Speaker 1: Our next guest front of the show. But it's been
Speaker 1: a while, it's been too long. I mean Al Hassen
Speaker 1: back on the Drive on a Thursday, I mean, happy Thursday, sir.
Speaker 2: How you been doing well?
Speaker 3: Doing well?
Speaker 2: Can complain there you go, appreciate the time.
Speaker 1: So let's get your reaction to the news of the
Speaker 1: day today, Victor woman Yama will miss the rest of
Speaker 1: the season with a blood blood clot in his shoulder. Now,
Speaker 1: my first my first thought, I mean was Chris Bosh.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but it just was. Now,
Speaker 1: this is in his shoulder, not his lower leg. We've
Speaker 1: seen I'm and Thompson deal with this, brandon Ingram deal
Speaker 1: with this, and a lot of Spurs fans probably be
Speaker 1: pretty nervous about the news.
Speaker 2: What's your reaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was taking my show Oddball with Izzy Gutierrez
Speaker 3: when the news broke, and he was the one that
Speaker 3: had to kind of remind me of brandon Ingram and
Speaker 3: I'm and Thompson because originally my first thought was Chris Bosh.
Speaker 3: And then a good friend of mine, Johnmate, who passed
Speaker 3: away not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago. Actually,
Speaker 3: he was a top five pick in the draft. He
Speaker 3: his storage career at Notre Dame, but his career was
Speaker 3: first like interrupted several times in the clotting and then
Speaker 3: eventually he had to retire because of blood clouding. And
Speaker 3: so it's a very serious issue. It's not necessarily kind
Speaker 3: of a end to his career. As we said, there
Speaker 3: have been plenty of examples of guys who got on
Speaker 3: the medication, got it sorted out, and came back and
Speaker 3: were perfectly fine. And I haven't had to deal with
Speaker 3: it again, but it just, you know, it's one of
Speaker 3: those things where I think we all have to be
Speaker 3: cognizant day none of this stuff is guaranteed, and you know,
Speaker 3: you hope that the kid bounces back great because he's
Speaker 3: been such a breasive fresh share for the league, not
Speaker 3: only with his play, but with his personality and kind
Speaker 3: of his genuine energy when it comes to the game
Speaker 3: of basketball.
Speaker 1: So, based off of what I was reading, this is
Speaker 1: an instant shut it down entirely for six months situation,
Speaker 1: based off of the medication that you have to take
Speaker 1: right away, because a blood cloud is not a sprained ankle.
Speaker 1: You have to take action immediately to make sure that
Speaker 1: you're taking care of just as a person less loan
Speaker 1: of basketball player.
Speaker 2: What do you think this process is going to be like?
Speaker 1: Because if it's a six month shutdown, he's going to
Speaker 1: be knocking on the door just to get ready for
Speaker 1: the starting next season. So what do you think the
Speaker 1: next six seven months are going to look like for
Speaker 1: Victor wemen Yama?
Speaker 3: Well, frustrating. You've got to be frustrated for sure, because
Speaker 3: one of the things that you really enjoy doing you're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to do.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: You know. The conversation that Izzy and I had was,
Speaker 3: you know, these kind of live events kind of take
Speaker 3: one or two paths on people impacts on people. One
Speaker 3: is the this is another challenge, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: teach this challenge and I'll come back better than ever
Speaker 3: and kind of you know, just almost determining that comes
Speaker 3: from it. The other is, oh my god, I've been
Speaker 3: racing my life, worried about things that really don't matter,
Speaker 3: and now that life and death has entered the equation,
Speaker 3: I'm going to cherish the things that do matter, like
Speaker 3: family and friendship and quality of life and all that.
Speaker 3: I tend to think that web ben Yama is more
Speaker 3: of the former simply because I think he's already someone
Speaker 3: who's with a healthy work life balance. He seems to
Speaker 3: be well rounded, he's got interests, he's not afraid of
Speaker 3: expressing his interests that are not basketball. So I kind
Speaker 3: of feel like he's going to look at it as
Speaker 3: just another challenge to be bested, rather than a wake
Speaker 3: up call that he's been living in life the wrong way.
Speaker 1: What do you think? And I'm chuckling because I'm just picturing. Look,
Speaker 1: San Antonio twenty three wins, and the Jazz have thirteen.
Speaker 1: The Pelicans have thirteen, So there's still a major gap
Speaker 1: between where the Spurs are now and some of the
Speaker 1: worst teams in the league Washington with nine wins.
Speaker 2: But what do you think the Spurs do now?
Speaker 1: Do you think they can completely just like shut it
Speaker 1: down and try to get another top lottery pick in
Speaker 1: a draft that's absolutely packed? Like, what's the rest of
Speaker 1: the year look like for the San Antonio Spurs?
Speaker 3: Oh, Spencer, are you asking me if the Spurs are
Speaker 3: going to play capture the Flag?
Speaker 2: Yes? Are you exactly what I'm asking you?
Speaker 3: If the San Antonio Spurs, a team that went to
Speaker 3: the Western Conference Finals in nineteen ninety five and had
Speaker 3: the MVP of the league, and the next year one
Speaker 3: fifty five or fifty six games, and then the year
Speaker 3: after that had an unfortunate injuries in a franchise player.
Speaker 3: Just happened to be the same year that this can't
Speaker 3: miss prospect that a wake for us is coming out,
Speaker 3: and then they got them, and then and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden they were good again with the best player generationally,
Speaker 3: probably for his entire class. Are you asking me if
Speaker 3: that's gonna happen against man? Is that what you're your
Speaker 3: kind of questioning?
Speaker 1: If you want my third eye to be open, I'll
Speaker 1: ask you if this is really a blood clot.
Speaker 2: Bro I can go as deep as you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm su the Spurs, though, you know five they
Speaker 3: would never they would never step something up.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, gracious, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's cruel because I feel like the Jazz should
Speaker 1: have done what they're doing now a few years ago
Speaker 1: when this kid was available, you know, But instead the
Speaker 1: Jazz decided to be fine being average for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and they had some late lottery picks, and
Speaker 1: these kids just really haven't popped very much. So I
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying tongue in cheek, But the Spurs
Speaker 1: did exactly what they should have done a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and the Jazz didn't, and now we're kind of paying
Speaker 1: the price for it around here.
Speaker 3: It is. It is remarkable, right that every time there's
Speaker 3: a generational talent, these guys just happen to have, like
Speaker 3: the the on ramp to being terrible, terrible at the
Speaker 3: right time and not terrible for too long. Right, you
Speaker 3: don't have to deal with a whole lot of terrible
Speaker 3: of pan Antonio. They're just gonna be terrible for the
Speaker 3: small window. And it seems to work out for them.
Speaker 2: It sure does, It sure does.
Speaker 1: So whether it's intelligence, timing, or luck or accommodation of
Speaker 1: all three, you gotta give them a lot of credit.
Speaker 1: But let's have a little fun now with the Utah Jazz,
Speaker 1: and let's say, for the first time in jazz history,
Speaker 1: the Jazz actually get lottery luck. The Jazz have been
Speaker 1: in a lottery nine times and they've never moved up.
Speaker 1: If they're able to cash in on this really difficult
Speaker 1: season for a fan base around here that choose to winning,
Speaker 1: to digest and snag Cooper flag number one, and they
Speaker 1: roll in the next season with the front court of
Speaker 1: Walker Kesher, Larry Market and Cooper Flag, a front court
Speaker 1: that would be very popular around here. I'll just leave
Speaker 1: it there. Then we're kind of onto something, aren't we. Like,
Speaker 1: if this entire process leads to that, maybe this fan
Speaker 1: base has something to latch onto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just want to point out how staggered I am.
Speaker 3: These said the Jazz have been to the lottery nine
Speaker 3: times in their franchise history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they've never moved up I mean, look, okay,
Speaker 2: never moved up fields.
Speaker 3: Like, oh wow, that's that's kind of tough. But so
Speaker 3: only been there nine times. Yeah, yep, pretty remarkable. I
Speaker 3: mean it's and by the way, three of them, so
Speaker 3: thirty three percent of them we're in that right now.
Speaker 3: That's that's very, very, very remarkable. Now, you know, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, Cooper Flag is a kind of talent where
Speaker 3: you could thirty teams and they all need a Cooper Flag.
Speaker 3: Utah is kind of Look, Denny Ainge has a vision
Speaker 3: of how to do this, He's done it before, and
Speaker 3: what we're seeing is kind of, you know, the same
Speaker 3: sort of formula in terms of when you look at
Speaker 3: the deals and you look at him getting involved in
Speaker 3: that Lake to Maverage deal as a third party, not
Speaker 3: even knowing who the deal is, for all of that
Speaker 3: kind of accumulation, accumulation, accumulation. He's doing this in the
Speaker 3: same way he did it in the mid two thousands
Speaker 3: when he realized that Paul Pierce alone wasn't going to
Speaker 3: get it done and you needed to make a bold move.
Speaker 3: And so the question becomes, and I think this is
Speaker 3: the part where everyone gets frustrated, is you say, what
Speaker 3: is that bold move going to be? Well, you don't know.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the thing when you know, way
Speaker 3: back when I think of Philadelphia, when people were praising
Speaker 3: Sam hinty Oh for doing this and he's accumulating picks,
Speaker 3: and this is the way to do it if you're
Speaker 3: not first, your last with your Bobby style. And what
Speaker 3: I said at the time is on paper, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: what you do. But this thing doesn't happen on paper,
Speaker 3: and you've got ownership to answer to. And even owners
Speaker 3: who can pretend they're bought in and it come from
Speaker 3: tech or finance and they understand these kind of processes. Ultimately,
Speaker 3: they still have kids who go to school and get
Speaker 3: teams because their dad owns the team and ruined it.
Speaker 3: So your capacity to run this playbook, in essence is
Speaker 3: directly proportionate to how confident you are in the ownership
Speaker 3: behind you speaking behind you. In the case of Sam Presty,
Speaker 3: I had full raids you could do it forever, and
Speaker 3: they were never going to give up on him because
Speaker 3: they knew, hey, we got ourselves one of the best
Speaker 3: guys in the league. Does Danny Aide have that sort
Speaker 3: of job security with Ryan Schmick? I don't know. One
Speaker 3: would tink because his track record and obviously who he
Speaker 3: is locally, one would think that he's got that job security.
Speaker 3: But again, hell have no fury like my kids coming
Speaker 3: home from school crying because they've got made ton.
Speaker 1: Of Well, look, I think the answer to the job
Speaker 1: security security question is Danny has tremendous job security. I mean,
Speaker 1: Ryan has been front facing about how much of a
Speaker 1: fan he always was I Danny because Ryan's a big
Speaker 1: BYU fan, and then obviously Danny goes on to do
Speaker 1: great things in pro basketball. This was born out of
Speaker 1: a fan relationship between the owner and the executive far
Speaker 1: more than it was born out of a friendship. Now
Speaker 1: it seems that it has become that now, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure Danny appreciates this ability to not necessarily put in
Speaker 1: the same type of ground where Xanik does, yet get
Speaker 1: paid a lot more money and kind of swoop in
Speaker 1: what he needs to. And I know that he's involved,
Speaker 1: but Justin's the one that seems to be doing the.
Speaker 2: Work on the ground. But here's the question.
Speaker 1: Based off of the dynamic, Ryan fancies himself as a
Speaker 1: basketball guy. He's in the meetings, he has input, and
Speaker 1: I can tell you that both Dennis Lindsay and Quinn
Speaker 1: Snyder had just one meeting with ownership and was like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm good. In your history around the league medaling owners
Speaker 1: that think they're basketball people, how does that typically work out?
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny that you mentioned that the relationship with
Speaker 3: between Danny and Ryan was born out of a fandom,
Speaker 3: because to answer your question, I can think of another
Speaker 3: owner GM Combo that was born out of a fandom
Speaker 3: was Robert Charver and Steve Kerran Phoenix. Robert Tarborough was
Speaker 3: the university when I was on the Glad and he
Speaker 3: was a big fan of Steve Kerr at U of A.
Speaker 3: He's obviously a big fant of Steve Kerr as an
Speaker 3: NBA player, And you know, at first it was like that,
Speaker 3: it was like, yeah, he listened to Steve, and then
Speaker 3: at some point Robert just thought he knew better. And
Speaker 3: so anything that Steve came up with that we came
Speaker 3: up with as a staff, Robert would basically second gas
Speaker 3: and leak to other people asking them their opinions, and
Speaker 3: our business was out in the streets. So typically, what
Speaker 3: I found is the more your owner thinks he knows basketball,
Speaker 3: the more dangerous your owner becomes, right, because he's much
Speaker 3: more likely to believe. Look, I get it, I understand.
Speaker 3: I'm not like you've got a guy I am. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm cool, right, And as we all know from high school,
Speaker 3: the guy who announces he's cool not really cool, right.
Speaker 3: The cool guy I didn't have to announce you cool,
Speaker 3: he just is. And typically these owners who think they
Speaker 3: know what they're talking about are not. They don't know
Speaker 3: what they're talking about. I'll give you another example. A
Speaker 3: current example is Matt hb in Phoenix, who I would say, legitimately,
Speaker 3: good thing. I know basketball. I played high level V
Speaker 3: one basketball. I won a national championship. I played for
Speaker 3: Togas one of the greatest coaches of all time. I'm
Speaker 3: friends with Isaiah Namas, I'm friends with Jason Rigidster, I'm
Speaker 3: friends with all these great NBA players, Zach Randolph, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 3: So if they ever learn with anyone who would say, oh,
Speaker 3: I actually know this stuff, it's matt Eshbia and yet
Speaker 3: it hasn't really turned out great. I'll give you another one.
Speaker 3: And he may have heard of this guy, Michael Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Jordan's son might say he knew basketball any of any
Speaker 3: of us, But when put in that position to be
Speaker 3: the final saying, he turns out he wasn't that great
Speaker 3: at running a basketball team, because at some point it
Speaker 3: gets in the way, point your know it all, this
Speaker 3: gets in the way, and ultimately the best owner is
Speaker 3: the owner that at the beginning of the year says,
Speaker 3: this is a number, you can't spend over it, and
Speaker 3: we come to an agreement on what the expectations are,
Speaker 3: and then I don't do anything. I just sit back
Speaker 3: and watch the show. And at the end of the
Speaker 3: year we look at the numbers. We look at like
Speaker 3: where we were recording to an expertation, if there are things
Speaker 3: that make us alter the plan midway through. We have
Speaker 3: a conversation about that. But the more your hands on
Speaker 3: and there, sitting on meetings and all that and giving
Speaker 3: your opinion, the more you end up with kind of.
Speaker 1: What I would like to say is mediocre results one
Speaker 1: more jazz thing because you're good at this and you
Speaker 1: can make it interesting. There's not a lot of things
Speaker 1: topically with this roster that I really care to ask
Speaker 1: you about, because we all know the deal, we all
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. But this is a fan base,
Speaker 1: as we outlined with nine lottery appearances, it indicates that
Speaker 1: this fan base is used to winning back basketball. Now,
Speaker 1: we haven't had a championship out here, and if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: we haven't had a championship team here since nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight in my opinion, and that was John and Carl's
Speaker 1: best and quite frankly last chance to get it done.
Speaker 1: And of course Mike took brings off their fingers as
Speaker 1: he did to our guy, Pat Ewing and Sean Kemp
Speaker 1: and Gary Payton, Charles Barkley.
Speaker 2: We could keep going.
Speaker 1: It is a fan base that's used to winning, and
Speaker 1: his championship thirsty. What's a reasonable expectation during this process
Speaker 1: where it is asked to accumulation, you hope a young
Speaker 1: player two pops, then you hope you get lottery luck.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's as reductive as I can be about
Speaker 1: what they're trying to do. What's in that reasonable expectation
Speaker 1: to this fan base is to win. Winning basketball might
Speaker 1: be back in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 3: Well, I think again, we have to define what winning
Speaker 3: is winning a championship. I don't know, maybe never I
Speaker 3: got something that everyone has to come to groups with
Speaker 3: every fan in the league except for the Lakers, so
Speaker 3: ha do they keep doing it? But everyone else you
Speaker 3: have to come the grips with. If your thing is
Speaker 3: my destination championship, you gotta be ready that you may
Speaker 3: never see that destination. So what do you want to
Speaker 3: see in the meantime. You want to see growth, you
Speaker 3: want to see improvement, and you want to see standards right,
Speaker 3: And the thing I always go back to Sam Presty
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City Thunder and comparing contrasting what he did versus
Speaker 3: what Sam Hinky did in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, sam Hinky said,
Speaker 3: I need to be terrible so I can get all
Speaker 3: these lottery picks and just be a clearing house for
Speaker 3: other people's craft so I could get keep getting lottery picks.
Speaker 3: And he did that by stocking his roster with players
Speaker 3: who were not NBA talents. No disrespectful guys, they just
Speaker 3: weren't NBA caliber players. They were guys who in a
Speaker 3: regular situation would never make an NBA team, but in
Speaker 3: this situation, because they're trying to be as bad as possible,
Speaker 3: welcome aboard. And he did that over years, and then
Speaker 3: even as he hit on some of his guys, he
Speaker 3: refused to stock his roster with vets. He refused to
Speaker 3: have any sort of semblance of we're going to play competitive,
Speaker 3: tough basketball. We're just gonna get blown out every night.
Speaker 3: And the contrast is the Oklahoma City Thunderwear. Yes they
Speaker 3: were doing the same thing. Yes they're trying to be bad,
Speaker 3: Yes they were getting a lot of evictuses to their cleaninghouse,
Speaker 3: But beyond hitting on their picks, they maintain the entire time.
Speaker 3: This is the standard. The people talk about heat culture,
Speaker 3: they got thunder culture over there, and it's that we
Speaker 3: have standards and we're going to do things the right way.
Speaker 3: Win or lose, it doesn't matter. These are the expectations,
Speaker 3: and so what happens is the players that you have
Speaker 3: there are growing up in a system and in a
Speaker 3: culture that is positive and a winning culture, despite those
Speaker 3: standings not being that. To me, if I'm a bad
Speaker 3: team and if I'm a fan of a bad fanchise,
Speaker 3: that's what I want to see. I want to see
Speaker 3: players that execute. I want to see players that defend
Speaker 3: and play both types of the ball. I want to
Speaker 3: see players that are developing and be able to do both.
Speaker 3: You know, multiple things are supposed to being specialists, right,
Speaker 3: and I want to see my team be competitive even
Speaker 3: if we win twelve games all year long. I want
Speaker 3: us to be I want us to win twelve games,
Speaker 3: lose seventy games by five points, seven points, nine points
Speaker 3: like I wanted to be. I want us to be
Speaker 3: leading and then we blew the lead down on the stretch.
Speaker 3: Like those are the type of losses where you can
Speaker 3: walk away and say we had a legitimate chance and
Speaker 3: either we got out talented or we made mistakes of
Speaker 3: youth that we will not make in the future. And
Speaker 3: if you're Utah, that's if you're a jass On, I
Speaker 3: think we look at this team, you want to see
Speaker 3: players that play hard. You want to see players that
Speaker 3: are competing, and if they're losing due to bad decisions,
Speaker 3: like when the Collier kid waves off Colin Sexton to
Speaker 3: still get an eight second count, you want that to
Speaker 3: be feared in his brain. So I think he becomes
Speaker 3: a number one time a time in sport situation type
Speaker 3: of play.
Speaker 2: So well, I want to move over here.
Speaker 1: We have we've we had Tom Haberstrawan, and Zach Harper
Speaker 1: on this week, and so we've talked to friends of yours,
Speaker 1: coworkers of yours about All Star Weekend, and I think
Speaker 1: I'm just now resigned.
Speaker 2: Look for thirty years or forty years, it was.
Speaker 1: The best pickup basketball game in the world, and it
Speaker 1: was awesome, and it wasn't every year, and they didn't
Speaker 1: play hard one through forty eight.
Speaker 2: I understand that.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I still bemoan what it's become
Speaker 1: is I miss that what it once was. Is there
Speaker 1: any going back or at this point is it just
Speaker 1: going to be an undigestible weekend regardless of everybody yelling
Speaker 1: about how bad it is, There.
Speaker 3: Isn't going back. Unfortunately, the guy who is going to
Speaker 3: do that for us is out for the rest of
Speaker 3: the year with a blood clot. You know, hopefully he's
Speaker 3: fine next year. But it starts in the locker room.
Speaker 3: All of these fixes that they've tried, elamending, draft your
Speaker 3: Own Team, tournament, like all of these things, they all
Speaker 3: come down to one simple premise, which is the twenty
Speaker 3: four guys in that locker room, for whatever reason, aren't
Speaker 3: taking it seriously, and so we're going to do whatever
Speaker 3: we can to manufactor something that causes them to ticket seriously.
Speaker 3: I thought the tournament, the basketball part of it, the
Speaker 3: basketball part of it, wasn't improvement over the last three
Speaker 3: or four years. We got competitive basketball for the first time.
Speaker 3: I thought the rising stars in their game, they actually
Speaker 3: that was the best game of the three that we
Speaker 3: saw on Sunday. I thought that the championship game was okay,
Speaker 3: it was decent. I thought the first game was kind
Speaker 3: of lackadaisical. But the point is they created this gimmick
Speaker 3: because they wanted guys to burn calories. Like you said,
Speaker 3: we're not asking for one through forty eight. We're not
Speaker 3: asking for Game seven intensity. We're not asked for the
Speaker 3: finals intensity. We're not asking for playoff intensity. We're not
Speaker 3: even asking for regular season intensity. Can I get preseason intensity? Preseason?
Speaker 3: A preseason intensity looks like basketball people want to watch
Speaker 3: because here's the deal. These are the greatest players in
Speaker 3: the world. They dribble better than anybody else, they shoot
Speaker 3: better than anybody else, They dunk on people, all that stuff.
Speaker 3: You know what makes that crazy crossover, that crazy three pointer,
Speaker 3: that crazy dunk look cool. It's resistance. Resistance makes Oh
Speaker 3: he tried to stop him and he couldn't. He tried
Speaker 3: to block it and he couldn't. Right the moment you
Speaker 3: remove resistance, it's just guys getting shot up before the
Speaker 3: pickup game starts. Been it again, Spencer or maybe at
Speaker 3: the playground and like we're still like we try to
Speaker 3: figure out what teams are. Guys just getting shot up.
Speaker 3: That's what the ALSAR game has become over the last
Speaker 3: few years. And so until those twenty four guys understand, hey,
Speaker 3: I got apply a little bit, I can't completely treat
Speaker 3: it like a joke. It's gonna stay the way it is,
Speaker 3: no matter what the format is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well said all right, buddy, before I say
Speaker 1: you lose. I have not been able to catch up
Speaker 1: with you since Luka Tancic was traded to the Lakers
Speaker 1: and look man, I Like everybody else, the alert popped
Speaker 1: on my phone and I said, Nope, not real, no chance.
Speaker 1: Like everybody else, I texted everybody that I know in
Speaker 1: the league to try to make sense of this, and
Speaker 1: we can. I guess we can be as reductive as that.
Speaker 1: Nico just didn't like Luca and like z D. I
Speaker 1: guess that that's the deal. I've talked to more than
Speaker 1: a handful of executives that still don't buy it and
Speaker 1: believe there's something that none of us know. One of
Speaker 1: them said, we'll find out in summer league when we're
Speaker 1: all together. It didn't make sense then. It still doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me now. So your reaction when you
Speaker 1: saw the news and now a few weeks later, where
Speaker 1: are you at with that trade?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I saw a dm an All Star weekend. The
Speaker 3: first thing he asked me was what do you think happened?
Speaker 3: Because he couldn't figure it out. We're all kind of
Speaker 3: in the dark search and trying to make sense. How
Speaker 3: nonsense if we're going to be perfectly almost here, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I think I think the stuff that has
Speaker 3: come out recently clarify some of it is that some
Speaker 3: of it is Nico. If you know, Nico basically grew
Speaker 3: up in the NBA with Kobe Bryant on Kobe Bryant's side.
Speaker 3: So if that's your vision of what a franchise player is,
Speaker 3: I can imagine how Luca Dantis could be a jarring departure, right, Like,
Speaker 3: that's got to be the crazy like from this guy
Speaker 3: who's a workaholic, waits up at four in the morning
Speaker 3: and you know it doesn't put any poisons so that
Speaker 3: you can embody to the beer drinking, hookah smoking, lovable,
Speaker 3: affable guy like who's never in shape, Like has to
Speaker 3: be a complete departure from everything you believed in. Right,
Speaker 3: you got ownership that also has like, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: shaky kind of aspirations. I think you want to talk
Speaker 3: about another situation where ownership is kind of meddling. Hearing
Speaker 3: him talk the Patrick Dumont talked to the Dallas Morning
Speaker 3: News and explain kind of his visions and stuff like,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh my god, this guy doesn't sound bright
Speaker 3: at all when it comes to basketball. So I think
Speaker 3: there's a little bit today. It's always is always an
Speaker 3: ownership element in any one of these types of deals.
Speaker 3: I think there's a little bit of Nico Harrison's worldview
Speaker 3: based on his basketball upbringing, and and maybe there's something
Speaker 3: more to it than that. If so, like I still
Speaker 3: go back to this all those things I named, you
Speaker 3: could tell me. Okay, that's why we got to shape
Speaker 3: book of docs. Okay, I see it. I don't agree
Speaker 3: with it, but I see it. But the part where
Speaker 3: your return for him is that that's the part where
Speaker 3: you lose everybody. That's the part where you lose everybody.
Speaker 3: And so I'll say it, like like we talked about
Speaker 3: on Basketball Illuminati a couple of weeks ago or whatever
Speaker 3: it was. Once you've made up your mind I have
Speaker 3: to trade this guy, which it sounds like they did,
Speaker 3: then why do you care if it's a secret or not.
Speaker 3: Why do you care if he's uncomfortable oren notough, why
Speaker 3: do you care if the fans are upset or not?
Speaker 3: At that point, then you play it to its natural
Speaker 3: conclusion and try to get as much as a sand.
Speaker 2: Form wild man. I still I still whatever.
Speaker 1: I actually kind of marinate on it, and like, I
Speaker 1: still can't believe you do this with a twenty five
Speaker 1: year old global superstar, not just transcending talent, global superstar.
Speaker 1: But we'll see how it plays out. Hey, it's been
Speaker 1: too long. It's great to hear your voice. I'll set
Speaker 1: you loose. Have a great weekend. Okay, thanks alast thing
Speaker 1: Amino Hassen spent a number of years in NBA front
Speaker 1: office with the Knicks and the Suns, and he's been
Speaker 1: on the media side of things for about fifteen years now.
Speaker 1: Busy guy one of those guys that has like seven
Speaker 1: different podcasts at darth Emine is where you find him
Speaker 1: on social.
Speaker 2: He is a Star Wars fan.