speaker 9: film the next day. And you know that's that's a
Speaker 9: tough thing to try and gauge. So are they meaningful?
Speaker 9: I don't think so personally, but seeing someone like Philipowsky,
Speaker 9: what it does in one level is at least shows
Speaker 9: you some of the things he's capable of physically. So
Speaker 9: now we need to get him into games that matter,
Speaker 9: games that mean something, and then we see how he
Speaker 9: reacts in those kinds of situations.
Speaker 3: Bingo.
Speaker 1: And that's why I want to move over to next
Speaker 1: because whenever, because I've got a lot of friends like
Speaker 1: you that love the Jazz, and I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of friends like you that have been spoiled by the
Speaker 1: success of the Jazz.
Speaker 3: I know, never a championship.
Speaker 1: But like as we've discussed throughout the past few years
Speaker 1: since you've started joining us, consistently, the ability of Frank
Speaker 1: and Scotti to pivot quickly, the ability of Kevin O'Connor
Speaker 1: to pivot quickly, and Dennis Lindsay to pivot quickly were
Speaker 1: their down years sure ties. Last year Quinn's first year,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years after John and Carr left,
Speaker 1: when Jerry coached the hell out of a team with
Speaker 1: not a lot of time.
Speaker 3: Yes, there have been lean years, There's never been anything
Speaker 3: like this. It's the first team in fifty years.
Speaker 1: Of Jazz Basketball to lose more than sixty games, and
Speaker 1: it is the first time they have been front facing
Speaker 1: about just not trying at all. So whenever I talk
Speaker 1: to my friends, like, they'll watch you or another, Hey,
Speaker 1: Kiantet a couple of shots and overtime, that's they've got
Speaker 1: to win.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5: Good.
Speaker 3: I'm sure a win is.
Speaker 1: A breadth of fresh air for competitors who have been
Speaker 1: bred to win and have been having their doors blown
Speaker 1: off every single night. But what I always say to
Speaker 1: them is, I don't know what Keyante's game looks like
Speaker 1: when a team is serious about winning. I don't know
Speaker 1: who Kyle Philipowski is for a team that actually is
Speaker 1: trying to compete in NBA basketball.
Speaker 3: So whether it's.
Speaker 1: Philipowski or Sensiba or Kyante or Cody, Like, what are
Speaker 1: the challenges of analyzing this group to try to understand
Speaker 1: what's real with these young players when they're serious Again.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well that's that's a that's a big mountain to
Speaker 9: climb because you don't know until you get them on the.
Speaker 5: Floor in meaningful game.
Speaker 9: So you know, these are all to me, there's my opinion,
Speaker 9: my perspective, having been involved in it. For a lot
Speaker 9: of years, these guys are just in you know, organized
Speaker 9: scrimmages because again there's I don't know what the accountability
Speaker 9: level is individually with them. I'm sure the coaches talk
Speaker 9: to them about trying to improve their games and improve
Speaker 9: their you know, the things they decision making or shot taking,
Speaker 9: whatever it is, but the organization doesn't really care.
Speaker 5: Whether they're winning or not.
Speaker 9: In fact, that rather than lose because of the whole
Speaker 9: tank you know, approach that they they've taken to this.
Speaker 5: So in that.
Speaker 9: Regard, it's hard for anybody to figure out, you know,
Speaker 9: can Keyante George be a a Lou Williams slash Vinnie
Speaker 9: Johnson slash Jamal Crawford type of guy in a meaningful
Speaker 9: team where he comes off the bench and can get you,
Speaker 9: you know, a eight points in three minutes and be
Speaker 9: kind of a spark plug.
Speaker 5: Guy in games.
Speaker 9: That means something because when you're with these teams that
Speaker 9: are fighting, you know, for playoff spots or fighting for playoff.
Speaker 5: Positioning every game.
Speaker 9: This time of year, we always used to talk about
Speaker 9: games spence the last six, seven, eight games of a
Speaker 9: regular season, unless you were like Oklahoma City this year,
Speaker 9: which is you know, run out and hit from everybody,
Speaker 9: and nobody can see them.
Speaker 5: They're so far ahead of the race.
Speaker 9: But all these other teams the other day I looked
Speaker 9: at it, and I didn't look at it.
Speaker 5: Today, so I don't know what I know. It's almost
Speaker 5: the same.
Speaker 9: But five teams in the West between spots number four
Speaker 9: and eight all had at that At that day, I
Speaker 9: looked at thirty two losses, and the losses we always
Speaker 9: look at this time of year because those are games
Speaker 9: you can to get back. If you're behind a game
Speaker 9: in the win column, you can make that up by
Speaker 9: going out and winning your next game. But if you
Speaker 9: have if you're behind in a lost column, you gotta
Speaker 9: hope you get some help from you know, somebody, you know,
Speaker 9: if the teams are in front of you. But that
Speaker 9: the other day I looked at it, five teams all
Speaker 9: had thirty two losses. So that meant those teams are
Speaker 9: jockeying in the last three or four games of the
Speaker 9: regular season not only for playoff positioning in the top six,
Speaker 9: but also to stay out of the play in situation.
Speaker 9: Right and so because because of that, for those teams,
Speaker 9: the playoffs have already started, right, They started last week,
Speaker 9: because every game they're playing is meaningful, Every game, you know,
Speaker 9: does something to them their team and the standings and
Speaker 9: means something to what's gonna happen to them when playoff
Speaker 9: time starts. The games that the Jazz are playing and
Speaker 9: the minutes the players are getting, how much can it
Speaker 9: transfer to those.
Speaker 5: Kinds of games down the road.
Speaker 9: It's always difficult to say that, but you've gotta have
Speaker 9: some base.
Speaker 5: To start from.
Speaker 9: So if this is the way that the Jazz have
Speaker 9: chosen to go, which obviously it is, then.
Speaker 5: They're gonna throw these young guys out there.
Speaker 9: They're gonna let them trip over themselves, they're gonna let
Speaker 9: them take bad shots, they're gonna let them throw the
Speaker 9: ball away into the third row, you know whatever, whatever,
Speaker 9: And then they're gonna try and coach them up and
Speaker 9: try and get them better during the summer.
Speaker 5: But nothing is going to fill the void.
Speaker 9: Of playing meaningful games until they get to that point.
Speaker 5: And that that's that's the.
Speaker 9: Hard part about judging where the individual talents of these
Speaker 9: uh these players lies.
Speaker 1: Two games left, Okay, see tonight, I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: who's gonna play and who's not. Ok Ces injury report
Speaker 1: right now looks like this. No Jalen Williams, no Case
Speaker 1: and Wallace, no Isaiah Hartenstein, no lout Dort for the
Speaker 1: Jazz uh, no Walker Kessler, no John Collins, Isaiah Colliers
Speaker 1: game time, Elijah hart was kJ Martiner out. I don't
Speaker 1: know if marketing is gonna play. It's just the issue
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff because it's so hard to watch.
Speaker 3: Before we catch a break.
Speaker 1: One more NBA storyline. I wanted to get to with
Speaker 1: you because look, I'm not. I wasn't in Taylor Jenkins
Speaker 1: locker room. I'm not wasn't in Michael Malone's locker room.
Speaker 3: I just I'm stunned. And as you know, Michael Malone
Speaker 3: was an assistant in New York. His father was an
Speaker 3: assistant for Jeff.
Speaker 1: You get to know the family, and yes, old school,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a maybe an abrasive approach. Maybe
Speaker 1: modern day players don't like that. He won a championship
Speaker 1: two years ago. And I know that doesn't matter, asked
Speaker 1: Frank Vogel. Asked Mike Budenholzer. You know we could keep going,
Speaker 1: but I just I don't know.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember when you were really good
Speaker 1: at your job, you got to keep it. And now
Speaker 1: we have two really good coach coaches losing their jobs
Speaker 1: for playoff teams days before the playoffs start.
Speaker 3: What do you make well?
Speaker 9: This goes to show you, spense that that it's hard
Speaker 9: to figure out exactly how you would want to build
Speaker 9: something and then be able to sustain it.
Speaker 5: When you look.
Speaker 9: At the championship coaches in the NBA, four of the
Speaker 9: last six NBA championship coaches starting in twenty nineteen are
Speaker 9: no longer with the team that they led to an
Speaker 9: NBA championship.
Speaker 5: They've all gotten let.
Speaker 9: Go by the team within a couple of years of
Speaker 9: winning the championship. So you know, what does that mean?
Speaker 9: I know, you know Michael Malone. I know him some.
Speaker 9: I wouldn't say he's a quote friend of mine, but
Speaker 9: I do know him and we've done a couple of
Speaker 9: NBA camps together overseas in the summertimes.
Speaker 5: Michael's very you.
Speaker 9: Know, knowledgeable obviously those what he's doing winning his coach
Speaker 9: in Denver Nugget history. But he is a he can
Speaker 9: be an abrasive guy. He's a fun guy. He's a
Speaker 9: smart guy, but you know, he has a little bit
Speaker 9: of that New York you know attitude.
Speaker 5: Of you know, hey, you know you you guys.
Speaker 9: If you're not doing it right, I'm gonna come right
Speaker 9: at you, right right in your face and and and
Speaker 9: get after it. And I'm just guessing I don't know,
Speaker 9: because I'm not there that, you know, maybe that was
Speaker 9: starting to wear on players, Maybe that was starting to
Speaker 9: wear on the ownership.
Speaker 5: Maybe you know, they want to give some.
Speaker 9: Kind of a spark to the team before the playoffs.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 9: Sometimes those things are short circuited. But hey, in the
Speaker 9: same in the same vein spence, you got to flip
Speaker 9: the card to the other side and recognize that Michael
Speaker 9: Malone in his case, just as an individual supposedly got
Speaker 9: in a contract extension that doesn't start till next year
Speaker 9: where he's making the neighborhood of twelve million dollars a
Speaker 9: year for the next couple of years, and so they
Speaker 9: were willing the team, he was willing to give up
Speaker 9: that kind of money to just send somebody home. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and so if that's the case, if it's anywhere in
Speaker 9: that ballpark, then you have to look at the decision
Speaker 9: being made saying, well, I guess it was really really
Speaker 9: a tough deal and really a lot of problems going
Speaker 9: on that maybe we're not aware of that caused an
Speaker 9: ownership group to make that kind of a decision from
Speaker 9: a financial standpoint that they felt they had to do
Speaker 9: to save this season or not, you know, whatever they
Speaker 9: think they're going to be able to do in the playoffs,
Speaker 9: you know. And the Taylor Jenkins thing, same thing, a
Speaker 9: winning coach, a smart guy, you know they let him go?
Speaker 5: Is it a player thing? You know? You don't really
Speaker 5: know those kind of things when they happened to me.
Speaker 9: More often than not, it's not about the basketball, it's
Speaker 9: not about the x's and o's. More often it's something
Speaker 9: behind closed doors, a personality scuffle, or somebody doesn't like
Speaker 9: what somebody said in the meeting, or something got out
Speaker 9: of hand. Somebody's not not you know, giving space, and
Speaker 9: if they're not relenting to someone else's ideas or direction
Speaker 9: or what have you, and so they becomes a philosophical
Speaker 9: tug of war. And then at some point ownership has to,
Speaker 9: you know, figure out how am I gonna deal with
Speaker 9: this in this business setting, which oftentimes ends up being
Speaker 9: something like this. Now, sometimes the owner goes, okay, no,
Speaker 9: I got the coaches back, and I'm gonna get rid
Speaker 9: of the players if that's the deal, So I'm gonna,
Speaker 9: you know, trade players or whatever. But more often than not,
Speaker 9: it's some kind of personality issue that has entered the
Speaker 9: fray that that the ownership group just feels, you know,
Speaker 9: we can't figure.
Speaker 5: This out, so we got to make some kind of a.
Speaker 1: Move before we catch a break, and we need to
Speaker 1: so we're going to. You just spark something in my
Speaker 1: mind that I don't think I've ever asked you. And
Speaker 1: ultimately it doesn't matter because it's revisionist history. But you
Speaker 1: reference ownership at time siding with a coach and moving.
Speaker 3: On from the players.
Speaker 1: Was there ever any messaging to Jerry Sloan like we'll
Speaker 1: trade him, we'll get rid of him, we want you
Speaker 1: to stay, because they they.
Speaker 3: Ended up trading Darren anyway.
Speaker 1: But you know, the whole Darren Jerry thing cost the
Speaker 1: Jazz their beloved head coach and their franchise player.
Speaker 3: Did anybody tried to.
Speaker 1: Get head and look when Jerry make his Maybe if
Speaker 1: Jerry makes up his mind, he's gonna do his thing.
Speaker 1: But did anybody Kevin or Gale just say look, take
Speaker 1: a beat here. We're gonna trade him if if it's
Speaker 1: this bad, we'll get rid of him because we want
Speaker 1: you to stay well.
Speaker 9: I can tell you that what happened over the years,
Speaker 9: and this was this was you know, not a lot,
Speaker 9: but it happened, you know, a handful of times over
Speaker 9: the years when you were in a rough patch, like
Speaker 9: the Denver Nuggets, you know, had lost four games in
Speaker 9: a row before they won the other night, after the
Speaker 9: after the change they made, you know, the team would
Speaker 9: be in a rough patch.
Speaker 5: You know, Jerry might you know, a bristle at something
Speaker 5: you know one of.
Speaker 9: The players is doing or saying, and they get into
Speaker 9: a little scuffle and a heated argument in a pregame
Speaker 9: meeting or a practice meeting or something like that, and
Speaker 9: Jerry would say to them, hey, listen, we can't get
Speaker 9: this worked out. We will figure it out some other way.
Speaker 9: And the other way is probably not going to include you.
Speaker 9: Because I am gonna be here tomorrow, and the owner
Speaker 9: referencing Larry at that time, the owner has my back,
Speaker 9: and I can tell you that. So if you don't
Speaker 9: want to get on board with what we're trying to
Speaker 9: figure out here, then we'll figure it out.
Speaker 5: But when we figure it out.
Speaker 9: It's probably not going to include you because you're gonna
Speaker 9: be gone, I see. And so that took place, you know,
Speaker 9: a handful of times over the years, you know, just
Speaker 9: so the players understood.
Speaker 5: If they were feeling their oats and they thought, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm the guy around here here, Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I run the show here, you know whatever, Jerry
Speaker 9: would quickly go, Okay, we're gonna make sure we all
Speaker 9: understand who runs the show here. Yeah, right, And and
Speaker 9: that's what you need. That's what you need in an organization.
Speaker 9: You need the head coach to be firmly in charge.
Speaker 9: But the head coach has to know that the ownership
Speaker 9: has his back because if it gets to a push
Speaker 9: and shove deal, then he knows, you know, how the
Speaker 9: owner is going to react. And that's that's key if
Speaker 9: you want to have stability in your organization for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, the eighty ninth player playing of the Masters
Speaker 1: Tournament at Augusta, Georgia. We'll give you a leaderboard update
Speaker 1: coming up in a bit, but I will tell you
Speaker 1: that Tony needs a birdie in his final three holes
Speaker 1: to make the cut. Tony's at three over right now,
Speaker 1: he's through fifteen, so three holes left for Tony and
Speaker 1: the cut line is two over. So Tony needs a
Speaker 1: birdie final three holes or else he's not.
Speaker 3: Playing the weekend.
Speaker 1: We'll give you complete update coming up in a bit,
Speaker 1: but we are live on site today.
Speaker 3: You can hear the wind and the truck in the background.
Speaker 1: We are selling steaks Homestead Steaks twenty ribbis for only
Speaker 1: forty dollars. They got a bunch of locations Fashion Place
Speaker 1: Mall and Murray the shops at Southtown and Sandy Provo
Speaker 1: Town Center Mall as well. We are at one four
Speaker 1: five zero South State Street, number.
Speaker 3: Two three two zero. Easiest thing to do is just put.
Speaker 1: That in the GPS, then follow it, look for the
Speaker 1: ESPN seven hundred van, and then come on out and
Speaker 1: check out this great deal at one oh four five
Speaker 1: zero South State Street, number two three two zero here
Speaker 1: in Sandy with our friends at Homestead Steaks twenty ribbys.
Speaker 3: For forty bucks.
Speaker 1: How do you like twenty ribbis for forty dollars?
Speaker 3: How about a box of beef? Baby there we go.
Speaker 1: Come on out and say what's up Homestead Steaks Porter Porter,
Speaker 1: you're rolling out here, you're grabbing twenty Ribbys for forty bucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm gonna find my way there. If not tonight,
Speaker 4: of course, they they'll be there tomorrow, they'll be there
Speaker 4: a little bit on Sunday. Definitely taking advantage of that
Speaker 4: deal though.
Speaker 3: Gotta love it.
Speaker 1: Twenty ribbis for forty dollars with our friends at Homestead Steaks.
Speaker 3: They're sending me home with a box of beef. So
Speaker 3: I'm excited for that. Wow.
Speaker 1: Crazy half priced boat deals on steak, chicken, pork chops
Speaker 1: and seafood.
Speaker 3: Bolt Family party packs to.
Speaker 1: Fill your freezer with New York Strips, Filets, Mega Ribbis,
Speaker 1: Gourmet smash Burgers plus chicken and seafood. All payments accepted cash, credit, debit,
Speaker 1: and EBT.
Speaker 3: A box of beef out here, Smitty, How.
Speaker 5: Does the guy get in on the action? Where?
Speaker 9: You know, when when the truck pulls out a lot,
Speaker 9: the box of beef falls off the back.
Speaker 3: Of the truck. Does that like straight? Goodfellas?
Speaker 5: Is that stuff that we can get in on somehowway?
Speaker 3: Ask my guy Andrew over there, maybe you'll send you
Speaker 3: home with.
Speaker 5: A box to wait till till after midnight of something.
Speaker 1: So my way of describing where we're at is one
Speaker 1: oh four five zero South State Street, number two three,
Speaker 1: two zero.
Speaker 3: What's your way of describing where we're at?
Speaker 5: So you lost people already? Number two three, You got
Speaker 5: to put it in the chick fifty.
Speaker 9: We have phones, put that address in your GPS. Now
Speaker 9: I'm arguing with Spence off the air. That Spence just
Speaker 9: telling people a cruise down State Street. When you get
Speaker 9: about one hundred and fourth South, you look for the
Speaker 9: Ethan Allen building on the west side of the street.
Speaker 5: Just go behind that boom. You'll see our tent.
Speaker 9: Now you know, it's uh, there's there's not a lot
Speaker 9: of room here, so it's a little tight behind here
Speaker 9: because we're in this we're in this parking lot and
Speaker 9: there's I'm looking around, there's nobody within three miles on
Speaker 9: either side of us. But okay, hopefully you can find
Speaker 9: the tent in that vast parking lot.
Speaker 1: Sure, And I don't want to disparage anybody who's trying
Speaker 1: to make a living in commerce. My whole point of
Speaker 1: contention was, when's the last time anybody made an intentional
Speaker 1: trip to Ethan Allurs.
Speaker 9: Hey see that there's a guy smoking like who's never
Speaker 9: had to go and buy some living room furniture that
Speaker 9: really meant something.
Speaker 3: No, I'm all, I'm all RC Willie Baby.
Speaker 9: No, you're you're you're like the guy the guy's garage
Speaker 9: sale down the end of the corners, putting the bedframe
Speaker 9: out there for five bucks.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that'll work. I tell you that out.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you are Sie Willie rules. None of these
Speaker 1: places are sponsors on the show. So let's I got you, Hey,
Speaker 1: I got it, I got it.
Speaker 9: But this is the Southtown Mall though this area is
Speaker 9: really a high commerce there. There's a lot of stores
Speaker 9: around this whole area, which is I know is a
Speaker 9: big ber you know, my my, my wife Linda, her
Speaker 9: dad had an opportunity, this is going way back to
Speaker 9: buy some land out in this area, okay, when it
Speaker 9: was undeveloped, and and he passed on it at that time.
Speaker 9: It's a family favorite family story. He passed on like, nah,
Speaker 9: nobody goes out there. That's just out in the middle
Speaker 9: of nowhere whatever. Well, the land he passed on buying
Speaker 9: so many years ago is now where the Sandy City
Speaker 9: Hall sits.
Speaker 3: Oh that is rough. That is rough.
Speaker 1: But we've had some nice listeners roll out and take
Speaker 1: advantage of this deal. So if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: cheap way to feed the family with high quality meat,
Speaker 1: this is the way to do it. Twenty ribbis for
Speaker 1: forty dollars. You can take the Smitty route, which is
Speaker 1: go find Ethan Allen then check us out. Or you
Speaker 1: can do what normal people do and put this address
Speaker 1: on your phone. One four five zero South State Street
Speaker 1: number two three two zero.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 9: Yes, and you two can find us in the parking
Speaker 9: lot and get your own box of beat.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, yes, sir, all right, Smitty, Alex Jensen made
Speaker 1: a hire today. Uh, and you've been very helpful for
Speaker 1: us throughout this process because you worked with Al for
Speaker 1: nine years with the Jazz.
Speaker 3: And while you were at.
Speaker 1: The Jazz, a man named Martin Schiller was the head
Speaker 1: coach of the Salt Lake City Stars. Like Alex, Martin
Speaker 1: was a G League Coach of the Year D League
Speaker 1: for Alex back in the day.
Speaker 3: G League now.
Speaker 1: International ties all over the place. This feels like a
Speaker 1: very good, exciting hire for the Utah coach and staff.
Speaker 3: Tell us about Martin Shiller. Whatch we know?
Speaker 9: You know has roots in the in the German basketball community.
Speaker 9: He's a member of the Germanna. He has been a
Speaker 9: member of the German national team coaching staff. That's where
Speaker 9: he and Alex met because Alex Jensen has also served
Speaker 9: a number of stints on the German national coaching team
Speaker 9: for their men's basketball program. But from twenty seventeen to
Speaker 9: twenty twenty, for three seasons, Martin was the head coach
Speaker 9: of the Salt Lake City Stars, then COVID Hit and
Speaker 9: then the way the G League was going, you know,
Speaker 9: he went and pursuit a couple of opportunities to coach
Speaker 9: over in Europe. He coached Algeria's Countess for a year,
Speaker 9: which is one of the top EuroLeague.
Speaker 5: Teams in Lithuania.
Speaker 9: And he's been coaching the last couple of years and
Speaker 9: had a stint in Spain was coaching in Germany.
Speaker 5: But he will he's he's two things.
Speaker 9: One a very good basketball tactician.
Speaker 5: He's very organized. He's very.
Speaker 9: Very like how would I say, dents in what works
Speaker 9: in x'es and o's both ends of the floor, very
Speaker 9: exacting with the players to do it the way we're
Speaker 9: trying to teach you to do it.
Speaker 5: So he'll be one of.
Speaker 9: Those guys guys in practice who will really be holding
Speaker 9: a player's feet to the fire to get it the
Speaker 9: right way, which.
Speaker 5: Was a big deal with Rick mcjarrett sure those.
Speaker 9: Years ago, for sure, And so Martin has that skill
Speaker 9: set in his back pocket. And then the other thing
Speaker 9: I believe he would bring is because of all of
Speaker 9: his European ties, he would really have an insight into
Speaker 9: the youth European basketball community when it comes to recruiting
Speaker 9: and getting guys like jegor Demon and you know whoever
Speaker 9: else is coming over. You know the Jacket Tuna's kid
Speaker 9: from Illinois, who's gonna be a top ten pick. Probably
Speaker 9: these kind of young European players who may want to
Speaker 9: come to the NCAA for year or two if they
Speaker 9: think they're NBA level guys and could get some seasoning
Speaker 9: playing at this level. Martin would be a main point
Speaker 9: guy to identify who those guys are and if they
Speaker 9: would be able to fit in the University of Utah
Speaker 9: men's basketball program.
Speaker 1: So what we have now the problem with trying to
Speaker 1: analyze who Utah basketball will be next year is we
Speaker 1: only know Keanu daz is coming back.
Speaker 3: And then the FDU transfer.
Speaker 1: Terrence Brown, I believe is his name, who is a
Speaker 1: twenty plus per night scorer, but in the Northeast Conference.
Speaker 1: I all due respect to my home footprint, shout out
Speaker 1: Central Connecticut, thank you. You know certainly the devils. I'm
Speaker 1: not knocking on the conference. I'm just wondering what a
Speaker 1: twenty point a night guy in the Northeast Conference looks
Speaker 1: like in the Big Twelve. But we only know they
Speaker 1: have two players comittee. So what we do know now?
Speaker 1: Raphael Chile is hired as the lead assistant. Donnie Daniel's son,
Speaker 1: Eric Daniels hired from Utah State Martin Schiller, and then
Speaker 1: Wes Wilcox is the GM.
Speaker 3: So before we move on, what do you make of now?
Speaker 7: This?
Speaker 1: Uh, just overall the staff that's in place as so.
Speaker 9: Eric Daniels, a young coach who has roots here in Utah,
Speaker 9: will will help in the recruiting of the in state kids.
Speaker 9: He's worked at Utah Valley, He's worked at Weaver State,
Speaker 9: He's worked at Utah State, and now now he's at
Speaker 9: the U where his dad served a couple of different stints,
Speaker 9: and so he has the ties to the Utah basketball
Speaker 9: community to try and figure out who the top high
Speaker 9: school kids are here and the kids that he's been
Speaker 9: in touch with for many years in the in the
Speaker 9: various roles he's had at the local colleges, So he'll
Speaker 9: be helpful in that regard in the in the local scene.
Speaker 9: And he's just a good, young, energetic type guy. So
Speaker 9: you're getting guys who have ties to the U program
Speaker 9: but also have the background where they can get in
Speaker 9: the doors to kids that the U may be wanting
Speaker 9: to look at to add to their team.
Speaker 3: Do you like the way Alex is going about his business.
Speaker 9: Well, it seems like he has a dedicated approach. It
Speaker 9: seems like he's getting guys who he's going to feel
Speaker 9: comfortable with that know how, he wants to be able
Speaker 9: to set the program up. So that's the interesting thing
Speaker 9: is that he's not rushing into it. You didn't see
Speaker 9: a thing a week after he's hired, where you know,
Speaker 9: here's here's my coaching staff of seven guys or whatever,
Speaker 9: and all these guys that you know, people have been
Speaker 9: coming at him, I'm sure left and right the moment
Speaker 9: they got out that he was getting the job, and
Speaker 9: you know, he's taking his time.
Speaker 5: He's still finishing.
Speaker 9: Up as an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks, and
Speaker 9: he's he understands that this isn't about the short term,
Speaker 9: you know, let's win the press conference on Tuesday kind
Speaker 9: of deal. This is about setting up a group in
Speaker 9: place that's going to make sense for the long haul
Speaker 9: of our program. And these kind of hires he's been making,
Speaker 9: both on the coaching staff and then with Wes Wilcox
Speaker 9: overseeing things from the front office.
Speaker 5: Perspective, you know, make make a lot of sense.
Speaker 9: And you can tell this is an Alex Jenson type approach, regimented, diligent,
Speaker 9: take your time, make sure you know what you're doing,
Speaker 9: and then execute it.
Speaker 3: Are you surprised? Now?
Speaker 1: To your point, Martin Schiller was here as the G
Speaker 1: League coach. Eric Daniels has Utah ties. But the conversation
Speaker 1: immediately and we had some former utes that come on
Speaker 1: the show and like Bak for jobs. But the conversation
Speaker 1: immediately after Alex is higher was okay, Andre Miller's next
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 3: Excut player here And you are you surprised that we
Speaker 3: haven't seen any of that?
Speaker 5: No, No, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 9: You know those are just you know, fans who are
Speaker 9: you know, flashing back to and thirty years ago, and
Speaker 9: you know, just want to live in the past. You know,
Speaker 9: there was a when when we first started the D
Speaker 9: League at that time developmental league for the NBA down
Speaker 9: in Orum, when we started the Utah Flash, the.
Speaker 5: Owner Bran Anderson, who was down there at the time.
Speaker 9: You know, no, and Brandon was really the predecessor to
Speaker 9: Ryan Smith. He was the original, if you will, local
Speaker 9: version of Ryan Smith.
Speaker 5: He wanted to own an NBA team.
Speaker 9: He had the resources at that time as a twenty
Speaker 9: nine year old.
Speaker 5: To do so. Called the NBA.
Speaker 9: Tried to find out, Hey could I buy a team?
Speaker 9: That found out it doesn't work like that. They they
Speaker 9: moved him on to the guy who running the D
Speaker 9: League says, you know, we could talk about a potential
Speaker 9: expansion team there, which ended up happening with the Utah
Speaker 9: Flash that was in arm for three years. Brant right
Speaker 9: out of the gate had the same kind of mindset
Speaker 9: where he was so blue with BYU that he everybody
Speaker 9: he mentioned in terms of the hiring and startup process
Speaker 9: on the basketball side, we're all by you guys. Ye hey,
Speaker 9: let's get let's get I think we should hire Danny Ainge.
Speaker 5: Danny Ainge was the head of the Boston Celtics at
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 9: Okay, let's get Danny Ainge, and then let's get Fred Roberts,
Speaker 9: Let's get Devin Durant and then we can get Yeah. No,
Speaker 9: I mean he threw out every BYU basketball guy from
Speaker 9: the eighties and we had to kind of talk him
Speaker 9: off the ledge.
Speaker 5: A little bit of brand doesn't quite work like that.
Speaker 9: You know, you need guys who know what they're doing
Speaker 9: in their respective roles and whatnot.
Speaker 5: And look, when you see what Alex is doing.
Speaker 9: You got Eric Daniels, who has his footprint all over
Speaker 9: and embedded in the Utah High school scene. You got
Speaker 9: Raphael Chilius, who knows the national scene, has been doing
Speaker 9: that for a long time. And you've got Martin Schiller,
Speaker 9: who knows the European scene. So you can see how
Speaker 9: these pieces to the puzzle are starting to fit and
Speaker 9: get together. And I'm sure that's all by design of
Speaker 9: Alex to figure out where are the holes that we
Speaker 9: need to fill and how we're going to go about
Speaker 9: doing it.
Speaker 3: And you have Wes Willcox as the general manager.
Speaker 1: And also news broke today that Rico Sylvester Junior has
Speaker 1: been named the director of Operations and player personnel for
Speaker 1: the running US. All right, Spindy, before we catch a
Speaker 1: break and I set you loose. You reference Martin's ties
Speaker 1: in Europe, and I just wonder what sort of angle
Speaker 1: that Alex and the coaching staff will have dad talent
Speaker 1: if they're not given the same resource that some of
Speaker 1: the other schools are given, namely a school that's about
Speaker 1: thirty five miles south of US right now in Brigham Young.
Speaker 3: Jeff Goodman, who's.
Speaker 1: Kind of a college basketball newsbreaker and a very plugged
Speaker 1: in college basketball journalist, report yesterday that Rob Wright, a
Speaker 1: really talented freshman point guard from Baylor who had a
Speaker 1: really good game in this year for the Baylor Bears,
Speaker 1: had signed a one million dollar deal to stay at Baylor,
Speaker 1: but he has decided to remove himself from that deal
Speaker 1: and sign a deal with BYU that, according to Jeff Goodman,
Speaker 1: has worth three million dollars next year to play for
Speaker 1: Kevin Young. Whenever I talk about this stuff, I know
Speaker 1: we've got to be careful because BYU is a private institution.
Speaker 1: There's no way of actually grabbing access to their records.
Speaker 1: So I know what I've been told that they're paying
Speaker 1: Kevin Young. But if you go off the reporting of
Speaker 1: college basketball reporters that dig into this stuff, A J.
Speaker 1: Debants is seven million dollars for five months of basketball.
Speaker 1: Rob Wright three million dollars to play for BYU. We
Speaker 1: know they paid Yegor seven figures. They paid kenon Catching
Speaker 1: seven figures. Canon has transferred, yegor.
Speaker 3: Or is going to the NBA.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get Richie Saunders back with a seven
Speaker 1: figure deal offer. There's a recruit in the transfer portal
Speaker 1: named Darien Williams who played for Texas Tech last year that,
Speaker 1: according to Jeff Goodman, is now looking at BYU for
Speaker 1: a seven figure offer. BYU is going to market and
Speaker 1: they're out bitting other teams for talent.
Speaker 3: That's the name of the game.
Speaker 1: If you just do simple math, that's about fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars for five or six players.
Speaker 3: So I wonder what you make if BYU opening up, opening.
Speaker 1: Up the pocketbooks to go to market to outdid other
Speaker 1: schools for players, which is what they're doing. And what
Speaker 1: sort of pressure you think this brings Alex in the
Speaker 1: inversity of Utah.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean the pressure is always going to be
Speaker 9: there to win and to produce. So that's that's that
Speaker 9: that never goes away. How BYU is doing it? BYU,
Speaker 9: as far as I know, they're playing by the rules.
Speaker 5: And that's what everybody does.
Speaker 9: That's what Kentucky's doing, That's what Kansas is doing, That's
Speaker 9: what Duke is doing, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And they want to be one of.
Speaker 9: Those guys eventually, So this is how they're doing it.
Speaker 9: So that's until those rules change, Spence, until the NCAA
Speaker 9: puts a cap on this stuff and right relates it.
Speaker 9: More So, you're talking about, you know, the kid from
Speaker 9: Baylor that he had signed the deal, you know, and
Speaker 9: and I don't know what the wording is. I don't
Speaker 9: know how those guys send that information out, but I
Speaker 9: don't know what the phrase he signed the deal. Uh
Speaker 9: you know, in this case with Baylor, what that actually means,
Speaker 9: because I don't know what you sign And then you go, oh,
Speaker 9: you know what, Hey, by the way, I changed my mind, Uh,
Speaker 9: you just throw it out of way in the garbage.
Speaker 9: I'm I'm doing something else. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 9: what those things are right, right, but but I think
Speaker 9: the way it works currently with nil it's such a
Speaker 9: loose cannon, and there's so many open areas where schools
Speaker 9: can arrange for things and stuff that that's why, you know,
Speaker 9: even the people in the industry refer to it more
Speaker 9: at this moment in time as the wild wild West,
Speaker 9: and everybody's just trying to outbid the next guy, which
Speaker 9: is which which I which I find very distasteful, you know,
Speaker 9: for anybody who gets involved in that. I don't know
Speaker 9: if you saw right after they lost in the NCAA tournament,
Speaker 9: uh Scotti, Layden's old school, uh Saint Francis and Pennsylvania
Speaker 9: decide they're getting out of Division one athletics and moving
Speaker 9: to Division III because they just don't think it's the
Speaker 9: right thing to do relative to what the mission of
Speaker 9: the university is. I'm surprised there aren't more schools that
Speaker 9: are saying that and saying, wait a minute, what are
Speaker 9: we really doing here? What what is really going on
Speaker 9: in most places at the current time is that schools
Speaker 9: are selling out to you know, to the almighty dollar
Speaker 9: and trying to sell more basketball tickets and more buckets
Speaker 9: of popcorn and all that kind of stuff to make
Speaker 9: money for the school. They're gonna tell you it's promoting
Speaker 9: the school, you know in a pr sense, and by
Speaker 9: doing so is going to up their admissions and all.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot of.
Speaker 9: Reports that that that argue against that really, you know,
Speaker 9: being the outcome of those things.
Speaker 5: But that's what they're gonna argue. But you know, you can't.
Speaker 9: You can't tell me that you know, a school's academic
Speaker 9: reputation and what they're trying to do, you know, as
Speaker 9: an institution to educate young people falls in the hands
Speaker 9: of the athletic department and whether they get Ajdbanza to
Speaker 9: come to their school, and I just don't buy that.
Speaker 5: But having said that, everybody's doing it. All those are
Speaker 5: the rules at the moment.
Speaker 9: BYU has just decided to getting in with that full bore,
Speaker 9: which is good for them.
Speaker 5: Utah's gonna play catch up.
Speaker 9: They're gonna try and do the same thing until this
Speaker 9: whole thing gets regulated, which I guess we'll see some
Speaker 9: of coming down shortly from the government about the NCAA
Speaker 9: payoff and all that stuff, and maybe there'll be more
Speaker 9: rules about that coming this summer.
Speaker 1: Before I say you lose, because I promise you I
Speaker 1: do this masters going on right now and by the way,
Speaker 1: Tony final needs a burn on either seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 1: He parted sixteen. He's one stroke off the cut line.
Speaker 3: But you wanted to share some things about your master's experience.
Speaker 3: And then we've got a cool event coming up at
Speaker 3: Black Black at Black Desert.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, I was just gonna throw out that my
Speaker 9: wife Linda and I had been privileged to be able
Speaker 9: to get down and volunteer and work for the Black
Speaker 9: Desert Championship last fall for the PGA Tour, and we're
Speaker 9: gonna do the same thing again at the end of
Speaker 9: this month for the LPGA, which will be down at
Speaker 9: the Black Desert Course down there in Saint George and Ivans, Utah.
Speaker 9: And I know that they're they're currently trying to get
Speaker 9: more volunteers to come down. A lot of people aren't
Speaker 9: aware that those opportunities exist. So if anybody's interested, you know,
Speaker 9: in going down to the Saint George at the end
Speaker 9: of the month and participating as volunteers for the for
Speaker 9: the Black Desert the LPGA tournament down there, you can
Speaker 9: go on the Black Desert Golf Course website and will
Speaker 9: direct you to how to do a voluntar tier thing
Speaker 9: and and uh so that you know, that's a great
Speaker 9: opportunity to get involved in your community.
Speaker 5: And also to get involved in golf.
Speaker 9: And I was just gonna mention with the Masters had
Speaker 9: the opportunity to go in twenty eleven, what a great
Speaker 9: thing that was. And anybody whoever has a chance to
Speaker 9: go to Augusta, Georgia for this week of golf, it
Speaker 9: is a is a.
Speaker 5: Lifetime, once in a lifetime.
Speaker 9: Experience to witness it firsthand and see how they do
Speaker 9: things and and on the highest level possible. It's just
Speaker 9: an experience that that you never forget. And anybody I've
Speaker 9: ever talked to Spence over the years who has had
Speaker 9: the chance to go, you know, feel the exact same way.
Speaker 5: I've never heard anyone say.
Speaker 9: Oh it was overblown, Oh that was you know that
Speaker 9: it's not what they made it up to.
Speaker 5: It's what what they make it up to be.
Speaker 9: And more so so, you know, people watching this weekend
Speaker 9: sit back and watch a tournament.
Speaker 5: You know at one of the most beautiful.
Speaker 1: Golf courses, or some of us have to do four
Speaker 1: hours of radio and sell steak see that bitty see.
Speaker 9: That you spend See again, we related to the NCAA stuff.
Speaker 5: Spence.
Speaker 9: You're all in on the box of beaf I am
Speaker 9: and however it comes to you, that's that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Twenty ribs for forty bucks. Come out and say Hi, Spinny,
Speaker 1: great to see.
Speaker 9: Hey, my central Connecticut. Math if I'm not, if I'm
Speaker 9: not a mistaken, tells me that's two dollars a steak.
Speaker 1: Looks like a nice little weekend, maybe a little chillier
Speaker 1: than you would prefer or maybe I'll just speak for myself,
Speaker 1: because it's eighty degrees today and I wish it was
Speaker 1: eighty degrees every day.
Speaker 3: Saturday is pretty good. Sunday about fifty seven.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a little chilly on Sunday and then
Speaker 1: warming up until next week.
Speaker 3: So happy weekend to you. Hope you have something fun planned.
Speaker 1: Maybe little golf, little hiking, little biking, get outside. It's
Speaker 1: one of the best parts of living in this beautiful state.
Speaker 1: Before we say good night, time for our you went
Speaker 1: to golf Master's update five Utah locations at Worldwide Golf
Speaker 1: Shops dot com for the latest time. Tylerstprov one x
Speaker 1: ping drivers Taylor made Qi thirty five woods in the
Speaker 1: Callaway Ai ten Times Smart Club. It's the eighty ninth
Speaker 1: plane of the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club
Speaker 1: in Augusta, Georgia, where conditions were really, really nice today.
Speaker 1: Justin Rose grinding his way to a two round lead.
Speaker 1: He's eight under par. Bryceon Deshambeau, the defending US champions
Speaker 1: seven under part Roy McElroy, six hunderd par, as is
Speaker 1: Cory Conners, Matt McCarty, Shane Lowry, Terrell Hatton, Scottie Scheffler,
Speaker 1: five under par, Victor Hoveland, Jason Day at.
Speaker 3: Four under par.
Speaker 1: Your winner will come from the names that I just listed.
Speaker 1: The one exception I'll give you is Ludvig o'berg, who
Speaker 1: struggled a bit today with a seventy three, but he's
Speaker 1: at three under and that kid has so much game.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be stunned to see him have something to
Speaker 1: say about it.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Jazz in Action tonight taking on the Oklahoma City Thunder
Speaker 1: No idea who's gonna play? Reminder it is a seven
Speaker 1: to thirty tip. It's a little bit later than that
Speaker 1: usual seven o'clock tip. It will be the final game
Speaker 1: where Dan Roberts will be the PA voice of the
Speaker 1: Utah Jazz Alex Jensen made a couple of hires today.
Speaker 1: Martin Schiller is going to be an assistant coach for AJ.
Speaker 1: He is a guy that has a lot of experience.
Speaker 1: He was the G League Coach of the Stars and
Speaker 1: he was the g Lead Coach of the Year once.
Speaker 3: Upon a time. So there you go.
Speaker 1: Rob Wright has transferred a brief to BYU. According to
Speaker 1: Jeff Goodman, it's gonna cost BYU three million dollars.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: RSL back in action tomorrow, taking on San Jose. Before
Speaker 1: we say, and I want to tell you about what
Speaker 1: we're doing out here, which is where we're at at
Speaker 1: one O four five zero South State Street, number two
Speaker 1: three two zero. It is a vacant parking lot with
Speaker 1: a truck full of meat. That's right, Homestead steaks twenty
Speaker 1: ribbys for forty dollars. It's their weekend meat sale and
Speaker 1: they also have in addition to that, crazy half price
Speaker 1: bolk deals on steak, chicken, pork, chops, and seafood.
Speaker 3: Check out their party packs.
Speaker 1: To fill your freezer with New York Strips, filets, Mega Ribbis,
Speaker 1: Gourmet smash burgers plus chicken and seafood.
Speaker 3: All payments accepted cash, credit, debit.
Speaker 1: N e BT, Porter Larson two rounds down with the
Speaker 1: Major Championship.
Speaker 3: Of course, the masters who you got on Monday? Who
Speaker 3: are gonna be? Who are gonna be?
Speaker 5: Who are gonna be?
Speaker 3: Who are we gonna be talking about on Monday? That
Speaker 3: won this tournament?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well, as you said, Spence, Uh, the name is likely
Speaker 4: to come from that group of leaders that you just mentioned.
Speaker 4: Of course, our guy Tony Fenale Uh. Struggling down the stretch.
Speaker 4: He had three bogies on the back nine, a lot
Speaker 4: of them on the the putter as well. So U
Speaker 4: but I'm going to see our guy Tony final drop
Speaker 4: like that. But the winner, Spence Man, I really like
Speaker 4: the way that that Justin Rose is playing golf. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Roy McElroy, with that round he had today, you have
Speaker 4: to keep him at top of mind over the weekend.
Speaker 4: You have that number one player in the world though
Speaker 4: Spence sitting three shots back and Scotty seems to kind
Speaker 4: of just be filling the course out this year so far.
Speaker 4: I think if especially if the conditions are wet, if
Speaker 4: the greens are soft, I think Scottie Scheffler is the
Speaker 4: guy you look at for a low, low wet weekend.
Speaker 4: But again Justin Rose, Bryce and to Shambeau, those guys
Speaker 4: already have a couple of shots up on him going
Speaker 4: into round three.
Speaker 3: There you go, so stay tuned.
Speaker 1: We'll let you, of course, know the take takeaways from
Speaker 1: Augusta National and let you know who's gonna win the tournament.
Speaker 3: We'll cover it on a Monday Drive. But porter before.
Speaker 1: We get out of here, get our weekend started out
Speaker 1: what comes our way on a Monday edition of the program.
Speaker 4: As you said, Spence, we will react to the masters
Speaker 4: the first hour of the show. Rex Hoggard, who was
Speaker 4: going to join us today but is live in Augusta,
Speaker 4: was dealing with some stuff on the course when we
Speaker 4: were trying him earlier. He's going to join the show
Speaker 4: on Monday, as will our old friend Cam Rogers. Of
Speaker 4: course you mentioned it, Spence. The final home game of
Speaker 4: the season for the Utah JA tonight. They'll wrap up
Speaker 4: over the weekend and then on Monday, I'll be down
Speaker 4: at Designs Basketball Facility wrapping things up with Will.
Speaker 3: Hardy and Justin Xanix.
Speaker 4: We'll have some sound from then. Sarah Todd will stop
Speaker 4: by the program post NBA season, as will a standout
Speaker 4: from the weekend with Real Salt Lake. Of course they
Speaker 4: are in action against Nashville on Saturday.
Speaker 3: All right, there you go.
Speaker 1: That'll do it for us on this Friday show special.
Speaker 1: Thank you to our friends out here who are hooking
Speaker 1: you up with great steaks, our friends at Homestead Steaks
Speaker 1: twenty rabbis for forty dollars.
Speaker 3: It is their weekend Meet Deal special.
Speaker 1: Thank you today to Howard Beck, to Christopher Camronnie, to
Speaker 1: Richard Smith, and to Paul Pugmyer for the sound you
Speaker 1: made miss from the show website ESPN seven hundred Sports
Speaker 1: dot com, download our mobile app.
Speaker 3: And take us on the go.
Speaker 1: The ESPN seven hundred app is available for free in
Speaker 1: the App Store, in.
Speaker 3: The Google play Store.
Speaker 1: And then for what we do in our space, our
Speaker 1: podcast page is the way for you to go consume
Speaker 1: whatever part of our show you want on your time.
Speaker 1: And it's called the Drive with Spence check its and
Speaker 1: that's available wherever you get your show. Subscribe, rate, review,
Speaker 1: say nice things in the comments, give us all the stars.
Speaker 1: It helps reporter. I'm spent saying and I'd have a
Speaker 1: great weekend. Be good to yourself, be good to each other.
Speaker 1: Talk to you on a Monday drive. As always, you
Speaker 1: can catch that right here on ESPN seven hundred